Living in Japan, this almost didn’t register to me. I have literally never met anybody that didn’t have one. When you move out, you use your family’s old one until you can buy a newer one.

Everyone should have one, absolutely.

Their point is the double standard. Either apply it consistently or not at all. If athletes are representing their country in all aspects when competing internationally, all athletes should be held to that standard.

If an athlete refused to shake a USian athletes hand because of the war crimes of their country, including ones ongoing at this very moment, you would be on board with it then? There would be precious few handshakes that could be given out on international sporting stages, that is for sure.

Obviously you run into a lot of other issues with a sudden change but we are frankly pretty overpopulated and could use a decrease. It turns out that a system predicated on infinite population growth with finite resources can’t be sustained forever. Especially with how finite they are in our case.

I think even worse than our population issues is the overcentralization though. SO much is based around Tokyo, the vast majority of jobs are located there, especially if you want any upwards mobility. It’s even worse if you include areas like Chiba and Saitama as part of the greater Tokyo area. Even the other cities pale in comparison to opportunities in Tokyo. If people could spread out a bit more, it wouldn’t be nearly as bad as it is now.

I was lucky enough to be able to move out of Tokyo last year thanks to my work. I am not in a super rural area but I definitely never want to go back to Tokyo if I can help it. I am in the mountains around Mt. Fuji, and get to work overlooking a spectacular view of the mountain. Don’t have to deal with packing into crowded trains in the summer when everyone is dripping with sweat.

My country is exceptionally bad about this.

Buy a plastic package of crackers? It will be filled with smaller packages of crackers all wrapped in plastic with a plastic freshener pack for each one. I am not exaggerating. I am not sure I have ever bought something that didn’t have at least two degrees of plastic wrap.

We did stop giving plastic bags out at cashiers unless requested, but that means shitall when everything you buy is triple-wrapped to begin with.

I quite like it, I generally like how it looks, and there was less of a learning curve than I expected there to be. Things mostly work without needing you to know HOW they work (though that is fun too). I am sure it will get more active as more people move over, but it’s actually the perfect amount of activity for me right now. I can check in and there is usually some new stuff without worrying about things moving so fast that my voice gets lost in the noise.

Big plus is I can be fairly open about my leftist politics, at least around here, and not be downvoted into oblivion. Nor does everything thread even tangentially related to China devolve into racism within five posts.

Are there a couple niche communities I miss? Sure, I might recreate them myself honestly, somebody has to. Otherwise, I don’t miss much.