Blog - David Helkowski
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Is Japan Paradise?

I recently watched a YouTube video titled I'm leaving Germany | Brutally Honest Review.

I found the detail of the video good and it made a lot of sense to me. What I found striking initially was that much of what is said there could be said about the US as well. I'm no fan of the US. Rather the opposite. The guy ( who knows what his name is I couldn't find it in a few minutes of searching... )

Let's pause for a few seconds and consider how insane that is. It's common respect to refer to people by their name, and this guy won't even share his first name? Now back to the topic...

Another distraction: I watched the video a few days ago, and I wanted at this moment to refer to some of the things that he said, so I wanted to get the subtitles for the video to refer to. When I open the YouTube link on this computer I can't see either the video or the subtitles without "logging into Google" because it thinks I'm a bot because I use a VPN.

That's... Stupid. Logging in doesn't prove I'm human. It proves I'm a bot using an account... Yes yes I fucking understand the point is to prevent scraping of YouTube content I know all about this. Stop whatever crap you are thinking along that line.

So I login to Google only to be presented with... a broken YouTube page that won't show me the transcript. Have to refresh the page to get the rest of the UI to function. Wtf...

There is a 'Show Transcript' button. I click it. It just moves me back up to the video and... no transcript shows. Oh wait I see it's off to the top right and nothing called it to my attention. #uxfail

Now how the fuck do I copy the transcript text out to be able to read it sanely? It disables its own scroll bar so I can't even fucking scroll to the bottom of it nor sanely even highlight and copy the block. I hate YouTube.

Gah. Fine. I'll use yt-dlp. I know that can download videos should be able to download the transcript also. First have to brew install it. brew :( I'm staring at the initial brew "Auto-updating" bs now for several minutes with no progress. Finally 3 minutes later it is... installing ruby. I don't want ruby. I want yt-dlp piece of shit.

Looks like I'll have to step away for... half an hour? To wait for brew to freaking update the planet so I can get some YouTube subtitles. And of course because this computer is running an "out of date MacOS" it is going to rebuild everything from source despite that the binaries still exist within ghcr. Because brew sucks.

Aha, finally figured out painfully how to navigate the stupid section of YouTube with the transcript by using arrow keys and pgup and pgdown and succeeded in copying and pasting the text out despite being absurdly blocked by a scroll bar there that vanishes if I try to click it to drag it.

I'll call out the following bits that he said ( ~ are paraphrased ):

Then after all that, he says this, which is the actual focus of what I want to talk about: "For me, the best country in the world right now to live in is Japan."

His only caveat to this is that the work culture of Japan sucks but that doesn't effect him because he's a YouTuber. Basically.

What's my issue with this? I love Japan. I've said this in multiple of my blog articles. I also dislike the US and have railed against it similarly to how this guy is railing about Germany.

I've been living in Japan for about 3.5 years now. I do think being here in Japan is much better than being in the US, but my reasoning does not match his at all, and is tempered by the reality of being here and intending to stay here in Japan permanently.

One of his main issues is that taxes are insanely high in Germany and you don't get much out of them. The same could be said of Japan imo. Taxes and "Social Insurance" related things were over 60% of what I made this last year. I was particularly screwed because I made more the previous year, and because my company is now bringing in almost nothing. Yet I still have to pay obscene high taxes and fees and bs, while this moment essentially making nothing.

In the US ( and I think in Germany ) if you aren't making anything, you don't pay taxes on the nothing you are making. This isn't true in Japan. So really in my view Japan is total shit when it comes to taxes. I still love Japan, but if you are going to criticize a country for high taxes, you need to do the same to Japan. Japan isn't any saint in that regard.

Also, health insurnance here, which he also complains about, is a huge problem here. Doesn't matter if you make nothing, you have to keep paying into health insurance.

Now, mind you, I could tell Japan my own company fired me or laid me off, which is essentially true, because my company doesn't have any money to pay me anything. But... my company is still running. I'm still working nearly full time attempting to keep my company going and creating valuable things. So, it would be a lie to said it fired me. I'm still running the company. I just get paid nothing until my company can afford to pay me again.

Now, this is a "me problem" for sure. It's not really Japan's fault per se, but it is a huge issue with me trying to reasonably have a way to pay the taxes and fees Japan demands I pay them.

So, my initial point, Japan's taxes and social fees? They are far from perfect.

I'll grant you Japan is extremely safe, and there is incredibly affordable housing here if you need to live cheaply. Food is pretty cheap also. Trains in Japan are incredible. All of those things are good.

The remaining points he was complaining about Germany are essentially: Politics, Child Raising, Pension, and free speech.

Every Japanese person I've talked briefly about politics with think that Japanese politics are basically junk. I know almost nothing about it, so I can't really comment meaningfully. Well besides that the mayor of the city I live in lives down the street from me. I talked to him once. He was friendly to me for an hour. Then never spoke to me again after that. His daughter randomly gave me a surprise upper back massage uninvited while I was sitting there talking to him. That was strange to be sure. So strange my mind says "did that really happen". Yes it really happened. Rambling here again. Basically, Japanese politics are like politics anywhere. Not great.

Lets consider Pension next. I've been paying into Japanese Pension the entire time I've been living here. The population of Japan is famously older and my rough understanding is that they are consuming Pension at an enormous unsustainable rate. It's pretty well known to be a problem here. I'm unlikely to ever see any of the Pension I am paying in to. So much for that being a shining part of Japan.

So what's left is Child Raising and Free Speech.

Children here when very young are given great freedom and have a lot of opportunities to engage with the world around them. Parks are excellent. Their schooling at a young age looks to give them a lot of outdoor time running around having fun. All of that looks good.

There are a ton of children out and about everywhere. This looks like a positive thing to me compared to my experiences in the US.

Once children though get a bit older? Middle school and high school? Such as when they are teenagers? They become jerks just like every other teenager on the planet. They are also hugely pressured to do well in school to such a degree it is essentially abusive to them. They are basically forced to conform to society.

That society is one where people are not expressive of emotions publicly and mostly work themselves to death. Many drink themselves to death after work to let loose.

I, like YouTuber dude, don't make my money ( besides that I'm struggling currently ) by being in the Japanese workforce, but realistically I'm going to have to join the Japanese workforce and do menial minimum wage jobs soon if I can't figure out how to keep my company afloat. So the toxic Japanese workplace? Headed my way soon.

I did not though complete what I was saying about raising children. My point essentially is that Japan is different in the way children are raised. There are lots of great things. There are lots of... not great things. It's just different. I wouldn't say it is better than elsewhere overall, nor worse overall.

I will address one minor point. He points out that there are lots of diaper change stations in Japan. This is true. There are many. There are stations in the majority of bathrooms, and there are also family bathrooms specific for families and children and such. I do think Japan is trying to help families.

On to the final point. Free speech. I think this is another fail for Japan. While nobody is harassing me for whatever I say, such as this extremely long ranty article with me cussing at the top, that includes me saying Japan is bad in a bunch of ways, it's not because Japanese people would approve of what I've said here. I really don't think they would like what I've just said.

The reason I can speak freely? Because they don't pay any meaningful attention to anything in English. Almost all Japanese people were taught English in school and know a bit, but never keep up with it or retain enough to do anything much with it. Japanese people read, write, speak, and understand Japanese.

Japan deals with restraining people through social shame. There is freedom in the sense you can do many things, but if you stick out from the crowd? You are going to get shamed. There is much less freedom to "act amercian" in Japan than in the US. If you like expressing yourself publicly, Japan is not the place to do that.

That's sort of different from the "free speech" topic itself. My understanding is you can actually speak critically in Japan even as a Japanese person and not be punished for it, but punishment is not the social method of control here. It is shame.

Blending into the culture here and not "causing waves" is a huge part of getting along here. I don't think anyone should come to Japan thinking they are going to be able to "speak freely and make a difference here."

So, while you can speak freely here? You probably shouldn't.

In closing, I'll return to my title "Is Japan Paradise?" Nope.

Japan is awesome in many ways. It's shitty in just as many ways that it is awesome. Where you live on this planet just depends on which awesome bits you want and which shitty parts you are willing to tolerate.

I'm not saying Japan is a bad place. Far from it. I love Japan and intend to stay here for the rest of my life. I just don't think it is a magical place where one can escape from the problems caused by humanity. People here are just as crappy as people are everywhere. They just hide it in public better.