Curious if anyone knows of any good forums for discussing things in Japan (restaurants, traveling, lodging, studying Japanese, etc.)

gaijinpot.com is okay, however alot of it is focused on employment and it has alot of (some rightfully) bitter/jaded 40+ dudes on there as well as younger dudes just asking how to bang as many girls as possible in a weekend. still very useful.

Are there any japanese forums like sb?

I'll check it out, thanks!

I hear what you're saying about the bitter/jaded expat crowd. For whatever reason, there are plenty of them in Asia. Often the worst of the lot don't speak the local language and yet they enjoy pretending to know everything about the local culture! It's funny you pointed out they're 40+, since the expat crowd in Asia is definitely aging with the rest of the population.

Anyway, yeah so I'm looking to get a bit more "on the ground" info about things going on in Japan. I know a few English forums in Taiwan which I check out from time to time, but I'm not sure if the SB expat crew does the same in Japan.


Edit: I've read a few threads on gaijinpot. Man I see what you're saying! Not only do they go after the throats of their Japanese hosts, but they spare no venom for fellow expats and forum members.

Thread title change.

yeah, i hear you. its not really a casual forum like this, but if you need 'serious' advice on something in japan (work contracts, buying a car, divorce, etc) its definately the place to go.

i gotta say though, if you're not happy somewhere there's a pretty simple solution: leave (obviously harder if you have kids!).

ps i have came across boards for videogames/fixies/sneakers for expats in japan, but i think vinyl would be too much of a niche.

It's funny, there are plenty of expats in Taiwan who seriously should leave, but I think they enjoy complaining too much, especially those from certain countries. (Interestingly, despite the stereotypes about Americans, I find they tend to complain less than others.) In my experience, expat Australians tend to have the best attitude - generally extremely easy to get along with.

For the chronic whingers in Asia, they just love it here too much. If they went home, what would they do with their sense of entitlement?

one hot, sweaty summer in Taipei was enough for me!

I do miss the food though.

that's interesting, how long have you been in taiwan for? can i ask what you do there? i've always wanted to go and was planning on visiting along with tibet after my year in japan but i should probably come back here and start university finallly (i'll be 24ish then!).

When are you moving to Japan? Have you taken Japanese classes, or are you planning to do that there?

I've been in Taiwan quite a while. Unfortunately, very few people make it over here. Well, from the West. anyway. Tons of Japanese tourists make the short hop every year. Taiwan is the home of the best Chinese food on the planet and probably the best place to experience Chinese culture. But with Tokyo so nearby to the north, and the shopping Mecca of Singapore to the south, we don't get many Western visitors.

Anyway, back on topic: Japan. I've thought about moving there and have been studying Japanese for 2 years, so that makes traveling there easier. I know some expats who have lived in Japan for decades. Some very interesting folks!

i'm moving to tokyo in two weeks. my visa only allows me to stay in the country for a year (i have no degree) and then i have to leave. i can read japanese fine if it isn't too heavy on the kanji (i probably only know 60ish) but i would be totally lost in a conversation and would probably have trouble saying much more than 'hi, i'm jake from australia'. if you've been studying for two years you would be alot better than me, i did night classes one night a week for a year and that was it. i was too tired after work to give 100% really so i kinda slacked off. last time i was in tokyo (just over 2 weeks) i was fine but i know living there and opening bank accounts, sending mail etc will be a totally different experience.

before i went i only knew two ex-pats there that i knew through hardcore, but i did meet alot of other cool people and brian (mondocoyote) on here who was awesome and showed me some of the toy joints.

like you said, the average westerner knows nothing of taiwan and i don't think i even know anyone who has been. i've always been interested in those sort of places though, as opposed to most people my age i know are only interested in going to the US or wherever. that's the last place in the world i'd wanna go personally, its way too similar to australia.

if you find yourself in tokyo in '09, let me know. always cool to meet another SB'er or vinyl fan.

Yeah, I hear you, and it only gets harder to make those yearly time committments as you get older.

Can you guys get "working holiday visas" for Japan? OZ recently started a cooperative scheme like that with Taiwan, so tons of young Taiwanese have taken working holiday trips down under.

About Japanese, I think you really need to live there for a while to reach fluency. It's been slow going for me. My "classes" are a once a week language exchange, and for textbooks I've used children's stories. (I've advanced to a storybook for 1st graders LOL.) Fortunately the kanji is pretty easy since I know Chinese, but the grammar and multiple confoundancies (made up word - tribute to the outgoing prez LOL) still make the language a bear.

Anyway, dang 2 weeks and you're on your way - you must be psyched!!

yeah, i have a working holiday visa . its normally valid for 12 months, but australians and new zealanders can actually have it extended to 18 months if they want. i hope to stay the full amount, but worst case scenario is i run out of money after 2 months, can't find any work and have to come home.

i don't know about you but i found sentence structure in japanese the hardest to get down (i'm not sure how chinese differs at all in this regard?). 90% of the time i just guess. i still don't know whether to use wa/ga in sentences either. alot of the 'rules' seem to contradict themselves to me, but maybe i'm just retarded

yeah, i am excited but also shitting myself. so much stuff to do when i get there, you forget how much stuff their is to do when you start fresh (setting up bank account, getting a phone, id/gaijin card etc). on top of that you have the language barrier!

Ah yes, all that, but you're rewarded with the adventure!

Chinese has a very simple sentence structure. No verb conjugations, no articles, no masculine/feminine noun distinctions, and very few particles - certainly nothing as baffling as the wa/ga issue, and definitely nothing approaching the complexity of the triple levels of politeness that Japanese has. One similarity with Japanese is the tendency for sentences to go on for a good while until the "idea" is completed. But Chinese follows a S + V + O structure, and prepositions precede, instead of following their objects, so in that sense it's similar to English. Chinese is also very "economical". There is ONE way to say "why". Why Japanese needs THREE (maybe more, I only know of 3) versions of the word is beyond me.

The bears of Chinese are the characters (you need to know a few thousand to get by) and the pronunciation (ie, tones). But folks in Taiwan find Japanese very easy, since they know all the "kanji" and seem to do alright with the grammar. Plus there's a huge fascination with Japanese culture here. So this is a pretty good place to study Japanese.

I stay away from the gaijinpot forum crowd...in fact I tended to stay away from the expat crowd in tokyo completely. The gaijinpot crowd are the worst of the worst.

You would be surprised how many people can live in a country for years and learn nothing of the language or culture and have no desire to.

This happens in every country.

I hear you. Especially in Japan, with the huge number of expats, I could see people easily staying in just expat circles for years or decades.

In my experience, in the early years, I didn't consciously avoid exapts in Taiwan. I just didn't see them very often, since there were just so few living here. I could sometimes go several days without even passing another foreigner on the street. There are a few more expats here now, but in general, most of my friends have always been Taiwanese.

So it sounds like gaijinpot is good for the info, but not for the crowd. Do you know of other English forums that have a better vibe?

pm'd you andy.