Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on its evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Avoid long drawn out arguments. This should be a place to relax, not to waste your time needlessly.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Please do not spam at the top level. If you have a lot to post each day, try and post them all together in one top level comment
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Try keep things light. If you are bringing in deep stuff, try not to go overboard.
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Things that are clearly on-topic for this board should be posted as a separate post and not here (except if you are new and still getting the feel of this place)
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If you find people violating these rules, deport them rather than start a argument here.
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evolving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
Rules For the rest of the Site also accessible on the sidebar.
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Ha, yeah Japanese steak is so incredibly great. Very marbled and fatty, and melts in your mouth. I'm not at all fluent, but somewhere between level 3 and level 2 (level 1 is totally native and even many adult Japanese cannot pass that exam). No, I cannot vote in Japan because I am not a citizen. I can only imagine that I would get into bigtime trouble if I tried. You must be a citizen to vote, you must register, have ID, and you must write the candidates' names yourself. There's no simple checkbox for voting. If you cannot write the names in kanji, then your vote is invalid. They don't mess around. Unfortunately, election season in Japan is extremely annoying because candidates have vans going through neighborhoods with loudspeakers repeating the same message ad nauseam. If you've seen the movie Lost in Translation with Bill Murray, you can see an absurd (although not unrealistic) example of this. It's why Kamiya is so interesting. He is certainly grassroots, getting his start via YouTube with his "Japan First" message.
In Japan, pretty much every child is on "welfare," so to speak. Parents get 10,000 a month, paid in sums every other month or 3x a year. Healthcare (except for stuff like dental clinics) is free for children. This certainly helps, but it's atrocious how the educational system in Japan is set up to basically extort parents. As an American, if I showed up to class, paid attention, did my homework and studied for tests, I could pass classes with at least a B. In Japan though, it's set up so that parents must shell out lots of money on supplemental education, such as cram schools. We've never done that for our daughter, but they do have a home study equivalent that my wife felt the need to shell out the money for. I've helped my daughter with her algebra homework and the way it's set up is crazy. From my experience, you'd have one problem, do several problems of that same type, and then go on to the next one. But my kid's homework is just one problem, then it goes to an entirely different problem. Not enough repetition. If you want repetition, pay up for supplemental education. It's scandalous, I think. One of the many reasons why people don't have many kids, or any kids at all.
Or imagine the motor vehicle department where you must pay the equivalent of a thousand dollars to get your driver's license. Let's say there is a test proctor who keeps failing people during the practical test, then tells them to enroll at the driving school down the street. Let's say this guy has quite a warm relationship with that driving school to the point where he gets kickbacks for sending so many customers their way, unofficially and under the table. I've no idea how often that happens here, but I imagine it's probably commonplace. As an American, I am extremely unusual because I passed the test on the first try. I lucked out, I guess.