Shifty Eyes

Instead of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, it’ll be 6 degrees and we’re all bakin’

More than meets the eye 😏

please do. I stole the term myself from the japanlife subreddit.

The most dangerous part of living in Tokyo isn’t the typhoons, earthquakes, or tsunamis these days, its the mothers on electric assist e-bikes ‘mama-chari’ mid-afternoon on their way back with the whole family.

Toddler in the front, middle schooler on the back, she has pedal assist and is booking it on the sidewalk while looking at her smartphone because its legally permissible to ride with the pedestrians when you feel unsafe on the streets. The bike lanes here aren’t separated from traffic. And the bike lanes here are de-facto 15-minute loading parking spaces for the massive trucks, drop off points for taxis, and uber eats scooter parking spots. So you either have to merge into traffic due to all the parked vehicles, or ride on the sidewalk.

If you ever come to Toyko, walk on the left and look over your right shoulder so you don’t get run over by a whole family on a modern day chariot.

Yup, everybody looking down at their pocket computers and fucking up their posture.

Tokyo is full of meanderthals walking and biking while looking down at their phones. Standing still while waiting for the lights to change is tame.

There’s even a word for it here: aruki-sumaho

Notable sightings so far in 2025:

• A pack of middle school boys all playing a mobile game while walking with their faces in their phones and blocking the sidewalk. Three abreast in marching band formation, maybe 15 of them.

• Salaryman holding a laptop and on a conference call while rushing towards a train station.

• A few face-in-tablet while walking, that always gets a smirk out of me.

• Lady in heels, approaching the upward stairs while watching a video on her phone in landscape mode, arm fully extended and airpods in. Misses a step and eats it, goes full scorpion. I was impressed she managed to hold onto her phone and keep all her teeth, she just missed chomping on a concrete step by a few cm.

Its extremely common here. Enough that I usually have to stop walking on the sidewalk and just wait for them to notice me to look up and move out of the way, you can’t always side step them because they’re frequently not walking straight and they’ll wander across the path anyway, hence the term meanderthals.

(Edited for grammar/spelling/links)

I’ve only ever heard Autumnal used for the equinox. Otherwise Autumn and Fall are also used as adjectives in American English. Fall colors. Fall planting. A cool autumn breeze.

In most of these sentence examples, an American would use fall/autumn interchangably where autumnal is used.

I propose a combined American, British, Australian vernacular only using the word with fewer syllables. (New Zealand and Canada are welcome too)

British Wins:

• lift not elevator
• chips not french fries
• bin not trash can
• torch not flashlight
• loo not toilet/restroom/bathroom
• pram not stroller/baby carriage
• tap not faucet
• petrol not gasoline
• chemist not pharmacy
• sweet not candy
• jug not pitcher

American Wins:

• fall not autumn
• hood not bonnet
• truck not lorry
• pants not trousers
• cart not trolley
• subway not underground
• eggplant not aubergine
• sink not washbasin

Australian Wins:

• thongs not flip flops/slippers

Try this brand https://www.sceptre.com/

Its all losses on paper, unrealized losses.

I could see them all coming out ahead in some other way, tax minimization, write downs/write offs, other financial methods not accessible to normal people that don’t have a fleet of accounts and tax lawyers on retainer. And they’ll all be ready to profit massively during and after any future crash.

The cynic in me says that they all have a bunch of call/put options, algorithmic high frequency trading and dark pools at the ready, or other bets that’ll make them massively rich and any upcoming stock market crash is calculated and planned by influencing a bought president. Maybe that’s giving them too much credit but the people that advise these billionaires and the president are definitely ready to profit off of whatever is coming.

And horoscopes

https://mntre.com/index.html

https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next

How climate change threatens coffee production | DW Documentary

There’s some great documentaries about stenophylla, resdiscovering a forgotten strain of coffee that’s resistant to heat.

Coffee and climate change: rediscovering stenophylla

In the video Dr Aaron Davis describes coffee as the “canary in the coalmine, as the litmus for climate change, particularly for woody crops like coffee, cocoa, tea, wine. Crops that have to stay in the ground a long time. And what we’re seeing is that the issues facing coffee also affect many other woody perennial crops”

Tasting The Lost Species That Might Save Coffee - James Hoffman

Saving Coffee From Extinction | Planet Fix | BBC Earth Science

We’ll probably see some issues with stonefruit too:

A couple of years ago, no stone fruits grew in New England. Peach, nectarine, plum, and apricot trees in the region had been fooled into flowering in February because of record warm weather. When winter resumed for another few weeks, the buds died, ruining the harvest.

I loled

Kept a hand knit wool scarf (they made for me) for around a decade. Outgrew the style but it was a damn good scarf.

Help me Futo’s Louis Rossmann, you’re my only hope.

Consumer Action Taskforce! aka CAT

Agreed. I live in Japan and self censor what I say online, avoid leaving negative but truthful business reviews, because there is a very real risk of being sued for libel.

Yes, if you only consider the letter of the law. But the spirit of the law and the pro-business, pro-those-in-power courts rarely rule in the individual’s favor. The laws weren’t made for you the individual.

Don’t Get Sued! Libel, Slander, and Defamation Laws in Japan

More relevant discussion here about the concept of face.

edit: Key comment here:

“The law in Japan has a cultural and legal background in much older laws about “damage to honour”. Anything that damages someone’s social standing, regardless of whether a specific claim is being made, is not on and is liable to be considered defamatory. Further, the lack of a specific claim makes the “truth and public interest” bar much, much harder to meet since you can’t claim that your statement was truthful or in the public interest if there’s no specific claim the business or person can respond to. If you’re just being insulting you’re one a one-way trip to a legal spanking.”

I live in Japan and self censor what I say online, avoid leaving negative but truthful business reviews, because there is a very real risk of being sued for libel.

Edit 2: I dug up some China specific info: “In Understanding and Application of the 1993 Answers, the SPC [Supreme People’s Court] clarified that truth was NOT a defense to defamation. If a work insults and damages a person’s reputation, it is defamatory even if true.”

I’m having trouble finding more info about the specifics of the ruling in the Tesla case (AP, CBS, English media don’t provide any info), but I’d bet my dollarydoos that the ruling relates to the Chinese civil code concerning the rights of ‘reputation’ and ‘honor’ of Tesla being infringed in this instance. The AP article misses a lot of this nuance and detail, which is unfortunate. Something like The Atlantic or the Economist, Foreign Affairs (or NYT 20 years ago) with long form articles and investigative journalism from the days of old might have provided this detail, but these days BBC, CNN, et al care more about click-thru rates so we don’t get the full picture.

Japan has similar laws curbing free speech. It comes down to the east asian concept concept of ‘face’.

In sociology, face refers to a class of behaviors and customs, associated with the morality, honor, and authority of an individual (or group of individuals), and their image within social groups. Face is linked to the dignity and prestige that a person enjoys in terms of their social relationships.

Japan’s defamation/libel laws, similar to this Tesla case China, don’t matter if what you said is true. What matters is that you disrespected the ‘face’ and reputation of those in power.

“(1) A person who defames another by alleging facts in public shall, regardless of whether such facts are true or false, be punished by imprisonment with or without work for not more than three (3) years or a fine of not more than 500,000 yen.”

For example, if a news agency reports on a rapist, or an individual puts up a bad review online: it doesn’t matter if it is true. The ‘victim’ sues you for libel/defamation for speaking the truth because you didn’t “give them face” and you hurt their public reputation. Expect the police to come knocking and ask you to remove your truthful reviews, or you risk jail time or civil penalties.

Edit:

The judicial system in China is fucked up beyond repair.

I suspect the judicial system here is working exactly as intended. Its the laws in Japan/China that are fucked when it comes to free speech vs protecting the ‘face’ of those in power.

Edit 2: I dug up some China specific info: “In Understanding and Application of the 1993 Answers, the SPC [Supreme People’s Court] clarified that truth was NOT a defense to defamation. If a work insults and damages a person’s reputation, it is defamatory even if true.”

I’m having trouble finding more info about the specifics of the ruling in the Tesla case (AP, CBS, English media don’t provide any info), but I’d bet my dollarydoos that the ruling relates to the Chinese civil code concerning the rights of ‘reputation’ and ‘honor’ of Tesla being infringed in this instance. The AP article misses a lot of this nuance and detail, which is unfortunate. Something like The Atlantic or the Economist, Foreign Affairs (or NYT 20 years ago) with long form articles and investigative journalism from the days of old might have provided this detail, but these days BBC, CNN, et al care more about click-thru rates so we don’t get the full picture.

Some Alternatives:

• Firefox + Ublock Origin
• Grayjay App
• Grayjay Desktop
• FreeTube
• NewPipe

“On 17 September 2019, the Japan Audio Society (JAS) certified LDAC with their Hi-Res Audio Wireless certification.”

Something something oxymoron. Bluetooth is trash, its why I still use wired whenever I can.