I clicked the headline expecting a chuckle and left with an unexpectedly warmed heart.
> “We wanted to strengthen the connection between the children and the older generations in the community. There are so many amazing people here. I thought it was such a shame that no one knew about them,” [...] “Since the card game went viral, so many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures.”
> Kids have started attending local events and volunteering for community activities — just for a chance to meet the ojisan from their cards. Participation in town events has reportedly doubled since the game launched.
there's so much more I want to comment on--it's not screen-based, increased cross-generational interaction, strengthening community, elders having their stories known--but what I love is that these effects will compound into even greater benefits for the community.
This brings back something we've mostly lost in modern times. Elders had respect because they knew a lot and had contributed a lot, and everyone knew that. But that's not scalable, and we migrate a lot more now.
This is an engaging way that brings that back - rather than focusing on fantasy heroes, show kids real life role models.
I think society hasn’t figured out the incentives for elders currently. In private settings it’s fine, but in the work context I’ve seen few incentives for >50 year olds to support younger generations. To the contrary, many of these people fear losing their job just before retirement so choose risk-averse behavior. At the same time, unlike in the village, the juniors are not their relatives so that is also not incentivizing any positive behavior.
And yes there are of course very nice people who are the exception, but from what I’ve seen they are truly the exception. As Charlie Munger put it “Well, I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I’ve underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther.”
Worth noting that the relations to elder is really getting rocky, and people are rethinking them in both directions.
We can't hide from the influence the elder generations had on the current situation. Japan is a developed nation with a crazy low crime rate and incredible infrastructure thanks to them. It's also a social mess and the poster child of stagnation thanks to them.
This whole trading card game surfaces both sides of the coin, with what these people are bringing to the community and also why small kids shouldn't look to much upon them as it's a recipe for trouble.
Japan always does the hard thing. If someone misbehaves and two people are close by you can be sure that they loudly will talk with each other about how the person misbehaves (they are not afraid). The prisons are very strict, with beatings if you don’t follow authority. The police acts swiftly and have small offices everywhere . Green tea and healthy food makes people be able to control their mood (hard to not stuff your face).
The rules are very open and clear. The deincentives for misconduct are strong.
The newspapers focus are different. More fun or actionable news.
People just think they are built different, that is not the case. They just succeed with many small things that makes a greater whole. But people just dismiss it as a culture thing, which is reductive.
> If someone misbehaves and two people are close by you can be sure that they loudly will talk with each other
This is the exact opposite of my experience (and all my Japanese friends). They will stare at the person misbehaving but will absolutely not challenge him. Their culture is "avoid the problem/confronting at all costs".
> The police acts swiftly
They are considered tax thieves, even by Japanese people. Also, talk to some foreign women that got sexually harassed or even raped how the police helped them. In fact, I don't have proof, but I sincerely believe that if the police was trained well, crime rate would increase because they would find more crimes.
> healthy food
Are we talking about deep-fried food? Or perhaps over-salted dishes? Oh, no, you meant the sugar they add in basically all their cooking? Time where they mostly ate fish and rice is over. They barely eat enough vegetables. And fruits are for the well-off only.
It's a country that I love and have spent quite some time there—and more to come—but your observations are exactly the opposite of what I saw.
What they do correctly is the low unemployment rate, though I think it's starting to rise with younger people. People don't need to commit violent crimes to feed themselves if any work lets them afford necessities.
I think they are opposite because when I say police acts swiftly, you turn around and say that they are tax thieves. They can both be true?
Healthy food. Yes they eat healthy and their BMI shows it. I find it quite ludicrous to think their restaurants represent what they eat on daily basis. Proof is in the pudding (BMI). Yes it is getting worse and I hope American tariffs will help in this regard. Again, healthy living AND getting worse can both be true, especially with people that are friendly with cultures they want to know more about (many, but still a small subset).
Not sure why Violent crime would be better than non-violent crime for feeding your kids. But the narrative that is pushed heavily in media is the equal sign between poor and criminal, instead of the correlation, which again is reductive. Why? Is there anger? What food do trigger it? What mindset?
My grandparents where very poor (as in oat porridge for weeks poor). They would never hurt a fly. In certain minds that would have been a weakness, in certain minds it’s self sacrifice and equal strength.
Most want to be the wolf among the sheep. It is US greatest strength and greatest weakness at the same time.
I think it's more likely that social pressure to control people's weights is responsible for Japan's low BMI, not anything to do with the food. Japan is the land of vending machines and convenience stores. It's easy to eat junk food all day if you want to. But people will notice you getting fat, and unlike in Western countries they're likely to criticize you for it.
Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "swift".
> I find it quite ludicrous to think their restaurants represent what they eat on daily basis
I have lived with 2 different Japanese family (one younger, one older) and I was referring to the younger one when writing my previous comment. You say that restaurant doesn't represent what they eat, but again this is not my observation; restaurants and prepared meal (bento) are socheap—price-to-purchasing-power compared to Western countries—that many people don't even cook for themselves. So yes, it's absolutely relevant.
> Not sure why Violent crime would be better than non-violent crime for feeding your kids
I never said it was. But hunger definitely makes you more violent and more irrational. I excluded non-violent crimes because people usually exclude those when thinking about a country's safety. There are a lot of scams in Japan, for example.
> They would never hurt a fly.
Most people would never hurt someone. Most people are lawful. But most criminals are not from well-off families and grew up needy. Perhaps there is a causation, perhaps not.
> But most criminals are not from well-off families and grew up needy.
Petty or to-some-extent violent criminals. White collar criminals, the worse kind of criminal, usually come from good/rich/powerful families (I'm generally speaking, not talking about Japan specifically)
If you think sugar added to everything is a Japan phenomenon oh boi, time to travel.
As someone that lived there, frankly your take come off as the typical "English teacher/exchange student that lived in Tokyo and spend too much time on r/japanlife" and think Tokyo represent the average.
> If you think sugar added to everything is a Japan phenomenon oh boi, time to travel.
You're not refuting my argument.
> As someone that lived there, frankly your take come off as the typical "English teacher/exchange student that lived in Tokyo and spend too much time on r/japanlife" and think Tokyo represent the average.
That's very condescending of you and again not refuting my claims at all. Do most of your colleagues eat their own dishes? Don't they add a helluva lot sugar and salt to everything? Hell, even Japanese-made Western desserts taste way too sweet.
I think you could be a bit kinder and not resort to personal attacks.
Edit: it's true that I lived in Tokyo, but unfortunately it's a country that contains 4 cities that get more dense by the day at the cost of unpopulated rural areas.
The poison is in the amount, not in the substance. Salty or sweet food is completely fine if you don’t eat a ton every day. You actually need salt, it is much more dangerous to not consume enough of it.
Most people are dying of heart diseases and guess their causes...
Japanese elderly don't even drink the broth of ramen otherwise they may literally die (not my words).
Edit: sugar we don't really need to survive (trace amounts found in fruits and vegetables is basically enough) and salt maximum daily recommended amount is around 3g. Do you know how much salt a tablespoon of soy sauce contains?
I totally understand what you mean, however the vast majority of the population isn't even close to being hydrated properly so you're just taking an extreme example to make your point.
This is about as deep of analysis of Japan as the Ghibli AI avatars are "art".
> If someone misbehaves and two people are close by you can be sure that they loudly will talk with each other about how the person misbehaves
This is just straight up fan-fiction, and absolutely not how the society here operates. You will get stared at. People will move aside, maybe. That's the extent of reaction from the public you can expect.
> The police acts swiftly and have small offices everywhere .
The "small offices"/kobans are more than useless for any actual "crime". They're quite useful in reporting that you lost a wallet/keys, but good luck when having any actual problems that need to be reported. Goes doubly so for areas where there's elevated chance of actual crimes happening — interacting with cops in Kabukicho has to be one of the least useful activities on the planet.
> The prisons are very strict, with beatings if you don’t follow authority.
And this is... a good thing? We have wildly different moral systems if you think that.
> Green tea and healthy food makes people be able to control their mood (hard to not stuff your face).
"Green tea and healthy food" is, frankly, an even stupider argument than "they're built different". Yes, it's the diet that makes the society more conformist, sure, why not.
There's many great, and many not-so-great things about Japan — why do these arguments online always just start with the most basic, surface level, inane pseudoanalysis?
Because it’s not that it is used to attack people that are different, but it is used to deincentive bad behaviour, but by conflating the two you end up in a bad place, where incentives are…misaligned.
It seems to me Japan does just fine by having rules and sticking to their culture.
Many people admire Japanese culture. But they wouldn't have anything to admire had Japanese people not conserving and caring greatly about their culture and sticking to their rules and ways of life.
I probably won't be integrating in the Japanese culture, but I admire and respect it and the fact they still have that culture.
It used to be that elders were few and far between, as the population pyramid was, well, a pyramid.
The other day I joked in conversation that I raise my daughters to disrespect the elderly - particularly my generation in the future - as considering the fertility rates (worse than in Japan) in the region, there will be plenty of elderly compared to younger generations.
I'm only half joking really. My own parents are reaching the age at which they would use some help every now and then. I have two siblings, so it doesn't take huge individual effort from any of us.
Meanwhile I'm the only one there who has children and most likely that will remain the case. Should they feel any obligation to help my siblings once the time comes?
I'm going more for "screw just old people". Nowhere in my parenting there's even a mention of family being a burden - well, the younger part at least.
Anyway, again, half-joking here - I'm not actively pursuing this approach, just not nudging them towards the traditional one.
I spent some years in Italy, where the younger generations are absolutely squeezed by the presence of a huge population of elderly. It went to such bizarre extremes where my one Italian friend not only doesn't own a home being in his 40s now, whereas both of his divorced parents each have their own properties, his salary is lower than his father's pension. Kids are of course out of the question.
My country is speedrunning this same scenario and the only thing preventing it from happening now is considerably lower life expectancy compared to Italy.
I believe some resentment towards the elderly is unavoidable given the circumstances. Its unfortunate, but understandable. Looking at my own family, my mother inherited the family property after my father died. She has never had any officially payed job since her 30s. In the last 40 years, she has only lived off pension, and hasn't put anything back into the system. Meanwhile, I have worked 25 years straight now, and still don't have enough money to buy a decent apartment in the city where I work. I am guessing the perceived unfairness of this "pyramid" is going to make a lot more people unhappy in the future. Certainly, compared to my mother, my life feels like I am a drone. Not being female is a huge disadvantage these days. I mean, a pension for being married to a man who died? Alimony when the spouse leaves? All things males can only dream of. And, the incentives are all wrong. My mother didn't take on any official jobs because she would loose some of the pension she gets. So, its better to just suck every drop of blood you can out of the welfare state, instead of thinking about how the system actually works and that it needs people to put in effort so that others that really need it can take things out...
If my wife dies first I get half her pension, if I die first my wife gets half my pension.
If we divorce assets are spread equally. Kids complicate things a bit, the person who owes the kids get paid by the other one. As I have a far more flexible job (I do after school care etc) it’s likely I’d keep the kids and thus would be paid child support.
Things suck for the “young” (sub 45 nowadays). Despite what Andrew Tate and his ilk tells you this is nothing to do with gender. It’s to do with every increasing ownership of the wealth by the wealthiest.
That's the same thing in France, where on average a retiree has a higher pension than a worker. Workers whose one third of gross salary goes to pensions, then at least another of net salary is paid for rent to live in a property often owned by the previous generation. It's very depressing environment to live in.
Every social norm will be exploited until it becomes a threat to existence. Right now the olds are exploiting their protected status to outright exterminate the younger generations. I will be down voted because the truth is too bitter for most to swallow. This happens close to all of us and isn't some bogeyman foreign/domestic politician or other convenient scapegoat.
I mean, the model the current soon-to-be old people (boomers) operated on is exactly "screw everyone coming after me", so considered on the whole they deserve every bit of cold shoulder.
That doesn't mean that every boomer is bad of course, so if you have good (grand)parents, be good to them!
I prefer to frame it as “help the younger generations” rather than “screw old people”.
I saw my parents, especially my mom, waste their youth taking care of two people who lived to near 100 years old, and I don’t want to see my kids waste their time and resources on me.
> Should they feel any obligation to help my siblings once the time comes?
Absolutely not, but hopefully your siblings will have been positive enough presences in your children's lives that they will want to of their own accord.
It's even less that we move around a lot more; technology advanced with the personal computer and Internet such that kids see adults not knowing things about the world that they already do. What is decades of personal lived experience wisdom when there's tiktok and YouTube and chatbots?
In the US we are at all time lows for internal migration. Or at least very close to them, I haven’t checked those stats in a couple years since this last came up on HN.
We used to (as a population) migrate to opportunity far more than we do now.
For many reasons there is simply far less community engagement and integration going on. Fewer people put down strong “roots” in their communities these days.
Thats surprising, I thought moving was less common than now. In either case, is it possible that the single households is the other factor, people choosing more instead of interacting with whoever is around?
When? In my grandparents generation (born late 1800s to early 1900s) moving to either try to start a farm in the US or to leave a failing farm for a job in town at the local whatever factory was very common.
Post WW2 for the boomers was loaded with people flooding to all kinds of industrial boom cities.
After that it was hollowing out of the rust belt and moving out of cities to suburbs due to the lead/crime epidemic.
Then rich cities boomed back with millennials in a continuous feedback loop where the successful ones became more desirable as money brought attractions/activities/restaurants, draining the failing ones even more.
Then 2020 was the brief mega disruption where people thought the internet might catch on and they found out the vast majority of white collar jobs can be done from home so the fanned out to all of the nice and cheap suburbs, mountain towns, etc. Now the Internet fad has worn off so that’s reversing a bit.
Moving in the US has been very common until this brief lull where you could change jobs without relocating thanks to remote work.
Unfortunately we’re going backwards so it wouldn’t surprise me if constant relocation resumes.
The main factor that you fail to mention is living cost, and not the internet, which made it possible and desirable to frequently move in search of opportunity.
It didn't mean there weren't people that lived long-term in communities. However, it did mean that you could find more lucrative opportunities in different places while also affording to move and live there.
That began to slowly change in the 60's, beginning with the death of single occupancy residences and a lack of funding/investment in affordable housing for a significant portion of income brackets.
The last 30ish years helped cement that for lots of reasons, but the ability to work remotely via the internet isn't particularly new nor causative for that change.
I've been taught to respect the elders. But now I've seen that there are enough of them which aren't honest, good people, but only know how to present themselves in a positive light, while looking down on the ones they live with.
I now stand neutral against them: they may be good, they may not be. There's nothing in their age which makes them deserve more respect than the one younger people deserve.
So do you respect 12-year-olds as much as you respect 25-year-olds? Do you respect the opinions on work and adult responsibilities of a 23-year-old as much as those of a 35-year-old? Do you trust the professional judgment of a junior engineer as much as that of a senior engineer?
Older people, in general, know more and have better judgment than younger people.
You're conflating age with wisdom - a common fallacy when charisma is valued over education, leading to Septuagenarian Heads of State ruling on partisan lines rather than Technocratic and egalitarian governance.
I hope the people don't get too much pressure to up their stats.
>The rarity of a card isn’t based on fantasy stats — it’s tied to real-world contributions. The more actively the ojisan engages in volunteer work or community service, the higher the chances of their card being upgraded to a shiny version with a glossy laminated effect.
I'm a bit reminded of the cards Harry and Ron find in their chocolate frog packaging, each of which features a picture of a famous wizard, some historical, some contemporary like Albus Dumbledore. The kids had a chance of actually meeting some of the heroes pictured on their cards.
For real. This is the best thing I’ve seen on HN in a long time. My kids are very into these card collections/games and I told them about it and they thought it was a great idea to put “normal” people on these cards. Super great story and concept. Japan isn’t perfect, but some amazing things come from their society.
>> We wanted to strengthen the connection between the children and the older generations in the community.
Holly molly, that's exactly what I was suspecting when reading "Japanese" and "middle age". Kinky schoolgirls are not enough, now they distribute their "business cards" directly to children.
Of course this is satire but nonetheless, bring up the downvotes! :)
“Good morning! Are you up?” asks the fisherman in the video, to which the user replies “Yes, thanks to you. Are you on your ship?” “Yeah, I got up at 3, so I’m already on the sea,” he replies, before adding “I caught a really big fish.”
I’m not sure how much demand there is for this product, but that really brought a smile to my face.
I found Wakie[1] in 2015 while on a project in London. Every morning at a specific time you set, a stranger (real person and no AI) would call you and talk to you briefly, waking you up. I used it for about a month.
There was always a different caller. One thing I vividly remember was when I found it really hard to understand a pretty heavy Scottish accent. I'm not random-social enough to be talking to new people every day, but it was a fun experience. Fun for that short interval but not really my type of thing.
I don’t speak Japanese but I would pay for this. Trying to get up and run before 6 is a chore. Having a fisherman wake up call would be awesome and motivating. Especially for someone who loves fishing.
But AI is like video games, it can’t emulate sacrifice and other deep human dynamics because there’s no stake. If you die you restore from last save point. For AI you have infinite no-memory interactions, which changes the dynamic. In other words, your actions don’t have lasting consequences.
The few games that succeed in building something deeper (for me RDR2 but you take your pick) have to carve out sacrifice and character out of the player’s time, which is finite.
Well said. If I signed up for this and I knew it was AI calls, I would likely not pick up. But if I knew it was a person calling me, there's a much stronger emotional incentive to pick up and talk to them.
I remember as a young kid living in Norway, there'd be the "russefeiring"[0] around May where students finishing their final semester will don a brightly colored overall and cause mayhem in the town. I remember getting shot a lot with water guns. Anyway, one thing that is pretty fun about that tradition is that the students print cards for themselves with a picture and fun facts etc and hand them out to all the little kids, and we'd trade them between ourselves to have the whole collection of students.
I still remember decades and decades ago hearing about vending machines in Japan. Someone mentioned going to Japan and how you could get cold cans of coffee out of vending machines there. This was sometime in the 1990s, before even Starbucks was a huge thing. Everyone I knew thought the idea of cold coffee was ridiculous, a quirk of the Japanese that would never catch on.
I feel the Japanese have been pretty good at exporting culture, but it has a lot of misses among the few hits. I wonder if this is something that would catch on outside of Japan.
David Lynch's Twin Peaks commercials for Georgia coffee, featuring almost the entire cast in character and a running subplot of a missing Japanese woman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxNvhN7UUE
> There's an old tradition of American stars appearing in Japanese television commercials, [...] before downing what appears to be about a four ounce can of Suntory Iced Rainbow Blend coffee.
Was this tradition referenced or inspired by Bill Murray's "Suntory Time" scene in "Lost in Translation" (2003)?
> Anyone who has seen Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation must wonder for at least a second if there is truth in Bill Murray’s character of a famous American actor in Japan to film a commercial. Well, there definitely is. Huge American and European stars have been hawking products in Japanese commercials for decades.
And vending machines with hot drinks and soups, my favorite being cream of corn soup...which I have yet to see stateside.
Another thing Japan had before the US was texting on your phone. I was living in Japan at the time and recall telling my American friend who worked as a Manager at ATT about texting and she thought it was the dumbest thing she had ever heard of.
First trip to Japan, I selected what I thought was a local cherry Coke equivalent from the vending machine. I was more than a little surprised to get a can that was a) hot, and b) contained not cherry-flavored cola, but chunky sweet red bean soup (oshikuro).
I was living in Australia in 2000 and texting was more common than calling because it was cheaper to text than call. But in the US it was the opposite. You had unlimited calling, but plans around that time had a different pricing scheme for texting (can't remember the exact details) so could be one reason why it took the US a bit longer to finally pick up texting. I remember it was about a year or 2 later that I felt texting started to become more common in the US.
Yeah, I lived in Europe in 1999 and 2000 and then moved to the US. In the EU you could text people from different countries and it would often work.
Then I moved to the US and the shock of not being able to text between networks was really something. That and writing cheques. I'd never written a cheque in Australia or Europe but you sort of had to in the US while electronic payments between banks were sorted in Australia in the 1990s.
These days it seems when a technology appears it generally spreads more quickly.
My first cell phone bill was like $600 because my gf at the time used a different carrier. This was also back in the olden days of unlimited texting!! (Only after 9pm)
> And vending machines with hot drinks and soups, my favorite being cream of corn soup...which I have yet to see stateside.
Its a cultural thing I am sure. As an American I will say that prepared food served from a vending machine is going to be associated with low quality and possible poor hygiene. I'd equate it with food from a gas station store or roach coach (mobile canteen)- food prepared with little care or quality, destined to be sold for as little as possible while still being profitable. Stale bread, wilted vegetables, low quality meats, cheese, etc, sloppy prep. Who cares, ship it.
On the other hand, I can see food vendors in Japan guarding their reputation with attention to their craft ensuring quality.
> As an American I will say that prepared food served from a vending machine is going to be associated with low quality and possible poor hygiene.
The grandparent post is talking about canned food/drink that's heated in the machine. Vending machines with freshish prepared food do exist, but they're kinda pointless given the existence of...
> I'd equate it with food from a gas station store or roach coach (mobile canteen)- food prepared with little care or quality, destined to be sold for as little as possible while still being profitable
Convenience store food in Japan is fantastic: food from 7/11, Lawson, Family Mart, etc. is probably unironically better than the median restaurant in the U.S.
Indeed. Spent a few weeks there last year. You can't throw a rock and not hit one of those places - it's absurd how many there are no matter where you are. Though, TBF in NYC the density of convenience stores/bodegas is similar but the consistency lacking. I do miss those gooey chocolate babka things they sell in the 7-11s.
> is probably unironically better than the median restaurant in the U.S.
Eh... I would say they certainly beat out fast food.
The foods sold in vending machines make sense though - everyone's already used to instant or canned soup, so throwing it into a vending machine and warming it up makes sense. You're not getting fine dining from the vending machines, you're just getting a quick and tasty snack (although there is also a culture of niche vending machines with serious meals that require cooking at home, which is another story). Just swap out the corn potage with something Americans would already be familiar with, like Campbell's chicken noodle soup in a single-portion can with a twist cap instead of needing a can opener, and it could work.
I think some Americans might object more to the idea of microplastics leaching into your food, or high amounts of preservatives, though. And the ubiquity of vending machines in Japan makes it possible to build a habit around vending machine food, whereas in the US they're fewer and far between, so you couldn't really depend on them.
> The foods sold in vending machines make sense though - everyone's already used to instant or canned soup, so throwing it into a vending machine and warming it up makes sense.
The US used to have much more diverse vending machine offerings, including prepared hot foods and drinks, but they started to disappear in the 1970s, though you could find stragglers into the 1990s in older institutional settings (e.g. government buildings), especially for drinks--coffee, hot cocoa, etc. As previously mentioned, I think they fell out of favor because they began to be considered very poor quality (it's a death spiral if turnover doesn't happen fast enough), perhaps as compared to increasingly popular drive-thru alternatives. I guess in a way it was a result of our car culture. Like with the demise of cafeterias generally[1], Americans preferred to jump in their car rather than choosing from what was available within walking distance.
[1] A wall of vending machines selling sandwiches, salads, soups, and hot drinks constituted a "cafeteria" in many buildings.
People always forget something, when talking about Japanese vending machines: vandalism. Vandalism is relatively uncommon in Japan, whereas it's sadly endemic in most Western societies.
Emoji is a Japanese thing too. It's why a lot of the early emoji are kind of odd from a western point of view, like the naruto fish cake, Japanese top secret emoji and hot bath symbol.
Well, it's called "Emoji" (絵文字, literally "picture character/letter") for a reason ;) Weird how it's often misunderstood as being derived from "emotion" in western media.
Better than that is the Japanese 'Boss', which even comes in a very-Japanese steel tin. Great coffee that you can now get at most Australian servos, convenience stores, etc.
As a New Zealander who's been to Australia + a small handful of other countries I can vouch for Australia having a uniquely good convenience store dairy based drink industry. OAK is another old faithful brand I miss in NZ. Also Hungry Jacks (Burger King) there uses cream instead of milk in the soft serve and it's noticeably better.
The $1 coffee from 7-11 was my go-to drink in Australia. Came with the added bonus of annoying the hipster coffee snobs in melbourne when I was walking down the street holding a 7-11 cup. Damn fine coffee.
7-11 has surprisingly good coffee in the US too, or at least Texas. There was a 7-11 on the corner of the block I use to live on and drive past to get to Starbucks until I was running late once and decided to just grab the first coffee available. Now if I just want plain brewed coffee I'll find a 7-11. And if I'm wanting something more Starbuck-ish but don't want to deal with the morning rush, I'll go to a 7-11 and mix little over half a cup of the brew coffee then top it off with their hot chocolate.
I am not a coffee hipster (as will probably become evident by my next statement) but I do like good cafe coffee here in Melbourne and I completely agree. I don’t make it my daily driver, but 7/11 and even McCafe coffee is quite decent here IMO
Iced coffee in Australia seems to automatically imply sweet with lots of milk (or even ice cream). This is very jarring when you expect the default “iced coffee” to be black coffee over ice.
I agree completely, most iced coffee here from supermarkets is hyper sweetened rubbish that barely tastes like coffee at all. You have to go for “double” or “triple” espresso options to get a proper taste of coffee, otherwise you’re just drinking sweet milk (and not even in the guilty pleasure Vietnamese iced coffee way)
As previously mentioned Boss does do a decent black iced coffee though, and there are a few niche brands around putting out less sweet varieties
> This is very jarring when you expect the default “iced coffee” to be black coffee over ice.
Same reaction I had the first time I ordered a cappuccino there. I learned to order Flat Whites cause I kept forgetting to tell them to not put chocolate powder on top...why anyone thought that would be a great idea is beyond my comprehension. The Flat White on the hand easily makes up for their cappuccino faux pas
_Most_ of the coffee sold in cans in Japan is also sweetened. Not all, you can usually find a can or two that are just black and unsweetened, but a majority of the cans will be sweet to some degree.
> Everyone I knew thought the idea of cold coffee was ridiculous, a quirk of the Japanese that would never catch on.
Iced coffee has been around for centuries and is very common in warmer countries (and was before the 90s). アイスコーヒー is closer to cold brew than the milkshake-esque thing we call iced coffee.
it may well be "cold brew", a coffee specialty that is some work to make at home and that has a very distinguished taste and contrast coffee that was brewed hot and then cooled down.
> Someone mentioned going to Japan and how you could get cold cans of coffee out of vending machines there.
They're everywhere!
In rural Hokkaido, some people even have them outside their home's driveway for people walking by. They have various teas (green, hojicha, jasmine, etc.), Coke and Pepsi products, Pocari Sweat (like Gatorade), iced coffees, and sometimes even hot teas and hot coffees that are heated on demand. They're super convenient and something I miss having in America (we seemed to have more of them here in the 90's and early 2000's).
The only problem is that in Japan there can sometimes be absolutely zero public garbage (or, more correctly, recycling) bins in sight. You have to carry your trash with you, which is a bit annoying and mildly gross if it spills.
Pocari Sweat is so good. I always grab a bottle anytime we go to the japanese store outside chicago. I assumed it was a fake anime product like the way they always turn pepsi into bepsi or something, but no it's real and it's delicious.
The bins near vending machines are almost always _only_ for cans/plastic bottles.
That accounts for ~80% of the garbage you'll produce, but sometimes you'll have a onigiri wrapper, or a dirty tissue that'd be nice to get rid of, and finding a place to do that can be more difficult (ironically, especially so in heavily touristy areas).
> You have to carry your trash with you, which is a bit annoying and mildly gross if it spills.
True, but it also means that most people are used to this and don’t even question it. Which means no overflowing garbage bins or the need to service them in the middle of nowhere.
Town celebrates its own via a medium that the youth seek out on their own. The youth then forge closer connections with their elders. Everyone is happy, everyone wins.
Putting on my Product Manager hat, the best product launches often focus on a single well-defined persona, as this one apparently did. Now that this is proven to work, they can expand to middle-aged women, older people, younger people, animals and what have you. But I think that this is a great start.
Except humanity for the last 1000 years as alway done that to put white men in charge, in 2025 perhaps we can change how it's done and make everybody equal?
That's a needlessly uncharitable interpretation, but it is an interesting point.
I think that increased rates of low (and high) grade neurodivergence in men, and society expecting eccentric behavior from men, especially as they age, results in in the sort of characters that make something like this work. Umarells in Italy come to mind.
There's quite a few assumptions in your comment; one, that men have higher grades of neurodivergece than women (whereas it can also be underdiagnosis or masking through higher societal expectations on women). Women are eccentric too.
This is a well-known fact with a well-established genetic basis. For pretty much any trait, the standard deviation of the distribution for men is larger than the distribution for women.
In Japan, men commit suicide at roughly twice the rate of women. The age group with the highest rate of suicide was 50-59. I can't find good data, but loneliness and not feeling valued by a community is very likely a significant contributor here.
Women are important but if the problem you're trying to solve is deaths of despair, then focusing on men makes sense.
Suicide among men is ~4x higher in Canada and the USA in some demographics, too. In some cases, such as men 80+, the rate is 6.5x higher in Canada. This is crazy sad. It doesn't mean other things affecting women aren't sad. It just means this is sad.
Well, evidenced by the fact that these aren't even white men, and we have no evidence that anybody in the community in question are actually offended or feeling disempowered except for righteous social justice warriors like yourself, this comes off as screeching from someone who just wants to push their agenda.
And before you call me a sexist MAGA patriarchal asshole, not only am I liberal, but I actually live in Japan and interact with the local culture here all day every day. I speak the local langauge, am married to a local, have local friends and in fact talk about and interact with ojisans on a very regular basis, because it is a cultural touchpoint that is relevant here. Do you?
I am sick and tired of annoying people like you co-opting every discussion to push a specific victim-mindset zero-sum world view, reducing everything to your race and sex struggle without actually lifting a finger to, say, do things that actually affect outcomes in society besides pissing people off—unlike the people who set up this lighthearted card game, which is demonstrably bringing a community together. Not everywhere is the USA, let alone your toxic online ragebait bubble. What you are doing is repelling people from your cause more than helping it, myself included.
Please do some soul searching and if you really feel a need to irritate people, I would appreciate you do it somewhere else. I hope that your implication that Japanese culture is inferior because it doesn't kowtow to your cultural expectations, has made you feel good today.
And Japanese people are well aware of this, there is definitely a common youth cultural appreciation of goofy middle-aged men here beyond what I was used to growing up in the USA.
The whole thing was an idea of a woman, Eri Miyahara, 45-year-old secretariat head of the Saidosho regional community council, I bet she have her reasons to focus on men, I suspect it's the perceived loneliness of the selected ones.
Interestingly, Japan is in the middle of its own version of Obergefell v. Hodges where several courts have ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and plaintiffs are currently awaiting the consolidated Supreme Court ruling.
Yeah Japanese culture is very, very different from the West. But it also comes with its own set of problems and challenges.
As a gay guy I've always thought about the topic in your last sentence; I agree that male problems (suicide rates, expectations, hypermasculinism etc) get largely ignored, in part due to a tightly integrated hierarchy of social rules and expectations - men (ignoring feelings, emotions, trying to be tough all the time) women (reliance on men, encouraging/supporting hypermasculine behaviours).
I find it both interesting & sad the way that heterosexual (& bisexual, etc) male behaviour completely changes (often for the worse) when a woman walks into the room. I don't see this as much at all in the opposite scenario, though I won't say that gay men don't sometimes exhibit the same aggressive behaviours that straight men often do.
It's just sad to watch men not care about certain aspects of themselves that are deemed weak, and that society has no value for men not attached to a family unit (hence the suicide rate). Also look at rates of homelessness - women are more likely to be taken in/given much more leeway by family etc than men are as a man down on his luck is a "problem" aka useless. It's the same with calling for women to be forced into drafts the same way men are - heterosexual response to that is staggering - the same frequency as the response I get as a man if I say I _don't_ want to fight in a war (aggression, being called a coward, the vitriol received for being a "draft dodger").
I know why it is the way it is, though and unlike many others I never forget that we're all still just animals at our very core.
>get largely ignored, in part due to a tightly integrated hierarchy of social rules and expectations
I think this might change in the future when men realize the social contract reward for it has been reduced to rubble.
>male behaviour completely changes (often for the worse) when a woman walks into the room
I observed this many times and disliked it to the point of acting the reverse (disinterested) which ironically resulted in the opposite outcome at least temporarily. I think it certainly applies to women too but is just less observable because its more passive instead of active. The standard of the average men is also a lot "lower" (actual average) compared to women's to get active.
>I think this might change in the future when men realize the social contract reward for it has been reduced to rubble.
That's a great point but I don't think it ever will. Said social contracts are dictated by our underlying biology and whilst we may adjust or tweak them over time the fundamentals of them will stay the same. But who knows, maybe I'll be surprised and the higher order social rules will completely overcome the lower order animal rules.
It’s funny to me that the honest intent of my comment was merely “that’s neat, it would be cool to expand it to other members of the community” and people go straight to discrimination & indignation. Is it so hard to just express that it’d be cool to take a neat thing and expand it?
Seriously, I think the subtext is that people in the West equate Japanese = sexist (and therefore are an inferior people) and that the choice of focusing on ojisans, is a sexist decision made to degrade women.
When in reality it probably is just a light-hearted decision since old men are goofy, a lot of visible local businesses in rural Japan tend to be run by men, and the concept provoked a laugh.
I'd say the core reason is more that the person who started it was very much likely to be male and had a few existing connections to the group of men featured on the cards.
We should strive for equality where possible but to hold individuals account to it is tougher; we should enforce in our interactions/beliefs, that's personal responsibility.
But in play or for hobbies it's harder - the group of friends I play games with is all male for example (all gay, actually). But does that mean that I need to "diversity hire" a woman for the group? We'd have no problem with that at all, if a female friend asked to join when hearing about it we'd be all for it. But it's not like we're going to go out of our way to ensure that we have at least 1 woman in our play group. If that makes sense.
The article says it was made by a woman. Regardless I don’t agree we need to hold these people accountable for not making female cards, it’s their prerogative to do what they think makes sense or is appealing to them, and choosing ojisans as a theme makes sense if you have experience with Japanese culture because of the vibe associated with it. Not everything needs to be a gender equality culture battle, and I’m pretty confident nobody is feeling disenfranchised because they chose that theme.
Men statistically have fewer social connections and suffer more from loneliness as they get older, so if the goal is to remedy that, it makes sense to start with men first.
It's true for any intelligent species with sexual dimorphism.
However I agree; it's great that the initiative was started for those men, but they could totally hit up the older women in the area as well for an additional set.
If one house is on fire and you spray water on it to put out the fire, do you feel obligated to spray water on every other house too so that the other houses don't feel discriminated against?
Objectification is natural in a species that reproduces via sexual reproduction.
The key is sexually objectifying (recognising an attraction) whilst respecting said individual.
As a gay dude I see _plenty_, _pleeeeeenty_ of women wantonly objectifying men when they choose to, with no repercussions or qualms. It's just unfortunate because of sexual dimorphism and expected behaviours, men are expected to take the more active role most of the time and hence these reprehensible behaviours are more common amongst men.
Would be really fun to be a god and tweak everyone's brains such that heterosexual men take the passive role just to see what happens.
If we're going down this route I feel you should think about how likely it would have been that I got a similar response if I called out the objectification of men.
i needed an "oh, that's really nice" story today. this delivered.
in every way, this seems well-intentioned, quirky, cute, fun, and positive. unless there's some subtext i'm missing, this is just a good and nice thing happening that's great for everyone involved.
This is a superb idea. I had seen random cat gacha but not trading cards of random dudes.
Most efforts at custom TCGs seem to go nowhere at all because of the absence of any practical trading meta game, so bootstrapping that with local interest is a very neat marketing move that aligns very well with the desired community engagement.
The result is that whole idea is greater than the sum of its parts.
> Kids have started attending local events and volunteering for community activities — just for a chance to meet the ojisan from their cards. Participation in town events has reportedly doubled since the game launched.
Kids involved in community seems to be the best result
> The more actively the ojisan engages in volunteer work or community service, the higher the chances of their card being upgraded to a shiny version with a glossy laminated effect.
In systems like this, where artificial scarcity is seen as having value, making the cards _more common_ for good works seems like a perverse incentive; clearly, the best approach is to be Victor Meldrew, so as to have a rarer card.
The whole point of this is that we've reached breaking point with the ridiculous attempt to replace everything with a digital experience. It is fitting that Japan, which was arguably the place where the digital revolution really took off, should be the first place where it is rejected.
As I understand things, in Japanese the terms "onii-san", "ojisan" and "ojii-san" literally translate as "older brother", "uncle" and "grandpa" respectively - and are widely used for people who aren't relatives.
So while the colloquial use of ojisan roughly lines up with "middle-aged man" it's not a perfect mapping.
Ojisan age bracket can be pretty wide, but 81 sounds to me more like an ojiichan. That said, if they're running a business and are still somewhat lively they can possibly still pass as ojisan in context.
Oniisan is much younger usually; usually I don't hear ojiisan so much as ojiichan (as well as ojisan rather than ojichan), my wife is Japanese and it rubs her weird to hear the opposite honorific in these cases.
“Middle-aged” is a wrong in this case translation of “ojisan”, lit “uncle” but colloquially can mean “old man” in an endearing or mean way depending on context
Well, if the edges are the Japanese life expectancy of 84 and 0, then 80 does fall somewhere in the middle. So there should be some four-year-olds in this deck, too.
I think AR or augmented reality games like this trading cards is the future of gaming, but this one is offline AR rather than online.
One of the best game I ever played is the text based souvenir game shopping game on Windows 3. I can't recall the name of the game now since it's more than 30 years ago, but it's about shopping souvenirs using London Underground Tube. You have a semi realistic time constraints like train schedules, your flight schedules and of course list of souvenirs items to shop. This is totally offline since there is no Internet available at the time but it's very engaging nonetheless.
My proposal for the modern version of the game is to use real-time train schedules (with delays, ticket discounts, etc) that are available publicly on the Internet for many metropolitan cities in the world for examples Tokyo, London and Berlin [1],[2],[3].
Imagine you can have a real-world realistic in-app in-game items purchases feature that you personally can buy in the game and delivered to you or anyone you fancy of giving souvenirs except that you only virtually went there.
[1] A real-time 3D digital map of Tokyo's public transport system (2023 - 103 comments):
As someone who got back into mtg recently, nah. I think physical games are going to hang around because there's just something different between playing games with friends on discord versus assembling at one of our houses to play.
> Seeing this, the game’s creator decided to take it to the next level. New rules were introduced, allowing the cards to be used in actual battles. The objective isn’t to defeat the opponent’s card but to outplay it based on the characters’ skills and abilities.
Anyone have an idea of how the gameplay works? How do you "outplay" your opponent?
This sounds like something straight out of the Yakuza video game series. Which, incidentally, is a series largely focused on middle aged men - I would love a set of these cards with Kiryu, Majima, Saejima, Akiyama, Ichiban, Nanba, Adachi, etc...
“Japan has always had deep subcultures around games, cards, and character design — but what’s new is how global social platforms amplify them. It feels like TikTok is acting as a cross-cultural layer over local fandoms. Could this become a driver for new forms of cross-border cultural products?”
If the (presumably) male at the community center had painted a portrait of the three older buddies he had in the community, would you all be asking "why does that painting only have men in it?"
I agree that they should do women next, given the unexpected popularity of what is presumably a pet project - but it's not hard to understand the very simple & obvious reasons why the first set of cards didn't feature women.
Looks like they edited it to remove that end section that shows they just copied directly from an LLM, so here is the original ending of the comment for posterity...
Maybe the solution to preserving cultural heritage isn't always high-tech digital archives, but finding ways to make tradition relevant within existing social practices. RetryGIs this to academic?EditNot at all! Your comment is engaging and conversational rather than academic. It strikes a good balance between showing expertise and remaining accessible.
Feels like some kind of astroturfing. I found it very sad seeing how many people had interacted with the posts on good faith. How are we going to deal with this kind of engagement farming in our online communities going forward? Do we need AIs looking for other AIs and flagged accounts?
I feel like this is the kind of stuff that will be common with AI.
Imagine having a whatsapp family group and a bot auto-generates this type of games for you based on your group.
It's a privacy nightmare but it will be fun for sure.
> “We wanted to strengthen the connection between the children and the older generations in the community. There are so many amazing people here. I thought it was such a shame that no one knew about them,” [...] “Since the card game went viral, so many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures.” > Kids have started attending local events and volunteering for community activities — just for a chance to meet the ojisan from their cards. Participation in town events has reportedly doubled since the game launched.
there's so much more I want to comment on--it's not screen-based, increased cross-generational interaction, strengthening community, elders having their stories known--but what I love is that these effects will compound into even greater benefits for the community.
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