I remember I stumbled onto your website through people's neocities links, and just spent hours reading about sailing, UXN, Japan, and your travels in general. Fantastic and high-quality material. I wish there were more collectives and groups like this that keep the maker/hacker culture alive.
I'd just like to say I really loved watching your sailing videos. I was watching a lot of videos from sailboat cruisers around the start of the pandemic, and your videos were such a breath of fresh air in that space, as I relate to you two much more strongly than the stereotypical cruiser hanging out in the Caribbean for years on end.
When I was little, I briefly lived in a house with 3 generations and 10+ people in a single room.
From what I remember, parents would just pick a time to be alone, and grandma would sit on the porch and shoo any curious children away from the house.
Gramms always knew best — in my teenaged years, I briefly lived with my maternal great grandmother; she would always suggest we "go neckin'," which to her was the polite way of her proclaiming: sire her great-great grand-children.
Humans have always slept in family groups. It seems like the more natural thing to do.
Likewise with nudity. Westerner's are hung up on covering themselves up in front of family members at a certain age. Many Asian cultures don't have that baggage. Bathing with family or going to a bathhouse is normal, and why wouldn't it be?
Maybe, but for intimacy back in those times, there was plenty of private nature around, where couples could sneak away, while the grandmas watched the kids.
Those days, most of the world lives like this now. Intimacy when you have kids is not the highest priority that overrides everything. Im not saying its not important, just that you don't make life choices based on if we 'can get it on here'. You just have to get creative thats all.
Bonding with your child and thinking about their needs becomes more important.
"Intimacy when you have kids is not the highest priority that overrides everything."
It is not, but it is still missing, when you don't manage to make room and time for it. Because when it is missing for too long, you can loose each other.
(And I have 2 small children btw. and been on the road with them. So I know a bit about "getting creative".)
So called "natural" doesn't always mean better. Fortunately we get to choose what we like or don't like, preferences.
Our distant ancestors had to put up with a lot of negatives that we do not necessarily need to. Just because they did it, doesn't mean they wanted to, it may mean they had mediocre alternatives (or no alternatives at all).
Ancestors? It's normal now, just not where you are. A couple of centuries ago a bunch of upper class Europeans in big homes made it a point of having separate rooms for kids as means of showing off their wealth and status, and now here we are.
You can see this history quite clearly now in the old castles Royal families live in and the obscene amount of rooms they have. Who can look after an 18 room castle? Someone with money and power, that's who.
So what part of changing the basic build blocks of family connections that have existed even before we were walking on 2 legs for a 'status symbol' makes it the better option?
Its funny we like to pretend we are smarter or 'know better now'. It couldn't be any further from the truth. We don't sleep properly, we can't eat properly, we don't exercise enough and we suffer through chronic loneliness. We are the worst examples of how human beings should live.
From my reading, that's not where "modern living" comes from at all. For that, we should look to middle class folk living in the Netherlands, in roughly the late 1700s. They were (so I have read) the first to develop the modern concept of "home" with distinct rooms for different purposes, at least on a scale that be attained/reasonable aspired to by regular people. The account I read of this strongly suggested that this shift was not a copy of aristocracy/royalty, but rather a new conception rooted in the life and experience of a new mercantilist class.
And I'm sure the kids still remained with their parents at night. Through all of our known history across all cultures families have slept together. It is only in the past few centuries that European wealth and individualism changed that.
So why is this the 'better' option? What is the benefit from separating a child from their parents at night? More likely it just how our parents did it and everyone else does it so we inherently think its the best way.
What we think to be normal or right is in fact the complete opposite that based on our known history.
> And I'm sure the kids still remained with their parents at night. Through all of our known history across all cultures families have slept together. It is only in the past few centuries that European wealth and individualism changed that.
I am sure you are so sure because you are attempting to shoehorn reality into some vague political philosophy.
> So why is this the 'better' option? What is the benefit from separating a child from their parents at night?
Privacy for one. Some people claim letting your baby cry in the other room is healthier for their development, 'etc. If you insist on being post-modern about everything lets take it all the way, what even is 'better'? Why is 'better' even 'better'?
I'll keep my individualism thank you. You do your better and I'll do mine.
Political philosophy? Different cultures approach life in different ways. Where’s the politics in that?
Families sleeping together is the the absolute opposite of post modern.
Letting a baby cry out for its parents while it’s alone is a ‘good thing’ makes no intuitive sense. Feeding babies with bottles became normal for some reason until we understood that it was more for the benefit of the companies selling formula and decided ‘gasp’ breastfeeding might be preferred.
You keep your individualism? It’s the only thing you know, you have no idea what life is like otherwise. You just assume the culture you live in is the best version of how to do things.
While I'm happy for OP I'm afraid finding a "paradise" and telling the internet about it has the risk of ruining it. If 10k people read the article and 1% go to the same place and blog about it and bring even more people, then sooner or later it will be ruined and chances are localities will ban such adventures.
I've done something similar.. some years ago there was a casino I would go to where you would pay 10$ entry fee and have access to a buffet, for the whole day. They had great food too. So I told an uber driver this "hack" and less than 6 months later they started checking whether you were playing or not, you needed a special ticket to access the buffet. Now I have no idea if me not shutting up about it has caused it to be closed off but there's certainly a chance.
I doubt there's much risk of that in this case. A person who wanted to imitate this would need to:
- Live in Japan, or be able to get a Japanese visa
- Have a Japanese driver's license
- Have a remote working job with flexible enough hours
- Be willing to live a van life with all its inconveniences
Plus it's not like there's any particular single paradise to be ruined. Japan is a big place. Even if 1000 people did read this and suddenly started van-lifeing around Japan I doubt it would make a difference.
If not you someone else would have talked. Same for this post. Japan has a population of over 125 million (4x US?). Over 2000 children are born there per day. We are not movie protagonists, don't worry about it
This is wrong. The census counts everyone, and while it's not perfectly accurate they also have methods for mitigating that, combining in-person surveys and sampling methods.
For one, barrier to entry to Japan is high enough that people stampeding to this opportunity is unlikely. If it really takes off, I’d expect places to adapt and turn the free parkings to paying places, and monetize the whole thing as they do for any new trend.
Then more working age people coming to Japan would be a great outcome. The demographic situation is pretty dire and tourism also fell a cliff.
What a great article because, unlike nonsense IG hippies, this seems like a normal person doing something they think is fun, but knows they can't do it forever and that it isn't for everyone. I heartily appreciate their attitude, lack of paid sponsorship (#ad), and realism ("I have a kid. I am a freelance SWE. I would honestly not recommend living in a van with family if you can’t arrange your work schedule completely to what you want.")
Japanese people are usually very organized and neat, I can't imagine they'd appreciate backpackers coming through like this.
Where I come from there are ever increasing number of people living in vans and its a real problem. They usually just cause problems, dont pay hotel or property taxes and ruin the area for everyone else. Some towns have banned them which is worse for the few locals that used to do it on a short trip.
As someone living in Japan, this doesn’t strike me as something locals would complain about. Heck, my Japanese in-laws did a week long van camping trip last year, and I think they’d be impressed with this person’s setup.
As someone who has been living in Japan for more than 2 decades, don't be surprised if you get a knock on your window in the middle of the night from your friendly neigborhood police officer.
Likewise I would imagine backpackers must be even more organized and neater (after all, they must all have less space to store all their belongings, which would put on pressure to be organized about it), I can't imagine they'd appreciate Japanese people being in the way like this.
Where I come from there are ever increasing numbers of people living in houses and its a real problem. They usually just cause problems, dont pay parking fees or fuel duties and ruin the area for everyone else. Some towns have mandated them which is worse for the few travellers that used to do it on a short trip
Recently Japan is in the midst of a "camping boom", and car camping is quite popular. Whenever I visit highway rest stops in the early morning, there always seems to be at least one person/group sleeping in their car (easily identified by the covers they put over their windows for privacy and insulation). And a nearby campsite is always hopping on the weekends, during the temperate months at least. So I would say the general attitude is quite supportive in terms of infrastructure, laws, etc.
But yeah if folks are not well behaved, especially with regards to properly disposing of trash and human waste, it would not be well received.
Edit: For fun I just googled "キャンプブーム" (camp boom) and found this article calling it annoying, and complaining specifically about people with bad manners not keeping campsites clean, being noisy at night, and starting fires where they are prohibited [1]. Note this is more from the perspective of veteran campers complaining about newbs, and more directed at Japanese people rather than foreign visitors. But yeah maybe you are on to something.
Mostly poor manners / not cleaning up after themselves. A few years back there was a family from the UK visting New Zealand that was so poorly behaved that their exploits were being tracked around the country in the news and they were eventually deported [1]. This article also cites a woman from France defecating in the street when her camper broke down. And examples of foreign tourists not respecting local traffic laws.
Not saying that this is representative of all van-lifers, but when you are traveling around in a van with no plumbing or trash disposal services, it does require a bit more responsibility on the part of the travelers to follow the rules and clean up after themselves vs. staying at a hotel and using public transportation. And not everyone is up to the task it seems.
Organized and neat really varies even depending on the local culture and there's quite a bit of variety in normalish neighborhoods...I have cleaned out some serious Japanese hoarder houses / elderly houses in my time, and sometimes circumstances or life can change people, too, like from organized to more like a hoarder.
Used to live in Oita and totally agree that prefecture, Miyazaki, and I'd throw in Kagoshima, are all great for seaside (or otherwise) free camping. Used to putter around on my bicycle or in my tiny car to sleep at beaches, out-of-the-way parks, Michi No Eki: wherever I could find privacy and not bother anyone. Frequent onsen make cleanliness a breeze and a joy. Great times, those!
Not sure if the OP is here but I’d recommend a cassette toilet, if you can find one in Japan. Having lived in a van it was the ideal setup for what you are describing. If there are plenty of public restrooms, you empty the cassette toilet there (they wheel in like suitcases) and you can give up the adult diapers :)
Given Japan’s problem with depopulation, is this better than just renovating a free house? For context, in many prefectures there are houses that are either free or cost $15,000 or less.
Nobody renovates houses in Japan. You're supposed to destroy it and build anew. For 15k you're buying the lot and the right to spend a lot more than that.
He mentions renovation companies as well as builders who will undertake renovations. He has many more videos detailing the process. However, being a youtuber does open up possibilities that aren't common.
People renovate older homes, which have historical value, but most homes built in the postwar period are rightly discarded because they are thin, flimsy junk.
> Unlike in other countries, Japanese homes gradually depreciate over time, becoming completely valueless within 20 or 30 years. When someone moves out of a home or dies, the house, unlike the land it sits on, has no resale value and is typically demolished. This scrap-and-build approach is a quirk of the Japanese housing market that can be explained variously by low-quality construction to quickly meet demand after the second world war, repeated building code revisions to improve earthquake resilience and a cycle of poor maintenance due to the lack of any incentive to make homes marketable for resale.
Of course, houses can be renovated - as the article explains. But going along with a country's traditional building methods is often cheaper than bucking the trends.
Because of earthquakes. Old houses are considered unsafe even after renovation. Of course things are changing as modern materials are getting more trust.
No native Japanese are renovating houses, but we’re talking about foreigners who are vlogging from their vehicles. Gaijin do renovate old Japanese houses.
The crucial difference is that vans are mobile: most of the people I know living in vans travel constantly, and that kind of nomadic life is part of the appeal.
I don’t think the vanlife demographic in Japan are prioritizing saving money. If anything, housing would be cheaper. I pay very little on housing and considering getting a van as a luxury addition to my apartment.
The tolls are quite high, too. Between Kyoto and Tokyo, which is a 6 hour drive, the tolls are about $100.
In Asia, vanlife and glamming is becoming an aesthetic almost. It’s especially popular among affluent people and influencers. People in Japan buy expensive gear such as SnowPeak, including clothing to match, just to sit in a park. With all lifestyle things in Japan, people have to dress a certain way.
Depends on your goals. If you want to travel to and explorer new places on a regular basis, a van can make more sense since you aren't tired to a specific location and can go anywhere driveable at a moments notice. There are certainly tradeoffs to having that ability but for some people, it's obviously worth it.
Somewhat unrelated, but for folks who might enjoy living like a vagrant in Japan, it is also worth checking their extensive network of mountain huts [1].
They are a little pricey (JPY 8,000+ per night, meals included), fairly strict in terms of lights out, wake up time, etc, and can get pretty cozy when you're sharing a room with upwards of 20 other people. But also some of the best, most memorable experiences of my life for being able to climb up to 3,000m elevation and just relax and take in the stunning views while offering the convenience of warm meals, toilets, bedding, and a often times a vending machine full of beer.
It's not that hard really, I recommend it. RV rentals are a thing in Japan. I am from USA, so I went to a local shop here that offers International Driver's Permits. All they do is look at your driver's license to ensure it's valid, and then stamp a little paper brochure that has a bunch of translations of what your country permits with a driver's license. You can get as many of these as you want, it's not an actual license but just a certified translation, so you still need to carry your regular license. I got pulled over once at 3am in the middle of nowhere and the officer didn't speak any English and was so confused when I handed him my documents but once I pointed to the Japanese section of the IDP he studied it for a bit and then made the sounds of "ohhhh, I get it now" and let me go.
(Aside: If you're traveling to a country where casual roadside police bribes are a fact of life, (NOT Japan, more like Turkmenistan) multiple IDPs can be really handy, since the mechanism of the bribe is often 'I will hold your important document for you until you are ready to give the money' and they may not realize the IDP isn't actually your license, so you can just drive away.)
Also, language barrier isn't really an issue day to day. Most people in the huge urban centers (such as where you'd pick up the RV) speak English well. Once you get off the beaten track, English is a lot less common but translation apps work well (i enabled the Japanese keyboard on my iPhone and often we'd just pass the phone back and forth, typing messages) locals off the beaten path tend to be interested in foreign travelers, happy to take time to help, learn more about you, etc. Small regions in Japan tend to have strong local identity and there is generally an interest in sharing that with travelers.
I only did it for 2 weeks but Japan would have let me stay for 90 days without a visa.
> language barrier isn't really an issue day to day. Most people in the huge urban centers (such as where you'd pick up the RV) speak English well.
This is not the general experience in Japan, and advising people to expect English speakers is misleading :) That said, you will certainly still get by, and if you're nervous about it there are definitely other (more expensive) rental options with strong English language support - one of them is linked from the blog.
Good point, not a precise statement from me. I personally did not want to use one of those more expensive options so I called around to find an agency that was open to renting to a foreigner, but wasn't too targeted at renting to foreigners. So, definitely selection bias there since my memory is the ones I didn't go with basically just said no, which isn't enough data to show if there was enough English support to complete a complicated rental transaction.
> locals off the beaten path tend to be interested in foreign travelers, happy to take time to help
I had this experience everywhere, not just off the beaten path. Language barrier was never a problem for me in Japan because people would bend over backwards to help me.
You can get by without speaking Japanese as a normal tourist, but if you try to live in a van and get hassled by the police, lacking Japanese language skills will not go well for you.
Related to this, a good idea when traveling internationally is to carry contact information for a local embassy or diplomatic branch of your home country.
One thing a traveler could do for some peace of mind is notify an embassy of the trip ahead of time, such that in a police hassling scenario someone on scene can call and get official confirmation in Japanese of who you are and what you're doing, act as an interpreter, etc.
To note, this is not about getting shot in the night or forcefully locked for weeks without recourse.
Just spending hours trying to convince local cops that you’re not a drug dealer, having them look at papers they don’t understand, and getting more lecturing on how you wasted their time. And that every few days as you move to new places.
Of course shit can happen, but it will be the exception more than the rule.
As someone who's been doing van life for the past year, things like finding water, and places to camp are usually top of mind. Especially if you try to stay on the East Coast of the United States for a while. Might have to try Japan!
You could also try New Zealand. You’re probably never more than 30 minutes drive away from a campsite. And if you get a self-contained vehicle it’s even better as you can park up virtually anywhere.
As a Kiwi, free-camping is restricted in NZ and for good reason, people need to make sure they're allowed to be there.
But also tourists make an absolute mess of the place a lot of the time. Other countries don't have the "tidy kiwi" mentality that we get growing up. I live in the UK now and the percentage of people that will just throw rubbish on the ground is extraordinarily high; I'll hold onto my rubbish until I find a bin, I have never once in my life thrown something on the ground.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned getting a self-contained vehicle for freedom camping. The laws around self-contained vehicles are designed to solve the problems you discussed.
I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting freedom camping in a non self-contained vehicle, nor littering or other anti-environmental or illegal behaviour.
But anyone with a self-contained vehicle is well within their rights to freedom camp on council or public conservation land except where camping is explicitly prohibited. Alternatively, if you have a non self-contained vehicle, you’re never far from a legit campsite anyway.
I agree about the UK though, it’s next level. I was up in the lakes one time, can’t remember exactly where, but on the path from the carpark to the lake (maybe 500m) I noticed an insane amount of rubbish (some of it very old), so I grabbed every plastic bag I had and started collecting it. I received extremely dirty looks, people started handing me their rubbish (???), and an old man asked me what crime I had committed to be forced to do community service.
I struggle to understand the mentality of people who visit national parks for their beauty then ruin them by littering.
East coast, or more generally, east of the Mississippi, is definitely much harder than the west. Here in New Mexico, you can sleep overnight pretty much anywhere you want ... nobody will care unless you stay for more than 3-4 nights. Water can still be challenging out here, although when we've been in our van for a long time out east, we generally abandon our in-vehicle tanks and just buy those 2.5 or 5 gallon jugs from a store. I hope you're using iOverlander to help locate both of the things you've mentioned.
I wasn't in Japan, but I did something similar in the US for about 6 months before the pandemic cut our (planned 12 month) trip short.
It was far from perfect, but it was super rewarding! Your experience will vary wildly based on what's available in your van, but you can make just about anything work.
"An empty water bottle/adult diaper can become a luxury in the middle of the night to avoid putting on your clothes/shoes and exiting the van in the coldness"
For anyone who's spent any time sleeping in a van or car in public parking, this feels like gently worded subtext that fits in with this from the 'safety' section:
> While sleeping in normal parking I think it is important to keep discrete so people will not bother you and you will not annoy anyone.
In much of the world, going outside to pee in the bushes in a populated area carries a nonzero risk of attention from law enforcement and a progression to sleeping outside minus the now impounded van.
Public exposure convictions/registration from people who are innocently peeing somewhere they shouldn't is vanishingly rare. As in, I've never seen a report of a conviction that I found credible, but if I did, I'd bet lots of money that you couldn't find a second one. What I HAVE found is lots of people on the registry for indecent exposure who tell their friends "I was just peeing in alley, I swear", but I do not count those as credible.
Diaper is gross, but peeing in a bottle while sleeping in the car can be nice. Just roll over, pee, roll back over and fall asleep again. Much less intrusive than getting up and walking to the bathroom, dealing with bright lights, etc.
There’s a device called a she-wee and many female vanlifers report success with Folgers tins or large fountain drink cups, which then get poured into a bottle.
While my personal urinating experience so far in life has involved a male urethra, I met on trail women who've been using Shewee for peeing in the outdoors. I imagine that if it works the way it's supposed to work, maybe it could work with a bottle.
Author here:
Just to clarify: We don't wear diaper everyday... But it happened and was a good option during snow for the lady..
The luxury was an expression (I'm not English native speaker).
I wouldn't. I'd go outside in the snow. My wife claims the same. Don't take this as negative commentary directed at the author of the article. If this works for them, great! I'm just saying that it isn't a solution that would work for me and my wife.
It’s hard to imagine putting up with stuff like this when for the same amount of money it takes to do “van life” in Japan you could live quite well elsewhere.
I lived in rural Japan for two years as a single guy and it was very, very cheap. I was making ~30k USD and saved half of it without really trying. I didn't have a car, but you don't need one even in the countryside if you can bike. These days you could Uber etc too which didn't exist yet when I was there.
I have a hard time imagining it to be cheaper to live in this truck than most things. And the kid… I can’t imagine this is good for the kid.
Obviously the point of the van is that you can move around a lot!
Aside: vagrancy is illegal in Japan, so if you’re sticking to the law you probably need to rent somewhere (or use your parents) and have a registered address.
This is absolutely fine for a young kid. Kids are way less conventional than adults at that age. If a kid gets food, warmth and attention they're basically golden.
It solidly depends on the age/stage of development of the child. When you say young, that really means like <3 years. Anything above that, and they really need stability, routine, and regular/stable interaction with individuals outside of the immediate family group to avoid long-term developmental and psychological issues.
Yeah I think one could quibble on the exact age...I think even up to 4 it would be OK. After that I think a more stable setup is definitely positive. I would say though that a stable environment where they get little attention from parents is not superior.
There are homeless people in Japan. You'll see them sitting in alcoves by train stations or sleeping under a stack of umbrellas in parks sometimes. The places I've seen them most are in remote locations by rivers, where they'll set up tents or tie tarps to trees to live under. They aren't as ubiquitous as they are in the US though, and I've only seen a homeless person panhandling once in all my years in Japan.
There are lots of homeless in Japan, and people do see them.
Anyone living near Tokyo who has money, clothes, shoes, gas cans, batteries, shelter material, work opportunities etc they wish to pass on - please reply here or email i.am.grozzle at gmail, please. Or ask staff at Lavanderia cafe in Shinjuku ni-chome.
According to a very untrustworthy source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Japan) the numbers of homeless people are somewhat low-ish, if those numbers are anywhere near accurate it may account for the low visibility of the problem.
> Is that why you don't see any homeless in Japan? They just arrest them for vagrancy and house them in jail?
Each time I've been to Japan I've noticed plenty of homeless people. They are really tidy about it, but you'll find encampments in Osaka and Tokyo if you just check out some of the parks.
There are limited public places to "sit" in Tokyo/and other cities too, for example, this is increasingly common part of civic design, to encourage either "moving on", or "taking refuge" in shops/cafes > ie. spending.
They could have bought a house in rural Japan for peanuts. Probably less than they spent modifying the van let alone buying it. They did it to travel. Not what I’d choose, but interesting.
These vans do seem reasonably priced compared to American living vans. I don't think you'd get much living for around $60k. Plus you could rent vs. buy.
The author links to a van rental service. Looks like a van comparable to the author's van rents for ¥24,800/night. Ouch! You could get a very nice hotel room in rural Japan for that.
Funnels that are specifically shaped for that purpose very much are, yes. I don't understand how that's even a question.
Adult diapers' main purpose isn't peeing while on a van trip; I would imagine elderly people around the world need them day to day. A funnel specifically made for women to pee is an incredibly niche product with little to no day-to-day use.
Nobody said that a diaper is superior to a funnel. The grandparent comment makes it seem like it's easy for half the population to pee in a bottle and I called them out on it. I didn't even mention the ubiquity of adult diapers, I compared finding a specialized funnel to a water bottle on purpose.
"The grandparent comment makes it seem like it's easy for half the population to pee in a bottle and I called them out on it."
Funnels of various sizes readily available in every hardware and auto parts store. Also these specific funnels are readily available in outdoors and sporting stores. It is easy to find funnels. No need to defend "half the population" by "calling them out on it."
"Just use a" implies that it's easy as picking it up and using it.
The fact that a funnel has to be bought and brought into the equation means it's not as easy as just [using] a water bottle.
Please, next time your wife needs to go to the bathroom, give her a water bottle and tell her to just use it. It's ok, someone said it's just that easy.
The comment you "called out": "Just use a water bottle like the rest of us! I lived out of an Explorer for 3 months, not once did an adult diaper cross my mind."
I love how you're pedantically rationalizing "calling them out" on this one word "just" and ignoring the subject is people living in their vehicles (for 3 months in the case of the comment you "called out" and indefinitely in the case of the original blog post).
First of all, just can be used to mean several things aside from simply [1]. When used in an imperative cause as it is the comment that triggered you, it is more correct to interpret it as being used for emphasis. Consider this exchange: "I pee in diapers.", "Just don't do that."
So you were really just (Just meaning ‘only’ [1]) triggered by your poor understanding of the use of this word.
But there's more. Even if the comment used just meaning simply, you are still wrong.
Everyone is talking about habitual practices including and especially the comment you "called out."
Instead of habitually using adult diapers, habitually just (meaning simply) using a bottle is easy. Acquiring a suitably sized funnel from an auto, hardware or outdoor store for people who live in their cars who clearly have transportation, have a lot of time on their hands and frequent these stores anyway is an insignificant consideration.
There is no bottle related sex inequity to fight here.
And why do you, as a former LGBTQI+ director, keep referring to funnel-using-persons as women or wives? Tisk tisk. Thankfully what you say is representative of your own viewpoints and beliefs and not those of your employer! Maybe someone should call you out!
You seem to have an awful lot of anger and resentment over a random person on the internet calling out that funnels make it a lot more than “just using a water bottle”.
And for your own curiosity, I used wife because he literally called her that. I know reading is hard; you’ve already shown it earlier by hyperfixating on something that wasn’t being discussed.
I guarantee you there are many women van/car lifers who don't use adult diapers (I know quite a few!). As has been said many times in this thread, there are inexpensive tools for this.
I said that just peeing in a bottle really only works for half the population. That's all. Your choice to somehow read into those words so deeply as to make up a completely new sentence that was never written is yours alone.
Gross. Anyone who has camped knows that feeling of sadness when it’s cold outside but you have to go to the bathroom at 3am. But some of the best moments I’ve had outside are during that time. The air is cleaner, you can see the stars if it’s clear, you might hear coyotes or other animals yipping not too far off...well worth the momentary annoyance.
Camping in a remote environment is way different than parked in a parking lot on some highway exit - and now that Walmart isn't 24 hrs in the US you can't even just park there and walk in.
Temperature also changes things - if it's above zero outside it's not so bad for a quick jaunt, but if it is -40º it's a whole different ballgame.
True, but at the same time I'd wager its rather difficult to appreciate the grand mystery of nature while you're sloshing around in a pee soaked diaper.
I don't buy it. What do buses and RVs with toilets do in japan? If it is that difficult to dump trash, then what do these guys do with their soiled diapers? Certainly there has to be better options than wearing diapers.
I don't know, but I drove an RV for a month through Europe and we've never used the onboard toilet because we didn't want to have to deal with it. (We were also students on budget and wanted to avoid camps as much as possible.)
Of course I would prefer the RV toilet to a diaper though.
Buses with toilets probably have dedicated disposal facilities operated by the companies. Long-distance buses here are mostly run by big conglomerates.
Maybe I'm a spoiled westerner, but (save for that one time that my kid barged in because I forgot to lock the door,) I've never had sex in front of my kids.
Monkeys? Wtf? I had no idea. Given its geographic location I should have guessed that was the case but for some reason I am still a little bit shocked.
Feel like I've seen about a million photos on instagram of snow monkeys chilling in hot springs. I've never been, but I think it's a pretty world-famous tourist attraction (can't comment on whether it's actually worth a visit, though):
I've also run into wild monkeys hiking around Kamikochi in Nagano, and cycling around Lake Tagokura Fukushima. They're small, but not particularly shy, and like any wild animal bigger than a cat I find them somewhat scary.
Well-founded caution. Monkeys are very strong and fast. Hung around with a spider monkey for years at my friend’s house. The monkey was “domesticated”, but sometimes it would just… go off.
Not OP, but I traveled through Japan with a few friends before the pandemic and none of us speak Japanese. It's true that almost no one there speaks english. However, everyone we've encountered (especially the people working in the service industry) was super friendly and tried their best to be helpful. The public transport system is thought out and labeled very well, even in english + it plays well with Google Maps, so navigation was never an issue.
One thing that I didn't expect (although it makes perfect sense) is that OCR of Japanese writing is very bad compared to what we've got used to. Aiming a phone with Google Translate at some sign will often produce total garbage. You can attempt to transcribe the kanji with your finger and that usually gives better results, but is tedious and difficult (since the order of strokes matters and you have no clue about it). We've quickly learned a few crucial kanjis, e.g. 出口 for `exit`.
A tip for the restaurants that only offer japanese menu with no pictures: open the listing in Maps, browse through the photos and show the waiter a photo of the meal you would like.
I found it kind of boring/isolating though. Did you? It's unbelievably easy to move through their society, eat well, etc etc. But not truly interacting with anybody for weeks at a time besides tourists is kind of annoying.
I was there only for a bit more than two weeks, so I crave to go back. We are rather introverted so we socialized (for more than a short dialogue) only two times IIRC.
Once was with other foreigners at a hostel. But the other time it was at some tiny pub in Hiroshima. They had like 3 tables and there were only the owners (a couple) and 2-3 regulars. All of them wanted to drink and hang out with us and they were very loud and enthusiastic even though we didn't understand each other almost at all. We loved it, I will never forget it.
I've gone on two separate trips. I did have this feeling at times. What helped though was finding groups of people who shared hobbies with me. This way I could chat with them, even using Google Translate, and have some form of that connection.
Yeah but just in general it seems like they're an insular society, don't have random big parties and stuff. It's all like rigid, at the specific bar area. I went to a language meetup and met some cool ones that spoke enough English. But that was about as far as I got. All the "side quests" were with foreigners who I met.
Discussing where in the world to travel, someone told me roughly: When I can manage conversations, my travel is about people. When not, it's about places. As I prefer people to places, that's my first filter.
Yeah I enjoy both. But the little "side quests" that happen when you're able to regularly interact with people didn't seem to happen as much in Japan. Only with foreigners who lived there who could act as a bit of a bridge. It's an insular society too.
> Only with foreigners who [...] could act as [...] a bridge
Hmm, or perhaps some other subculture which addresses both language overlap and (sub)cultural openness? Like local alumni, or some software-related community (eg ruby, or XR, or ...), or ... ? HN people? In context of TFA, perhaps something surfing? One dream the net was weaving a world where you could have a friend in every city.
I've reduced my skin and scalp's dependence on soap and shampoo, and now a vigorous rinse in a hot shower gets me 95% clean. I do use a mild (minimal glycerin content) soap on sensitive parts. Whatever it is that accumulates on my body over time has become less oil-based (more water-based) and after some time in hot water begins mixing (emulsifying?) so that I become clean.
This helps you to live with a healthy skin microbiome that is effective at maintaining itself. I can easily skip a shower for a day and be fine, because the buggies living on my skin help manage the population of bacteria and yeasts that ultimately contribute to smells, pleasant or otherwise.
However the transition from Western-style harmful hygiene practices (harsh soaps, extreme obsession) back to a more normal baseline can take a while, and requires being a little gross as your body re-learns to manage itself without such drastic outside measures as strong surfactants.
tl;dr your skin and scalp easily develop an unhealthy dependence on external soaps, resulting in a chronic inability to manage skin microbe populations, which means you're covered in uncontrolled colonies of stinky microbes until your next shower. Let your body handle it and it will manage those populations itself.
Not the main problem. It is a stinky bacteria infection in the armpits. Coincidentally uncommon in Japan. No amount of washing will fully get rid of them because they are beneath the skin in the sweat glands.
A infection in the armpit, is not something normal. Odor and sweat and lots of bacteria is, yes, but that is not an infection. It can become an infection.
To clear this up a bit, you are most likely referring to a mutation in the ABCC11 gene often associated with and common in east asian demographics.
The gene mutation causes earwax to be dry instead of sticky and seems to inhibit production of certain proteins in the sweat glands:
"To learn the reason behind why this gene affects body odor, the origin of body odor itself will also have to be examined. To learn why, it must be noted that sweat itself is odorless. Body odor comes from the apocrine glands in areas such as the armpits and genital regions, and is caused by bacteria feeding on proteins produced by the apocrine sweat glands. However, with the gene mutation in ABCC11 gene, these proteins are not made, causing sweat to remain odorless."
I'm living in apartment and shower twice a week (at least in winter). Never understood obsession with daily shower as seen is American movies, no wonder Americans have extreme water consumption, I wonder how common is eczema and skin diseases over there compared to countries which shower less.
EDIT: instead of downvoting rather prove me wrong, do you think Americans don't have extreme water consumption? US water consumption per capita is in top 10 in whole world and it's 4 times higher than Germany for instance. Everything else in comment are just observations, but I guess too many Americans here don't like the facts and observations.
By your own source the vast majority of that use is agricultural and industrial [1]. If you look at say, Germany they use 19.68 billion m^3 for municipal purposes vs 58.39 in the US, but the US population is about 4x that of Germany, so Americans use less water than Germans(for example). The Japanese use a little less per person for municipal purposes, but not by a lot.
People are down voting you because you're muddling domestic use with agricultural and industrial numbers and you're being a judgemental asshole. And you can't be both innumerate and an asshole at the same time here.
I'm from a northern European country and I moved to a tropical country. I sweat buckets here, quite possibly literally.
You can bet I shower daily. Sometimes I shower several times a day (although fortunately I live by the sea so I try to jump in there instead when possible). I also sometimes go though several shirts in a day and have to take care to manage my electrolytes and hydration.
Showering this often is not a luxury, it's a necessity. To avoid becoming a stinking sweat monster who would send children screaming, I mean.
Locals don't have this problem. I've been living here for years and I don't think my body is going to adapt.
America is a big place, and a lot of it is hot and populated with many people of a similar ancestry to mine. Maybe it's where their "obsession" comes from?
Last time I checked US was not a tropical country. Obviously when I travelled around Southeast Asia I was showering daily. We are talking here about your regular American living and working in AC home and moving between them in AC car and shopping in AC shops and not doing manual labor.
> Locals don't have this problem.
Oh they do, but for instance they use prickly heat powder in some of those tropical countries. And that's also reason why everything is airconditioned and you freeze in buses, cinemas, etc. so they are comfortable and don't sweat that much.
US water consumption per capita is 4X higher (3794 litres) than Germany (855), 9X highter than Czechia (422).
Even warm Spain and Greece have half of US water consumption, Thailand little bit over half, Malaysia less than 1/3 of US consumption, so there is no reasonable excuse why Americans waste that much water.
So individuals in America (i.e. showering) do not use abnormally high amounts of water. The country in total uses more water because we have more farming and more industry than Germany or Czechia.
You're fixating on water consumption as a measure of the impact of showering, but for a households usage it's more likely the amount of grass Americans maintain that pumps those numbers up.
I would also like to point out how massive America is, it has almost all the climates, and it has almost all the infrastructure variants in regards to where the water comes from and how impactful that usage is.
You don't need to use any chemistry for shower unless you are greasy, thus no pollution and washing your skin with just water is good for it if not outright neutral. You do you, some people sweat and/or smell more, some people less, some have very social lives and some go out of their home just for shopping or not even that.
And some simply don't care if they disgust others. World is big, no need to bash Americans or any other nation.
> washing your skin with just water is good for it if not outright neutral
Not true, excessive washing even just with water dries your skin plus not everyone has exactly pH neutral showering water. So yes, you can wash every day and then apply lotion/cream or you can just not wash and avoid all of that.
household freshwater consumption in the usa is insignificant compared to irrigation freshwater consumption, so shower frequency is irrelevant; what matters is, roughly, bushels of rice produced per capita
Hackernews told me that this is just another microbiome that needs to be brought into balance, after which the smell goes away; and that soaps and shampoos disrupt that balance.
As one who's hung out with bohemian vagabonds who didn't make a routine habit of bathing, my nose has told me otherwise.
This might be more a reflection of your social bubble. I'd reckon the percentage would be more likely to be flipped. Especially if we're talking about a global population.
Fun fact- most Koreans don't have the same sweat gland that many others have that produce the type of sweet that the stinky bacteria feed on, and thus don't stink like Americans from sweating (they do have their own smell, from what I understand, but it isn't as pungent) and thus they don't usually use deodorant/antiperspirant. It is my understanding some other Asian groups don't stink or don't stink as much, as well, due to differences in the sweat produced.
As someone who lived in China for years I always laugh at this myth, you clearly haven't traveled by crowded Chinese subway every day if you think Chinese don't stink (and they make up pretty much all East Asians).
And not to sound racist, but black people have (often) very different stench from the rest, that one is not Chinese (racist) myth.
But to be honest every race/nation I met stink, your nose is just blind to the people you meet most often. It's same with my apartment when I return back after longer vacation I can notice its specific (new) smell still even after years living there (especially if I won't leave windows a bit open for air exchange), but if I'm away just for a day or two I don't smell anything.
It's not a myth. The distinction here isn't general body odor, which everyone has, but a specific gene (ABCC11, the same that controls for wet or dry earwax). Those with the gene have a chemical in their underarms and groins that bacteria feeds on, producing a stinkier odor.
Also, I've ridden plenty of crowded buses and subways in China and haven't noticed as much body odor as Westerners. So our anecdotes cancel out there.
It doesn't really matter, ebcause it applies same to all countries, so it doesn't explain why Americans need to consume 4 times more water per capita (3794 litres) than Germans (855), while Czechs for instance even half of the Germans (422).
And don't go at me with average temperatures nonsense, Spain and Greece are warmer than most of the US and have half of US water consumption, Thailand little bit over half, Malaysia less than 1/3 of US consumption.
In summer: you need a shower to wash the sweat off
In winter: you need a bath to get as warm as possible before going to bed. Until recently (~1980s-90s) houses were expected to be ephemeral, whether they were knocked over by an earthquake or the new owner, so people skipped "luxuries" like insulation.
So everyone else just smells like shit all the time in other countries? I smell like shit when I wake up in the morning, you wouldn't want to work next to me if I don't shower.
Build up of aromatics in your adipose tissue that are released over time via your sebaceous glands, bacterial decomposition products of those compounds, and off-gassing of bacterial decomposition byproducts from your orifices contribute to bad body odor.
I agree that diet is a factor. I started living in Japan back in the late 80s and spent a lot of time helping newcomers learn how to speak Japanese and get around in society. One thing I noticed is that people fresh from America had an odd buttery smell that went away after they ate a Japanese diet for a few weeks.
バッタ臭い / Battakusai / Stinks of butter was a derogatory term for foreigners in the past. Butter was unpopular with locals in Japan for a long time by what I've read, but I never thought the expression was being literal. Interesting.
People are different and skin biomes can change. The ways that showering habits (frequency, duration, temp, ph, soap use, etc) effect skin biomes is poorly understood. The largest factor in body odor is the bacteria living on our skin, so it is entirely conceivable that with a different showering regime your skin biome would change over time and cause you to generate BO differently.
Not only from just existing, but between going to the gym a few days a week and doing regular cardio on other days, I just can’t imagine the absolute rank stink from not showering regularly. Once I thought I didn’t work up enough of a sweat weightlifting in the gym so went to bed when I got home, and the bed smelled like absolute trash the next day and neither me nor my partner could sleep there again without washing everything.
Maybe it’s just my neuroses or mental illness, but I can’t imagine smelling so badly and not showering even if I didn’t socialize with others, and can’t imagine I’d have many people to continue to socialize with (in USA so this is probably different in the OP’s country) if I smelled so bad when I went out.
That's not sweat, that's the bacteria on your skin. Use less soap and change your diet and you will encourage more healthy skin microbiome that can even smell pleasant.
http://100r.co/site/provisioning_in_japan.html