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And in the end they gave up on Google Plus. Clever decisions.


Way easier: buy a projector, use your ceiling as the screen, lie in your bed.


Taxis are about 20% (rough estimate) cheaper than Uber in Japan. That, plus the already mentioned abundance and good quality of service of taxis in Japan (as well as the ease of booking one through phone/internet/mobile apps), leaves no real reason for most people to use Uber in my opinion.


Uber in Japan is just a routing service for regular taxis, since UberX is banned.


Am totally awed by the devotion and passion of Toru Hidaka.


Why not just use flickr? A search for images with "No known copyright restrictions" returned 663,502 results. https://www.flickr.com/search/?license=7%2C9%2C10&text=&adva...


I'm not sure if "No known copyright restrictions" means what you think it does.


The title on HN is downright misleading. "... the Japan Family Planning Association interviewed 3,000 subjects, both male and female, about their sex lives." Those aren't couples, they're just random men and women from what I understand this text.

Also, I have lived in Japan for the past 5 years and around me at least a lot of people are (very) sexually active, in fact, too active, or too casual usually. Most guys date multiple girls/have multiple sex friends, and even if they're married or in a relationship, many have sex partners other than their girlfriend/spouse.

Despite the misleading title, I wouldn't be surprised if couples reply that they haven't have sex with each other for the past month and were telling the truth (because they're too busy having sex with other partners).


We changed the title to make it less misleading. Sorry we didn't see this earlier.


Spot on.

...however, its also fair to say studies like these work their way up into the Japanese government policy think tank.

The 3 billion yen in match making & services is no joke.

The government is obsessed with the issue, which is more troubling than the reality of sexuality in Japan.


How old are you?


Turning 32 this year.


These guys should grow some balls and just separate from their "partners".


Can I guess that you are a tech yuppie, whose social circle consists mostly of other tech yuppies? Most people around the world are not tech yuppies in a recession. Try asking a dropout or a convenience store clerk about the sex they're having and you might get a less outrageous answer.


I'm an engineer but my social circle is mostly made up of people who are not in web/tech, and from all kinds of industries (marketing, finance, medical, real-estate, business owners, etc). So this definitely does not (just) apply to the tech industry.


You criticize the methodology by citing anecdotal evidence. That's worse.

Also it doesn't explain the correlation with the recession.


I only criticized the title of the HN post, because it differs from what what was written in the article.

What followed was what I observed from my personal experiences, and I did not say that my personal experiences necessary reflect the state of the whole of Japan, nor vice versa, or prove this article false. These are just my personal observations, which happen to be the opposite of what was stated in the article.

Also, in addition to the very small sample set (3000 out of millions, even if we are just considering the age group mentioned), it also provides little to no detail of the sample selected (location, marital status etc). IMHO this is article seems sensationalist to me, or just bad journalism (no links to concrete sources or data).


So wouldn't the world be a better place for everyone if all the librarians in the world posted everything to a searchable quora/stackoverflow shared knowledge base? Instead of having knowledge fragmented and buried deep in places where people would have trouble finding.


The better to obsolete you with, my dear.

The challenge of every "knowledge management" system ever invented, including Google Answers, which paid (!) for answers.



Despite Google's global presence and all the smart and capable people they have, are still unable to offer international purchasing/shipping for one device almost one year after it's launch?


This is actually quite a common perk offered by Japanese companies in Tokyo (GREE, CyberAgent, etc).


Interestingly, my former employers had what I believe to be a more common system in Japan: they paid you more to live farther away from the office, by subsidizing your monthly train pass. (One could actually turn this into an untaxed wage increase by buying the 6 month pass at the standard discount, rather than six 1 month passes, and pocketing the 6th month's subsidy. Eventually HR realized this, cut the subsidy, and directed everyone to buy the 6 month pass. HR was surprised that this decision was unpopular.)

One of the reasons for subsidizing commute expenses in Japan is that they're typically both high relative to employee salaries and the benefits are not taxable as earned income, whereas giving equivalent sums of money for other purposes does make that money taxable. For example, my read of the relevant regulations suggests that paying somebody to live close to the office constitutes taxable income but subsidizing their commute is not.

In case it isn't obvious, I'm none of Japanese, a tax lawyer, a Japanese tax lawyer, or your Japanese tax lawyer, but the regs are fairly straightforward if interested parties want to look them up:

http://www.nta.go.jp/taxanswer/gensen/2508.htm

[Funny anecdote: My boss attempted to sell me once on moving next door to the office, on the grounds that this would save the company money on my train pass and let me continue working without that pesky hard stop at 30 minutes past midnight when the last train to Ogaki left. I think he was genuinely confused when I told him "I consider that less a bug and more a feature." The joke was on me, though, after crunch time happened and I had to buy hotel stays at my own expense after staying until 3 to 4 AM.]


I also received a bonus while working in London (I always thought it was called "London Waiting" [1], which seems like a more accurate a reflection of their train system).

I think it was £3000, which was a large amount back then.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_weighting


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