Drone:

The Maryland governor actually posted a picture saying he was worried about drones and it was orion’s belt with a couple other stars in the picture.

https://www.newsweek.com/mystery-drones-restricted-areas-2002176

Japan separates burnable stuff like paper and food waste from the non-burnable plastics and styrofoam type things. I believe they end up burning both though, but with different methods or temps or something like that. Metal and electronics etc doesn’t go in with the rest of the non-burnables. The only plastic bottles they separate for recycling are the PET kind.

You mean how do you teach a language to foreign speakers if you don’t speak their language? It’s an interesting question with varied answers in terms of effectiveness, but for practical purposes in this discussion, the cheapo language schools in Japan really want their teachers to not use any Japanese in the classroom. They have you teach out of a series of textbooks and mostly don’t care about the outcomes for the students. In fact, the worse students do, the longer they stay applied to the courses that schools offer-- a relatively cynical view on things, but there’s a reason Japan ranks pretty low in English ability among Asian countries, despite being a wealthy nation. Like I mentioned above, there’s a reason you’re working for peanuts (and why the major language school companies don’t tend to want actual licensed teachers).

If you’re serious about wanting out, I’ll put links here to the major companies, but just keep in mind that they’ll pretty much provide you with a method of existing in Japan without being able to put away much savings, and like many large conglomerates they don’t really care about you if any problems come up-- there’s always the next weeb ready to take your place.

Ideally the best you can do is the JET Program, but that’s a long application process (about 6 months IIRC), and you’ll need to be under 40 (and from one of the listed native English speaking countries).

https://jetprogramusa.org/

The rest I don’t have much direct experience with but the salaries are all less and they all sort of suck equally (Interac may be slightly better):

https://interacnetwork.com/
https://www.gabateachinginjapan.com/
https://recruiting.altmoot.com/
https://nova-holdings.jp/teachinjapan/
https://www.peppy-kids.com/

And there’s one that takes applicants to teach in universities, though you might need some credentials in ESL/EFL, but I haven’t checked very closely

https://www.westgatejapan.com/

If you have any questions let me know. I’ve been in Japan awhile, though I eventually managed to get a teaching license and masters, so I’ve been out of the ALT (assistant language teacher) game for over 10 years now.

If you’ve got a college degree you can pretty easily teach English in Japan for peanuts (though still more than the minimum wage offered in 20 US states).

Doncha like the 'do?

Or depending on your age, DnD (tabletop) or maybe Rogue or Hack

Oh I’d totally forgotten about those, and I had the exact same sentiment as a kid. They seemed somehow mystical just because they were in scroll form.

It probably relates to your age. When I grew up there were still newspapers (and dinosaurs) and you probably ran across a small horoscope section somewhere in there (especially on or near the comics page), so for me seeing the dates was virtually unavoidable. But I haven’t run across a random horoscope in over 20 years, so if you’re born after the millennium I’m sure it was much less prominent in your life.

What was Elrond doing while Galadriel was off visiting the trees?

Pretty sure this is a situation where you can just lie with impunity. Is sbucks gonna call up a college and demand records of your fake degree in egyptology?

Clearly that means you didn’t drink enough

Depending on how far it was to Mt Doom, they totally would’ve searched for a scifi way to destroy the ring first. Probably involving reversing polarity and inverting tachyons.

Japan likes its animal mascots as well

I’ve actually come to like the aesthetic in certain contexts. Maybe because a lot of cointries bury their power lines so seeing them snake through the countryside evokes a more quaint and raw setting than I’m used to.

I’ve been to Kyushu once and it was really lovely down there so I’d like to get back and see more of the place.

It me, in somewhere Japan a couple days ago

But contrary to the prediction of SCT, such polarization did not abate among subjects highest in Numeracy; instead, it increased. This outcome supported ICT, which predicted that more Numerate subjects would use their quantitative-reasoning capacity selectively to conform their interpretation of the data to the result most consistent with their political outlooks.

I dunno if equating numeracy with intelligence is a fair read, but an interesting study nonetheless.

Japan doesn’t do potatoes but corn on pizza is popular. I’m willing to tolerate a lot of different toppings but for some reason corn just seems wrong to me

I grew up with a lot of Italian cooking and when I first went to Japan I saw a small pile of spaghetti in one of the bento lunch boxes covered with what I thought was marinara sauce. When I ate it and it turned out to be ketchup I almost spit it on the floor in shock.

Japan putting ketchup on spaghetti: “Hold my sake.”

turdogen?