User visits and time spent on the social media platform normalize after traffic to Reddit briefly dipped last week during the blackout, according to SimilarWeb.
I’ve reduced my usage to ~3 subreddits also specifically to do with living in Japan. There’s just nowhere else with this info or discussion and people are just not presently interested in moving over here. I mostly lurk (between two reddit accounts (I nuked my online presence because of a stalker and took most of a year off all social media), I had something like 13 years on reddit and maybe 20 submissions), so it’s not like I’m producing alluring content on those places.
I also don’t use facebook, meta, instagram, twitter, tiktok, etc. which further reduces any interaction I might have.
EDIT: also having to deal with government, legal, visa, etc. things are not fun when little to none is in English (and that which is in English is out-of-date) and a lot of the characters and grammar are not in the standard set. Living and working in another language and culture is also not without its own difficulties and having people to talk to is important. For further info on just the language, 2 sets of characters containing roughly ~50 symbols each are required (not hard), and then you need at least ~2100 Sino-Japanese characters (kanji) just to be able to read a newspaper. That doesn’t include a lot of jargon used in legal, medical, and other things. I wonder if my downvoter /u/Veraxus has ever had deal with anything like this. I can speak conversational Japanese, know a lot of IT jargon, and can somewhat read Japanese and it’s still very difficult at times.
It’s cool man. I’m still gonna use reddit for a few niche communities too. Only to lurk though.
The important thing is continuing to build things over here, and hopefully it won’t be too long until we can start some Japanese communities, along with everything else people are missing.
Good question! “Standard” In terms of characters refer to the 常用漢字 which are the -er- “basic” 2160ish (I will try to remember to update with the exact figure; it was expanded in the last 5-10 years) kanji that are the basis to be considered “literate”.
To look at it a bit different for Americans (which is the only basis I have; other counties even within English differ), one could think of reading at an X-grade level. Many publications can be around 5th-grade level (though this comes with its own can of worms).
In English, we have 26 letters of the alphabet. I guess we could call it 52 differentiation lower- and upper-case. We could also double that to 104 for cursive. If we’re feeling generous, we could add a couple of shorthand signs (such as an & that is more shorthand).
Now, for japanese, in addition to those 104ish, you now have to learn at least 2160ish Chinese characters (and, if you’re japanese, all the latin alphabet as described above, but this isn’t applicable to those of use whom are native English speakers looking to learn Japanese).
And, until here, we’re only talking about the squiggles used to represent sounds. After this, we actually get into things like vocabulary and grammar and registers ( think something like manners.
Edit: oh! And those 2160isj characters! Unlike Chinese or something, they can have multiple readings (pronunciations) based on whether they are alone, in a compound, a person’s name, etc. Some knaji have over 10 readings. Much like many languages, the most-used words and grammar patterns are the most irregular.
a lot of the characters and grammar are not in the standard set
Were you referring to some standardized grammar set here too? I’m aware of the 常用漢字. Trying to guess the proper readings of random stations in 東京都 on the Japanese map is a fun exercise, but of course it’s complicated by characters I don’t know, and the possibility it could be any reading, even 名乗り readings.
I can speak conversational Japanese, know a lot of IT jargon, and can somewhat read Japanese and it’s still very difficult at times.
I imagine from my own studies. Are you working in an IT-related field? Was there a specific reason you wanted to work in Japan?
I’ve reduced my usage to ~3 subreddits also specifically to do with living in Japan. There’s just nowhere else with this info or discussion and people are just not presently interested in moving over here. I mostly lurk (between two reddit accounts (I nuked my online presence because of a stalker and took most of a year off all social media), I had something like 13 years on reddit and maybe 20 submissions), so it’s not like I’m producing alluring content on those places.
I also don’t use facebook, meta, instagram, twitter, tiktok, etc. which further reduces any interaction I might have.
EDIT: also having to deal with government, legal, visa, etc. things are not fun when little to none is in English (and that which is in English is out-of-date) and a lot of the characters and grammar are not in the standard set. Living and working in another language and culture is also not without its own difficulties and having people to talk to is important. For further info on just the language, 2 sets of characters containing roughly ~50 symbols each are required (not hard), and then you need at least ~2100 Sino-Japanese characters (kanji) just to be able to read a newspaper. That doesn’t include a lot of jargon used in legal, medical, and other things. I wonder if my downvoter /u/Veraxus has ever had deal with anything like this. I can speak conversational Japanese, know a lot of IT jargon, and can somewhat read Japanese and it’s still very difficult at times.
It’s cool man. I’m still gonna use reddit for a few niche communities too. Only to lurk though.
The important thing is continuing to build things over here, and hopefully it won’t be too long until we can start some Japanese communities, along with everything else people are missing.
What do you mean by “standard set”?
Good question! “Standard” In terms of characters refer to the 常用漢字 which are the -er- “basic” 2160ish (I will try to remember to update with the exact figure; it was expanded in the last 5-10 years) kanji that are the basis to be considered “literate”.
To look at it a bit different for Americans (which is the only basis I have; other counties even within English differ), one could think of reading at an X-grade level. Many publications can be around 5th-grade level (though this comes with its own can of worms).
In English, we have 26 letters of the alphabet. I guess we could call it 52 differentiation lower- and upper-case. We could also double that to 104 for cursive. If we’re feeling generous, we could add a couple of shorthand signs (such as an & that is more shorthand).
Now, for japanese, in addition to those 104ish, you now have to learn at least 2160ish Chinese characters (and, if you’re japanese, all the latin alphabet as described above, but this isn’t applicable to those of use whom are native English speakers looking to learn Japanese).
And, until here, we’re only talking about the squiggles used to represent sounds. After this, we actually get into things like vocabulary and grammar and registers ( think something like manners.
Edit: oh! And those 2160isj characters! Unlike Chinese or something, they can have multiple readings (pronunciations) based on whether they are alone, in a compound, a person’s name, etc. Some knaji have over 10 readings. Much like many languages, the most-used words and grammar patterns are the most irregular.
Were you referring to some standardized grammar set here too? I’m aware of the 常用漢字. Trying to guess the proper readings of random stations in 東京都 on the Japanese map is a fun exercise, but of course it’s complicated by characters I don’t know, and the possibility it could be any reading, even 名乗り readings.
I imagine from my own studies. Are you working in an IT-related field? Was there a specific reason you wanted to work in Japan?
一週間前東京からダラスに帰りました。楽しくて、よかったです。日本語を勉強していますが、コメントどうもありがとうございました。他の人を助けています。