Reddit -> Beehaw until I decided I didn’t like older versions of Lemmy (though it seems most things I didn’t like are better now) -> kbin.social (died) -> kbin.run (died) -> fedia.

Japan-based backend software dev.

  • 0 Posts
  • 64 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
cake
Cake day: August 14th, 2024

help-circle








  • It’s not learning linux for me; I’ve worked with it professionally for over a decade at this point and started with old distros on floppy at home (with poor success; it got better once I got gentoo and broadband).

    The pain of switching is non-zero, but it’s also not high. By this I mean just the process of moving data around, settings, etc.

    Finding replacement apps can be annoying.

    There are some things that still bother me, though. Certain games still won’t work or aren’t stable. This impacts some people more than others depending upon the type of game. For me, it’s still being gun shy because updates have caused me huge headaches including requiring a reinstall even in fairly recent times. I’ve had to fix one windows update problem in that same period of years and it did not require a full reinstall.

    I have a full-time job, house/yard maintenance, and a small farming business. I require reliability with security (so not updating is not an option) and don’t have time to spend diagnosing and solving issues. I also can’t not fulfill orders, etc. because of an issue bother from a customer retention standpoint but also because when selling farm goods, those are mostly fresh produce with a limited TTL.

    I have 12 months to reassess things, but I’m not liking my current position. It doesn’t help that a lot of the software for the Japanese side of things (tax office, accounting, etc.) do not have cloud versions and require Windows to work. I’m not sure if any of those work under WINE or similar at this stage.









  • The reason usually mentioned is that the labels are produced centrally or some such. Though "They know the price to charge at the till’ might be slightly off when the tax is calculated on the transaction as a whole rather than on a per-item basis (i.e. rounding shenanigans). That seems like a totally solvable problem to me, though.

    I took my wife to meet my parents and had to remind her when we went shopping that we had to add tax to everything (and tip in bars/restaurants/etc.) Some things looked cheaper than in Japan until tax (especially at that time when the exchange rate was awful).


    • learn the language AND CUSTOMS
    • don’t hang out in foreigner/english bubbles
    • don’t assume anything works the way it does in the US (from gasoline and driving to medical to government). There are lots of little things that seem like they obviously must be done X way but aren’t in other countries
    • be careful with any investments. It’s very easy to end up with PFICs which are punitively taxed (making retirement vehicles here in Japan outside of the national pension prohibitive for me, for instance).
    • celebrate
    • bring any snacks that you can legally bring but they can’t legally sell (some things with food dyes, etc. if you really like them are banned in some countries to produce/sell but not eat).