I’m writing on behalf of my relative, whose Japanese mother died recently in Yamaguchi. The mother had been living in the U.S. for most of her adult life but retained her Japanese citizenship and returned to Japan a couple years ago. My relative does not speak Japanese and her mom’s surviving elderly relatives do not speak English or use much technology. She will have the assistance of her mom’s friends, an elderly American/Japanese couple, to help with some logistics and English translation during the three days she will soon be in the country. Does anyone have experience with closing out a loved one’s affairs? The family will not be much help. The friends will be more helpful, but they are also limited to just assisting in town.

What order should she try to get things done in? Does the death certificate need to be translated in Fukuoka at the US embassy, or is that something that could be done locally? She’ll have access to the apartment. Her mom’s main bank is also in the states, so she thinks she can handle that here later. She also had a Japanese bank with more limited funds. Any assistance is appreciated.

Hi all! European living in Japan here. I am really interested in the opinion of people of various nationalities about this topic, since my own opinion might be biased.

Basically Tv Tokyo (one of the largest private broadcasters in Japan) released a new movie special “晴れたらいいね” (“I hope it gets sunny”) in collaboration with Amazon Prime and starring Japanese sweatheart Mei Nagano. So it’s a pretty majir production and a big deal, even popped up on my Amazon Prime homepage.

https://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/haretara/

It’s a story of Japanese nurses deployed to the Philippines at the height of Japanese occupation of the Philippines in 1945. The medical staff was there to tend to the Japanese warriors injured while fighting the locals and the US who were resisting the Japanese occupation.

Now my question is - does this rub anyone else the wrong way? Now I get that the angle they’re going for is that war is bad for the people of both sides, but it just seems in bad taste to have a movie featuring nurses proclaiming how they volunteered for the war and how terrible it will be if Japan loses the war, when they are on the occupator’s side.

I come from a country that suffered a war quite recently so this might cloud our judgement, but if someone were to make a movie on how hard life is currently for the Russian or Israeli military staff, people would fight tooth and nail against it, probably (hate to use the word but) cancelling the director and the actors in the process.

Japanese social media reaction is as phlegmatic as usual, with it basically being praise for how beautiful and hansome the actresses and actors look and how sad the story is, with but a few right-wing “at least it wasn’t leftist propaganda that they serve us in school” comments.

I’d love to get the opinions of others on this. Am I overreacting?

TL;DR Japan made a movie about how hard life was for the Japanese during their occupation of the Philippines. Am I overreacting thinking it’s in bad taste?

I'm guessing advertising is like this to fit as much information as possible into a small area? And perhaps that being normalized over time has led to people finding this form of advertising as trustworthy and legit? I just don't understand how anything would stand out and be noticeable amongst all the noise.

When learning Japanese I found that I struggled most with reading advertisements. My brain seems to just shutdown by being so overwhelmed with information. I don't think I would bode well in major urbanized cities like Tokyo lol.

Hello everyone,

I am a non-Japanese that was born in Tokyo. I don’t reside in Japan and I’m trying to retrieve my birth certificate.

I know my name at birth, as well as my date of birth. However, I don’t have specific details like the ward where I was registered, and I do not know anyone who would be able to shed more details about that. I contacted my local Japanese consulate to see if they were able to help; but unfortunately with the information I have, there isn’t much they can do for me.

I’m considering hiring a private investigator to help with this but I’m unsure of the best way to go about it. Has anyone had experience with a similar situation? How should I proceed, and what should I be aware of when hiring a PI in Japan? Are there any other approaches I should consider?

Any advice or experiences you can share would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250108/p2a/00m/0na/009000c#cxrecs_s

What I find interesting is that there are a total of 2200 homeless people in Japan. And 60% would prefer not to be.

This is from January of last year and doesn't include Kanazawa because of the Noto quake but still...

Hi,

I visited Kyoto recently, and I love Hoshino coffee. I brought home some of their whole beans (I live in the U.S.).

I would love to be able to buy some Japanese coffee whole beans (Hoshino and other brands), but I was unable to find any online stores that carry them.

Where can I get them?

Hello, I would like to get more into Japanese literature and maybe my searching skills suck, but I can't seem to find much information about which recent Japanese books are acclaimed. Please give me some information. My favorite novel of all time is Spring Snow. I'm also a very big fan of Yusuke Kishi's "From the New World". Any genre is fine. Here's what I have on my list.

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

Parade by Shuichi Yoshida

Real World by Natsuo Kirino

Socrates In Love by Kyoichi Katayama

I would appreciate any recommendations, thanks.

Hi everyone. I live in Australia with my Japanese boyfriend. He is trying to move money from his Japan Post Bank account to his Australian account. He put his JCB card (JP Bank provided) on his Apple Pay and it still gave him errors when trying to pay his school fees (a small trade school). His account was set up with his old Keitai email account (@docomo/softbank etc) and we can't figure out how to change it to his new email. We can't call any of the JP Bank phone numbers as they block Australian phone numbers. He doesn't remember his security questions to do the process online either. Who knew Japanese banks were such a nightmare? Australian banks are so much easier to deal with... Does anyone have any advice?