I’ve been looking for sources about the Japan doctor shortage, do you know of any that describe the cause as being low pay? I have heard about the medicine issues.
I have no links handy, but practically every report by NHK and other outlets all come to the same conclusion that medical workers are leaving the industry and newcomers (medical students) aren't coming in because the pay is too low for the intense workload required compared to almost every other industry (and the shortage leads to doctors putting in even more hours, causing a negative feedback loop).
The low pay in turn has been linked to hospitals running on essentially zero margin, so they can't pay more even if they wanted to. That in turn has been linked to Japan's national healthcare insurance system and other government mandates, with arguments everyone here has probably heard enough already.
1. It’s not very fun on iOS, especially because crypto mining makes the screen zoom in and it’s no good. Also the sound for the phone doesn’t work so that’s a big blocker. You probably know already.
2. Later, playing again on PC, I fist pumped when I finally was able to pay my ISP and the network clicked on. It felt like I defeated some boss in Dark Souls. You made that feel so horrible … thank you.
3. I sent this to a friend and he said that the browser was requesting microphone permissions so he turned it off. I didn’t encounter this but I’m wondering what that was?
Anyway I don’t know if I’ll continue to play and try to pony up the six thousand dollars I need to pay my rent and open the door to the endless staircase, but good job anyway :)
Yeah, even though most of the game takes place on your phone, I (ironically) couldn't think of great ways to port some of the mechanics to mobile in a satisfying way.
The microphone thing is just a small interaction when you try to talk to the intercom. It doesn't affect the game whether you accept or deny the permission
In any case, it sounds like you already know the ending, but I think it's worth sticking it out. Paying the ISP seems like it's the hardest/most frustrating part for a lot of people. Besides, some of my favorite parts are around the middle-end.
Thank you for the article! I’m an American who’s lived on and off in Japan for around 10 years, currently in Tokyo working in game development. I related to many parts of your article, especially the later part about foreign devs working with Japanese executives.
My work environment aims to be multilingual (Japanese/English) but creative conversations are inevitably stymied by pauses for translation. Machine translation and AI is helpful but fails to capture nuance, and compounds normal, everyday communication woes. Japanese only speakers on our team feel lonely and left out despite best efforts. Japanese applicants are quite rare because of the stress of being in such an environment. It’s exhausting when people around you don’t share common cultural touchstones and every conversation is an unpredictable exchange.
On the other side, although many of my non-Japanese colleagues speak varying levels of Japanese, some have tried but are unable to (or don’t care to) improve further. Working proficiency is a high bar, and our “real work” is busy. You can get by in Tokyo with cursory Japanese, translation apps and online reservations. There is a large expat community, so you can ignore the “Japan for Japanese people” if you so choose.
I wonder how things will change as the native population continues to shrink over the years. Even in Tokyo, many businesses have responded to the tourist explosion by insulating themselves in various ways. There are recent incidents related to concentrated immigrant populations as well. I hope that we avoid the xenophobic trend that is sweeping the rest of the world but I do worry.
Thanks for the comments! I have been following developments in MT and AI as close as I can and have been interested in how well MT works—or doesn’t—in real-life situations, but I don’t get much opportunity to experience such situations myself. Your description of your work environment is really valuable to me.
Your report about some of your non-Japanese colleagues not making much progress with Japanese matches my own experience in academia. A few years after I started working at the university, we began hiring a steady stream of youngish academics from around the world to teach academic writing classes in English to undergraduates. Some of them already had good Japanese ability, and the others all started out wanting to learn. But being busy with teaching and research and being able to get by in Tokyo with just English meant that few of the latter group made much progress beyond basic conversation. The language is hard, adult life is busy, and acquiring languages gets steadily harder for most of us as we get older.
I also wonder about how Japan will change and adapt as the native population continues to decrease. At the government and business levels, the overall response to the growing foreign population seems to be a slow shift toward adaptation. Among the general population, it’s hard for me to tell.
There are a lot of cashless options but many places still only take cash. There’s a bakery in building that opened right when COVID started and they’re strictly cash only. Whenever friends and relatives visit they’re always stunned.
I don’t know if I agree that phones are the only culprit, but I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your article. Teaching is an incredibly hard job.
Lately I worry about all the AI written content that appears when doing a simple web search. I’ll find an article that seems relevant, but after spending 30 seconds or so unwrapping the prose, I find absolutely nothing of value.
If I was younger and every time I tried to read something longer than a tweet I got nothing out of it, I would likely get frustrated. Maybe that’s why it’s easier to default to gifs and memes.
> This is not the middle. The author is talking about small games.
Exactly what I thought reading this article. It’s very hard to stand out and it’ll only get harder. Tools are much better than before, and now AI generation is entering the ring. Being an exceptional game is half the problem, the other half is getting noticed. Which takes money, or connections. Usually both.
Two additional points.
1. Good interaction design is still hard. Making something that many people can play and understand quickly is a skill. Releasing lots of content is the best way to learn.
2. Back in the Newgrounds days it was really simple to put something out there and get feedback on it quickly. Ads were (generally) not woven into games directly, the Flash tools were simpler and they limited game scope. Itch.io is ok for this but has a lot of downloadable stuff. I miss the days where browser games were huge but I guess there’s no money in it anymore. Maybe someone with better insight can share.
It’s a shame. Hobbyist developers and smaller studios have very little time to sift through all of these complicated pricing situations. The pay-per-installs prevents giving away a semi-successful game for free in donation packages, and adds new admin overhead. I don’t understand the goal… what new revenue stream will magically spring forth from these changes?
Unity is not my favorite engine to work with, and there was a long period of buggy, non performant console ports, but less choice is always worse.
Very interesting video that verbalizes many thoughts I’ve privately had. I agree that NPR has gotten more sensational and hive minded over the recent years. I was pledging 10 years ago or so, not anymore.
Lately I was trying PBS because it’s pretty dry, but they’re also quite left leaning no?
No PBS is not left leaning. At least in my opinion. One thing I noticed about PBS is they always bring up both sides of the argument. And when they have people on to give opinions they have two people that a very mild mannered and speak eloquently. I also see them report on stories that you would see on either fox news or cnn but it's all facts, and almost always never opinion. It's kind of refreshing to watch. I think that is the reason is seems dry, because what they present are the facts of the story. There is no emotion added in and there is no hidden suggestion to try to alter your emotions.
Be careful when you use "自強不息" though. I have never seen any native speaker who is also a sane person use it in daily life without sounding sarcastic.
This word does mean what you say, but it probably one of the overused, insincere, and meaningless words in government speeches.
It's like people roll their eyes when tech giants says "make the world a better place" for the past 30 years. But instead of 30 years, this came from 《易经》,which was roughly from 5,000 year ago, and has been constantly used in a similar fashion since then. So imagine how a Chinese speaker will think of it.
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