Hey everyone, this is the QA for March although, I'm filming in April because I'm kind of slow
This is for the patreon people so here are the questions
Hi, Greg. This is NYX. No need to say my last name. Thank you very much because I couldn't do that
The question is my girlfriend
And I love to watch life where I'm from and she wanted me to ask you some questions
Do people in Japan buy mostly of their things when they go on sale?
Like do they only buy new clothes our toiletries when they go on sale, or do they just buy goods when they need to?
Without accounting for sales I know in America people go crazy during times like Black Friday. Yeah, I've heard of that
We have that similar thing in Canada
Do the Japanese also have a tendency to shop for bargains?
And what are the common brands people buy? Thanks a lot, okay, so I do know people buy on sale
My wife and my sister-in-law they like to do it because maybe at the store on a Tuesday or on Sundays
they have 10% discounts or on the 8th of the month eatle yoga dough has a
sale so at least I know from my personal family experiences that they do shop for sales and
The malls always have like some type of special sale going on
People are aware of it they do it do they do it more than what I would see in Canada
I'm not too sure. I think it's fairly similar, and I also think depends on what?
social economic scale you have
You know how much money you have and whether you have to wait for sales or not, but yeah people do
popular brands or common brands
Uniqlo is a big clothing one. It's kind of for the
It's an affordable
Type of clothing store we shop at it quite a bit, I think it's quite popular for
Furniture, I would say like Natori. That's a pretty big name, so that's really popular
For other stuff there's nothing that comes quickly to my mind, so I'll leave it at uni Cloney Tony. Those are fairly
you know common household type stuff things you can get
Okay
Q and R Q no K and E not Q&E looking back at life in Japan. What is the biggest gaijin mistake?
You've made in public
In public I'd have to say I might have answered this before for a different question
but it was one of my first times at a sento a public bath and
I'm going to blame this on my wife because she made me do it
I
Had shin, and he was just a little baby still in diapers
And she told me to put a swimmer on on him so a swim diaper
So I brought that in and this was in the middle of the day, so they had
female staff
Actually checking the water quality and just making sure things are clean
and so she approached me this oboz' and
said you can't do this and
You have to have your I guess my son has to be naked in the own sin on the sento so that was fairly embarrassing
Because that was my first experience in Inosanto and I was already getting lectured by nobis
Ah, so I was also my first time. I guess naked in public in front of woman so more and more
embarrassing
Yeah, that was fun times
okay, this is NAT KNAT are your kids starting to watch or have interest in enemy yeah, they like anime and
I
I'd say that Aiko likes more of the same anime that I do
And Shin probably likes more of the children based enemy like yokai watch or something like that
We're probably not huge anime fans
But we do watch it, so we're not really otaku a very obsessed with it
But yeah, we do watch
Simon oust I believe that's how you say it
What would you change about Japan if you could I think I made a video about this and not smoking in Japan
That's my number one thing just watch the video, and you'll prove. You'll see my whole argument about it, but I would love not to
Inhale secondhand smoke when I want to go to a restaurant by myself or with my family. That'd be a huge change
They've already done that in Canada and lots of other Western countries
I think Japan is about a couple decades behind in terms of that
Maybe just a couple bonus one so I'll add there is
And I've made a video about this as the work/life balance
For Japanese workers. I really think that'd be an improvement both for I think it would help product productivity
Honestly is to work less hours, but be more productive
But also spend more time to family to be less stress anything would be better
so and the third one I
Probably get have a third one, but I forget now so I'll leave that to
Jock TF. How would you describe the awesomeness of alpacas I?
Have not seen alpacas in person that I can remember so I have a hard time describing it
But if I remember from the Minecraft game Shin loves to play they spit on the characters who can actually damage them
So I think that is pretty awesome
Rick all are Olay I guess depends on if you have an accent in there or not
Hey, Greg having lived in Japan for several years and also married to a native Japanese
I think it would be good to explain to all those people
Thinking that living in Japan is going to be wonderful. It's not always great my opinion as Japanese are very friendly on a casual basis
But to develop a true and lasting
Friendship requires as much or more work than North America my question is then how do you feel about that?
um
I'm not that sociable of a guy. I don't make very many friends
I don't go and up and talk to people without them talking to me, and this is in Canada not even in Japan so I
Think I'm a bad person to judge that I however have made some Japanese friends whether it be
people at the sento
that I've made friends with are people who are parents of in the same school system, and I
Felt I've made just the same amount of friends or a closest of friendship that I have in Canada
But the people I have generally talked to and
become closer with they do speak English they have traveled and
I think they have a different mindset than the typical Japanese person who hasn't traveled outside of Japan
So I don't think that's a very fair
Gauge of you know creating friendships or strong friendships you know with Japanese people
Just looking at my wife, I think she's made some fairly strong friendships
You know with the native Japanese people and with Japanese people have traveled
I still need to Japanese people but people have global experiences so I
think though that
Japanese people offer a lot of compliments there's more of a like initial
You don't really get to know the person until you sit down and talk with them
but I think once you get to know Japanese people and
If you have the opportunity you can become close friends so
That's kind of my judgment on it. I
Will say though that I know some American friends they are they're more likely to tell you their personal history
to anyone
without much provocation
so you probably get more of an insight into American person than a Canadian person are a Japanese person that's kind of my
Two cents about that
Okay, Michael. Lau is it hard to find an english-speaking paid tourist guide
Tokyo for Tokyo and guma for three-day trip I
Honestly, don't know because I've never tried to do that
I've always had personal native guides or I've acted as my own Kai from that so sorry
I can't help you very much there all right so besides patreon. I did ask on Twitter Facebook and Instagram
Some people ask questions, so I picked one question from each platform so on Twitter I picked
What are the broadband and cellular charges like in Japan? I would say they're fairly decent
More so for the broadband than his cellular is
That what time is that do you hear that?
That is five o'clock so at certain times in Japan you'll hear these announcements and this might be asking kids to go home
We'll see
Maybe I'm not patient enough to wait for it, but we'll see if it starts talking. I'll stop
So broadband is fiber internet. I think I pay about
40 bucks and I used to live in apartment
$60 because I'm in a house, and it is fiber. So it's very fast and
It's great so I think it's just awesome for cellular charges
They're pretty similar to Canada in that they kind of restrict your data
At the lower levels speeds are pretty decent though
Yeah, I generally only take the one gigabyte plan because I don't travel that much
I know you can't get unlimited you pay more so I know it's probably a bit better than Canada, but not the awesomest
for
For Facebook friend Francesco cover
Ricci top Ricci
How is a?
Beard seen in Japan and I've heard that a lot of people are asked to shave daily if I go to work in Japan will
It be asked to shave
This I actually do not know because I don't work in the Japanese workplace
And I did not ask people when I interviewed them about working in Japan
But I think it's fairly common to shave
Most people I see they they do a clean shave. I don't see many scruffy people like myself
Going to work in Japan with the suits
I think if you work for a
startup company or in the tech side you might get more of the American Silicon Valley type of
casual
Dress code, but I think for most
Areas yeah shaving is a thing that's just my my personal thought on that
Instagram
Magnificent Oh clever name there
Magnificent t w ro w how can you cope with being over 30 years old? It's hard. Isn't it?
Old and have family and kids then relocating it to another country to live what's the biggest challenge?
And what do you do you enjoy the most?
hmm I
Think because I was 30 and I did have family and kids I was quite concerned about it. Honestly because
My level of Japanese coming to Japan was definitely not enough to work at regular Japanese companies
I could do like things like teaching English, maybe I could have done some specialized business stuff where they require my English skills
But I couldn't just get
Any job like I could in Canada my language would be a definite limiting factor
So the biggest dress for me is making money
For my family providing for them because I was the breadwinner in Canada, and I was supposed to be the breadwinner in Japan
I found out I could work online so I didn't need to work in the Japanese workplace and
That was alright because I could kind of create my own hours and work my own pace work from home
And so I kind of lucked out in that situation
Where I could find online work?
So once I had the I guess the money issue sorted out
And it actually went way better than I expected I was so nervous
And we didn't know how long we were going to be in Japan
For but you know, we've been here for five years now, so obviously it has worked out all right for us
No everything's been great Tokyo is also fairly
You know it's a the biggest metropolitan area in the world and I was I'd visited
I was nervous about living in here, but I find the quality of life to be quite good
and there's lots of green areas they can get to if you want to and
get the space you need so I'm happy and
That's it for the questions. Thank you so much for asking the questions
As always thanks for watching, and I'll catch you on the flipside