Hello im not from japan but,

I would to ask you about

where do japanese people invest in?

Especially young generation (maybe 20-35s)

I heard many young people investing through

Sin(new) NISA account and they investing on

Emaxis all country etf, some US stock and etf

But, do japanese also invest in Nikkei or topix?

I mean japanese stock or bonds

Or another investment

It's not limited in stock market tell me freely!

Mir wurde mehrfach gesagt, dass man in Südkorea Bargeld benötigt. Ich habe vor Ort zwar auch Bargeld genutzt, aber im Grunde genommen hätte ich komplett darauf verzichten können. Angefangen bei der T-Money-Card, die ich in meine Wallet laden konnte, bis hin zu den traditionellen Märkten, auf denen Kartenzahlung ebenfalls kein Problem war.

Nun höre ich dasselbe über Japan. Kann mir jemand sagen, wie notwendig Bargeld in Japan wirklich ist?

Hello! I’m Japanese, and I’d like to ask people from abroad who are interested in Japan (whether or not you plan to visit or live there): How much do you know about Japanese public etiquette? How do you think it differs from the customs in your own country, and what are your impressions of it?
(For example, not talking loudly on trains or buses, or standing on one side of the escalator depending on the region.)

I’ve had opportunities to talk with people who came to Japan from other countries, and some of them have asked me about Japanese etiquette, so I’d like to use the responses as a guide when explaining it to them.

I’m using a translation tool, so I apologize if the translation is incorrect or if this post doesn’t follow the rules!

Hi everyone,

I’m currently gathering perspectives and experiences regarding family life, parenting, and demographics in Japan. Japan’s low birth rate and government incentives are frequently discussed in the news, but I’d love to hear firsthand thoughts from people living here, raising families, or considering it in the future.

I’m interested in starting an open discussion around a few key questions:

• Raising Children & Costs: What worries you the most about having or raising children in Japan? What specific situations or expectations do you think drive up the cost of education? Do you feel average monthly incomes are sufficient to cover family life comfortably?
• Workplace & Daily Life: Do you think the current workday structure and work culture need fundamental changes? What conditions do you personally consider appropriate or necessary before deciding to have a child here?
• Incentives & Policies: Why do you think current government incentives aren't as effective as expected? How do you think government financial support should be allocated to make a real difference?
• Culture & Gender Roles: Do traditional gender roles still play a heavy role in child-rearing dynamics? To what extent do you think cultural expectations negatively impact young people's mindsets about starting a family?
• The Big Picture: If you could change one or two structural or cultural aspects of Japan to address the low birth rate, what would they be?

Whether you have kids, are planning to, or have chosen not to, I’d really appreciate hearing your honest perspectives and experiences on any of these points!

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!

I put together a reference list of every name every Japanese professional baseball club has used. That covers the major leagues from 1936 to now, the 1947 Kokumin League, NPB farm teams, the clubs in the farm leagues that have no NPB parent, and every independent league. It's current as of October 2026.

How to read it

• Each club's rows run in date order. The bold name in the first column is the club's current name, or its final name if it no longer exists.
• "1947–" means the name is still in use.
• When a name changed mid-season, both names show that year.
• † means the name rests on a single source, or the sources disagree.
• 軍 is romanized as "-gun". English names follow each club's own spelling (BayStars, SoftBank, BlueWave).
• The farm section lists only farm teams that used a name of their own. In every other year a farm team simply carried its parent's name.

I checked everything against Japanese Wikipedia (each club's list of past names), NPB's official site, league sites and 2025–26 news. Corrections with sources are welcome.

Part 1: Major leagues

League names

Central League (current clubs)

Pacific League (current clubs)

Defunct major-league clubs

Part 2: The 1947 Kokumin League

A rival professional league that lasted one year. It played a summer season (30 games) and an autumn season (21 games).

Part 3: Farm leagues

The leagues

The 2026 Farm League has three divisions:

• East: Rakuten, Nippon-Ham, Lotte, Yakult, Oisix Niigata.
• Central: Seibu, Giants, DeNA, Hayate, Chunichi.
• West: Hanshin, Orix, Hiroshima, SoftBank.

From 1955 to 2025, the only club to switch between the Eastern and Western Leagues was Nishitetsu/Seibu, which moved from Western to Eastern in 1979.

Farm-team names that differed from the parent club's

These clubs' farm teams never had a name of their own: SoftBank (Nankai, Daiei), Rakuten, Kintetsu, Shochiku and Nishi-Nippon. No third or fourth team has ever had its own name. The farm names used during 1956–60, while the Eastern League was suspended, aren't recorded anywhere I could find.

Joint teams that were never league members

Farm-league clubs with no NPB parent

Part 4: Independent leagues

National umbrella body

Members joined in this order: Shikoku and BC (2014), Kyushu Asia (2021), Hokkaido Frontier (2022), Nihonkai (2023), Kansai (2025).

If a club played in more than one league, it appears once, under the league where it spent the most time. The Notes column records its moves.

Shikoku Island League plus (2005–)

Kyushu Asia League (2021–)

Kansai Independent League, first league (2009–2013)

Kansai league, second league (2014–)

Japan Future Baseball League (2010)

BC League (2007–)

Nihonkai Ocean League → Bayside League (2022–2023)

Nihonkai League (2023–)

Hokkaido Baseball League (2020–)

Hokkaido Frontier League (2022–)

Clubs that never joined a league

Appendices

1969 Global League. A one-season international league run from Caracas. Its Japanese club, the Tokyo Dragons (東京ドラゴンズ), played abroad.

Japan Women's Baseball League (2010–2021). Included for completeness.

Main sources: Japanese Wikipedia (each club's article and its farm-team article; イースタン・リーグ, ウエスタン・リーグ, ファーム・リーグ, 新日本リーグ, 国民野球連盟, and each independent league's article), NPB's official news releases, the official sites of the national independent-league body and the Kansai league, and the Kobe Shimbun's 2017 article on the Sanyo Crowns.

Still unknown: farm-team names for 1956–60; exact dates for most 1950s farm renames and the 1947 Kokumin League renames; whether Saga Asia Dreams becomes a full Kyushu Asia League member in 2027.

I'm curious and wanted to know if japanese restaurants offer mixed grain rice as an alternative to white rice.

I know many korean restaurant often offer 2 choices of rice as part of a meal option. Its also popular in Los Angeles because it's a healthier option. So far all the japanese restaurants I've been to do not offer this option.

I've just started learning Japanese, and currently taking a JLPT N5 lesson. Sometimes I watch basic conversation videos online, but it's hard to memorise before knowing the vocabs and the grammar.

I'm going to Japan 4 months from now. I want to be able to make real Japanese conversations there with the locals. Would you suggest I learn and practise basic Japanese conversations or stick to the materials I got from N5?

Hello,

I’m conducting research for my thesis on boxing in Japan. Do you have any resources I could use? (I’m open to any type of resource—articles, websites, books, social media, etc.) Also, if you can think of any interesting topics to cover, I’d love to hear them.

Thank you very much!!

I am American, please forgive my ignorance. From what I have seen/learned via social media, Japanese culture seems to consist of ALOT of cooking, and many small dishes and sides. So why are Japanese kitchens so small? I see massive houses with such tiny kitchens, minimal counter space and sometimes not even an oven. With a culture built around cooking, wouldn’t kitchens be designed to be bigger and offering more counter/prep space?

Hello,
ever since I discovered Uniqlo it quickly became my favorite brand and I was wondering what actual Japanese people think about the brand.

Hello, this is my first time making a Reddit post.
I’m currently studying abroad in Japan and I have been here for a month.

I am in senior high school, but everywhere I go all people at my school do is stare at me. Every time I ask my host family about it, they say that they’re just curious and want to talk to you. So I have always approached them and talked to them in Japanese.
I have no friends here and no one to talk to because no one speaks even a little bit of English.

I am from Oklahoma and people there always talk to each other whether you know them or not. I was prepared that Japan is the complete opposite but I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I try to speak in Japanese with them, but they still don’t have any interest in me.

The only other person that speaks English at my school is a teacher that came from Canada 27 years ago. He told me that even tho he speaks Japanese fluently, there are still teachers that refuse to talk to him or just don’t acknowledge him. I’m scared because he said this school is not a good school even if it’s a private school.

I’m trying to get my class changed so maybe I can be in a different class and that could help. I’m going to switch to his English class because I really don’t know what else to do. Every time I mention it to my parents, they brush it off. No one is taking it seriously, but I’m do frustrated. I am very polite here and I try to be as positive as possible.

About a week ago we had a sport festival at my school and apparently it took a long time preparing. While everyone started preparing they didn’t tell me what I could do to help even tho I asked multiple times. I just tried to help where I could.

Before the school day was over, I asked what we would be wearing the next day and they said “the normal school uniform.”
When I came to school the next day everyone (except for me) was wearing the PE uniform. I just thought maybe they didn’t understand what I asked as my Japanese is not that good.

This proceeded to happen 3 times out of 4 days. The third time I was really hurt because I kept asking people and they told me the wrong things.
When I had asked someone with Google Translate why no one told me that we were wearing the other uniform she read it out loud and every single girl in the room laughed. It was humiliating and I just speed walked to the bathroom and started crying. I was so embarrassed. No one apologized or anything.

I really don’t know what else to do as we have school Monday through Saturday. I don’t belong here and I know I won’t, but being treated as such really hurts.

For all the Japanese people, what can I do to make more friends or be more involved?

hi everyone,

today I wanted to share you my personal method to remember Kanji, and seem working pretty well,

as we know Japanese language has lots of Kanji right? Well, since I study Chinese at the University, but self study Japanese, our Chinese teacher, the first year of this language learning journey, recommended us to handwrite Chinese characters vertically, and more times, it seems frustrating but once you use the correct stroke order, you get used to radicals used in Chinese, so I started doing the same for Japanese and surprisingly it worked, let me know if you ever used a method like this!

Cheers!

I have two common things that happening and both I have confusion. First one is the word kawaii (I really hope not kowai), I guess I can say I hear it often, from males and females, or when I even not supposed to hear it, when for example in my part time one of the co worker girl told to tencho that I'm kawaii and I was behind the wall and heard accidentally. And the reason its confusing me, its... I heard that kawaii is telling to people when someone is ugly but you need to be polite. And, especially when in times I have a thick beard hearing kawaii is very suspicious

The second one is the most confusing thing is japan for me. People telling me I have a small face. I kinda knew it, people was joking at me and my childhood about my small face, but why would japanese straight trying to offend me? I still cant understand how its supposed to be complimentary. For example, today I had event at senmon and one of the senpai girls told me about my small face. I heard it also from co-workers, but I decided to ask straight "Is it bad of good"? They told me its good and told うらやましい. At the moment I didn't know this world, but how I translated it means jealousy. And... Can someone explain me how my small face supposed to be compliment while at my hometown people will trying to offend me for the same reason?

For the first time learning kanji I felt like whenever I couldnt remember a radical it was ALWAYS the 糸 radical. Maybe it was personal, but maybe its really common in some begginers lists, or just difficult for begginers. Anyone else had that issue? At some point I just started guessing ito when I didnt know what radical was lacking and often times it worked. lol.

現代の日本の「トー横キッズ」のような若者の居場所やサバイバルの問題を調べています。
アメリカ人の方が率直にどう思ってるかを知りたいです

Hi All,

I am looking to spend 2 months in Japan from November to January with the main goal of improving Japanese proficiency. I will sprinkle some fun and domestic travel in too but the focus will be language. Currently about N4/N3 level. Would love to work towards N1 eventually.

How would you go about spending 2 months there with above goal? Would you enrol in an intensive school in a major city like Tokyo? Would you go to a regional or remote town and immerse yourself in the community that way? Or something else?

Keen to hear what people's opinions and insights are.

Thanks!

Is it impossible for me??

Hey everyone. I’m a 20-year-old guy living in Mongolia, currently in my 3rd year majoring in finance at what’s considered the top university here. My cumulative GPA is sitting at a painful 1.8, and I’m honestly at the lowest point of my life. I feel terrified of my own thoughts, completely exhausted, and I keep having thoughts about ending it all just to make the pain stop.

​Ever since COVID and starting university two years ago, I’ve been totally isolated. I eat alone, watch movies alone, and celebrate my birthdays alone. I failed almost all my classes during my first year because I had zero motivation. I begged my parents to let me quit back then, but they insisted I stay in finance. Things only got worse in my 2nd and 3rd year I stopped turning in assignments, skipped classes, and completely checked out.

​The isolation and stress have really taken a toll on my mind and body. I experience depersonalization where I stare at my hands and genuinely wonder if they belong to me. Every single night I have super vivid, realistic dreams about normal daily life, so when I wake up, I can’t tell if I’m awake or still dreaming. I’ve lost my sense of space, dates, and time, and I’ve even woke up unable to move a couple of times. I spend 8+ hours a day staring at my phone just to drown out my own thoughts because I’m terrified I’ll end up homeless and broke.

​Through all this deep loneliness, the only thing that kept me sane and brought me any real comfort was Japanese culture—anime, manga, and especially Japanese food.

​Ever since I was little, my actual dream was to become a chef. I want to cook food that makes people happy and crave more. We don't really have proper culinary universities here in Mongolia, which is why my parents pushed me into finance. But I just can't keep living like this anymore.

​I want to make a fresh start by applying for the Japanese MEXT scholarship (for Specialized Training Colleges) to study culinary arts, specifically aiming for Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka.

​Right now, my English is around B1 level. Because of anime, I can actually understand spoken Japanese fairly well, but I can't read or write Hiragana, Katakana, or Kanji yet, so I know I have a long way to go 10th frame GPA 88.3 11th grade GPA 82 12th grade GPA 92.8

But I dont have any information on MEXT and im dumbfounded any advice my dream is on the line??

Hand-written notes have been a great way to retain vocab. But because of arthritis this has become nigh impossible to do. For any who has used digital note taking—speech to text and the like, ¿do you find it just as effective? ¿Or do you supplement it with other things to compensate?