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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2260 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 30, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I very much enjoyed it. Especially this section:

Eventually I get to my final stop and ride the bus to work, which as it happens is a hospital. There is a a cardiologist who rides the same bus as I do, but I never speak to him and he never speaks to me. I think we both realize that if we ever did speak we would have to then speak every day for eternity, and who wants that?

Is a two hour commute common in Japan? It seems absurdly long to me, at least if you’re doing it more than once or twice a week. If daily, thats’s 20 hours a week on the commute!

In high school, my physics teacher commuted three days a week from a village in upstate New York (well, mid-state, maybe) to Manhattan. I think in his case he and his wife lived very simple lives (such that they got by on his part-time salary, although he was quite old), and they preferred the deep country, had chickens and things. A nice guy, but still, a big sacrifice. Nothing like finishing a long, hard day and realizing you have three hours to go before you can sit down on your own couch.

Wow, a reply. Thank you. Yeah, it's long as hell. Of my non-Japanese friends I am the only one with such a punishing commute, it's true. I've only been at this particular gig for about a year, but it's tenured so I will stay at least a year or two--and I'm no spring chicken so I may just call it and settle. I have kids to put through school, after all.

There is actually something called 単身赴任 or tanshin funin where dads live literally away from their families--as in, you have a wife and kids in Osaka, but you live in Tokyo and just send money home. So you don't commute, you just live way the hell away from your own family. That is not as uncommon as you might imagine. I don't think it contributes much toward family harmony, either. I would never do it. I am not sure how common long commutes are in Japan--I have been commuting this way for some time, and some of my students have nearly equally long commutes.

As for a "long hard day" it's for me just prepping, grading, and teaching, and most of that is done either standing stationary or sitting at a computer, and there are a helluva lot more rigorous jobs. I use the commute time to meditate and will probably start writing in those times. Mornings especially I find my brain is very alert.

What do they offer that made this arrangement seem like a good deal to you? If I understood your situation correctly, you are an anglophone foreigner with a tenured teaching position at a Japanese research/teaching hospital, and the mental flexibility to be undertaking real steps to culturally assimilate. I'm far removed from medicine, but based on my vague understanding of academic salaries and conditions across the world I would have pegged Japan as an unfortunate example where simultaneously the standards of medical research are among the highest in the world and academic salaries and non-monetary perks are unusually low for a country at that level of development; and on top of that, the commute you described? It's hard for me to imagine how there is no employer, country or even field that could offer you a better life.

Hmm. That's a good question. I suppose autonomy, a generous research budget including travel to international conferences, and some degree of clout. I have sons of an age where my pulling up stakes for an unknown would be irresponsible. We built a house. We have a community we like in a good location and I don't want us to move.

If I were still single, and had no kids, I might make a lot of different decisions. I've never been particularly cutthroat or ambitious beyond providing a reasonably comfortable standard of living for my wife and children. And oddly the commute for me is a very Zen experience, to use that term inaccurately and shallowly. I mean to say that it is meditative for me, and because left to my own devices I am very much a homebody, it thrusts me out into the world. Kind of like how my whole life I was profoundly shy, and chose a career where I have to lecture to 120 students in two languages. It's good for me. Well, probably. Keeps me from being too comfortable.

If this isn't a satisfactory answer, well, I am still thinking about your question.

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