okay I lied. I do vaguely remember going to Coronado and passing by La Jolla but meh....like I said earlier. I'm not much of a beach person. Pt. Loma and Blacks sound foreign to me though. I don't remember them.

Why do you feel a foreigner would have special insight into that?

I'm quite curious about the quality of life in Tokyo; I've heard about indecipherable street names, high-rise buildings and sky-high rents, but I presume it can't be all bad. I have also heard for instance that taxi drivers wear immaculate white gloves while driving.

I wonder if there are any couples on MB who would like to comment on everyday life in Tokyo...

For our American posters:

How easily can you tell different British accents? Do we all just sound the same to you? I'm guessing cockney and Scottish ones would be easy.

Ocean Beach, Imperial Beach, and Mission Beach is where it's at in San Diego. Great bars, places to eat, small cool shops, and 10X cooler than La Jolla or Solana.

I can usually distinguish them pretty easily. Brummies are the best.

I can never tell the difference. I can tell when it's a British accent but other than that, I don't really hear distinguishable differences. Then again, I live in Seattle. Everyone here sounds the same with their lazy speaking patterns.

For all the Ki posters:

Do you actually enjoy the taste of Batlord?

No, but he moans and cries if I don't do what he asks.

Thanks :cool:

yeah makes sense. Same with me and American accents. I think I can tell strong NY ones & Southern ones, but no others. All just sound American to me.

^southern accents are pretty easy to differentiate. Though even living in America, I can't differentiate a south southern accent from a more northern southern accent. I'm talking northern like Virginia, and surrounding states. Canada is a whole different story though, they're easy to spot.

I can't tell between US & Canada until the Canadians say words like 'about', and then I can tell.

Nobody asked.

I'm Canadian, and I have never in my life heard someone unironically say "aboot". Just sayin'.

Na I never said that. When I hear them speak I can definitely tell a difference when that sound is spoken. I'm not saying they sound like them accents on South Park.

Canada is more about that slight accent they have to certain words. I can't describe it but it's obvious if you're listening for it.

I think you just accidentally spoke with a Southern accent.

I don't need a prompt.

I've met maybe two or three people in my life who talk like that. I've heard people say that Nova Scotians do have a distinct accent, but I don't know if that's actually true or not.

Yeah, people on the east coast, particularly the maritimes, have a pretty different accent than people on the west coast (me), do. Probably best to ask them.

I am an east coaster.

Life in Tokyo....that's a big question, and since everything here is normal to us now, I'm not sure where to start. :)

Tokyo is a very safe city with regards to crime. Random violent crime is almost unheard of, unless some crazy guy drives his van into a group of people then gets out and starts stabbing people randomly.

A lot of Tokyo is not skyscrapers, though. Only the immediate areas around major train stations, like, for example, Shinjuku:

http://www.japan-guide.com/g4/3011_01.jpg

Notice how quickly smaller buildings take over. And see all those trees? Yeah, there are tons of amazing parks in Tokyo, many of them land that used to belong to daimyos and are now semi-public property (you have to pay a nominal fee to go in).

Rent is ridiculous, especially in places right around major train stations. Think Manhattan. We, of course, don't live in those areas, since we have a large family.

Street names...Tokyo is an old city with many winding back streets hardly big enough for a passenger car to go down. Those kinds of "streets" have no names, so it's almost impossible to get directions from someone by word of mouth. You've gotta look at a map or have navi on your smartphone. Only the arteries of the city have names, and yes, since the names are Japanese, they can't be a tongue-twister!

White gloves...some taxi drivers still wear them, but most don't. I think that was a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle thing. But you know what they do wear white gloves for?

https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qim...t_to_webp=true

This is why I cycle to work.

Tokyo is a great city, very interesting with lots of things to do...but the city closes down every night. The trains stop, so this encourages people to go home. Tokyo is both very modern and very traditional...and very weird! For example, these two things are right next to each other:

http://www.ehabweb.net/wp-content/up...20128_0517.jpg

&

http://tokyostory.net/wp-content/uploads/197.jpg

where you can see these kinds of girls every Sunday

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y11...psdloumkk3.jpg

Thanks, mordwyr, that's a very good summary and some nice pics. I see what you mean about the mix of high-rise, low rise and parks.
You can learn a lot about a city from a good map, and (thank you, Google) I see that Tokyo is a complicated place, but with a lot of variety too. Koto-Ku looks pretty nice, for example; it's pronouncable, has lots of water and a big park - just the sort of breathing space you need after those packed subways and shopping alleyways, I should think!

In Mexico, they don't do a very good job of designing cities; they use a grid system for the streets, then sell every square inch off to developers. Typically, you get a dusty square that passes for a park every twenty blocks, and sidewalks so narrow that there is space for utility poles, or pedestrians, but not both. Downtown it's difficult to move around, and in the suburbs people walk in the roads.
The extreme is Mexico City, which has some of the worst urban probs in the world.

P.S. Those fashionable girls look very strange, but happy enough. Two of them look like they're wearing chrome cylinders instead of shoes!

Hmm.

This is quite difficult for me to answer, as I have lived in Japan for over 25 years. This is what I know best, despite being a "gaijin". When I arrived in Japan so long ago, the number of foreigners was still low enough that strangers would try to sneak a little touch of my sister's blonde hair.

Now it is not so extreme, of course, but the stares still happen. Yesterday, even, as my darling and I were walking back to the station, a girl stared at us to the point she stepped on her own dog.

People here will stare, even now. They point less, but it still happens. The "gaijin da!" (it's a [derogatory term for] foreigner) still follow us everywhere. But for the very reason that we are foreigners, we will get excluded. There are still many places that will not rent to foreigners. And this is legal. It's simply the way it is.

Japan is definitely, as Mordwyr put it, a place of contrasts. Despite the exclusion and despite the fact that being foreigners means we will always be outsiders, the busybodies of the neighbourhood always watch us. Like hawks. They know and comment on, say, the amount and type of trash we throw away in a given week. They know what sort of juice we drink. This, too, is the way it is.

If you don't mind institutionalized discrimination and the close observation of strangers accompanied by being ignored for being foreign, it's actually cool. I don't mind these things, so I have happily lived here for 25+ years. Many foreigners I know, however, find that these things gradually weigh on them, and eventually they become bitter toward Japan.

"Gaijin da!" Well, you've taught me some Japanese, Kedvesem. Thanks! Sounds like you have adapted well to the in-between status of being both a foreigner and a local.

Of the things you mention, the two that surprised me most were the legal discrimination against renting to foreigners, and the spying of the neighbours.

I'm also a gaijin da; here they say "gringo", though to their credit, never to my face. (Instead, I hear the mechanic out the back calling, "The gringo's here to collect his car!") In fact I'm jolly well British, and many Mexicans have quite a high regard for Brits; at school they learn about the industrial revolution and their own Spanish heritage, which makes them pro-European.

^ This really struck a chord with me, Kedvesem! I've been in the same Mexican city for about 24 yrs, and not being a particularly sociable type, I like the way that being a foreigner allows me to maintain a certain distance. As a foreigner it's understandable if I leave the party early or indeed, don't bother going.

This always struck me as a good thread idea that is rather under-utilised. It's a great way to get the max out of the internet and is an anthropologist's dream: you can ask-and-answer with an actual native about the bizarre rituals and inexplicable mysteries of some exotic foreign country. That's why I'm posting this question this morning:-

Who is voting for what in Iowa, and why is it important?

It's one of the most influential caucus's in the electoral process based on past results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_caucuses

Why the race for the presidency begins with the Iowa caucus

They're the first to vote, making it the first time people make their voice heard outside of polls, and traditionally the neofascist that wins Iowa is later elected president.

^ Well that turned out to be weirder than I imagined! Thanks.

As I understand it, any regular registed voter can take part, but they have to be sufficiently commited to hang around for sometime in a conference hall and stand in a designated place to be head-counted as supporting one guy or other as a Presidential candidate. Is that right? Do you think a guy can go stand in a Dem caucus one night and then in a GOP caucus the next night? I presume America will also be watching for how many people total turn up at the Dem meetings and how many at the GOP. That's an important indicator too.

EDIT: Thanks for that extra info, and classic Frownland slant ! :laughing:

They have a closed primary, which means that you have to register as a member of the party that you caucus with. I think most Americans will just look at the headlines and say "whelp, Iowa said x".

Such a British thing to say.