You know, I don’t read a lot of websites about Japan, mostly because if I wanted to know something about the country, I’d just roll over in my futon and look out the window. Like, oh now there’s a guy pushing a cart with a fiery oven full of sweet potatoes down the street, a woman in a fox fur hat and tiny miniskirt talking on an Android phone the size of her head, and a kid by himself, pitching balls against the dark wall of an apartment block by a dim street lamp. Yep, still Japan. Probably the only site I read with any frequency is GaijinPot, mostly because I’m always looking for a job that’s better than the one I currently have. Hey, it’s a pastime of mine, loosely related to keeping the heat turned on and not starving to death. Employment really excels in that respect.
Japanese Website Design
Initially, the most striking thing about GaijinPot is, for a site about Japan, just how un-Japanese it actually looks. Like if you check out a typical Japanese website, say Rakuten or Jorudan, you’ll no doubt be impressed by the stunning 1993-esque design ethic and use of every pixel of space. Just trying to click all the links on either home page would wear down the sturdiest of trackpads, and you might as well make an appointment with the ophthalmologist now, for the permanent retina damage you’ll get from those heaping screenfuls of six-point font.
But how can a nation so prized for its aesthetics have such terrible web design? I hear you say. Thanks for asking. Some “Japanophiles” have addressed this seeming paradox by explaining how Japanese characters “convey information visually,” or commuters “access sites from their cell phones,” or such nonsense. Let me offer a much simpler explanation. Japanese aesthetics pretty much ended with the Meiji Era. All that zen garden, peaceful waterfall, and little green bonsai postcard stuff stops at the exit gate of the tea house gift shop. Outside, modern Japan is a sprawling mess of condominiums built above ramen shops next to ancient Buddhist temples that now double as kindergartens, all wired together with a sky full of licorice black power lines. People leave homes packed floor to ceiling with heaps of clothes and rice cookers and fashion magazines to sprint to the station in great hordes and ride the sardine train, then sit nuts to butts in an office buried under landslides of paper. How many Japanese people does it take to change a light bulb? Well, how many you got?—-because the moment that 60-watt fizzles out everyone’s gotta jump up on their desks, plus three guys in suits on tables and two office ladies on swivel chairs and the secretary dashing off to Family Mart for an armload of bulbs while the boss goes stumbling in search of a ladder because nobody can just chill the eff out and let one dude reach up and screw in a new light bulb. So when you’re looking at a Japanese website, that’s basically what you’re seeing—-everyone and their Shiba dog rushing to contribute the maximum information possible, all at once, all the time. If the Japanese had designed the internet it would just be one really, really big page.
But Back to GaijinPot
So if you knew the old GaijinPot site, then you’d know a lot’s changed recently. Such improve. So design. Very Fuji. Wow. There are three buttons suitable for the visually impaired that take you to Work in Japan, Study in Japan, and Travel in Japan. That pretty much covers about 90% of what you’d ever want Japan for. Work in Japan is straightforward. Click the button and Poof! Six months later you’re an English teacher. Study in Japan is actually cool, in that it gives you the option of doing either that by enrolling in a language school, or doing the exact opposite with one of the online lessons. I actually liked the little lessons a lot because they had pretty photos and taught me a bunch of obscure and marginally useful Japanese. I hope this section continues to expand, because the stories are interesting and it could be a good way to learn some language fundamentals.
Travel in Japan is your one-stop shopping for hotels in Japan: big, small, hostels, near hot springs, near airports, near Mount Fuji, all of the above. It’s even got a mini Google map of the nation, just in case you forgot where Japan was. Hint: go to Korea and turn right. Much useful.
Saving the Best for Last
Some of the best sections of GajinPot didn’t manage to get their own silver dollar-sized button, but that’s okay. They’re just swimming at the bottom of the page, with ever-popular friends like Contact Us and Sitemap. (They’re also accessible through the mysterious “UFO landing Lights” button on the top right.) There’s a ton of stuff there, including sections for Classifieds and Personals, so you can get that used toaster oven of your dreams, along with someone to butter your Pop-Tarts in the morning. Particularly worth a look are the GaijinPot Blog and Podcast sections, which provide an insider’s view of Japan on a range of subjects, from Money Transfers to Modeling to Meiji Jingu. Okay, so they really like M’s, whatever. Anyway, those sections would be particularly good if you couldn’t just look out the window, or your window faced a soy sauce factory or something.
All in all, GaijinPot is informative, funny, but most of all useful. Is it the best Japanese website? Well, of course with present company excepted, then yeah, it just might be. But you tell me. If you’re not already going there for information about Japan, you probably should, at least for a visit. Just don’t forget to come back. I’ll be right here, waiting, butter and Pop-Tarts in hand. Sure is getting melty though.
Very nice, such information, wow.
So seeds. much reap. very harvest. Wow.
NEED. LIKE. BUTTON!!!
Doge FTW ahahah
Seriously though, awesome article, as always! ^^
Thanks a lot. For 2014 I plan to release a Japanese Rule of 7 theme song, entitled “When Doges Cry.” Wow. Much butterflies. Such bell bottoms. So cold. Father too stronk.
I’m still working out the lyrics.
Did you mean “sow”? You did not say you were an English teacher, did you?
And Gaijinpot sucks. Sorry. The forums are(were) filled with the most mis-information on the web about Japan, and the most rude and violent mentally unstable people on the planet. Their apartments are expensive. And, was there anything else? I do not think so…
Agreed, the GaijinPot forum had devolved into a bunch of people venting their frustrations with Japan and anything else they could think of. I think that’s why the finally discontinued it.
On the other hand, GaijinPot’s strength is in its job listings. It enabled thousands of people to move to Japan, and then bitch about it. That’s quite a feat.
Every time you write about how much it sucks to be Japanese, with huge mandatory overtime, hours spent on trains, and loveless / sexless marriages, I wonder why you want for Japanese people to think you are Japanese.
That’s a good question, and one not lost on me.
The deal is that I live in Japan, and work in a Japanese company alongside Japanese people. We all do mandatory overtime, and ride crowded trains, and have strained relationships with our partners. Well, okay, that part’s probably universal.
Anyway, it’s been years that I’ve lived and hung out with Japanese people. Whether I want to be “Japanese” or not doesn’t matter—I have to work and exist here the same as everybody else, like it or not. How anyone else views me—eh, whatever. I just think it’s screwy to treat people differently depending upon how they look.
These are the guys in charge:
http://www.gplusmedia.com/en/about-us/ceo-message/
Guess that solves the mystery.
White guys! I knew it!
“If the Japanese had designed the internet it would just be one really, really big page.”
Haha, Jesus, you’re not kidding.
I like GaijinPot, I really do. But they axed the best thing they had going for them for people actually living in Japan–the forums. I mean, if you want to know about Japanese convenience stores and how the trains work, sure, GaijinPot is nice. But for those of us already here the forums were where it was at–everything from obtaining a scooter license to visa questions to buying a car from the Japanese-only car auctions to obtaining a guarantor for your apartment. You know, all the really, truly fun Japanese stuff whose procedures are as ass-backwards as can be from everything Westerners are used to. There’s just literally zero information in English about that sort of stuff on the interwebz.
I guess the archives are still there if your question is common enough, but still, nothing beat GP forums for real advice on real issues that come up while living in-country. That being the case, I guess I’d better get back to studying.
Yeah, I know. The GaijinPot forum was an amazing resource, and certainly there were no shortage of opinions. It was the one place you could bitch about Japan or discuss dating in Japan and half the people would agree with you and the other half would call you an idiot. It was like an online Irish bar.
Japanese websites are the very best example of the very worst in web design. It’s always shocking to see a Japanese website which looks relatively “modern”, and usually it’s because it wasn’t made by a Japanese company (or by Japanese people if it was a Japanese company).
I hadn’t realized that GPot had gotten such a dramatic overhaul. It’s a bit of a shame really, the forums were a useful collection of the best and worst of foreigner life in Japan. It gave a rather… realistic? insight into the Japanese life/work mentality that you just couldn’t get anywhere else. Shame they disabled it.
Ahh well.
The GaijinPot forums were a real snapshot of what Westerners think about Japan, which is to say that, basically, they think every damn thing. It was hard to find a single entry that wasn’t contradicted somewhere else. Japanese people are polite. No . . . they’re only acting that way because they view you as a foreigner. Japanese girls are easy. No . . . you’re just dating uglies. Japanese trains are on time. No . . . okay yeah, you’re right about that one.
It’s hard to say if the forum was realistic or not, but if you had an idea about Japan, no matter how far off-base it was, you could find validation there.
lol I see someone stoped double spacing after the period ‘\^_^/’
Yeah, turns out it was a technical issue. I went to the Apple Store and they adjusted the tension on my space bar. Then they took a giant hammer and broke both my thumbs and voila, problem solved.
Yo, Ken,
I really don’t go to Gaijinpot, BUT if I did, I’m sure I’d like it more after reading this post and listening to your explanation; but then again you can always make me smile about almost anything! Sorry to not be able to get to your site for the last several days, glad you’re not lost, I was starting to get worried.
Thanks Bud, I’m a bit worried too. Taking 60 seconds to connect is not acceptable. What am I supposed to do in that time, pushups? That’s no good. Pretty soon I’d look all buff and then I’d have to buy new shirts, so that’s out.
Anyway, yeah, GaijinPot is kind of one-stop shopping for Japan. It may not fit all needs, but you’ll definitely appreciate it once you finally decide to get a job and move here. The Japanese Space Agency is waiting!
I agree with you about the Japanese websites and I think you’re very funny. 🙂
Ah, thanks very much!
So, we’re slightly older (in our 30s!), married and have no teaching experience. But, we’ have BFAs, have held stable jobs and our pretty desperate to get to Japan. Any advice on how to make us stand out from the millions of other people applying through gaijin pot? Or directly through a school? We have money saved and will find our own apartment and we’re willing to live pretty much anywhere in Japan (key words = pretty much). Does anyone out there have any secrets they’d like to pass on?
Is your Japanese fluent? JPLT1? That will be needed. However, I am not sure a BFA is a highly regarded degree in Japan, like most nations. And like most nations, you need to offer Japan something they do not already have and are in desperate need of. No secrets. Moving to Japan is pretty much the same as any industrialized nation. What are your stable jobs? Are those jobs in high demand? Are you both applying for visas? Or is one going to be a dependent? Will you be a company transfer?