Japan Reacts

Category: Society

  • Used Syringe Left in Fushimi Inari Shrine Restroom: “Public Safety Is Done For” — What a Cleanup Volunteer Told Us

    A photo circulating on social media showed what appeared to be a used syringe needle thrown away in a restroom trash bin at Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine, mixed in among discarded plastic bottles. It was posted by a man who has volunteered as a cleanup worker at the shrine for several years, and he says illegal dumping of trash has become a serious problem there amid the recent surge in tourists. The post sparked a big reaction on 5channel’s News Express+ board, with commenters speculating about what the needle had been used for, pointing out that a patient who self-injects would normally be meticulous about disposal, and others mentioning they’d seen similar warning notices posted at a nearby train station.

    At Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari Taisha, famous for its thousand torii gates, illegal trash dumping has become a serious problem in recent years. In mid-month, an image showing what appeared to be a used syringe needle left among discarded bottles and other empty containers went viral, causing a stir. We spoke in detail with the man who posted it, who says he’s volunteered to clean up at Fushimi Inari Taisha for several years.

    [Photo] The abandoned syringe needle… an actual photo from the Fushimi Inari Taisha restroom

    “Why is there a ‘syringe needle’ just tossed in the trash in a Fushimi Inari restroom? Isn’t that seriously bad?”

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here

    17AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:37
    Care for a little injection, dear? (playful Kyoto-dialect phrasing, mimicking a shopkeeper's polite offer)
    197AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:01
    Re: #17
    Much obliged (eyes rolled back)
    29AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:46
    There was a similar notice posted in the restroom at Higashi-Yodogawa Station too.
    33AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:49
    Re: #29
    Does Higashi-Yodogawa Station even have anything that would draw foreign tourists?
    148AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:06
    Oh my, I wonder if it was some poor soul with diabetes? (said in gentle Kyoto dialect)
    151AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:11
    Re: #148
    Patients who self-inject always clean up their syringe and needle.
    They don't just leave it lying around.
    They understand the risks all too well.

    This is definitely a drug addict.
    187AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:39
    What was in that syringe was just plain glucose!!
    188AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:40
    Re: #187
    Then just drink it like a normal person (lol)

    Background and Key Points of This Story

    Fushimi Inari Taisha is one of the tourist sites where illegal trash dumping and manner violations have become an issue alongside the recent surge in foreign visitors, and this incident is an extension of that trend. Patients who need to self-inject for conditions like diabetes generally follow the rule of placing used needles in dedicated disposal containers and returning them to a hospital or pharmacy, and the thread reflected this, with posters noting that “a patient who self-injects wouldn’t leave it lying there.” At the same time, as of this report neither the shrine nor the police had given any official explanation of who discarded the needle or why, and the person responsible remains unidentified. Plenty of online speculation linked the incident to drug use or to specific nationalities or regions, but none of that was based on confirmed information, so it should be treated with caution.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (News Express+) thread “[Kyoto] “Public Safety Is Done For” — Syringe Needle Found in Restroom, Cleanup Worker Nearly… Fushimi Inari Taisha’s Dire State Goes Viral, We Asked Those Involved What Really Happened.”

  • Only 1 in 4 Workers Hit ¥6 Million a Year — For Women, It’s Fewer Than 1 in 10

    According to the “Fiscal 2024 Survey on Private Sector Salaries,” the average annual salary for salaried workers was ¥4.775 million — ¥5.867 million for men and ¥3.332 million for women. Only 1 in 4 salaried workers overall reach the ¥6 million mark, while for men it’s more than 1 in 3, and for women it’s fewer than 1 in 10 — a finding covered on 5ch’s News Express+ board. In the thread, opinions split over why the gender gap is so wide: some pointed to differences in working hours and job titles, while others questioned the underlying realities of women’s employment, sparking a wider debate over how to read the statistics.

    (Excerpt)

    According to the National Tax Agency’s “Fiscal 2024 Survey on Private Sector Salaries,” the average annual salary for salaried workers was ¥4.775 million, broken down by gender as ¥5.867 million for men and ¥3.332 million for women.

    There’s a gap between the statistics showing rising incomes and how little that increase is actually felt in people’s wallets. This article checks where the widely-cited milestone of “¥6 million a year” actually falls on the statistical curve, then walks through how much take-home pay really moves when gross pay goes up.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    21AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:58
    If men's and women's wages are supposedly equal, a gap this big just shows how little women are actually working.
    35AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:01
    Re: #21
    They're not equal, lol
    26AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:59
    So for men, ¥6 million is pretty much par for the course — if you're on the career track (sogoshoku), even a small-to-mid-size company gets you there easily.
    41AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:04
    Re: #26
    Tough at a tiny company, but that's roughly the average for a section chief (kacho) at a mid-size firm. At a big corporation you'd tack on another ¥2 million or more on top of that.
    46AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:05
    I'm a fixed-route bus driver, 5 years in, and I'm over ¥6.5 million.
    It's a nerve-wracking job, but out in rural Kanagawa nobody cares if you're running late.
    Just drive safe and take it slow, that's all it takes.
    And running behind schedule actually bumps up my pay too.
    There's hardly a job this easy and this stable.
    Work never dried up even during COVID, and since it's a big company, raises actually happen on schedule.
    49AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:07
    Re: #46
    Smells like bait, but that's a job that'll be first on the chopping block. Get a useful license or qualification while you still can.
    52AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:08
    Re: #49
    Well, it's a driver's job after all.
    97AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:41
    Re: #49
    I don't think you guys get it — proper self-driving infrastructure is still a long way off.
    It's not happening until the infrastructure is fully built out.
    If anything, technical intern trainees (foreign labor program) will replace you first.
    50AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:07
    40 years old, ¥12 million a year — will somebody marry me already.
    54AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:10
    Re: #50
    Try a matchmaking agency, you could probably find someone your own age.
    58AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:13
    Re: #50
    You're not hoping for someone in their 20s, are you?
    56AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:11
    That 1-in-4 group is clustered almost entirely at big corporations, so you probably don't see much of it in the areas where ordinary people actually live.
    62AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:15
    Re: #56
    I get what you're saying, but the countryside isn't exactly representative of everyone either.
    61AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:14
    ¥6 million is a pretty tough bar for an average job.
    For ordinary people the average is probably under ¥4.5 million.
    67AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:20
    Re: #61
    The working population also skews heavily toward older guys rather than young people.
    Even at small-to-mid-size companies, plenty of places pay around ¥6 million once you're an older employee.
    70AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:21
    Re: #61
    My kid's in their 20s and already over ¥6 million at a major company.
    More than me — big companies really are strong.
    72AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:23
    Re: #61
    I'm a college dropout from the Employment Ice Age generation and I'm at ¥8 million.
    My wife, same generation, graduated from a national university, is at ¥8.5 million.
    We've both been at our jobs over 25 years.
    Stick around long enough and you'll get there too.
    The real question is whether you can actually stay that long.
    A lot of people fall out along the way.
    65AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:18
    For women, being a civil servant is the best option.
    There aren't many jobs in the private sector where a woman can keep her pride intact while working all the way to retirement.
    68AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:21
    Re: #65
    Doctor, maybe? Get married, work outpatient duty just 2 or 3 days a week, and you'd still pull in several times what an average part-timer makes as pocket money.
    73AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:24
    My real annual income doesn't even hit ¥2 million.
    I'm useless, so I let my money do the working instead.
    82AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:29
    Re: #73
    The system that automatically factors investment income from tax-withheld special accounts (where no tax filing is required) into the calculation of health insurance premiums and co-pays is being fleshed out under the government's "social security for all generations" reform policy.
    This legal change is meant to close what had been a loophole and an unfair advantage — it will effectively make it impossible to pose as "low income" on paper in order to receive generous welfare benefits or premium waivers, and it's positioned as a major step toward correcting the generational gap and sense of unfairness felt by the working generation.

    Taxation on investment income is clearly coming, no way around it now.
    87AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:31
    You people really do love your fantasies, huh.
    Take a good look at reality, old men.
    105AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:53
    No, if you think about the falling birthrate, women are better off heading home before it gets too late and saving their energy for their kids, their husband, and having more kids, rather than working late.
    108AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:55
    Re: #105
    Working late is actually easier than dealing with your husband and kids, lol.
    No married person gets to say "I'm beat from work, guess it's beer and instant noodles tonight," lol.
    107AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:54
    You can't live a decent, human life without at least ¥10 million a year.
    109AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:58
    Re: #107
    Yeah, fair enough.
    Doesn't really feel "human" either way, but once the kids are grown and out and you're on your own, money does pile up pretty fast.
    110AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:58
    It's because they're not doing jobs that actually earn money.
    Most women are in easy desk jobs — if you want to earn more, get out there and land clients yourself.
    112AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:00
    Re: #110
    Calling it a "job" is generous — it's just passing along contracts handed down from the government and pocketing the margin.
    113AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:01
    This all comes down to age, really.
    If you're in your 40s, you're normally well past ¥6 million, right?
    I'm comfortably past it too.

    If you're not past it, stop posting here and go work.
    118AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:15
    Re: #113
    At my company even high school grads and bottom-tier-university Ice Age hires clear that level.
    149AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:45
    You see people on 5ch claiming ¥8 million, ¥10-million-plus here and there — just how much of a high-earner hangout is this place?
    155AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:48
    Re: #149
    Isn't it the same as how a thread about Tokyo brings a swarm of Tokyo residents piling in to post? There are over 10 million Tokyoites, and over 10 million high earners too.
    171AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:59
    Re: #149

    According to census statistics, wasn't it something like 10% of the whole population earning ¥10 million or more a year (gross, not take-home)?
    That works out to about 14 million people.
    But here's the trick — that "¥10 million-plus" bucket also includes people making ¥30 million-plus, or even over ¥100 million.
    So the actual "wealthy" segment, out of a population of 140 million, is only a genuinely small slice — maybe just a few million people.
    (My personal guess: around 2 million.)
    And apparently this ratio holds true not just in Japan but in other countries too.
    159AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:51
    Men can basically only contribute to society through work.

    That's just the fact of it.

    Women give birth to children and raise them — that's a legitimate contribution to society too.

    In fact, it's something only women can do.

    It's a biological role.
    160AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:53
    Re: #159
    "Biological role" or whatever — there are tons of women out there who'd rather work than get some guy's dick stuck in them and pop out a baby.
    166AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:56
    Re: #159
    > Women give birth to children and raise them — that's a legitimate contribution to society too.
    Sure, but that "legitimate contribution" comes with zero pay.
    So it's only natural that more people would rather go work at a company and actually get a paycheck.
    If child-rearing really is such a legitimate contribution to society, then the government should just pay people to do it —
    say, ¥100,000 a month per child.

    Background and Key Points of the Discussion

    The “Fiscal 2024 Survey on Private Sector Salaries” is an annual survey published by the National Tax Agency, and one notable feature is that it covers all salaried workers, including part-time and temporary staff, not just full-time employees. The low ¥3.332 million average for women isn’t just about a straightforward wage gap — it also reflects the higher proportion of women working short hours. Some posts in the thread assumed that “men’s and women’s wages are the same,” but equal pay for equal work and the gap in average annual income are actually separate metrics, and conflating them tends to derail the discussion. Meanwhile, the wave of 5ch posts claiming ¥8 million or ¥10 million-plus salaries isn’t a statistically representative sample — it reflects self-reporting bias, since salaried workers actually earning ¥10 million or more make up only around 10% of the total. That mismatch between gut feeling and the actual data stems in large part from this kind of skewed sample.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[¥6 Million a Year] Only 1 in 4 salaried workers reach it — but for men it’s over 1 in 3, and for women it’s fewer than 1 in 10.”

  • Kyoto’s Yawata Mayor Gives Birth While on Maternity Leave — 5ch: “If the City Runs Fine Without You, Quit”

    It was revealed on the 16th that Mayor Shoko Kawada (36) of Yawata City, Kyoto Prefecture, gave birth to a baby girl on the evening of September 15th while on maternity leave. Known as Japan’s youngest female mayor, Kawada has been on roughly four months of maternity leave since July 20th, in what is believed to be the first time a sitting head of a local government in Japan has taken such leave. On 5ch threads, critics argued “if city government runs fine without her for four months, maybe the mayor’s post itself is unnecessary,” while defenders countered with “there’s value in setting a precedent” and “the real problem is a society where it’s hard to take childcare leave.” The discussion also spread to how her salary is handled during leave and comparisons with parental leave among politicians abroad.

    9/16 (Wed) 12:55 JST

    Asahi Shimbun

    Yawata City in Kyoto Prefecture announced on the 16th that Mayor Shoko Kawada (36), currently on maternity leave, gave birth to a baby girl on the evening of the 15th. Kawada, Japan’s youngest female mayor, has been on roughly four months of maternity leave since July 20th. Her taking maternity leave as a sitting head of local government is believed to be a nationwide first, and had been drawing attention.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here

    3AnonymousSep 16, 2026 16:45
    If the mayor isn't even needed to keep things running, just resign already.
    59AnonymousSep 16, 2026 17:30
    Re: #3
    Seriously, do we even need a mayor?
    65AnonymousSep 16, 2026 17:34
    Re: #59
    Exactly this.
    She didn't even name someone to cover for her, so I'd say the post's just unnecessary at this point.
    No idea what she's even doing.
    114AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:24
    Re: #59
    You just don't notice it, but all kinds of work quietly piles up.
    A few years from now it'll show up as "why haven't we done that," "why don't we have this," "why is this problem getting worse" compared to neighboring towns.
    19AnonymousSep 16, 2026 16:52
    I get why the leftist crowd wants to pull stunts like this to test society's limits, but think about how public and important this office actually is.
    49AnonymousSep 16, 2026 17:16
    Re: #19
    It's less about testing society and more about setting a precedent.
    In a way you could even call that politics.
    If even a mayor can take maternity/childcare leave mid-term, maybe it'll become normal for everyone in the private sector too.
    I'm honestly in favor.
    Kids and workers don't just spring up out of the ground.
    Management during the Employment Ice Age (Japan's brutal job market of the 1990s–2000s) worked their own staff to the bone on the cheap and never let them take leave, then just hired fresh young workers someone else had raised and burned through them too.
    That's exactly why we've got a labor shortage and a birthrate crisis now.
    54AnonymousSep 16, 2026 17:21
    Re: #49
    Guess it really was a planned pregnancy then.
    Impressive that it worked out right away.
    I struggled with infertility before my first child, so no matter what the intentions were here, I still feel like a baby is a blessing you're given, not something you engineer.
    107AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:16
    Re: #49
    Got a feeling she'll roll straight into childcare leave next and never show up at city hall again for the rest of her term.
    20AnonymousSep 16, 2026 16:53
    If things run fine without you for four months, you're clearly not needed.
    Just quit already.
    124AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:38
    Re: #20
    Just so you know, she's about to go on two years of childcare leave from here.
    32AnonymousSep 16, 2026 16:59
    Elected in November, announced the pregnancy in May, due in September… that timeline is pretty rough no matter how you slice it.
    39AnonymousSep 16, 2026 17:01
    Re: #32
    She's 36, right at the edge of the fertility window — cut her some slack.
    53AnonymousSep 16, 2026 17:19
    Re: #32
    Makes you wonder: did she just get caught up in the high of winning the election and it happened, or did she deliberately plan the pregnancy to set a precedent of a mayor conceiving and giving birth mid-term, and it worked out perfectly?
    Either way, a child really is a blessing, so I'm just glad mother and baby are both doing fine.
    Looking forward to seeing this new style of politician.
    160AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:15
    Re: #32
    So she started trying for a baby right after getting elected…
    52AnonymousSep 16, 2026 17:19
    Re: #1
    She's the mayor — couldn't they have passed an ordinance capping her pay during leave at welfare-level amounts?
    Otherwise isn't she just collecting a paycheck for nothing?
    108AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:17
    Re: #52
    Actually, births are free under welfare, so that might end up being the better deal for her.
    76AnonymousSep 16, 2026 17:43
    Japan isn't a society that's tolerant of maternity/childcare leave,
    which is exactly why the population keeps shrinking.
    78AnonymousSep 16, 2026 17:45
    Re: #76
    Nah, that's fine for a job like teaching where someone else can cover for you, but people entrusted her with running the whole city.
    She should be working her butt off for the roughly four years of her term.
    94AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:01
    Re: #88
    Foreign politicians tend to have bigger builds and more stamina to begin with.
    You can't really compare them to Japanese people.
    139AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:49
    Re: #94
    This is a matter of systems and culture, not physical build.
    97AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:02
    People nitpicking this must have zero room to breathe in their own lives.
    103AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:09
    Re: #97
    "Room to breathe" lol.
    If good vibes alone fixed the country, we wouldn't have any problems.
    112AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:23
    Since things run fine without a mayor around, we probably don't need one anymore.
    Better to formally build a system that runs without a mayor.
    That way we could scrap whatever parts of the system don't suit women too.
    151AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:01
    Re: #112
    Maybe every mayor and town head nationwide should just be doubled up with the vice-minister of finance.
    115AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:25
    Re: #98
    Calling maternity/childcare leave "irresponsible" — you've got way too little slack in your own life.
    131AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:42
    Re: #115
    Do the math between her election date and the due date.
    It's blatantly irresponsible.
    116AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:25
    The nerve to keep collecting 100% of her salary the whole time she's on maternity leave.
    You wouldn't get that in the private sector.
    120AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:34
    Re: #116
    Honestly just a flaw in the system.
    She was elected to work for the citizens,
    but instead she's taking leave for the sake of her own one child.
    125AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:39
    My impression is that politicians abroad don't really take childcare leave much.
    In cases like this it's usually the husband who takes it instead.
    128AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:41
    Re: #125
    I see.
    As a politician she should be fulfilling her responsibilities.
    Just shows how politically immature Japan still is.
    130AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:42
    Re: #124
    It says her maternity leave is scheduled to run until November 8th,
    but is she going to take childcare leave on top of that too?
    149AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:56
    Re: #130
    She might end up pregnant with a second child during childcare leave and roll straight back into maternity leave…

    Background and Key Points of This Debate

    Maternity and childcare leave are legally available to heads of local governments too, but how substitute arrangements and salary are handled depends on each municipality’s own ordinances, and nationwide precedent is still thin. The thread’s disagreement splits into two main camps. One is an institutional argument: “if the local government runs fine without her for four months, maybe the position itself is unnecessary.” The other is a supportive view that “setting a precedent has value in itself,” with some linking it to Japan’s low rate of childcare-leave uptake in the private sector as a point in her favor. One easy point of confusion: whether her full salary continues during maternity leave depends entirely on the municipality’s own ordinance, and the original article doesn’t specify how Yawata City is handling it in this case. Some comments also criticize the timing between her election and the birth, but whether it was planned or coincidental is something only she herself could know, so those claims remain speculation.

    *This article is compiled and summarized from excerpts of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Kyoto] Yawata Mayor Shoko Kawada gives birth to a baby girl, currently on four months of maternity leave.”

  • Station Platform ‘Stand-and-Eat Soba’ Shops on the Verge of Extinction — 5ch Reacts: ‘Are They Really Dying Out?’

    A Yahoo News article reporting that stand-and-eat soba stalls on train station platforms are quietly disappearing has stirred discussion on 5ch’s News Speed+ board. These stalls once epitomized the Showa-era scene of commuters wolfing down noodles while keeping an ear out for the departure bell, and the article traces the reasons behind their decline. On the thread, posters mourned beloved shops that have closed — Rokumon Soba, Menjo Ippuku in Minami-Urawa, and the fried-chicken soba stand in Abiko among them — while others recalled how “I used to eat there all the time when a bowl of plain soba was 200 yen, but I stopped going once it passed 300 yen,” pointing to price hikes as a direct driver of the drop in customers. Some also noted that station kiosk culture as a whole, including KIOSK stores, is shrinking.

    Published 9/16 (Wed) 6:00 AM

    PinsBu NEWS

    The smell of rich soy-sauce broth drifting from a corner of the station platform. Wolfing down piping-hot soba in one go while keeping an eye on the departure bell — a scene once familiar to salarymen on their commute. Now, that platform stand-and-eat soba culture is quietly fading away.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here

    2AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:38
    On the brink of extinction?
    4AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:38
    Way back when, I heard a story about a huge idol at the time eating at the stand-and-eat soba stall on my local platform, and it blew my mind.
    "Wait, she eats soba too…?" — that kind of surprise.
    6AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:39
    Re: #4
    Which "huge idol" are we talking about?
    Golden Half?
    12AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:42
    Re: #4
    Sounds like something a pampered rich kid would whine about — "ugh, typical countryside."
    20AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:49
    Re: #4
    Idols back then worked under brutally exploitative ("black company") conditions, so stand-and-eat soba was probably all they had time to eat.
    13AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:45
    Speaking of stand-and-eat soba, the fried-chicken soba in Abiko comes to mind.
    I also liked the soba in Maibara, but at some point they just stopped selling it.
    216AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:40
    Re: #13
    Wait, that soba with the giant fried chicken is gone?
    That's the first place I think of when someone says "stand-and-eat soba."
    18AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:48
    Went to try the one at Sapporo Station — way too salty, it was rough.
    62AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:06
    Re: #18
    Sorry about that 🙏
    19AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:48
    I can't stand people who act like soba connoisseurs when they eat it.
    The stand-and-eat soba on the platform of the ○○ Line at Ueno Station — that's the real soba, passed down among ordinary people.
    25AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:52
    Re: #19

    And I can't stand people who talk big like that while eating in the most uncouth way possible lol
    117AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:21
    Re: #19
    For a second I misread that as the restroom on the ○○ Line platform at Ueno Station lol
    24AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:50
    Menjo Ippuku, the noodle shop that used to be inside Minami-Urawa Station — brings back memories.
    57AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:05
    Re: #24
    Such nostalgia.
    It was right at the corner before the ticket gates, wasn't it.
    36AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:56
    More recently, Ajisai was good, but that's gone now too.
    Hako Soba has been terrible for a long time now.
    72AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:10
    Re: #36
    You think the place people nicknamed "Flavor Disaster Teahouse" was good? What kind of taste buds do you have?
    42AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:57
    Stand-and-eat soba has real charm to it.
    Places like Rokumon Soba, you know.
    45AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:58
    For pretty different reasons, station kiosks (like KIOSK) have disappeared too.
    59AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:06
    Re: #45

    Are kiosks even still a thing?

    Haven't seen one in years…
    67AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:08
    Back when plain soba was around 200 yen, I'd grab a bowl whenever I got a little hungry.
    Once it passed 300 yen, I stopped.
    That's really all there is to it.
    76AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:11
    Re: #67
    Tempura-and-egg soba runs about 380 yen now, I'd guess.
    79AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:12
    Re: #1
    Honestly the railways themselves are already a dying format — nothing but breakdowns and accidents, on the verge of vanishing.
    113AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:21
    Re: #79
    Then how do you explain rush hour?
    89AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:13
    Not a single mention of korokke (croquette) soba so far.
    Newbies — including Re: #1 — shouldn't be talking about stand-and-eat soba.
    123AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:23
    Re: #89
    Someone who worships a gimmick like korokke soba and acts like a soba connoisseur shouldn't be lecturing anyone about soba.
    99AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:17
    There really was a time you could get plain soba for 200 yen.
    Pile on some tenkasu (fried tempura scraps) and eat two pieces of inari sushi with it, and it'd still only run you 300 yen.
    Man, those were the days.
    109AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:20
    Re: #99
    You'd say "crack an egg in!" and hand over 50 yen, and the old lady would take the coin and crack the egg with that same hand lol
    Guys who ordered it with inari on the side were the regulars, and they looked so cool to me.
    100AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:17
    Just putting a paid smoking room on the platform would bring in steady income, you'd think.
    128AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:24
    Re: #100
    If a smoking room actually charged enough to turn a profit, even heavy smokers wouldn't bother going in.
    122AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:23
    The broth's so strong.
    The kind of place where one try is enough and you're done with it.

    And honestly, it's not that different from instant cup noodles.
    135AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:25
    Re: #122
    The flavor varies a ton from shop to shop.
    Lumping them all together just makes you look clueless.

    Background and Key Points of This Topic

    Platform stand-and-eat soba stalls grew out of a business model dating back to the Japanese National Railways era, meeting commuters’ need to eat quickly in the limited space of a station platform, and — including chains affiliated with various private railway companies — they were part of the everyday commuting scenery of the Showa era. In recent years, rising costs for wheat, cooking oil, and labor have pushed the price of a basic bowl of plain soba from the 200-yen range into the 300s, and as one thread comment put it, “I stopped eating there once it passed 300 yen” — this is a business where that psychological price barrier tends to translate directly into fewer customers. Competition from convenience stores and in-station cafés and quick-service shops, along with the ongoing trend toward unstaffed, streamlined stations, is also likely a factor, though it should be noted that the article itself doesn’t provide detailed figures on these points. Some posts on the thread touched on differences between Kanto- and Kansai-style broth, but comments that flatly declared one superior to the other have been left out here, since they amount to little more than mudslinging. Reports of long-established shops closing vary by region and by time period, so individual store closures shouldn’t be mistaken for a nationwide trend.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “So that’s why they’re vanishing from platforms… “Stand-and-eat soba” on the brink of extinction — the reasons behind the fading of this wistful Showa-era relic.”

  • Cricket Found in Kura Sushi Soup? “Drank Half Without Noticing” Post Goes Viral, Company Reports to Health Department

    A post claiming a dead cricket was found in soup ordered at Kura Sushi has gone viral on Threads. The poster says they drank about half of it before noticing, and the operating company says it is aware of the incident and has already reported it to the local health department. On 5ch, reactions came from all angles: some users scrutinized the photo trying to determine whether it was really a cricket or a cockroach, others tied it to the years-long debate over eating crickets as food, and still others called for stricter hygiene management at restaurants.

    9/16 (Wed) 18:46 JST

    Bengo4.com News

    A post claiming a “dead cricket was found” in soup ordered at the rotating sushi chain “Kura Sushi” is spreading on social media.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    2AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:32
    Watching an Osaka night-view video channel on YouTube beats watching Peace-kun at Omiya Park any day (Peace-kun is a swan mascot statue famous as a livestream fixture).
    28AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:38
    Re: #2
    As for the "poison taster," who does it, how often, eating what, and how much of it?
    3AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:32
    The Bell of Amore at Utsukushigahara Kogen Art Museum announces post No. 2

    (∪^ω^)　🔔♪ Ding-dong, ding-dong ♪ (a recurring 5ch copypasta meme marking reply numbers)
    4AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:33
    Just tell them crickets are food!
    Pasco will back you up! (Pasco, the bakery brand that got backlash for its cricket-powder bread)
    11AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:34
    They already caused an uproar with the Pretty Cure collab,
    and now this on top of it?
    15AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:35
    Are there still people out there desperately pushing cricket food?
    21AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:36
    This time of year crickets are still full of energy
    one wouldn't just wander in and die like that
    108AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:53
    Re: #21
    It'd die if you boiled it, though.
    22AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:36
    With bugs like crickets, even if you go to the health department, they'll just go "huh, okay" and that's the end of it
    23AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:36
    That's not a cricket, that's a cockroach
    197AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:16
    Re: #23
    Nah, that's a cricket
    Cockroaches are flatter
    I see them every day, so trust me on this
    24AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:36
    "I drank about half without noticing"
    No physical evidence left, but my stomach remembers
    25AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:36
    Not just Kura Sushi, but every restaurant should make staff taste-test the food first
    if they had to eat it themselves, they'd take hygiene a bit more seriously
    30AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:38
    There was a dead cricket in the soup.
    I drank about half of it before I noticed.
    42AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:41
    Re: #30
    That's a "G," isn't it?! (slang for cockroach)
    31AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:38
    Sabotage by an employee cornered over embezzlement?
    33AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:39
    There's actually a chance there were 5 crickets in there and they already ate 4 of them
    35AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:39
    Just name the store already — if you don't, customers will end up avoiding all of them out of caution
    45AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:41
    Re: #35
    We don't even know if it's a standalone street shop or one inside a building
    36AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:39
    Kura Sushi never runs out of things to make headlines about… (wry laugh)
    37AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:39
    This isn't just about pulling back this one customer's order — they need to recall every order made from that same batch of soup already served, and halt orders for it altogether
    38AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:40
    Not related to crickets, but
    I used to hear bell crickets (suzumushi)
    chirping a lot in autumn — at some point
    I stopped hearing them entirely
    73AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:49
    Re: #38
    That's just what happens as you get older
    46AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:42
    Maybe cricket powder is still commonly mixed into things even now
    59AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:45
    Re: #46
    I still remember which company used to sell cricket powder,
    and I'll never buy from them again,
    even though they're a fairly well-known company
    58AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:45
    Still doesn't quite match the impact of the simmered-rat incident, though (a reference to a notorious past food-contamination case)
    136AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:59
    Re: #58
    Compared to that, this is basically a non-issue
    176AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:11
    Re: #58 Thanks to seeing the uncensored version of that image,
    to this day I can't set foot in Sukiya, let alone that type of restaurant at all.
    Talk about a Deep Impact (a pun on "deep impact" and the racehorse Deep Impact)
    95AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:52
    Crickets, if you really look at them, are basically "G"s…
    no matter how you slice it, they're just a skinny G
    111AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:54
    Re: #95
    I feel like it's the other way around — a cricket that's gotten skinny and flat is what looks like a G
    97AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:52
    A lot of people find camel crickets (kamadouma) disgusting to look at, but they're harmless — about the only thing to watch out for is the horsehair worm (harigane mushi) parasite
    109AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:53
    Re: #97
    Is there anyone out there who could actually bite through a horsehair worm?
    170AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:09
    I don't get how a cricket ends up in miso soup in the first place
    184AnonymousSep 16, 2026 22:13
    Re: #170
    You put it in yourself?

    Background and Talking Points

    Foreign-object contamination at rotating-sushi chains has become a familiar pattern: a single social media post goes viral and the company is immediately pressed to respond. This time, too, attention centered on the poster’s own photo and whether it had been reported to the health department. On the thread, many users tried to determine from the photo alone whether the insect was a cricket or a cockroach, but heat and prolonged soaking in liquid can easily distort an insect’s shape, making a definitive call from an image alone difficult. The debate over eating crickets as food has also been divisive for several years now, and that context appears to have amplified reactions to this incident. It’s worth noting, since it’s easily misunderstood, that reporting an incident to the health department is simply the standard procedure when a foreign object is found in food — it does not mean any administrative penalty has been imposed at this stage.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “[🦗] “Drank Half Without Noticing” — Cricket Found in Kura Sushi Soup? Threads Post Goes Viral, Company “Aware,” Reports to Health Department”.

  • Over 30% of unmarried people now say they don’t want kids, a first — 5ch: ‘The moment you start weighing pros and cons, it’s over’

    The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS) has released its 17th Basic Survey on Birth Trends, finding that among unmarried people aged 18 to 34, 33.0% of men and 32.4% of women said they “don’t want children” — both topping 30% for the first time. That’s up 9.8 and 8.8 percentage points, respectively, from the previous 2021 survey, while the average number of children born to couples married 15 to 19 years has also hit a record low of 1.86. On 5ch, opinions split over what to do about it: some argued the real cause isn’t financial hardship but the fact that people have started weighing marriage and childbirth in terms of costs and benefits at all, while others called for bigger government payouts.

    A survey by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research has found that a growing number of unmarried young people don’t want children. According to the 17th Basic Survey on Birth Trends, the share of unmarried people aged 18-34 who said they “don’t want children” topped 30% for the first time. Broken down by gender, it was 33.0% for men and 32.4% for women — up 9.8 and 8.8 percentage points, respectively, from the previous survey (2021).

    Meanwhile, among unmarried young people who do want children, only 7.7% of men said they wanted “three or more,” down 3.9 points. Among women the figure fell 0.7 points from last time to 11.9%.

    The average number of children among couples married 15-19 years also hit a record low of 1.86, driven in part by a 1.9-point rise (to 9.6%) in the share of couples with “zero” children compared to the previous survey.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    13AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:12
    Income-wise, I can barely support myself as it is
    25AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:15
    Re: #13
    The money's there, except for a bottom segment.
    The real issue is that more people have it but still choose not to have kids.
    From a guy's perspective, divorce rates are high and men often can't get custody in a divorce, so it feels like marriage could all be for nothing — that's another reason not to bother. They should scrap asset division too.
    21AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:14
    Why are there so many threads like this lately?
    Is this some kind of propaganda from the Children and Families Agency or something??
    24AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:15
    Re: #21
    They rack up replies, so they spark flame wars.
    31AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:15
    Re: #21
    Just another variant of the classic 'kids these days…' article.
    33AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:15
    Well, if you think about it normally, you don't need them.
    Even with money, they're just a hassle.
    40AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:17
    Re: #33
    Yeah, they really do become a huge ball and chain.
    Like, if a zombie outbreak hit, parents would be the first to go.
    You'd slow down trying to save your kid and be forced into reckless moves, so no way you'd survive.
    34AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:16
    I wouldn't go so far as to say I 'don't want' kids, but I've never really felt like I wanted them either.
    So there's no need to actively pursue it.
    35AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:16
    Marriage and raising kids need to be left to instinct.
    The moment you start overthinking it, it's over.
    47AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:19
    Re: #35
    Seriously, this.
    The instant you start weighing pros and cons, marriage becomes impossible.
    105AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:28
    Re: #35
    That instinct itself has gone haywire lately.
    The self-preservation instinct has just gotten way too strong.
    39AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:17
    Well, women say they don't want kids up until about 25, but around 30 they start to panic, get swept up by peer pressure, and end up marrying and having kids anyway.
    174AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:44
    Re: #39
    In the end, I guess they just cave to peer pressure…
    49AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:20
    Give a million yen (~$7,000) when a baby's born —
    you'd need to do at least that much or nothing's going to change.
    52AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:21
    Re: #49
    A million yen isn't nearly enough. Even 10 million yen (~$70,000) wouldn't really cut it.
    54AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:21
    Re: #49
    Doesn't matter how many money-grubbing lowlifes it attracts.
    59AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:22
    Re: #49
    Just give 10 million yen per baby.
    Scrap the Children and Families Agency and there'd be more than enough to cover it.
    50AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:20
    Re: #47
    It's the other way around.
    People can't find a partner, so they can't marry — and they use 'pros and cons' as an excuse.
    127AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:31
    Re: #50
    High-tier men and women who land their ideal romantic partner get married and have kids. Low-tier men and women who can only date someone below their ideal just bluster about not wanting to marry or have children.
    67AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:23
    Re: #34
    There's actually a solid amount of data on what happens to people who keep putting it off, and the conclusion is pretty consistent.
    They hit an age where it's too late to do anything, get hit with intense regret, fall into self-loathing, and spend the rest of their life listless, like a burned-out husk.

    What matters is that whatever choice you make, you decide and act on it yourself instead of just postponing. If you decide not to have kids and act accordingly, you'll have far fewer regrets.
    92AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:26
    Re: #67
    Exactly this.
    I've felt since my teens that I probably wouldn't marry, and now I'm 45 and single — but about 70% of my friends who also said they wouldn't marry ended up losing it once they hit their mid-30s.
    102AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:28
    Re: #92
    We're the same age.
    My kids are 20 and 18 right now.
    We've lived the same number of years, but our lives turned out pretty different.
    109AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:29
    Re: #92
    Thinking 'it's still fine for now' isn't a decision, it's just procrastination.
    But whether you're a man or a woman, five years from now your odds of finding a partner under the same conditions as today will have dropped massively.
    The longer you put it off, the worse your position gets and the harder it becomes.
    What matters is making a clear decision.
    If you're not going to do it, don't. If you're not having kids, then don't.
    Decide clearly and you won't suffer over it.
    82AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:25
    Money is absolutely not going to solve this lol
    90AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:26
    Re: #82
    It eats up your time too.
    In modern society, money alone doesn't fix everything.
    There's never enough time — I constantly wish I had a second body of myself.
    94AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:26
    Re: #82
    Like the Showa-era baby boom — people were way poorer back then than now.
    108AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:28
    Go take a look at childless households where the couple's over 50 —
    it's pretty pathetic.
    Makes you wonder what they're even living for.
    117AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:31
    Re: #108
    Their precious dog is the kid substitute.
    It's a dog, but they spoil it rotten (the phrase literally means fawning over it like a cat).
    167AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:42
    Dogs and cats are just cuter, though
    177AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:44
    Re: #167
    No doubt about it.
    Human kids kind of seem like little demons.
    241AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:02
    Re: #167
    Honestly, dogs and cats are cuter than human kids, hands down.
    And they never grow up to take 'dark part-time jobs' (slang for crime-ring gigs like scam or robbery jobs recruited via social media).
    170AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:43
    Only people whose lives are actually going well want kids in the first place.
    Specifically: money, a stable job, and social security.
    If society won't provide those, there's no incentive to supply it with slaves.
    206AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:51
    Re: #170
    Even for people whose lives are going well, kids could be exactly what drops them into ruin, so it makes sense they wouldn't want one.
    If you end up with a child who needs round-the-clock medical care, your whole life basically gets poured into that…
    And even kids born perfectly healthy sometimes grow up to become criminals.
    210AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:52
    Re: #206
    I get what you're saying, but
    if you avoided everything with odds lower than a traffic accident, you'd never be able to leave the house.
    223AnonymousSep 16, 2026 20:57
    Re: #206
    Choosing a spouse is something you can steer with your own judgment and how you handle the relationship, but kids come with way more uncertainty.
    233AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:00
    Honestly, the government should just hand over 10 million yen (~$70,000) flat whenever a Japanese person has a baby and basically 'buy' the kid.
    Build state-run orphanages and raise Japanese children there.
    239AnonymousSep 16, 2026 21:01
    Re: #233
    I wrote it myself, but yeah, 10 million yen was too much for something where you're not even the one raising the kid.
    500,000 yen (~$3,500) is probably about right.

    Background and key points of this discussion

    The Basic Survey on Birth Trends is Japan’s largest survey on declining birthrates, conducted by the IPSS every five years among single people and married couples; this round is the first since 2021. What makes this data notable is that, against a debate over unmarried and declining birth rates that has typically been chalked up to “economic reasons,” the segment that simply doesn’t want children at all has surged in just five years. In the thread, one camp argued that “the cause isn’t money — it’s that people have started weighing marriage and childbirth in terms of costs and benefits at all,” while another argued that “boosting government payouts would solve it,” but the survey data itself can’t settle that debate. It only tracks how stated preferences have shifted over time, not the underlying change in values driving them. It’s also worth noting that the share wanting “three or more” children declined for both men and women, suggesting that anti-declining-birthrate policy may need to shift focus from just supporting marriage to motivating people to want children in the first place — a point barely touched on in the replies.

    ※This article is compiled as an excerpt/summary of the 5ch (Breaking News Plus) thread “Growing number of unmarried young people who don’t want children – tops 30% for first time, IPSS.”

  • Tokyo’s New Houses Are Closing In on ¥100 Million — Welcome to the ‘Oku-Kodate’ Era

    An article about how new-build detached houses in Tokyo’s 23 wards are increasingly averaging close to ¥100 million — dubbed “oku-kodate” (literally “hundred-million-yen houses”) — went viral on 5ch. It points to buyers who’ve given up on condos amid soaring prices, shifting instead to detached houses a bit further from the station. The thread split over whether this price surge will keep climbing or finally stall due to rising interest rates, with one camp pointing to rising land, materials, and labor costs, and the other stressing that higher rates cut into buyers’ borrowing power — both sides trading real-wage statistics and vacant-home projections as ammunition.

    In urban areas where land prices keep climbing, people are rediscovering the appeal of detached houses — a bit further from the nearest station, but free from the hassle of close-quarters neighbors. The average price of a new-build detached house in Tokyo’s 23 wards is nearing ¥100 million, and homebuilders are increasingly focused on supplying what’s now called “oku-kodate,” the “hundred-million-yen house.”

    Rather than a cramped “narrow-lot house” in a prime location…

    A 37-year-old man working for a medical device maker bought a new home in Tokyo in December 2025.

    Source: mainichi.jp / Original article here

    6AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:09
    Re: #1
    A 90-square-meter lot is already plenty "narrow" though
    29AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:20
    Re: #6
    Stuff like floor-area ratio and building-coverage ratio [zoning regs]
    117AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:59
    Re: #6
    In the real estate industry, a "narrow-lot house" means land of 15 tsubo or less — that's about 50 sqm
    With a 90 sqm lot you wouldn't normally even build three stories, so calling 90 sqm "narrow" sounds like a rural mindset
    Actually, even in the countryside, houses built for nuclear families are usually sized to fit on a 90 sqm lot anyway
    11AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:13
    Re: #8
    Land prices, materials, and labor are all going up, so of course housing prices go up too
    If anything, interest rates and housing prices are basically unrelated
    20AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:16
    Re: #11
    That completely ignores market forces.
    Sure, costs get passed on to the price,
    but bank rates are rising, so buyers' borrowing limits shrink.
    That means fewer buyers, so prices are forced to come down.
    42AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:30
    Re: #20
    If you've got the creditworthiness to get a bank mortgage,
    interest rates aren't really a problem
    "Can't get a mortgage because rates are too high" — that's just the wrong crowd to begin with
    So even with rates up, housing prices won't get cheaper
    What actually drives housing prices is the cost of land, materials, and labor
    You clearly don't understand how the economy works lol
    143AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:06
    Re: #42
    It's generally said that when interest rates are high, property prices fall
    21AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:17
    He's getting a 42-year mortgage at 37?
    Guess the bank's counting on the death insurance payout to collect
    51AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:36
    Re: #21
    Is there even such a thing as a mortgage without death insurance attached?
    90AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:51
    Re: #21

    It'd be a real problem if he doesn't die but ends up bedridden with a chronic illness instead lol
    116AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:58
    Re: #21
    Flat 50 [a 50-year fixed-rate mortgage from Japan's Housing Finance Agency]
    You end up paying interest equal to the property price itself, all the way to age 80
    41AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:28
    They've been saying prices will drop for 20 years straight and it's only gone up the whole time
    Everyone especially said the bubble would burst after the Tokyo Olympics, but the surge actually accelerated once the Olympics ended
    In hindsight, whoever bought earliest won, and whoever sat around waiting lost — hard
    56AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:37
    Re: #41
    Whatever the decision, sooner is always better
    People waiting for prices to drop tend to forget about all the rent they keep paying in the meantime
    77AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:44
    Re: #41
    2008: Lehman Shock briefly slowed things down
    2011: Great East Japan Earthquake — reconstruction kicks off and it speeds back up
    2013: Tokyo wins the Olympic bid — accelerates further
    2020: COVID, then the Olympics the following year — another jump
    Just kept climbing and climbing
    Whoever moved before Lehman ended up being completely right
    66AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:40
    Re: #62
    Over the past three years (2023-2026),
    regular full-time workers' wages have risen on the back of historic spring wage negotiation (shunto) hikes and regular raises,
    by roughly several hundred thousand yen a year on average — about 3-5% (¥10,000-16,000) on a monthly basis
    Thanks to this rapid wage growth, full-time workers' average monthly pay keeps hitting record highs
    67AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:41
    Re: #66
    Real wages are cratering though…
    76AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:44
    Re: #67
    Really?
    According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' "Family Income and Expenditure Survey" (2025 average), for households with two or more people including a working member, the averages are:

    Gross income: ¥653,901/month on average
    (combining the household head's salary of roughly ¥470,000 and a spouse's part-time/dual-income earnings of roughly ¥110,000, etc.)

    Non-consumption spending: ¥121,493
    (taxes, social insurance premiums, and other withheld amounts)

    Disposable income (take-home pay): ¥532,408/month on average
    (the actual amount free to spend)

    Consumption spending (living costs): roughly ¥380,000-390,000
    (food, housing, utilities, education, entertainment, etc.)

    Surplus (savings potential): roughly ¥140,000-150,000/month on average (about 27-29% of take-home pay)
    (goes toward savings, insurance premiums, stock/fund purchases, etc.)

    This is a national average, so it includes small and mid-sized companies in rural areas, where a large share of workers are employed
    78AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:46
    Re: #76
    Real wages hit a record 26 straight months of decline — by far the longest streak ever —
    and then another 12 straight months of decline on top of that

    That's exactly why cost-of-living relief measures are needed — because real wages fell that much???
    Do you seriously think they'd roll out inflation relief measures if real wages weren't falling?
    82AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:46
    Re: #76
    Honestly most people are just going off vibes
    like "supermarket prices doubled, so inflation doubled and wages got cut in half"
    In reality, fixed costs weigh heavily, so even if every item at the supermarket doubled, the overall shift would be pretty small
    83AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:46
    What is this
    garbage, late-to-the-party article
    Real estate has already peaked

    Long-term rates are spiking this hard, so property prices — which are basically a financial asset too — are already falling
    91AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:51
    Re: #83
    New-build tower condos have started falling in some areas, but detached houses are going up because the crowd priced out of tower condos is flowing into them
    98AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:54
    Re: #83

    Still, the average price of new condos in Tokyo topping ¥100 million is just absurd.
    And apparently they're still selling too lol
    142AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:05
    Re: #83
    Is there actually some company out there turning real estate into a financial product? lol
    137AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:03
    Re: #82
    So the "average household" is one that can put away ¥140,000-150,000 a month in savings, huh
    144AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:06
    Re: #137
    If you save ¥2 million a year, it'd take 50 years to reach ¥100 million
    152AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:08
    Re: #144
    If you live like that starting at age 20, you'll have ¥100 million by 70
    It's just basic math, but you guys talk like it's some crime for old people to have money
    159AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:10
    Re: #144
    That's basically a mattress-stuffing savings account [cash sitting idle, not invested]
    My company also fully funds my defined-contribution pension every month,
    but if you're not actually investing it,
    it ends up working just like a regular bank time deposit
    175AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:15
    Meanwhile I bought a 30-year-old 5-bedroom house out in the sticks for ¥3 million — watching all this from the cheap seats
    181AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:16
    Re: #175
    That's exactly the way to do it
    Let the city-center properties go to whoever actually needs them
    184AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:17
    Re: #175
    Hot in summer, freezing in winter — sounds like a house that's bad for your health lol
    Also at 30 years old, stuff starts breaking down everywhere and you'll be doing repairs every year just to keep living there
    Like a pipe inside the wall suddenly cracking and water spraying out
    206AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:21
    Vacant homes have doubled over 30 years to 9 million — by 2038, 1 in 3 homes will be empty.
    209AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:22
    Re: #206
    Alright then, point me to a good property among those vacant homes
    213AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:23
    The 2030 vacant-home problem. From here on, prices just keep falling.
    217AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:24
    Re: #213
    Prices only fell in inconvenient areas, which drags the average down — in reality, convenient areas keep rising or stay flat

    Also, even if land prices fall, building costs sure aren't coming down anymore
    There's really nothing left to bring prices down
    224AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:25
    Re: #213
    The "vacant home problem" and "more vacant homes means prices fall" —
    people have been chanting that like a mantra since the mid-90s lol

    And there's always someone out there who believes it religiously, lol
    240AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:30
    Watch out especially when real estate developers and spec-home builders
    start pushing "buy now, prices won't drop" — that's exactly when you need to be careful.
    243AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:31
    Re: #240
    Yeah, it's pretty blatant lol
    253AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:33
    Re: #240
    If it doesn't sell, they just bleed out on interest payments
    No wonder they're desperate lol
    260AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:36
    Re: #240
    No need to worry.
    You can't afford it anyway lol

    Background and key points of this discussion

    Debates over real estate prices tend to pit the conventional wisdom — “if rates rise, prices fall” — against the view that “land, materials, and labor costs are what’s really pushing prices up, separate from interest rates.” In reality, both forces are at work simultaneously: rising rates reduce buyers’ borrowing capacity and dampen demand, while rising construction costs push up the floor price on the supply side — so neither factor alone tells the whole story. On wages, there’s also room for confusion: nominal monthly pay keeps hitting record highs, while real wages (adjusted for inflation) have stayed negative for a long stretch — the same phrase “wages rose/fell” can refer to two different numbers. And the projection of 9 million vacant homes, or 1 in 3 by 2038, isn’t a direct sign that prices in popular central areas will fall — it mainly reflects a growing divide between city centers and rural or suburban areas.

    ※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “‘Even hesitating makes detached houses more expensive’ — what is the popular ‘oku-kodate’ trend in the greater Tokyo area?“

  • Kobe and Awaji Island Join the Michelin Guide — 5ch Reignites the ‘Nothing Good to Eat in Nara’ Debate

    Kobe and Awaji Island have been newly added to the areas covered by the “Michelin Guide.” They become the fifth region covered, following Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara, which are already included in the anonymous-inspection rating guide published by the French tire maker. On 5ch, the discussion drifted away from the actual Kobe/Awaji ratings and toward a long-running debate over the old saying “there’s nothing good to eat in Nara,” comparisons of star counts between Tokyo and Kansai, and the historical ties between Awaji Island and Tokushima.

    “Kobe and Awaji Island” will be added to the coverage area of the “Michelin Guide,” the world-famous guidebook that rates restaurants and other establishments with stars.

    The “Michelin Guide,” published by a French-headquartered tire maker that features roughly 17,000 restaurants and hotels worldwide, already covers “Tokyo,” “Kyoto,” “Osaka,” and “Nara” in Japan.

    The star ratings take into account the quality of ingredients, the level of cooking technique, the polish and originality of the seasoning, and the overall consistency of the cuisine, with anonymous inspectors visiting and dining at restaurants to evaluate ingredient quality, technique, and more.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    11AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:18
    Re: #1
    Tokyo → makes sense
    Osaka → makes sense
    Kyoto → makes sense
    Nara → wait, what?!
    53AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:39
    Re: #11
    "Nothing good to eat in Nara" — words of the great novelist Shiga Naoya
    74AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:50
    Re: #11
    Nah, it's Tokyo that's the real problem lol
    They handed out so many stars in Tokyo that it wrecked Michelin's whole brand lol
    103AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:15
    Re: #11
    You can eat court cuisine straight out of the Nara period, 1,300 years ago. That's actually incredible.
    12AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:19
    Well, I'm not going anyway.

    Give me a reason to.
    23AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:27
    Re: #12
    There was this daytime drama called "Love Letter" that was so good it made me go to Shodoshima. That trip was so great I ended up circling the whole of Shikoku. Shikoku is paradise.
    20AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:26
    When it comes to Nara food, all I know is narazuke pickles and kaki-no-ha sushi (persimmon-leaf wrapped sushi) lol
    25AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:27
    Re: #20
    Kuzukiri (chilled arrowroot noodles) is pretty good too
    31AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:29
    Kansai's food game is just stronger, honestly
    In Tokyo even a bad restaurant can limp along, but in Kansai those places get weeded out fast
    So you basically can't go wrong wherever you walk in
    38AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:32
    Re: #31
    Kyoto and Osaka combined barely add up to Tokyo's star count alone, and even then they don't touch Tokyo's three-star tally
    Osaka's star count is about on par with London's
    42AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:34
    Once a place gets a Michelin rating it gets overwhelmed with customers and the quality drops, right? Unless they cap how many guests they take.
    45AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:35
    The Michelin Guide is basically a guide to restaurants whose food is about to go downhill.
    89AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:02
    Re: #45
    Sure, sure. You probably can't afford to go anyway, so why do you care?
    48AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:36
    People in Awaji really drive like maniacs
    When I was touring on a Cub (small motorbike), it was honestly a bit scary
    83AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:56
    Re: #48
    Come to Tokushima sometime — compared to that, Awaji drivers are crawling along
    I'm originally from "Pasona Island" (Awaji, nicknamed after the Pasona Group's HQ move there) and now live in the "Awa Odori prefecture" (Tokushima), and I was shocked at how bad Tokushima's driving manners are
    50AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:37
    Seriously, can a tire company quit lecturing us about food already
    55AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:40
    Re: #50
    Well, people touring Japan by car don't exactly go out of their way for Tokyo
    Publishing guides for a huge, traffic-choked city with great public transit feels like it's straying from the original point of all this
    51AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:37
    Re: #38
    That's it! They're rolling out small-area editions as a setup before splitting Tokyo into multiple volumes
    People will end up buying two books
    56AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:40
    No stars for Hyogo/Kobe? I get it.

    Kobe's full of bad food. Even the Oriental Hotel's curry has started going on about now using onions from Awaji.

    Kobe's a place for enjoying jazz and high-end audio gear, not food.
    64AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:48
    During the Edo period, Awaji Island actually belonged to the Tokushima domain
    Makes you wonder if it's even in the same cultural sphere (as Kobe/Kansai)
    71AnonymousSep 16, 2026 11:50
    Re: #64
    Well, Tokushima does show up in the Kansai regional weather forecast
    (meanwhile Mie doesn't, lol)
    105AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:17
    Re: #64
    Tokushima itself basically is Kansai
    It's been tied to the Kinai region (the ancient capital area) since antiquity
    109AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:22
    Why do Japanese people act so grateful for some random rating from a foreign tire company? Are they stupid or something?
    128AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:37
    Re: #109
    Most of the inspectors for the Japan edition of Michelin are actually Japanese
    It's only originally a French company — the ratings themselves are made by Japanese people
    136AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:40
    Awaji Island is only about 50 minutes by bus from Sannomiya, right? That's pretty close. Why hasn't it developed more?
    143AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:42
    Re: #136
    Because the area under Pasona's control is nothing but mountains
    144AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:42
    Re: #136
    The fact that you can only get there via the expressway doesn't help either
    207AnonymousSep 16, 2026 13:05
    Re: #136
    There just aren't any real tourist attractions
    Just some so-so beaches, and even the sea isn't that clean
    155AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:47
    When I traveled to Nara a while back, I tried to find somewhere to eat near Kintetsu-Nara Station and was shocked — nothing but shabby little places
    161AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:48
    Re: #155
    Foreign tourists know there's nothing in Nara, so they head to Osaka at night
    168AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:54
    Re: #155
    The nice places (pricey, around 10,000 yen or so) weren't near the station — they were usually tucked inside the park
    Come to think of it, that's a strange way to lay out a town…
    165AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:51
    Come to think of it, why is Nara said to have no good food anyway? It's a farming region with plenty of produce and all
    166AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:53
    Re: #165
    As mentioned above, it spread because the great novelist Shiga Naoya once wrote that "Nara is a place with nothing good to eat"
    169AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:54
    Re: #165
    If you're opening a restaurant, you'd rather do it in Kyoto or Osaka than Nara — the price points are just too different
    175AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:56
    Re: #165
    Go there and you'll see. It's really true.
    185AnonymousSep 16, 2026 12:58
    Is deer meat actually any good? Can you eat it if you go to Nara?
    194AnonymousSep 16, 2026 13:01
    Re: #185
    The deer in Nara Park are a protected natural monument, so you can't eat those
    Just go to a regular game-meat restaurant — venison is actually pretty tasty, and Nara has places like that too
    198AnonymousSep 16, 2026 13:01
    Re: #185
    Don't hear about it much up north, but down south around Totsukawa there are places that serve it
    Before the boar hot pot they brought out venison and char (iwana) sashimi and I just ate it — but heads up, both can carry parasites…

    Background and Key Points of This Discussion

    The “Michelin Guide” is a rating system published by a French tire company using anonymous inspectors, and with Kobe and Awaji Island now added, it becomes the fifth region covered in Japan, following Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara. Some in the thread pushed back with “why does a foreign tire company get to rate Japanese food,” though others pointed out that most inspectors for the Japan guide are actually Japanese, with the French company being only the parent organization. Much of the discussion focused less on the actual Kobe/Awaji ratings and more on the old saying “there’s nothing good to eat in Nara.” That phrase traces back to a line written by the Taisho-era novelist Shiga Naoya in an essay, and isn’t a reflection of Nara’s current food scene. There was also talk of how Awaji Island was historically part of the Tokushima domain during the Edo period, with some arguing that geographically it has stronger ties to Shikoku and the Kansai region than to Hyogo. On star counts, Tokyo is said to outnumber Kyoto and Osaka combined, fueling further debate over how the regions stack up.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “[Hyogo] “Kobe/Awaji Island” added to Michelin Guide coverage — 5th region following “Tokyo,” “Kyoto,” “Osaka,” “Nara”.”

  • Docomo Leaked 340,000 Users’ Data to Amazon US Without Consent — 5ch: ‘Like Hell They Deleted It, LOL’

    On September 15, NTT Docomo announced that it had shared the phone numbers and contract plan names of roughly 340,000 users with Amazon.com’s Japanese subsidiary without their consent. The affected users are some of those who signed up online between April 21 and August 20 for a phone plan that includes Amazon membership perks; the cause was a configuration error that meant the consent-confirmation notice for sharing personal data was never displayed during sign-up. Docomo says Amazon deleted the data by September 12, but on 5ch, users expressed shock that such a system for sharing phone numbers and plan names externally even existed, voiced skepticism about whether the data was “really” deleted, and repeatedly compared the incident to other companies’ data breaches and past personal-information leaks.

    Published 9/16 (Wed) 0:17 AM

    Yomiuri Shimbun Online

    NTT Docomo revealed on the 15th that it had shared the personal information of roughly 340,000 users with Amazon.com’s Japanese subsidiary without their consent. What was shared without permission was users’ phone numbers and the names of their contracted phone plans. The cause was a configuration error on Docomo’s end, and the company says Amazon deleted the data by the 12th.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    6AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:15
    Shocked that a feature to share phone numbers and plan names externally even existed
    49AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:26
    Re: #6
    Any place offering a service that partners with an outside company to do something like this — you should assume they're sharing some kind of personal data externally.
    You can't link accounts together without sharing personal info.
    193AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:05
    Re: #6
    They probably tried to get some cloud service or AWS AI to do something and accidentally uploaded a file with personal data in it.
    Yeah, that's just dumb.
    10AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:16
    If you link with Amazon you get 1% points back on purchases over 5,000 yen, so anyone who already has both accounts is probably linked up already anyway
    197AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:09
    Re: #10
    That's literally me.
    Though I'm pretty sure they never told Amazon my plan name.
    207AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:18
    Re: #10
    If anything that'd be through d-Points.
    You don't even need to be a Docomo member for that, so why would they need to share your plan or phone number?
    11AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:16
    Only Docomo would mess up like this
    65AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:30
    Re: #11
    SoftBank just leaks stuff outright, honestly.
    I canceled SoftBank Hikari years ago and I'm still getting sales calls about it.
    21AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:18
    > According to Docomo, those affected were some of the users who signed up online between April 21 and August 20 for a phone plan bundled with a discount on Amazon membership fees. Due to a configuration error, the consent-confirmation text for sharing personal data with Amazon wasn't displayed during sign-up.

    So these are customers who were already using both services anyway.
    Doesn't seem like it did much real harm.
    37AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:23
    Re: #21
    If this weren't a major company they probably wouldn't have bothered apologizing, disclosing it, or even asking Amazon to delete the data.
    78AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:34
    Re: #21
    Is this some special deal just for people who've linked their Amazon account ("甘", lit. "sweet", is 5ch slang for Amazon)?
    I don't use Amazon, so I'm fine.
    210AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:20
    Re: #21
    There are 340,000 people who fit that narrow a set of conditions?
    24AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:19
    Get ready for the "How about switching to Docomo Hikari?" sales calls
    36AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:22
    Re: #24
    Lately I keep getting calls like "This is NTT, this is your final notice."
    The funny part is they say "your NTT line gets cut off in 3 hours" one day, and then just call again the next day anyway.
    27AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:19
    Oh right, Docomo and Prime Video teamed up recently.
    This is probably related to that.
    45AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:26
    Re: #27
    Ah, so this is promo material for that.

    https://ssw.web.docomo.ne.jp/prime/
    46AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:26
    "Amazon says it deleted the data by the 12th"

    Like hell they did, lmaooo
    47AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:26
    Wait, is this the d-Points linkage thing? I don't even have a plan tied to that.
    Amazon US shouldn't have any linkage set up in the first place, I'd think.
    54AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:27
    Re: #47
    "Can you use d-Barai on Amazon too? Benefits and setup steps explained"
    https://service.smt.docomo.ne.jp/keitai_payment/corporation/shop/tips/ID96.html
    101AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:38
    There was also that report on June 25 about the Digital Agency leaking over 246,000 pieces of My Number card personal data here in Japan. The news said to watch out for impersonation emails and phishing scams. This kind of thing is just normal in Japan.
    107AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:41
    Re: #101
    Especially with Docomo, this is just business as usual, no?
    184AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:01
    Re: #101
    You'd have to report it as often as the weather forecast before it actually sinks in.
    168AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:56
    This is exactly why linking accounts is scary.
    The more services you link together,
    the higher the risk of a leak keeps climbing.
    Humans mess up, that's just a given.
    179AnonymousSep 16, 2026 08:59
    Re: #168
    They only announced it because it's Docomo.
    182AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:00
    Re: #168
    I think that's right, more linked services means more leak risk.
    It's convenient, sure, but trying to connect everything to everything else is asking for trouble.
    187AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:03
    Give it ten more years and our personal data will be totally exposed for anyone to see.
    Like walking down the street stark naked.
    192AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:04
    Re: #187
    Bet the bureaucrats and cabinet ministers will still be fully dressed though.
    202AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:13
    Re: #187
    Honestly, just personal data leaking might be the mild version. If that gets bundled with your trash-talk tweets and your history of buying adult stuff, now THAT'S a scene straight out of hell, lol
    199AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:11
    Re: #1
    If you couldn't proceed with signing up for this bundled plan without agreeing to it (I forget the exact numbers, but I think this monthly discount might be cheaper than Amazon's own monthly rate — though Amazon's own annual payment, or even YouTube's annual plan, might actually work out cheaper than this) then sure, they should have to disclose that. But either way, the data gets shared all the same, doesn't it?
    200AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:12
    Re: #199
    "YouTube too" should read "YouTube's" (typo fix)
    204AnonymousSep 16, 2026 09:14
    Re: #199
    My mistake. Since in Re: #1 Amazon had already deleted the data, it might have been possible to proceed with sign-up even without giving consent.

    Background and Key Points of This Story

    This unauthorized data sharing wasn’t the result of an outside attack — it’s attributed to a configuration error on the sign-up page for the phone plan Docomo offers in partnership with Amazon (the one with discounted membership fees), which meant the consent-confirmation text for sharing personal data never displayed. Those affected were some of the users who signed up for this plan between April 21 and August 20, and only phone numbers and contract plan names were shared; Docomo says addresses and payment information were not included. On the thread, some posts noted that this kind of business partnership isn’t unusual in itself, and that “data sharing necessary for the service” and “failing to obtain consent” are separate issues — while plenty of other voices were skeptical of taking the claim that “Amazon deleted the data” at face value. Many posts also compared the incident to other personal-data cases, such as June’s leak involving My Number cards, framing it not as an isolated scandal but as part of a broader distrust toward the risks of linking personal data with outside partners — a nuance that doesn’t come through in the article text alone.

    *This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News Plus) thread “[NTT Docomo] Personal Data of 340,000 Users Shared Without Consent with Amazon.com’s Japanese Subsidiary… Caused by Configuration Error.”

  • Kanazawa City Failed to Collect Sewage Fees for 31 Years — Backlash as 20 Households Get Hit with Lump-Sum Bill for 5 Years

    It has come to light that Kanazawa City’s Public Enterprise Bureau failed to collect sewage fees for 31 years from some residents and shops in a building within the city. The affected parties number 20 out of 28 households, and the city plans to bill them in a lump sum for the past 5 years — the maximum period covered under the statute of limitations set by the revised Civil Code. The sudden lump-sum billing has reportedly sparked backlash from the affected households. On 5ch, opinions clashed: some said “of course they should pay what they always owed,” others sympathized that “a lump sum is too harsh, it should be split into installments,” and still others were skeptical, arguing “there’s no way you wouldn’t notice 5 years of missing bills” — with views divided over whether the residents themselves were also at fault.

    Published 9/15 (Tue) 19:04

    Ishikawa TV

    It has been revealed that Kanazawa City’s Public Enterprise Bureau failed to collect sewage fees — which it should have been charging — from some residents and shops in a building within the city, for a period of 31 years.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here

    2AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:17
    Just bill them gradually, no big deal.
    3AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:18
    A lump sum all at once is a bit much… Maybe letting anyone who wants it split it over 2 years would be a fair compromise.
    143AnonymousSep 16, 2026 05:06
    Re: #3
    Only having to pay 5 years out of 31 is actually a huge win for them.
    151AnonymousSep 16, 2026 05:57
    Re: #3
    The bill itself is issued as a lump sum, but you can pay it off in installments, you know.
    5AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:18
    Re: #1
    They probably knew they weren't paying and just kept quiet about it.
    Collect a penalty on top of it too.
    8AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:20
    Re: #5
    Most people don't really scrutinize their water bill statement.
    You wouldn't notice whether you're being undercharged or overcharged either way.
    31AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:36
    Re: #8
    They knew about it — that's why other residents filed a complaint.
    60AnonymousSep 16, 2026 00:13
    Re: #8
    It's not that they were undercharged, they weren't charged at all.
    There's no way they didn't notice that.
    6AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:19
    Wasn't the statute of limitations on a missed bill only about 2 years?
    45AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:54
    Re: #6
    That's right for civil claims.
    58AnonymousSep 16, 2026 00:09
    Re: #6
    There was a major Civil Code revision in 2020.
    Before that, there were shorter limitation periods for things like dining and lodging, starting from as little as 1 year,
    but now it's whichever comes first: 5 years from when you become aware you can make the claim, or 10 years even if you never knew.
    9AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:21
    > Following complaints of "this is unfair" from residents who had been paying the fee

    It's a mystery how they even found out, but that's a pretty small-minded complaint to make.
    13AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:22
    Re: #9
    Did they figure that crying "unfair" might get their own fees waived too?
    124AnonymousSep 16, 2026 03:25
    Re: #9
    They said 20 out of 28 households in this building weren't billed, so maybe residents compared notes with each other and realized some households weren't being charged at all.
    14AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:25
    They never paid a cent until now, and they're mad about being billed for just 5 years? Are they stupid? (lol)
    19AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:28
    Re: #14
    Well, a lump sum is bound to cause backlash.
    It is the city's own screwup, after all.
    17AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:27
    Wasn't it only a 1-year statute of limitations if they never billed at all?
    130AnonymousSep 16, 2026 03:47
    Re: #17
    Yeah, I kind of feel that way too…
    42AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:51
    Paying 100,000 yen (about $650) all at once? No way.
    43AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:52
    I once got a refund for an overpayment, but
    apparently anything older than 5 years is past the statute of limitations.
    51AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:58
    Re: #43
    That's exactly why it's 5 years this time too.
    46AnonymousSep 15, 2026 23:55
    Sounds like the limitation period is 5 years.
    Hitting them with it all at once still seems harsh though.
    64AnonymousSep 16, 2026 00:15
    Re: #60
    Sewage fees are bundled into the tap water bill — the whole system calculates it based on how much tap water you use.
    They were paying for their water usage, so they probably just assumed that was normal.
    160AnonymousSep 16, 2026 06:12
    Re: #64
    Since it's usually folded into the water bill, maybe they just weren't using tap water?
    Even if you're on spring water, you still owe sewage fees, right?
    65AnonymousSep 16, 2026 00:16
    They probably just thought "lucky, no bill came," but
    that in itself seems pretty reckless.
    67AnonymousSep 16, 2026 00:29
    Re: #65
    Even so, the responsibility lies with the city.
    92AnonymousSep 16, 2026 01:13
    Before chasing down the unpaid bill, shouldn't they just shut off the water main first?
    137AnonymousSep 16, 2026 04:32
    Re: #92
    I wonder what happens if you pay your tap water bill properly but fall behind on sewage fees…
    Do they just shut the sewage line and it all backs up out of the drain?
    93AnonymousSep 16, 2026 01:13
    I never even knew sewage fees were billed separately.
    Never once thought about it.
    97AnonymousSep 16, 2026 01:19
    Re: #93
    For a household in Kanazawa using both water and sewage service, not knowing that is pretty strange.

    The reason is that the bimonthly bill lists the tap water charge, the sewage charge, and the combined total.

    If you actually look at the bill, the breakdown is right there.
    104AnonymousSep 16, 2026 01:47
    Anyone would notice paying 0 yen in water fees for 5 years straight.
    These people knew and kept quiet — and there were 20 households doing it.
    They must have known this day would come eventually, so just pay up already.
    Don't be so entitled.
    108AnonymousSep 16, 2026 02:05
    Re: #104
    I can't say for certain, but…

    In Kanazawa, sewage usage requires registering with the city.
    Without that registration, you only get billed for tap water.

    So it's probably the case that they were only ever billed for tap water.
    Can't say for sure though.
    109AnonymousSep 16, 2026 02:07
    Re: #104
    They'd still be getting billed for tap water.
    Your "water bill" is the tap water charge plus roughly another 10% on top for sewage —
    that's just common knowledge.
    110AnonymousSep 16, 2026 02:08
    Re: #104
    Do you think the tap water was 0 yen too?
    It's only the sewage portion that went uncharged.

    Background and Key Points of This Story

    In many municipalities, sewage fees are folded into the combined water bill, so plenty of users never pay attention to the breakdown. This case stems from a 31-year-long administrative failure on the part of Kanazawa City’s Public Enterprise Bureau — likely a flaw in its billing system or in how registrations were processed — a management lapse on the government’s side, which is a different matter from any failure by residents to self-report. The focal point is the 2020 revision of the Civil Code, which unified the statute of limitations for debt claims at “5 years from when the creditor becomes aware of the claim”; the city is now billing retroactively for the full 5-year maximum this allows. In the thread, the detail that “payment can be made in installments” eased some of the backlash over the lump-sum bill, while skepticism that “it’s unnatural not to notice 5 straight years without a single bill” ran alongside a defense that “staying quiet even after noticing doesn’t necessarily make you at fault” — leaving opinions split over whether residents bore any responsibility. Though not stated in the article itself, there’s a notable skew in that only 20 of the 28 households in the same building were affected, and the original report never clarifies why only some households were missed.

    *This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Ishikawa] Unnoticed for 31 years… Kanazawa City fails to collect sewage fees from over 20 households, residents balk at sudden lump-sum bill for 5 years’ worth.”