Geez. 15,000 yen! for a parking ticket! Dang. 5 years for one drink in your system. Dang! You know what though. Rules are made and those that don't follow are penalized. I wish there were more strict rules here in the US. There would be less DUI accidents. I hear about those tragedies every other day in my part of town but 15,000 for parking! That feels a bit excessive.
It's expensive, but it gets the point across.
I know a lot of people in the States, too, who have been let off for DUI and DWI multiple times. The penalties don't work as a deterrent in the States, and the infrastructure to really help change the problem doesn't exist in many places.
Many reasons I would love to raise my kids in Japan.
I think there are a lot of positive points to doing so. Looking in at the culture from the outside, though, I don't know what it's really like to be brought upon the system here and by the culture. I've met a lot of Japanese people who want to live abroad because they think things here are too rigid. I've also met a lot of people here who can't live abroad because the thinking of time and scheduling, etc is too lose. I've also met a lot of people here who I think would be seccessful anywhere they go in the world precisely because they were raised in Japan.
I just hope it works out well for my kids.
I can see all your points. I watch lots of documentaries and NHK news about Japan and Japanese culture. I just saw a documentary about hikikomori. Small percentage of people but does give me some small sense of the struggles and stresses that could occur when living there. Here in CA, there is the good an bad. I guess it's like the saying, the grass isn't always greener. At least not all the time. Hope the house renovations are going well. Cheers
That sounds like an interesting documentary. I'll have to search for it. The recluse. A lot of students apparently just stop going to school when there are problems, especially in high school from what I hear. This isn't something that I know much about, but I've definitely heard stories and once interviewed at a school that specialized in dealing with "troubled kids", some of them hikikomori types.