Thread by @NathanLands

I'M SHOCKED.

After living in Japan for over two years, I recently visited the USA with my wife. It made me realize that the USA is dysfunctional in so many ways and has such a low-quality standard across the board.

Here are the things I noticed:

Everywhere you go, you run into little things that don't work. Half the escalators I saw were not working, soap was missing in the bathrooms, etc.

Once you notice it, you see it everywhere in America. Things just don't work.

Everything works in Japan, and it would be unacceptable if things didn't work.

Service is so bad compared to Japan, and you have to tip.

We stayed at a nice hotel in Boston, and the workers went on strike. This meant our rooms didn't get cleaned, etc., and they banged on drums outside the window. My wife couldn't believe people would do that.

I get it. From the Japanese perspective, it's like, how could the people we were paying to provide us with service not provide the service? Furthermore, not only did they not offer the service, but they harassed us.

In contrast, while we were in Japan, my wife got gifts for about eight people at her workplace, including her boss, to thank them for letting her take time off.

The culture and respect for work are just so different... basically, different planets.

Everything is so expensive. To my surprise, it's dramatically cheaper living in Japan than most of the US. Waikiki was especially nuts.

There is a sense of danger walking around US cities that doesn't exist in Japan.

We had two homeless people harass us; one ran in front of us like a zombie, and it freaked my wife out.

And on two different occasions, we saw large men threatening women.

One was very bizarre. In a mall dining court in Waikiki, a man threatened his girlfriend who was running from him that he would "bash her fucking brains in if she didn't come back".

Then, when we returned to Japan... I felt a sense of relief. Here you never have any sense of danger anywhere you go, at any time.

I have a feeling a lot of people are living with anxiety from those kinds of encounters, and they don't even realize it.

Homeless people in the US sometimes insult you if you don't give them money.

Happened twice in Waikiki.

In Japan, homeless people are rare. And when you do see them, they are almost always very respectful and don't bother people.

There are more car accidents than in Japan. I got stuck in traffic twice due to accidents.

I asked Perplexity and apparently on a per capita basis, there are 2.5x more car fatalities in the USA than Japan.

Flights get delayed way more often. Perhaps this is another quality control issue?

In America, the TSA is very rude and threatening. In Japan, they're extremely polite and helpful. They're so different.

So many things are locked up in stores in the USA. My wife asked me what that was, but she didn't understand. And when I told her, she couldn't believe how bad it was. It scared her to know that was an issue.

Immigration in the US is slow, and they ask you tons of questions, which is wild considering our current border issue and how easy it is to get into the country illegally.

In contrast, they asked one question in Japan, smiled, and let me in.

Public toilets are so disgusting. In Japan, you don't have this problem at all.

Oh, and of course, now, USA toilets feel incredibly primitive after living in Japan.

In cities, everywhere smells like weed. Or worse.

The portion sizes are so huge. I gained 7 pounds in 2 weeks.

Of course, there are also good things about the USA, like the diversity of food, etc. And there is something a little exciting about the chaos. But I now feel way less interested in moving back to the USA.

It feels like something is more deeply wrong than I realized.