Most of these are common sense. As a tourist foreigner, you also aren't expected to know all the customs but it's appreciated when you try. The one about which direction to NOT point the chopsticks in was new to me. If you just watch what other people are doing, then try to do the same thing, you're probably on the right track.
Related to eating, one pro-tip I got from a local is that when you're ready to close your tab or get your check at a bar or restaurant, you can make a small X with your index fingers.
A lot of them are not common sense at all. Even the 'serious' ones require cultural knowledge to understand. Only a subset of the rest would be un-ideal across cultures, which is what I would use to measure 'common sense'.
It's like how in some asian cultures it's rude to bring the bowl closer to you by lifting it off the table, and in others it's the opposite. And of course there's some just-so story for why, that seems to make sense if you don't know about the opposing just-so story.
Things like that aren't what I'd call common sense.
Using your fork, knife, or spoon to point at a person is absolutely considered rude. Gesturing with utensils likewise (because you can shower others with cast off detritus.)
A quick Google search will turn up hundreds of results corroborating this.
Or just consider the “asshole dinner guest” trope that appears in so many TV shows and movies. They will always be talking too loudly and gesticulating/pointing with their cutlery.
1. I have seen Japanese people do approximately half of the things on the list.
2. The two listed as "serious" are related to Japanese funerary rites, and so are clearly culturally specific.
3. Several of the things listed are perfectly acceptable in other chopstick-using cultures. Many are also perfectly acceptable to do with a fork and/or knife in cultures that use forks and knives. I think I would go so far as to say that there is not a single thing on there for which it would be widely considered rude to do in all cultures.
Both of the serious ones are not specific to Japan, I got told off in China for standing chopsticks up in rice. I suspect anywhere with a significant Buddhist population will have the same taboo.
The use of incense to remember ancestors was spread widely across Asia by Confucianism. Chopsticks look quite similar to incense sticks, so it makes common sense to have this tradition.
when you're ready to close your tab, you can make a small X with your index fingers
In the UK, we have the mime of "writing a cheque". I wonder how widespread that is, and if/when it'll fall out of relevance with the following generations who have never seen a cheque-book?
The UI for loopmaster looks really good. The color scheme is really pleasing to look at and it is easy to jump right in and start editing stuff.
I've owned a bunch of different synthesizers and used a bunch of DAWs over the years and it was clear to me where I needed to make my edits to affect the signal chain.
We do real-time client-side audio processing in Emurse, and there were definitely a bunch of challenges to overcome there, so it would be interesting to hear more about what went into building the tool.
Challenging would be an understatement. Had to create an editor from scratch in canvas to support the inline visuals, then a DSL that generates the code for each permutation of audio and scalar parameters, then the language itself which is Turing complete and controls the whole thing in a VM, choosing the optimal permutation for each case, and all the edits/recompilation be done in few ms to not distrupt the experience, all across a thread (the WebAudio AudioWorklet). The audio engine is in WebAssembly as it was the only way to get the performance needed. You can check out the code[0], the project is open-source!
Fish sauce is also really popular in southeast Asia and Worcestershire sauce is often made with fermented fish so can also be considered garum adjacent.
There's even a case that Ketchup is a distant relative, as it started out as South East Asian oyster sauce, was imported to Europe, turned into fermented mushroom sauce, was exported to the colonies, and finally turned into tomato sauce (though originally sometimes with fish in it).
Yes! Search for "mushroom ketchup", and you'll find various examples for sale. Whatever kinds I've had are nice on bread, and really nice with eggs, but I wouldn't want to eat with chips / fries.
You can still sometimes find mushroom ketchup in UK supermarkets. It tastes a bit like Worcester sauce (spicy and 'brown' tasting), but milder as it has no anchovies in it.
There's speculation that Asian fish sauce came from Greece through the same cultural diffusion processes that brought Greco-Buddhist sculpture as far as Japan.
Anki is great for what it is, but it has some annoyances when studying languages. They were annoying enough for me that I build some tools for Anki to try to address the problems. Eventually, I migrated my SQL scripts and JavaScript code to a lightweight .NET Core app that replaced Anki entirely.
This app was the starting point for presenting interactive content in Emurse. We're currently focusing on filling in areas of language learning that are missing - like phonetics.
If anyone is interested, they can checkout Dogen's Phonetics Course on Emurse: https://emurse.io/courses. There's also an "instant demo" for the Thai Course where you can try a demo without creating an account.
Multiple variations "per-card" are the way to go. It was one of my big gripes about Anki too! My other big complaint is that it only really is tracking one metric when it comes to study - whether you remember the "card" or not.
This is where Anki falls short for language study, because we as language learners also want to look at listening & reading comprehension as well as pronunciation.
Any reason why you're using SM-2 over FSRS? In Emurse we're using an algorithm similar to SM-2, mainly because FSRS wasn't out when we started building it. it works well enough because we've come up work arounds for Anki's problem of workload distribution. Looking into FSRS a bit, I am definitely interested in giving this a shot and seeing if it improves it in that area.
It's hard for even developers and small companies TRYING to make a living there. Keeping an app active in the app stores requires a lot of extra overhead, but doesn't add significant value to the product in cases where it's a native cross-platform or browser-based app.
So many of the apps installed on my phone could be PWAs, but since the implementation of PWAs is quite limited - a native app is required in most cases.
I've been developing with .NET since version 1.1. I feel like it's always been pretty easy to use for beginners. You install Visual Studio, create a new project and BOOM you've got a program that builds and runs.
Having used Turbo Pascal and Turbo C prior to Visual Basic and Visual C, Microsoft's "Visual" IDEs and other Windows based IDEs of the 90's were a step up in ease of use even if they did require more files to build a project.
I am working on a platform for learning languages called Emurse. It has some neat features, like tools to help improve your pronunciation. You also have the ability to study content presented in courses in new ways.
We worked with Dogen, a YouTuber that does Japanese comedy videos and pronunciation lessons with a course on Japanese Phonetics and Pitch accent - you can find a link in my profile.
AI has its place, but I am also tired of all the AI slop. That's why we're partnering with creators who have already been producing excellent content to build courses on Emurse.
I just got back from Japan. I did not notice a difference in performance between tapping with a Blink credit card and tapping with an IC card. I only used the ICOCA card. There were never lines at the gates. There were only ever brief lines at the ticket counters and terminals. I was there during golden week, which is one of the busiest travel times of the year. My travel partner and I used almost exclusively public transportation to get around, usually riding a few trains per-day. We only experienced one two-minute delay in Tokyo on a Friday evening during rush hour.
>I just got back from Japan. I did not notice a difference in performance between tapping with a Blink credit card and tapping with an IC card. I only used the ICOCA card.
Unless things have changed, the ICOCA uses Felica as well. And old Offline Credit Card transactions used to be 200-300ms. Compared to Felica that is sub 100ms. May be offline transactions for credit card have gotten faster? Or may be not latency sensitive enough to notice the lag.
I am working on making it easier to learn languages. We provide a platform for teachers and educators to create their own language courses. The platform offers features similar to software like Babel or Anki, along with some unique features for phonetics study and customizing the learning experience.
We're currently working with language influencers to build courses on Emurse. This year, we launched Japanese Phonetics course created by the YouTuber Dogen https://emurse.io/course/japanese-phonetics.
If you want to try out Emurse, we have a free Thai reading course available. You can view the first lesson without out creating an account: https://emurse.io/courses.
Related to eating, one pro-tip I got from a local is that when you're ready to close your tab or get your check at a bar or restaurant, you can make a small X with your index fingers.
Really useful in a busy bar!