(Part 2) Best products from r/japanlife

Alright, the flooring's squeaky clean so it's time to write! Paging /u/tenderlion too. Keep in mind that I'm doing the most conventional affiliate scheme - the Amazon affiliate program. That said, if you're thinking of approaching it differently, there's plenty of options. Most brands have their own dedicated affiliate program you can partake in!

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Picking a niche for me consists of 4 foundations: a) the products available, b) the amount of people looking for/buying these products, c) the current existing competitors you'll face and d) your willingness to sit down and write, write, write.

You are also free to pick a niche you have not much experience in, if you're willing to research about it. Passion sure helps, but also remember that if you devote much time to it, it'll start feeling a chore. Mixing hobbies with such a feeling..yeah, you get me.

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Products

In my case, I got the idea and immediately went to see how many products are there on Amazon. If there's 10+ products, you're good. But best scenario would be a few brands with 30-40 or even more products altogether. Aside from number of reviews, check their '#XXX in [category]'. The higher its rank, the more it sells, of course.

Let's see a very oversatured niche example: blenders. Check this guy out - it's 3580 in the whole Home & Kitchen category. If we take a look at its reviews (sort by latest), we'll also see it gets a new review every 1-2 days.

Perfect. This means it sells quite a few, as you know how lazy online consumers are. For every 1 review, there's waay more real purchases.

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How people search for these products

Time to see exactly how these people are searching for the stuff you want to promote. A.k.a.: keywords. Here's a mix of stuff you should use:

• Google Keyword planner (free)
  
• KWFinder (free, limited to 3 uses/day, but it shows volume on all KWs so you can do a lot with it)
  
• Moz Keyword explorer (free, limited to 2 uses, 5 with a free account)
  
  You should both see the volume of searches per month + the competition for them. Keep in mind these are approximate values. For example, KWfinder has showed me some keywords have only 30 searches/month, yet I've gotten 40 "impressions" (not visits) only for the last 5 days. Talk about inaccuracy!
  
  For additional keyword ideas, you can use things like Keywordshitter (grand name, I know :D), or Ubersuggest.
  
  Sounds like a chore? It can be indeed. But most of what's to follow is founded on how you do your keyword research. So we have to be careful here. Still, 2 weeks should be plenty to gain a deeper understanding and pick something.
  
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  Competition
  
  Always perform a competition check too. If you're going against too big of a site, it'll be quite hard. If, however, you see newer sites that are also affiliates, there might be space for you. Tools here can be the 'difficulty' score of KWfinder and Moz keyword.
  
  You can also use Semrush for an analysis on any website - its traffic, keywords, backlinks (other websites linking to it) etc.
  
  If you think you can provide better value (longer reviews, more accurate/reader-friendly ones, better images (if you can tinker with Photoshop) etc, you're alright!
  
  For example, I have 2 competitors who I'll never beat. However, I've found that some of them missed some new products and didn't do proper comparisons between models. This has become my small niche where I get some alright traffic from.
  
  Things to look for are DA (Domain authority) and PA (Page authority). Sites with DA <30 are generally alright to takeover if you invest a bit of time. If they're between 10 and 23 DA, go for it! Check this with Mozbar (a free plugin that analyzes PA and DA).
  
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  Writing
  
  Writing can become really daunting, believe me. I've written 44 articles and around 90,000 words. (Yay for having a flexible schedule as a MEXT dude until when I'll get busy as heck :D)
  
  Your first reviews will be, probably, shit. Then, you'll get the hang of it. Proper structure, length (never write to a word count!) etc. Be sure to have an affiliate link above the fold (i.e. on the first 'screen' the user will see).
  
  There's really much to be said here, but summed up, just keep with it. Affiliate marketing, if done correctly, will still take some time to show results...Usually a few months.
  
  Also, you don't need to invest much money. Grab hosting/domain and you can start with a free theme (I used Parabola for Wordpress).
  
  Uh, got really long and I'm tired. But if you decide to start anything, throw me a PM so I can help somehow :D Cheers!
  
  

I'm sorry I can't answer your specific questions exactly, but I can give an anecdote that might help if I know some more information. Do you live in a small town or big city? Do you work for a school or company? Do you have permanent residence or are you here on a work visa?

I might be wary of letting too much info out to Japanese people unless you feel you know them *really* well, but then I don't know the regs on reporting and things like that. My closest Japanese friend whom I've known for 11 years only knows I go to a hospital for my 「心」and we've left it at that. You can PM me for details if you want. :)

Also I second TELL. I have never called them, but the have a good rep.

I got this book to help me. I don't know if you feel you have time to read it, but it can be delivered in a couple of days if you feel you can hold out until then. It's from amazon.co.jp It's not wishy-washy woo woo. It's practical.

How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me: One Person's Guide to Suicide Prevention

You probably already know this site, but I usually read this over and over and over again when it gets really bad:

Metanoia

I know you have your safety plan, just thought I'd see if these might help, too. :)

Edit: Added "my closest Japanese friend." My foreign friends know a lot more. I have Japanese doctors and a Japanese therapist.

P.S. Agree with u/chibicb that there are a lot of people here that successfully treat their conditions, but, as you know, the secret is support. That's why I also agree with u/bulldogdiver. If you (as in anyone) come over here with no clue about how you're going to manage things and then have a freak out and no plan or support, then go home. You seem to have a plan and support here. If it's better for you here, get your care here.

> Everytime I go in for any of this nobody knows a damn thing.

So, it's really important to understand and recognize that PCOS is still something that Western doctors haven't 100% figured out and learned how to treat. Knowing that, and knowing the abysmal quality of OBGYN care in Japan, I would expect that the cluelessness and lack of understanding would be significantly more frustrating here.

Second, get to /r/PCOS if you haven't already. Granted, there's a lot of crap posting from self-diagnosed obese women who attribute their inability to get pregnant/lose weight to PCOS and not their weight/laziness, but I digress...Just use a critical eye and learn to recognize bullshit posts.

It's not PCOS, but it's similar and worth sharing my friend's story: She left Japan last year after 5-6 years of living in the country to return to the US — not because she wanted to, but because she was unable to find a doctor who could understand, let alone properly treat, her endometriosis. She'd been diagnosed in the US about a year prior to her departure while visiting home, and when she was back in Japan, it was a literal nightmare situation for her. It took her months to get birth control/hormonal treatment and she couldn't find a doctor in Tokyo (of all places) who'd had experience with the disorder before — which is surprising, considering it's a very real, well-documented and rather well-understood OBGYN ailment. My friend was consistently told to "ganbare" through her paid (which, if you're familiar with endometriosis, is a fucking laugh and a half) and that she didn't need surgery (which is the #1 best way to help cure/treat endometriosis). At the end of it all, she understood her health was more important than her life here — so she reluctantly left her friends/career/life behind to go home and get the treatment she needed.

Anyway back to PCOS — I was diagnosed, then undiagnosed, then rediagnosed with it throughout my teens and early 20s. (Remember that whole part about it not being understood? I had a doctor tell me that because I wasn't "obese or overweight with a beard" there was no way I could have PCOS. Right.) The #1 treatment method is birth control, so I suggest you get back on it right away. I've had a lot of success with microgestin, but YMMV. Keep in mind it took me switching four different birth control pills/brands over ~5-6 years before finding something that worked. I have a few friends who also have it and they all take some form of oral contraceptive as well.

The birth control will help tremendously with the acne. A lot of women also have success with spironolactone — but I've never taken it, and I'm not sure if you can get it in Japan. Acne and melasma are my biggest symptoms — the other being painful cysts that burst and sent me to the ER — so this is the one area I have a lot of experience with. General OTC acne stuff does not address or help with hormonal cystic acne that's caused by PCOS. The topic stuff that is prescribed in the West (Diffrin, Retinol etc.) isn't legal in Japan. You can manage it in the meantime by using a good salicylic acid product — I actually swear by 明色化粧品 明色美顔水, a Japanese anti-acne lotion (toner) that's been around for 130+ years.

The only other option is, if you can, return to your home country for a doctor visit and get on a good treatment plan with them. You're not going to find help for PCOS and other OBGYN ailments in Japan. They simply refuse to acknowledge their existence.

Second weekend in a long time where I didn't have something to do hanging over my head.

I mentioned before I bought a USS Enterprise-D (holy fuk why is it so cheap now? When I bought it, it was 1 man...) model I wanted to make but getting into it seemed daunting. So I decided to get a smaller, different model as practice - I picked up the original Enterprise refit, as well as some additional tools. I still have yet to actually start, but I have a better idea of the work that needs to be done. This hobby shop is amazing, they've got all sorts of things and pretty much every tool you could think of or want. If my no-work weekends continue (kind of hope not, as that means less money...) then maybe I can start to build the model next weekend.

Have been marathoning Fullmetal Alchemist in anticipation of the live-action movie next month. I think I'm 3/4ths the way through the series. I've seen it before + read the manga but it's still as good as I remembered.

Yesterday I took the family to a shopping mall. The baby conked out during the drive over, so I took her elsewhere while wife and oldest daughter went shopping. Ended up spending 4 hours with the baby, which was good. Wife shopped for the entirely of that time, and still wasn't finished by the time we came back. And then she somehow lost the parking ticket, and forgot my oldest daughter's backpack in one of the shops somewhere (which we later recovered, thankfully).

A friend wants to marathon all the Star Wars movies in anticipation of the Last Jedi, and asked if I'd like to join. ...I'm good. :P The original trilogy isn't that awesome, and for the prequels, I'll stick with the Plinkett reviews and the Auralnauts re-imagining.

I bought an Ender 3X myself and have been really impressed.

The difference between the 3 vs 3X is just accessories that come with it. The 3X has some extra hotend nozzles and comes with the glass bed which you'll want to get regardless (costs ~2600 jpy on its own). Otherwise the printer itself is exactly the same.

Comgrow is an official reseller for Creality, so no concerns there. The listing here appears to be direct from Creality.

What I don't know is if the Comgrow 3X package has the latest ender3 revision or is older stock.

There's been some updates recently that would be beneficial, particularly around the XT60 connectors used for the power connection to the PSU. They had a batch with connectors that had bad crimps causing excess heat due to resistance. They've apparently fixed the issue with their supplier. There's a sticky on the topic in /r/ender3

I found my XT60 started getting really warm to the touch after a few months and decided to replace it completely to avoid any issues. Instead of swapping the connector I decided to direct wire it from the PSU to the control board with heavier gauge just to be safe.

I would go read through the sub a bit as it can have some minor QC issues (as you'd expect from a cheap printer), but overall it's pretty solid. On the other hand you could end up with an Anet A8 which has been getting the reputation for burning up in a ball of flames.

The print quality is incredible for for the price, but it's a printer that will need careful assembly and tuning. It's also easy to fall down the rabbit hole of upgrades, which to me personally is part of the fun of a 3d printer.

If you want something you can use as a base and tinker with it's a great option and the next quality leap would easily require more than double or triple the budget.

There's a ton of youtube videos and reviews out there for these machines. I would recommend going through a bunch of them, including assembly guides to see what you would be getting into.

I'm a software engineer here. I made mediocre money with 10+ years of experience. I freelance now, make less but do things on my own terms


Programming in Japan is not what it is in the U.S. or other tech hubs around the world. You're more likely to make 4 - 7 million / year ( roughly 40 - 70K USD ) instead of the starting 8 - 9 million yen ( 90K ) / year in the U.S. Entry level in Japan is both competitive and hard to get (IMO). There are a lot of talented junior engineers or soon to be engineers so the market isn't really in need of them. It's mid - senior positions that are obtainable.

I also fancy myself an amateur writer, but could never go through what Steven King details in his book, "On Writing." Reading every moment and writing 8+ hours a day just sounds daunting.


If you really do want to get into programming, I would bank on your personality, language skills, and tenacity to get you a job vs. your programming skills. My recommendations:

- Start going to dev meetups and make some friends. People are often the best way into a good position. Finding a mentor is good, too.

- Put 40+ hours into a personal project that you show off to people. Could be a command line utility or some sort of web application that makes your life better.

- Start practicing with leetcode.com. You should aim to solve easy problems in less than 45 minutes. Don't let "easy" fool you, optimal solutions are difficult. You'll need to start studying CS concepts to get through them.

My apartment kitchen has the three prongs. I'll check tonight if it works with two prongs + adapter.

It depends on when you plan on buying that espresso machine and how often you plan on using it. Back in the US, I had an aeropress, a moka pot, a chemex, and an espresso machine. I would say that about 90% of the time, I used an aeropress.

My recommendation would be to buy this grinder: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000AR7SY/ref=pe_2313390_216827310_em_ti

That works perfectly fine for everything except espresso. For an espresso machine, you will need to be spend the money and buy the Virtuoso. The Capresso just doesn't have the ability to grind the beans finely enough for espresso applications.

At the end of the day, it's all up to you, but I think that it would be better to start small and expand the coffee setup later. Plus, when you are ready for an espresso machine, you will love having two separate grinders. Otherwise you would be spending a good amount of beans (expensive) and a bunch of time fine tuning the grinder for the perfect espresso shots every time you swap between different modes of coffee.

u/GravityTxT, geekguy has the best advice on this thread. "will, fortitude, and action".

I never earned much money and retired at 35 to travel full-time. It's not about how much you earn, but how much you spend.

If all my investments magically disappeared and I had to start again, I would get a job in rural Japan, doing something I like, where housing is essentially free, and there's a labor shortage. That's an immediate strong economic position from which to rebuild capital.

Do what you love, avoid lifestyle inflation, enjoy life.

And as a former software industry worker, I say the industry is awful for quality of living, and emotional fulfillment. IT, too.

You need to get concrete on what you want out of life. Read Your Money or your Life by Dominguez/Robin.

If you're a numbers guy read http://earlyretirementextreme.com/, if you're a heart guy read https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/. Even if you want to work to 75, these are great resources for living a examined life, rather than just floating along.

Oh! I got the perfect solution. As long as you don't mind a 2x4 wooden board running from floor to ceiling you can support nearly as much weight as you want. I currently have my projector screen hanging off it as well (as a temporary solution.)

Here's my setup: https://imgur.com/tT2ETE7

They are two plastic "feet" that you attach to the ends of the wooden beam. The top foot has a spring which applies a small bit of tension at the ceiling to keep it in place while the bottom supports the weight. You then do whatever modifications you want to the board. The feet have a bit of soft padding so that it doesn't scratch your floor or ceiling. Even if your ceiling has that soft kind of wall paper, as long as you apply it gently it won't dent or scratch it because it only really applies a small amount of pressure to keep itself upright. Pretty ingenious solution I do think.

The feet were around 800 and the beam was around 900 at my home center which they cut to my size for free, so less than 2000 total for that with a few yen worth of rope and screws to hang it.

Alternatively you could do two boards, one for each of the projector supports if you want it to be extremely secure but this works well for now until I make it a more permanent solution. You have various options for how you want to attach the screen to the board, like hooks or whatever.

Edit: Finally found the name. I could never remember it in Japanese. They are called: ディアウォール.

Here is an Amazon link: http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00QM84KDM

Edited price. Cheaper than I remember.

You could always get these - been using them for a while and they're really great, especially for that price. Pretty comfortable too - didn't need to get used to sleeping with them at all.

Have you considered a seasoned cast iron skillet?
The Lodge ones are cheap and will last forever if you wash them properly after use.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00006JSUA/

I got one of these 7 years ago after a few years of wasting money on the usual variety of non-stick pans and its still going strong.

You need to take a little care in how you clean it after use, but its great to cook with.

Thanks very much....is this the kind of transformer you use? http://item.rakuten.co.jp/netkashi/nti-149/
I want to get a sous-vide too!

And with the earthing deal (another stupid question coming up), when using products like that sous-vide and other things with or without the transformer, what happens with the earthing and those foreign devices' 3-pronged plugs? I've been going a little beyond the simple old 3->2 prong adaptor and using this Hataya extension cord and adaptor for 3-pronged devices to keep some of the earthing going as I connect it to the one socket in my kitchen that actually has an earth.
Even though it's for outdoor use....I used it to connect this Bonavita kettle from the US with temperature control and it seems to have been alright except for error messages coming up sometimes. But I want to go that transformer route for future things. Of course Japan has no shortage of its own great kitchen supplies, but for certain things like the above, I was more enamoured with the American option.

The "against the law" thing may mean that using medicines to clean out your ear come under things you need a medical license to do (there are more things like this than you'd think...). I poked around and found (this)https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%AF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%9E%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF-%E8%80%B3%E6%B4%97%E6%BD%94-20ml/dp/B002UNG086/ref=pd_cp_121_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=B9QJXFW0584YQRFR9X74]. Never used it, no clue what it does besides loosen things up. (The bizarre thing is, nobody has any trouble at all putting bamboo scrapers in their ears...)

Hope this helps. I would recommend going to a ENT soon, though, if you are experiencing hearing loss. It could be a sign of many, many other things, none of them pleasant.

Edit: sorry, reddit's new editor is playing heck with my ability to add the link properly. If it doesn't work as is let me know and I will repost it using tinyurl or something.

12-piece Copic Ciao set:

Amazon US - $40.73 (list price $57.48)

Amazon Japan - 3020 yen (list price 3240y)

3020y = $27.69, so that should give you a bit of an idea.

That said even at retail prices (which is what your friend will be paying if he buys them in a store) it looks like you're saving quite a bit.

How big? I have this for my desk, it's super quiet and spill-proof:

https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B07H98H9F4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Amazon Japan has the gooseneck version of the Bonavita available via Prime.
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B005YR0F40/ref=s9_acsd_hps_bw_cr_x__a_w

I brought over the non-gooseneck version of the Bonavita and have used it for a few years. I like the degree-specific setting and hold mode for up to an hour. Built in timer as well.

bear sprays can be less potent indeed but same are pretty much standard pepper spray labeled as bear spear such as this one (and many others on amazon)

https://www.amazon.co.jp/モチヅキ-371487-カウンターアソールト-熊撃退スプレー-02194/dp/B001MOY6S0

I have no idea how it relates to the BJT test specifically, but there's a textbook called Formal Expressions for Japanese Interaction that's all about formal and business Japanese usages.

It's out of print, but looks like you can still find some copies on Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.jp/Formal-Expressions-Japanese-Interaction-%E3%82%A2%E3%83%A1%E3%83%AA%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AB%E3%83%8A%E3%83%80%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%A6%E9%80%A3%E5%90%88%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E7%A0%94%E7%A9%B6%E3%82%BB%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC/dp/4789005712

Looks like standard apartment wall. Washi tape should be fine (as long as you don't keep it up for like... a year or something). You can also try these removable double-sided tape

I think that was the Lodge ones https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00006JSUA/ Haven't bought one yet but certainly will do in the future

I've never used them, but this sub has sometimes recommends 3M Command Strips even though it states not for use on wallpaper. Sounds like they might fail if it's too humid.

Two options from this thread are picture hooks (available at home centers, LOFT, Tokyu Hands, etc.) that leave an unnoticeable to minimal holes. You may want to buy some wallpaper filler to fix it. Or, for bigger applications, 2x4 achors (available at the same places) if you like the look of that.

Personally, I've always used shelves to display photos in rental units.