Salt in the wound: The default judgements locking in wage garnishment to pay illegal parts of the debt (on top of the immorality legal ones) because the kind of people who get these loans have many responsibilities and often can’t make an arbitrary court date, and it’s not clear to them the stakes are “show up or lose all recourse” (no appeals are possible).

As long as it’s mutually wanted. One of the women interviewed for the article started building her career later in the marriage, and cites her husband’s anger at her increasing independence as a major factor in their divorce.

If it’s representing value produced by a population, and that population is both growing in numbers and finding ways for each person to be more productive, it makes sense for the index to go up. The current drop in stock markets is not related to either population decline nor to some widespread productivity hit, meaning sustainability isn’t the problem at hand.

My understanding is the most benefit is to children whose teeth are still growing, then secondarily to adults who have substandard dental hygiene. An otherwise healthy adult with good dental care routines is the least impactful case.

Going off on the tangent of distilled water: distilled water can reduce overall minerals in the diet. From WebMD https://www.webmd.com/diet/distilled-water-overview

Distilled water lacks even electrolytes like potassium and other minerals your body needs. So you may miss out on a bit of these micronutrients if you drink only the distilled stuff. Some studies have found a link between drinking water low in calcium and magnesium and tiredness, muscle cramps, weakness, and heart disease

Part of my YouTube diet is English-speaking expat YouTubers who live in Japan (UK, US, Canada, Australia), and just based on what they have shared there are some firms that specialize in property searches by foreigners. Not like “buy up a Japanese town and make it Australian”, just networking with more open-to-foreigner Japanese, and being an interface with foreigners to help them learn to integrate.

Like everywhere in the world, remote villages in Japan lack services. From restaurants to health care to home supplies, it’s more time consuming and expensive to get some things, and others are just not available. From the YouTubers I watch, the community connections enabled by the great mass transit and walkable urban areas in much of Japan (though not all - some parts ate the car-centric pill) are what keep them there, and the friction to maintaining friendships from a rural area has pushed several to move to Tokyo.

As far as “how is Japan adjusting” to population decline, elder care sucks. A lot of people die alone unnoticed (kodokushi). Markets adjust to lower supply of workers (Japan is at the cutting edge of automation), but quality of life for seniors can’t be automated.

People tried staying and being an “inside” ally during Trump’s first term. In the end, it just helped his administration maintain a veneer of competency.

Leave. Let the institution fall. Collapse of the systems people rely on is the only way to gather overwhelming popular support to contain Trump’s destruction.