Things That Suck About Living in Japan: North Korea

There are many good things about living in Japan, like friendly people, a language that you can study by reading comic books, and being able to run into the convenience store with your car running without fear that it will be stolen. There are bad things, too, like being effectively illiterate until you learn to read basic kanji and having a single monolithic culture around you that isn't always flexible about outside ideas, which would present a challenge to, say, someone wanting to live a completely vegetarian lifestyle. The worst thing about living in Japan, though, is having to be next to North Korea. Between shooting missiles over the Japanese islands and doing nuclear tests to kidnapping Japanese citizens and flooding Japan with North Korean-made drugs and counterfeit money, there's just nothing good about being this close to those guys. The country is reported on in the news quite often, and everyone is quite familiar with the scary North Korean newscasters who report their government's version of the news while Japanese commentators parse it for us. One of the biggest links between Japan and North Korea is a surprising one: pachinko. Up to 40% of pachinko establishments are owned by North Koreans, who naturally send their profits back home.

Living next to "Rocket Monster" Kim-Jong Il is not a lot of fun. Anyone want to switch places?