What is the first word? Google translated it to the pronunciation, but said the second word means "true feelings"

Having been to many a hot spring, yes (but only in my head).

Edit: seriously, though, sitting in an outdoor bath in the mountains as snow slowly falls is one of life's great simple pleasures

For your first question, maybe take a look at the youtube channel Abroad in Japan.
Usually highlights not so well known locations in various places around japan.

According to some bilingual JP youtube colleagues he is well received in the japanese community.

• really depends upon what you're into and where you want to go. English ability can drop pretty rapidly outside of the cities, but I got by with and handful of words and gestures when I started visiting
• not really. Some old building are tough, but you can duck. I have a buddy who's 194cm (I think) and he's fine (born and raised in Japan)
• not really. I did fine as mentioned it point 1 with some very basic words and I've met plenty of people who knows zero and enjoy their visits

You might have to get used to ducking more than usual. And showers in AirBnBs might be too short to wash your shoulders and head. Hotels in the cities are fine in my experience.

I've only worked at two Japanese companies. My wife has worked at several in her life (and loves her current company and job). I've also read stories of people in bad places asking for advice. I'll answer based on that, but realize that it is not a huge sample size.

"black companies" are very much a thing and take advantage of those that either can't (or feel that they can't) find other work. Recent years have seen laws to reform the number of hours worked and against various forms of "power harassment" (you can google that for what it is, but basically managers/superiors cannot do certain things). My first company in Japan kinda waffled between a company with a ton of overtime, got quite nice, and then went back the opposite direction.

Some of it is just social pressure, which is a big thing in Japan. People don't want to rock the boat, so they will, for example, clock out but keep working, not leave before the boss, etc. Corona causing a lot of people to work from home has changed things, though, and a lot of people who have gone back to the office have a much better understanding of how much useless BS there is and how many hours of their lives they're missing out on. We'll see how it plays out in the future.

"...here's someone on YouTube who lives in Japan that does a good job of showing what living in Japan is really like."

Seriously, what was wrong with that?

"Japanese people on lemmy, what is Japan actually like?" "..."

wow that's so much better than people trying to help!

I don't know of any Japanese who really know of Lemmy and I've never seen it mentioned online (though mastadon is at least somewhat known, but not by the average japanese). Also asking in English is going to limit the pool of respondants quite a bit. I'm not japanese but I've been living here since 2015 and speak japanese on a daily basis with my wife and family.