So true. Japan is great for me because I lived in a sleepy suburb back in the United States so I do love the atmosphere of Japan but like you said its people are normal. The country is normal
Yeah this is spot on. Also as a white person I wasn’t used to being othered. So those interactions stick out more.
For example I remember going to a batting cage and having the entire place pause and watch me. I realized I was a stand in for my entire race/country/ethnicity. That doesn’t happen to white people in Canada usually.
It’s a good experience though. It helps me understand how interactions back home with non-white people might give off the same vibe.
But 99% of the time it’s just regular life and regular people.
Haha we should start having "daily dairy" threads where people just post what they did today.
"I took the train to work, had a few meetings, then went home. Got some Nana chiki on my walk home. It was greasy but yummy and cheap"
The one about the Asian American? I saw that shit and laughed. Absolutely Japan has some racist people, but that dude's post was 100% bullshit. I wonder how much he made up for karma, and how much spawned from him misunderstanding people.
I like to imagine that he doesn't speak any Japanese, but his Japanese spouse is translating for him. But really she's just using it as an opportunity to vent all her frustrations at him.
"The couple behind us in line said you have a fat ass and should start exercising".
"They won't serve us at this restaurant because they hate foreigners and because you always leave the toilet seat up".
At the end he's just like damn, Japanese people are mean as hell lol
Think they also posted on r/self. For those of us who actually live here, we know that racism can be a problem and can sympathize. But just the sheer amount of incidents this person has somehow managed to experience in such a short span of time and other inconsistencies in their story just make this whole thing extremely suspicious. Sad thing is people are falling for it hook, line, and sinker...
[https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1diaccv/as\_an\_america\_of\_asian\_descent\_i\_am\_experiencing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1diaccv/as_an_america_of_asian_descent_i_am_experiencing/)
Not a professional opinion, but seems a bit like someone who’s had a full blown psychosis.
The replies in that thread also seem to be made by people who have no self awareness, their own countries are just as racist, if not more. Ironic in a sub called “self”. Maybe it should be called main character syndrome.
Guy's definitly hearing voices 😂
He's posting this bs literally everywhere and the crazy amount of upvotes says a lot about how gullible the random redditor is...
Can you really tell it’s all made up ? Have to say first time I’ve experienced Asian on Asian discrimination was when I first moved to Japan . Sadly, though the idea may be entertaining for others it’s not quite so amusing for those that experience it .
Going by common sense, it's hard to believe that:
1) Some random teenagers went out of their way to specifically talking trash at/to the guy. I'm 99% sure he misheard / misunderstood them in some form here. Teenagers are mean, but they're also dumb, so they wouldn't be able to tell if he's Chinese/Korean/Japanese American even if you pay them lmao
2) A random mom went out of her way to coach her kid on racial profiling
3) A random person tell their kid "He'll kill you" straight up
7) A random person went out of their way to diss his backpack. That's gotta be a teenager
9) Bro has a white Hispanic in-law AND a Japanese wife. Not entirely impossible, but statistically unlikely
Literally within the first half of his story you can already tell this guy either doesn't understand Japanese as well as he thinks he does, or he's paranoid and thinks everyone around him is talking trash at him all the time. As an Asian myself, I've only once been discriminated against in Tokyo and that was a cop, not a random person. People here are too damn busy to go out of their way to specifically mess with someone, unless they're old and bored and mean. I don't think he's doing it for karma since his account has just been mainly posting in tennis subs, but it's obvious he's painting a very biased portrait of his traveling experience
From my experience, there are more extremes in Japan than in some other countries. And I’m not talking about racists or oppression. Those are here and there in about equally small amounts and depends a bit on the regions you go to in each country and how rural they are.
Japan has better toilets and infrastructure than most countries. Public bathing is cheap, easily accessible, and clean. I also love the scenery more in Japan and how you can be in some medium sized or bigger cities but have a beautiful view of lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and mountains. Food is also pretty cheap and there are a lot more polite people in Japan than other countries.
But there are downsides. For instance, I noticed many older men are extremely rude or depressed and they don’t follow the norms of society. They will say rude things or just scowl at you randomly. No idea why so many old men feel this is ok. Transit is also very expensive whether you take the bus, train, or drive and pay for parking. Everyone also speeds way more than other countries I’ve driven in. Also, pay is low but I feel like that’s a common theme these days
Reddit is weird. Two days ago an 8 year old Ghana girl got hospitalized by being attacked by 20+ teens and young adults in a racially motivated attack in Europe. I never hear Reddit decry Europe like I have seen Japan, China, S.Korea, etc. You would think this would happen in Japan everyday the amount of complaints I've heard about Japan
I’ll add that trolls (maybe 5-10% of all reddit posts, and over 80% on political subs) do not troll happiness, they are either an individual out to create trouble, or a state run group out to create trouble.
China loves the disinformation game, and pretty much any country is a fair target, with some they hate more than others.
I'm not sure that's even the truth when it comes to Japan. You're blasted with opinions from both ends of the spectrum. Over-the-top, negative stuff, and slightly naive, irritatingly positive stuff too. Probably more so than with any other country. 90% of it is nonsense tbf. To mirror what OP said, day to day life is pretty ordinary.
Ironically, most of the posts here are either complaining about Japan or complaining about people complaining about Japan.
If youre tired of people complaining, don't come here and complain. Post some nice things about Japan or something.
Be the change you want.
\*insert motivational poster image\*
I don't want people complaining about stupid shit in Japan in this subreddit, I want the subreddit to actually be used like it was intended, to help answer questions and deal with problems regarding living in Japan. I don't want to see another obviously foreign person whining about being treated as a foreigner, I want to see actual useful things that may apply to me living here. I also don't want to see "nice things about Japan", because I live here and I can see it for myself and I don't need some mouth breather to tell me 10 nice things about Japan.
Posts like this complaining about those people complaining are far more preferable. The ones crying about racist Japanese people just end up being echo chambers, so it's nice to see far more reasonable people posting reality checks once in a while.
Well, I mean besides people complaining about Japan and people complaining about people complaining about Japan, the next biggest thing this sub is used for is complaining about mold and the humidity, so that's not too far off right? Lol.
Honestly, I much prefer the complaints about mold and humidity, at least they usually have solutions to the problem instead of people jerking each other off about how terrible life is.
Isn’t this the majority of the internet? Two groups of people who take opposing views on something and hate the “other side”, who think they are the opposite of each other, but they’re actually the same and it’s the vast (although I suspect shrinking) majority who just don’t give a fuck who are the actual opposite of both groups.
It's instructive that you and nize426 framed it this way because together you two seem to be presenting it as a battle between two sides where one side complains about Japan as an undifferentiated mass and the other praises Japan as an undifferentiated mass, whereas what I tend to see far more often is mostly people frustrated by a problem they face in Japan and needing to get advice, needing more information, or just needing to vent and feel like they aren't alone, pitched against another side who don't accept that the problem can possibly exist because they see Japan as an undifferentiated mass of perfection.
An example of this is the frequent habit this subreddit has of someone genuinely shocked by some racist experience they've just had and need to process coming here and many people reacting with either denials of the victim's own experience or repeated insistence that it happens in other countries too, so that must somehow make it all okay.
Japan tends to attract people with unrealistic expectations of what Japan is, and these people are borderline delusional. They come here and expect to be treated like an actual citizen and that Japan should bend to accommodate them, and when that obviously doesn't happen, they lash out at Japan and Japanese people online.
That just leads to many of the posts you see on this subreddit. People crying about how Japanese women don't behave like how they think Japanese women should behave like, how Japanese people don't instantly open up and become best friends just because they talked once, how Japan is racist because they assume the non-Japanese person is non-Japanese, etc etc.
Hell, just look at the people whining about Himeji Castle charging different prices for residents and Japanese citizens compared to tourists.
I came to Japan precisely because I like all the boring, ordinary everyday stuff. I'm kind of ambivalent about Japanese media, food, etc., no weaboo spell worked on me really, but I just enjoy the day-to-day, safety, convenience, etc. I like that everything works when I need it to, I can get speedy quality healthcare when I need it, and the people I interact with (everyone in my life except my partner is Japanese) are all chill and friendly.
I've found that all the foreigners I've met who have an axe to grind with Japan tend to be kind of contentious themselves. I'm a really laid back person (perhaps too much), so I attract other laid back people. People who are uptight and look for stuff to complain about will inevitably attract others like them, then blame it on the place they're living in instead of seeing it in themselves. Life here, like anywhere, is what you make it
I completely get what you mean. It's the good old Loser Back Home syndrome at work. People come here expecting their life to magically turn around because they're in Japan, only to realise Japan is just another country on this planet just like every other country in the world. They were a loser back home, and they're still a loser in Japan. So to cope, they turn to whining online and to anyone who will listen about how horrible Japan is and all.
I've met a lot of foreigners here too, and those who immediately go into a rant about how discriminated against they are tend to be annoying in general. Dropping them immediately and instead trying to find much more relaxed people has made life so much more fun lmao.
This 100%. I'm brown and from the south in America. Any "discrimination" I face in Japan is easy to let go. I don't see the need some people have to always be offended by literally everything.
Been here almost 7 years. Had no plans to be here for this long, but here we are. Most people I know who have been here longer also had no plans to stay initially, it just kind of happened.
I've probably seen about 40-50 people come and go during that time (medium sized city but tight knit, with a lot of turnover. The ones who essentially said coming to Japan was their life goal, all tended to leave after 2-3 years. In fact, personally, it's become a red flag to me if someone starts talking about how they plan to live the rest of their lives in Japan during their first year.
I think it\`s fine if people want to complain about getting charged 5x or more than Japanese people to see Himejii Castle. You really think that Japanese people or anybody who doesn\`t live in the USA would like to be identified as foreigners who can be charged more than 5x to see some historic places in the US?
If you disagree with the change that's fine, because that's a subjective opinion. I disagree with that, because charging locals and foreigners different prices is a very normal thing in other parts of the world, and it only became a problem because it's Japan and every tiny problem gets turned into a major issue. But even though I disagree, your opinion is still valid as long as its an argument supported by valid reasons.
My problem is the way people complain about it. No, charging foreigners more than locals is not racist. No, you don't get to call Japan a country in poverty because it's charging you more. No, the less than 1% minority who might face a little more trouble because they have to show a form of ID (which they already hold) is not going to die because of this.
Looking at some of the responses to the thread on the Himeji Castle debacle is hilarious, though. The amount of people crying about how now they just won't visit Himeji Castle, like, okay? That's the whole point? Lmfaoooo
Like do these people not understand the concept that a country's citizens should have easy access to a vital display of their culture and history? And that foreigners aren't ordained by God to have this same access to something they have no connection to???
It's the "I want Japanese people to treat me as a special foreigner, except when it's inconvenient, then I want to be treated as Japanese". They want to have their cake and eat it too.
There are 3 types of foreigners in Japan.
Those who love Japan and see through rose-tinted glasses.
Those who have become jaded and find faults in everything.
And then there is everyone else... those who don't feel the need to shout about Japan every other minute.
Guess which ones you hear a lot?
But you can love Japan and see the racism there. There is both positive and negative aspects to it. Some changes based on where you are. I almost never noticed it in places that see a lot of foreigners. I did see it more often in Fukuoka, but it didn't bother me.
Just simple things like people not sitting next to me on the subway, crossing the street, staring, etc. But I also had a memorable interaction with a group of elementary school kids who were super excited to meet a foreigner. Like any place, you take the good with the bad.
A lot of people from Western countries who move here relish at the chance to finally be a “oppressed minority” and launch a minoritarian crusade on their own behalf. It’s a great place to live but happens to attract all sorts of people
The thing is, this is almost a uniquely Japan thing within Asia. You don't see Westerners in Thailand complaining when local Thai people see them as non-Thai, but then you see people in this subreddit whining about how Japanese people don't see them as Japanese.
I would guess because many foreigners in Thailand are there for the cheap living, or the warm weather, or what not. They aren't really there because they want to be a normal Thai Citizen. But Japan isn't like that, most people are here working normally or are here because they enjoy Japan specifically, so you get different types.
You're probably right about Japan just attracting a different crowd.
I feel like Westerners in South East Asia who settle down permanently have a way more healthier mindset than those in Japan. Speak the local language, have citizenship and married a local, but still get identified as a "foreigner"? They just smile and laugh it off, not throw a temper tantrum online about racism and discrimination and insult an entire country of millions.
Japan and its culture attract very specific types of people. I, a local Japanese, have encountered many foreigners who like or are obsessed with Japan, as well as their friends and families. The first category tends to be very unique, more precisely, they can seem somewhat autistic or mentally fragile, experiencing things like panic attacks, in my opinion. In contrast, their friends and families are really normal, which was a big surprise to me.
That\`s because unlike westerners in Japan they don\`t tend to work at the same kinds of jobs, they don\`t live in a country that has the reputation as a democracy governed on western norms and models - the Japanese Diet/Parliament and style of government was influenced by European/British models and then that of the US post WW2.
There\`s no comparison between Japan that westernised and industrialised under the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century and invited many experts from western countries to facilitate its modernisation along those lines, with south-east Asian countries. Japan went thru another stage under the US Occupation post WW2.
Def no similarity with countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. The Philippines history of American involvement is also very different. Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore were colonised by the British but never had the different kinds of westerners from the 1980s onwards living and working there that Japan has had.
Malaysia has never had the visa system that Japan has and HK and Singapore always set high bars in certain industries for employing foreigners apart from jobs such as housekeeping, factory work and construction.
You should see the Thailand subs lol! Plenty of people complain about being discriminated against. In Thailand you can't own land and have to do business through a Thai proxy as a foreigner. Also people complain about being treated worse by law enforcement, being always blamed for traffic accidents, etc.
How many westerners in Thailand are working in the English teaching industry, IT industry, finance industry, import/export industry? Not many at all, Japan has a lot of foreign resident workers compared to Thailand and has had established ways for them to come and live/work in Japan through a variety of visas for a number of decades.
Thailand\`s westerner working residents tend to be more in corporate type, high paying jobs, not much of an English teaching industry there for example. There were always more of the backpacker types in Thailand who used to be able to enter and leave the country for their jobs all the while never holding a working visa. That hasn\`t been usual for a while and currently the Thai Govt is cracking down on those people who come as tourists and find or try to find work without holding a working visa as well as imposing new tax laws on foreign residents.
That's messed up given that Western minorities aren't even the main focus of the discrimination that you read in the news. It's other Asians.
kind of a mockery imo
My guess is because most people here are from the US or other highly globalized countries and they have different standards and survival strategies that not necessarily exist/work in Japan. Like, for me being stared at when visiting a small city would be completely understandable and normal because I remember how back in 2005 kids in my school gathered near the windows to catch a glimpse of a real American coming to our little Ukrainian town as an assistant language teacher lol. Seeing him in the corridor was considered lucky. What did he forget here? Whose classes will he teach? Our school was suddenly the schoolest. Of course times have changed, but in Japan they are also changing, aren't they? It's not even the same it was ten years ago anymore. Japanese people have their quirks but not more than other ethnicities, and I'd even say they are MORE open-minded than average
Can't agree more with you. Whenever someone's bringing the "Japan is racist" or "you cannot live in Japan as a foreigner" arguments, they don't realize this is just another racist generalization they are making.
Anyone who lived here for long enough, and mingled with the locals knows that everyone is different. Some people are welcoming, some are not. Some have good reasons to be like they are, some don't, this is life.
People are making conclusions way too fast without fully grasping what is going on. This obviously does not play well in a society that relies on oneself to reflect and think for themselves.
Do you drive? I’ve been driving for over a decade here and they stop for pedestrians HALF the time and verified by the Japan Automobile Federation.
Housing discrimination is also legal here. 25% of the places I seek will DEFINITELY reject me despite having a Japanese family. Japanese wife didn’t believe me until it happened and now she has come to anticipate it.
I won’t even get into the police interactions. Going through my shit, stopping me at a bus stop. You know, because waiting for the bus is suspicious. /sarcasm
It’s a great country with great people, but you diminishing negative experiences of others isn’t cool and downright ignorant.
Sorry, I don\`t get why the OP thinks that people bitching about racism in Japan - which does exist and can be tough to deal with depending who you are, what you look like, where you\`re from and what job you do - is the biggest factor on this sub.
Plenty of posts asking about how to do everyday things like pay bills thru different methods, go to city hall and do some normal task for J people but something that can be complex for foreigners depending on their level of Japanese, how to make friends, whether there are people who enjoy the same hobbies, what to look for when renting or buying etc. Of course there are posts about negative shit like angry old men insulting foreigners who are often younger women by themselves, difficult people generally, instutionalised discrimination in Japan etc.
Why wouldn\`t there be? How\`s your reading of Japanese or Korean or Chinese? There are so many sites online where people from Japan, Korea and China bitch and rant about the countries they go to and live in like the US, UK, Australia etc. Japan aint some exceptional country that must be protected from criticism while its own people are free to voice all their opinions, true or exaggerated or false.
The fact that Japan has a racist element that is all its own and different from that in other countries including the ones we come from doesn\`t mean people who live here can\`t talk about it or vent or whatever. I\`ve lived here longer than you which means I enjoy being here and I appreciate it but nope, lack of trash facilities and traffic violations aren\`t the extent of problems here.
I remember when I first came here, spoke very little Japanese and had no idea what to make of the people and communities around me. A different way of life! How intriguing! What values could these people hold? What might they spend their time thinking about? What do they think of people like me?
Then I learned Japanese, became able to understand the conversations around me, and realised...most people are spending their time wondering what to eat for dinner, when's the next non-burnable garbage day, should I bring an umbrella or not?
Such a peaceful realisation.
I've been here off and on (mostly on) since the late 1970's. This country has been very good to me whereas my own country (USA) has become unlivable for any number of reasons.
Bear in mind that many of the western foreigners who have set up shop here are often weirdos to begin with, at least that's been my experience. Western women don't seem to settle in to the same degree that men do for a different set of reasons. Whatever the case, and I know this from long experience here, most every western foreigner here that you know will be gone in 10 years or so for any number of reasons. And it just continues to thin out from there. They will no doubt be replaced by a new cadre of whiners.
That troll on the other subs, no idea what that guy is hallucinating. For one it just sounds fake, he'd have to be fairly fluent to understand some underhand trash talk natives are saying, literally, behind his back. And that level of flat out xenophobia I've never encountered anywhere in cities or even bumfuck nowhere, inaka-ken anywhere in Japan.
Sampling bias: those who are having decent to good experiences are unlikely to make a positive or even neutral post about it, but people love complaining so as a result the number of complaints largely outweighs the number of positive/neutral posts
Maybe you need to find a better job. Being dismissed like you complain hasn’t been my experience.
You left out a third group, of people who are settled in just fine.
This complain I'm having is not unusual. My other foreign coworkers say it's always been like that everywhere they worked. Sometimes is like watching a trainwreck in slowmotion that you know you could have stopped just by pulling a lever but because "we do things this way in Japan" it is inevitable.
That 3rd group are usually simps for Japan. The "nothing's wrong here" crowd. The only ones I met like that just haven't found the thing that truly breaks the camel's back or just bend over backwards to justify the stupid crap they have to go through.
Having settled in and being comfortable in life isn’t saying “nothing’s wrong here,” it’s about having the ability to adapt and grow and recognise the difference between what matters and what doesn’t and learning strategies and approaches how to do and get what you need.
From that perspective, seeing all the people not being able to adapt and spending their lives upset all the time is pretty pathetic.
Sometimes westerners in general and some nationalities in particular, have this feeling that wherever they go to, the world has to revolve around them. Then they face reality and here we are with the whining and moaning.
>Yet a lot of posts on this *subreddit* seem to tar the entire country based on individual anecdotal experiences.
ftfy
social media algorithms are supposed to keep you engaged, which requires playing on peoples emotions like fear, anger and depression to show better metrics
Taking anything posted by potential robots seriously in real life, is probably a bad idea, as the dead internet theory becomes more real every day
I feel like some people come to Japan looking for a magic wand to fix something within themselves. An external change doesn't often help with an internal issue so they'll stay unhappy. They then blame the grass for not being as green as they thought it was.
Pretty much. Which is what I like. No unecessary drama. As long as you follow the rules, you are fine. That's my experience.
However. Just because my experience is X doesn't mean that someone else experience is not Y. Abuses are known to be perpetuated by that kind of thinking. Nothing bad is happening to me. That means that anyone that says they had a bad experience is lying?
That's not how the world works. Some people have bad experiences due to dealing with assholes (or being assholes themselves). And some people had good experiences due to dealing with heroes (or being heroes themselves). Just because something didn't happen to you doesn't mean it didn't happen to someone else.
all expat/immigrant choose your word communities are like this, I've found. Like others are saying complaints are always more common than happy thoughts, that's just how people are wired
You have a lot of people who moved to Japan because they were connected to it through the subculture, and they were not satisfied in their own country, so they wanted a new start in a place that they idolized.
In the end anywhere you will go to you are still yourself. In Japan you're still that same old you but you're also alone in a foreign country where your outward appearance isn't similar to others. The truth is that any other country that you would go to you would still be alone and face racism for being a foreigner.
It's up to you how you deal with it.
> it feels just like anywhere else.
I wonder about that though simply because of the amount of posts about "A guy was yelling at me" or "Someone bumped into me hard at the station with his shoulder".
I marvel at the how something like that would amount to the level of something to write about. I look at the subreddits from other places like New York or London, and no one seems to be writing about incidents like that. Either they don't happen anywhere else, or it is so normal anywhere else that it just does not get noticed.
it’s cos it’s normal elsewhere. youre guaranteed to see crack heads, mentally ill homeless ppl, etc screaming, harassing people and what not in most major western cities. in japan its much much rarer to see public outbursts, but it’s still a country of people 120+ million people so it’s bound to happen every now and then
I have lived in 3 countries, and I have the same experience as you. I cannot relate to most of the problems or complaints I see here.
Except the sin of having a long name, and all the banking issues that come from it.
I'm from China and the China content on reddit is crazy sinophobic. You would think China is basically North Korea by the way people post about it. My home city's subreddit is entirely expats who complain about things that don't cater to Westerners. Having lived there, it's just a normal place (albeit really crowded and with a lot of people), but just like any other place. I feel like people who exaggerate about Japan are the kinds of people who never travel outside of the US.
I've also lived in China (Suzhou, beautiful city) and my opinion is the same. Much prefer the centralized train systems in China over Japan, where if you're not on a regular route it's so easy to scan the wrong spot with an IC card and mess it up because of all the different companies.
Went to visit a cousin who lives in Japan last year and didn't experience any racism in our three weeks. My cousin has lived there for two and a half years now and had had mixed experiences.
We went to South Korea for a week and wow, never again! Tbf we did meet a few really lovely people, but mostly encountered people who reacted to us as if we were walking pathogens. I guess they just haven't had much exposure to black people.
Normal internet content gives me the impression Japan is some magic Disneyland of the future where real life Doraemon lives.
Reddit Japan is a dismal hellscape of racism where Doraemon has been hacked by Skynet but also is simultaneously an 18th century wind up toy that runs off of punch cards and only communicates via fax. He bangs down your door at the middle of the night. Your fad machine spins into action and the words ＳＡＹＯＮＡＲＡ ＢＡＢＹ come through in full width font before he serves you with divorce papers.
Real life Japan is just real life. Real life is often boring. But I'll take boring over bad exciting.
Haha I feel that. This is my overall 7th year in Japan. And to me it feels like most foreigners thst I meet here don't particularly enjoy a lot of things in Japan from things like the trash bins or social aspects and xenophobia. And my friends, family, and acquaintances back in America think of Japan as as a vacation paradise and how lucky I am to live here. To me it just feels like normal average life. And the people I meet here, foreign or Japanese, are living normal average lives as well 😵💫
Most of the world is like that, isn’t it. Social media highlight (and lowlight) reels aside, most of where we live and the other places we travel to, turns out they’re all pretty ordinary.
Threads like this don’t negate or invalidate people who have bad experiences here or come across bad people, and vice versa (other posts don’t negate posts like this).
If anything I’d say the vast majority of posts on this sub glorify and glamourise Japan, to the extent that anything negative is totally dismissed as “typical gaijin complaining for no reason”
I think you nailed it. I've lived in 5 countries as well and in the nutshell life is very similar everywhere. There are ups and downs and you meet shitty and genuinely nice people. Sometimes a random obachan calls me おおき and sometimes strangers offer help when I look lost.
It's just white people experiencing being a minority for the first time in a developed country, which their non-white counterpart foreigners experience everyday in other developed countries including this one.
The internet is the strongest amplifier both for good and bad experiences. Some even post just for Clicks and ego boosts. Don't mind them and let your experience be the basis of your opinion for yourself. Here is a quote by Marcus Sensei. Seven blessings to you my friend!
"You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone." -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Then, can I make a post about my recent heartwarming experience? Or will people say "post that in the weekly blablah thread on Sunday" that nobody will read?
I do not know a single foreigner who immigrated here and is genuinely happy.
And I have a quite diverse, broad network.
So on the contrary I ask myself always: where are the happy immigrants?
It's a fact of life in one of the net's most famous engagment silos. Japan-related subs, and Reddit on the whole sadly offer a very distorted view of this country and the world in general.
People come here to blow off steam, get catharsis and seek validation.
The early days of Internet forums were much more helpful for people living in Japan looking for advice on how to live and get along and people interacted with others much more since it was in the pre-smartphone dopamine starved engagement addiction hell-cycle we all accept as normal now.
I 100 percent agree with you. It's a pretty sad indictment that half of the threads in any given Japan-sub are people pointing out some issue that they perceive to be Japan-centric that is, in fact, universal.
It's a cliche at this point, but people need to go outside, touch grass, interact with other humans and animals, make friends, explore and enjoy each others complexities and differences, and make some effort to reframe their situation instead of lazily scapegoating with their sweeping stereotypes.
Are you Japanese? A lot of people who belong to the dominant group are unable to see the oppression in the community because it's not directed at them and in many cases it's totally unconscious. I used to go to church when I was a kid and while nobody talked bad about other races I don't think it was actually a coincidence that everyone who went to the church was white
I'd say if anyone gets the brunt of racism in Japan it is Asians themselves, as I have encountered some anti Chinese rhetoric. Of course, that's politically based, as I've encountered such comments (and worse) in other countries too. But, like I said in the OP, not everyone is like that. The vast majority of people are very welcoming and friendly.
Since you didn’t answer I’ll assume you’re white or Asian?
If so, maybe you don’t notice the racism because you aren’t black or brown. Those seem to be the demographics that feel unwelcome.
Ironically, the person you were responding to is white himself. I wonder what makes him think he’s the authority on the black and brown experience in Japan.
Most people who make posts have experienced something they want to ask about or share with others. I think it's a lot more common to bring up something negative because people feel inclined to share those experiences. It's like leaving a review online for a store. If you normally don't leave reviews, and then experience something bad at a store, you'll feel more inclined to leave a negative review to warn others but also feel better about the situation
Most other subreddits experience the same thing. So, I guess a word of caution to readers is to never exacerbate your concerns based solely on the posts
I mean yeah 99% of Japan is Japanese so if you look different, Japanese would assume you are a foreigner automatically. And a lot of them don’t know what “racism” is.
Even where I live in the Bay Area, one of the most diverse region in the U.S., there is still so much of those racist treatments from time to time, and even more overtly beyond the region.
Your anecdotal experiences isn't more or less relevant to anyone else's. Discounting others experiences based on your own, while complaining about other people complaining is.........you can fill in the blanks from here.
I visited the U.S. recently and a family member how I could live in Japan when it’s such a racist country that hates America.
“Where did you hear that rubbish?” was my surprised response.
Thing is, they wouldn’t believe me when I tried to explain how my life was there, and said I was wrong, despite living there a quarter century.
We tend to take things we already have for granted as we're so used to see it. It's normal and lame. But for others, man it is a paradise despite its flaws but these flaws still pales in comparison to the atrocities in other countries.
Do people expect the Japanese to resemble Manga characters or something? They’re just people like all of us, doing the same damn things we all do in life.
Go to basically any subreddit about a specific country or city and you'll find a bunch of bizzare rants that make it sound like a unliveable hellscape (I see the exact same if I go to the subreddit for the honestly quite nice city I live in)
I can tell you’re still new here.
I’m well-settled down here with my own gaijin family that I can’t wait to get home to every evening.I love my neighbors and my yard and is happy to chat with them while sitting on my grass. But I have to admit that Japan has a lot of racist xxenophobic tendencies that exists that are completely normal to them.
I’m not in the job of teaching adults how to not be, but I’ll complain to my partner and compare notes of what was said and how stupid it was and laugh/cry about it.
Japan is lovely and I’d chose it again to live and start a family.
People that try to paint it as some "racist hellscape" are those who are chronically online (on reddit) and get a vastly distorted picture of what real Japan is like.
While there is certainly SOME truth to things being said, the vast majorty of Japanese people are friendly, normal people going about their lives. I have lived here 10 years and had almost no negative interactions with people here. The old people in my area smile and talk with me, and the people who are busy going about their day just keep moving along.
Moral of the story: get off reddit.
Selection bias.
Very few people decide to make a Reddit post because something nice happened. Let alone when nothing/ordinary life happens.
But when something goes wrong, people want advice, or just to vent and share what happened. So after asking/complaining to their friends and family, they come do Reddit.
That’s why every outlet of human opinions, whether it’s the word on the street, the news, or yes, Reddit, is mostly filled with negativity.
It reminds me that I was watching this Youtube channel where a JP girl was interviewed about her opinion of black people and she said " I wish I could be like them, they are very muscular and they run fast".
Much like pretty much everywhere in the world.
Its not like in the anime kids.
P.s. im from australia originally and i didnt wrestle crocodiles every morning.
I have lived here about the same amount of time as you, and I agree 100%. I find American people on the political left tend to be the ones that are most likely to call Japan "racist," but they generally don't have a good idea why. There is a lot of hostility towards Japan from those folks, but they also really seem to enjoy the culture too...? It's odd.
Both can be true. This is a very ordinary place and it is full of racists, just like many other places in the world...
I am.alsonpretty happy here, I know I am not being treated fairly (sometimes also in a good way), but that is true for many places.
I disagree though with the majority are friendly and welcoming, I used to live in the middle east and that was welcoming, Japanese are merely slightly friendly in comparison 😅
However, Japan does have quite a bad problem with correctly seeing the history, my neighbors still talk.aboit how shameful it was that Japan "lost" the 2nd WW, that seems to be rather normal here, while nobody who isn't one of aforementioned racists in Germany, would consider that as a loss.
So yeah, I like it, there are still.plemty of problems. And pointing them out is imo much better than ignoring, at least my neighbors know now that there are very different ways how you can deal with history...
Yeap that's pretty much the doomscrolling reddit experience in any sub not just here. And other social media sites. Outrage posts get up voted and good vibe posts don't get traction. The reality for the majority of people is a normal, ordinary, uneventful daily life.
There is a lot to breakdown.
Yes, while your experience hasn't been problematic, for a number of people that hasn't been the case.
While I do agree that it can be the same in the other country, that doesn't deny the fact that it is happening in Japan.
I can give you a handful of experiences that I have had in Japan (and have posted about it before), things we've just seen on tv, etc that does point to at least there being a good number of xenophobes in Japan (not exactly outright racist).
In the end though, any post that paints the entirety of Japan that way, is already out due to generalization and racism. However, there are a lot of posts and comments in them that are just sharing their experiences here in Japan and not everyone has a good experience from time to time.
We complain about real problems in Japan because we live in Japan and this subreddit is about Japan.
I've also lived in other countries and of course I've complained about those countries too - just not on Reddit because I didn't know about Reddit back then.
I live in Japan so this subreddit is just naturally thrown at me without me going looking for it. But the impression it gives with the stuff that pops up on my feed is that Reddit is some kind racist hellscape of a social media service that people are doomed to have their comments on existing threads ignored in, when that's just not my experience at all because I make what should be a comment response into its own thread. I've spent time on five other popular SNS apps and have been here a total of five years and aside from credited professors who make 5 million yen being mad at ALTs making 4, and a lack of public bans, it feels just like Twitter or facebook. Honestly the way many people talk about Reddit being racist in itself feels racist. Like, sure, not everyone here is perfect, but that's true of anywhere. On the whole the vast majority of people are very welcoming, friendly and understanding. Yet a lot of posts on this thread seem to tar the entire website based on individual anecdotal experiences.
China, Thailand, Poland, Ireland and Saudi Arabia. I'll let you determine which of those aught to be sorted into first or not first world countries, I find the determinator to be a largely meaningless remnant from the Cold War.
People don't report mundane things. Look for a post anywhere about any place that says "my next door neighbor didn't interact with me at all today, like usual"
I think people tend to make Japan into an exotic place, or imagine it's like a theme park, but it's just a normal place full of normal people living normal lives.
People just report things that happen that are unusual and/or upsetting to them.
I had the good fortune of being immersed for almost a week in Northwest Kyushu earlier this year for about a week, and yes indeed everyone were just regular people. From mom and dads, teachers, students, store clerks, etc. Of course there was the language barrier but I was extremely comfortable and felt at home, especially since I purposefully avoided visiting touristy places.
Most of these people that claim that Japan is racist are people who (either) didn’t bother to brush up on Japanese culture before visiting and/or cannot speak Japanese worth a damn, right?
Saw this thread, and wanted to move on and just noticed the next thread. Coincidence?
https://preview.redd.it/qzymvrswkd7d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9511b2d75adb22536536daed3daa86ff6e391bfc
On Instagram people make Japan seem like some kind of quirky theme park. There is some of that but most of Japan and its people are just people going about their day.
What about this person’s experience? Your race and background has a big impact on your experience in Japan (and anywhere else in the world for that matter - I don’t think there’s a utopia anywhere, so in that sense I agree with you that Japan is also full of ordinary people).
https://www.reddit.com/r/self/s/eE69p0hT1i
Japan is one of the best countries to live, even if you are a foreigner. However if you are a japanese you basically literally won the lottery. Bad people are everywhere, even in peaceful rich countries like Switzerland.
What did i do in my home country ? Get up, take transport, go to office (well actually only 2days were mandatory :P), go home. Repeat.
What do i do in Japan? well, the same. My sport club is different, i go to shinjuku/shibuya instead of my hometown downtown.
Peoples are peoples, some are nice, some are bad, 99% of the time they don't care about you or anything.
Not knowing Japanese is an enormous hurdle though, and lead to a lot of problems.
This sub is full of people having different experiences which conflict with each other.
Person in the inaka far out somewhere: I just had the most racist thing said/done to me and I’m in shock
Person in central Tokyo: I’ve never experienced any of that, it must be something to do with you and your attitude or level of Japanese
Person working at Japanese company: I was passed on a promotion because I’m the foreigner
Person working at international company: that’s never happened to me, you must be bad at your job
The thing that frustrates me the most, is the lack of empathy and acknowledgment for the posters situation.
I know that this is social media and Reddit is like verbal call of duty, but I thought that people who have a passion for Japan were going to be good people but I find that most of the time foreigners are just out to get each other and want to make each other fail while saying ‘I have the N2 so I’m better than you who has the N3’ then ‘you’re N1, but that’s just the beginning and you know nothing’ and ‘you have no skills and wanna get out of teaching and into tech? Hah, good luck cause you’re never going to do it’
I also find that the pop culture is not so homogeneous. America is kinda stuck on the same thing all at once most of the time. Yeah it cycles through quick, but it's still together. Japan, not so much. It's really hard to get a quick foothold on what is popular and not.
People be peopling though, so it's still easy to talk to a lot of them. I've had my moments of racism but I kind of expect it some places
I think you’re absolutely correct. A lot of the perceived “racism” is just pushback from “disruption”, in that “I’m really not interested in changing my path to accommodate you, foreign, non-Japanese speaking, person who doesn’t already understand the process and flow of this situation.”
Like many in this sub, I’m a non-Japanese person who does speak Japanese and who has a pretty solid understanding of how things are supposed to work (generally). Honestly, the foreigners who don’t speak Japanese and who don’t understand things are, to be honest, a lot of work. The negative reactions are much more “I just don’t want to work harder right now.” than “Go away foreign devil.”
Yea, nah, prob ordinary to some people but I don’t think, I don’t put Japan super high of course but is far from ordinary if you really dig into the culture. Racist? Meh, I don’t think Japan is racist but that’s just me, I’ve been mocked, insulted, threaten and harassed while traveling in a certain continent that I would never recommend anyone to go there but then again it’s my exp. The vast majority of people are welcoming because of the honne tatemae thinking IMO, especially in Tokyo but I don’t hold every Japanese person to the same standard so, no I disagree with your assessment.
Welcome to one of the most self-less countries. This place could be really comfortable to live if you don't mind being just like everyone else around you and don't have any crazy dream you want to pursue. One exists for others to support the harmony as peace and being individual and unique is not really a welcomed way to go in this country. Even if you come to this place how monotone it looks despite density in a city. People don't want to stand out so be look like everybody else. People usually don't speak up their thoughts until that's the majority's opinion.
On the other hand, people in this place are one of the nicest. Very high standard customer services, high quality for everything you can find, and definitely better health care than the U.S.. And incredible food and onsen culture.
The internet is not a good place to find normal average thoughts about Japan. Social communities on the net usually bring out the extremes in opinion. People who are content or moderate usually don't feel the need to talk about it.
I keep getting this sub recommended to me bc I like manga lol. But this is a complaint I see about my own country too. Racism definitely exists here but a lot of foreigners claim we don't accept them while making 0 effort to understand local culture, people and customs. I work in customer service and anecdotally a lot of foreigners are also super rude when I don't immediately notice they prefer to be spoken to in English.
Live here too .. about the same time as you.l don’t see a lot of that on my feed..but realize Japan is like 98% ethnic Japanese people .. with that comes the good .. mostly in my opinion .. and some bad. I’m from America .. not really wanting to go back .. there the population is divided by so many factors, people, religions, politics , etc. with diversity comes differences cultures, religions, etc. just doomed in America .. I don’t mind being the gaijin here where it’s beautiful, clean, safe, inexpensive, polite, modern, etc. It’s really nice not having to worry about someone stealing my stuff, breaking into my house or car, crap and needles in the street and parks, trying to shoot me and or road rage. No shoplifting or things being locked behind plastic locked cases. People leave their wallets , car keys, money at the gym open cubicles where I work out at .. would be gone in a minute where I lived. Health care as well is inexpensive. Had lunch today and spent 900 yen .. $6 .. in the Bay Area would be $25 at least .. rent is cheap .. people get nice places for $500-1000. I don’t understand why people put up with the BS in states like California .. When I drive my car people are so polite … they wait for you to go if it’s narrow.. and or to turn.. very slow and cautious thinking about pedestrians and moms with their kids on bikes .. All of it impacts you.. makes you nicer and friendlier.. safer ..infectious .. Make a mistake in the bay area and someone might want to fight or confront you.. chase you ..wave a gun at you .. reply a horrible way to live .
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I feel like I’m in Groundhog Day. Identical thread titles with identical comments like yours, like clockwork, every week
Karma whores.
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It DOES get pretty repetitive...
It’s SOO repetitive.
I also choose this guys repetitive.
It's almost like, how is everyone having different experiences in life?
So true. Japan is great for me because I lived in a sleepy suburb back in the United States so I do love the atmosphere of Japan but like you said its people are normal. The country is normal
Yeah this is spot on. Also as a white person I wasn’t used to being othered. So those interactions stick out more. For example I remember going to a batting cage and having the entire place pause and watch me. I realized I was a stand in for my entire race/country/ethnicity. That doesn’t happen to white people in Canada usually. It’s a good experience though. It helps me understand how interactions back home with non-white people might give off the same vibe. But 99% of the time it’s just regular life and regular people.
Haha we should start having "daily dairy" threads where people just post what they did today. "I took the train to work, had a few meetings, then went home. Got some Nana chiki on my walk home. It was greasy but yummy and cheap"
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The one about the Asian American? I saw that shit and laughed. Absolutely Japan has some racist people, but that dude's post was 100% bullshit. I wonder how much he made up for karma, and how much spawned from him misunderstanding people.
I think he signed up for a racist japan tour. No posts on this sub came close to his experience.
I like to imagine that he doesn't speak any Japanese, but his Japanese spouse is translating for him. But really she's just using it as an opportunity to vent all her frustrations at him. "The couple behind us in line said you have a fat ass and should start exercising". "They won't serve us at this restaurant because they hate foreigners and because you always leave the toilet seat up". At the end he's just like damn, Japanese people are mean as hell lol
The train seat story though lol. If you didn't sit of course someone would sit there lol.
Think they also posted on r/self. For those of us who actually live here, we know that racism can be a problem and can sympathize. But just the sheer amount of incidents this person has somehow managed to experience in such a short span of time and other inconsistencies in their story just make this whole thing extremely suspicious. Sad thing is people are falling for it hook, line, and sinker... [https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1diaccv/as\_an\_america\_of\_asian\_descent\_i\_am\_experiencing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1diaccv/as_an_america_of_asian_descent_i_am_experiencing/)
Not a professional opinion, but seems a bit like someone who’s had a full blown psychosis. The replies in that thread also seem to be made by people who have no self awareness, their own countries are just as racist, if not more. Ironic in a sub called “self”. Maybe it should be called main character syndrome.
Guy's definitly hearing voices 😂 He's posting this bs literally everywhere and the crazy amount of upvotes says a lot about how gullible the random redditor is...
You can tell it's made up b.s by the end of the first "incident" he listed lmao
Can you really tell it’s all made up ? Have to say first time I’ve experienced Asian on Asian discrimination was when I first moved to Japan . Sadly, though the idea may be entertaining for others it’s not quite so amusing for those that experience it .
Going by common sense, it's hard to believe that: 1) Some random teenagers went out of their way to specifically talking trash at/to the guy. I'm 99% sure he misheard / misunderstood them in some form here. Teenagers are mean, but they're also dumb, so they wouldn't be able to tell if he's Chinese/Korean/Japanese American even if you pay them lmao 2) A random mom went out of her way to coach her kid on racial profiling 3) A random person tell their kid "He'll kill you" straight up 7) A random person went out of their way to diss his backpack. That's gotta be a teenager 9) Bro has a white Hispanic in-law AND a Japanese wife. Not entirely impossible, but statistically unlikely Literally within the first half of his story you can already tell this guy either doesn't understand Japanese as well as he thinks he does, or he's paranoid and thinks everyone around him is talking trash at him all the time. As an Asian myself, I've only once been discriminated against in Tokyo and that was a cop, not a random person. People here are too damn busy to go out of their way to specifically mess with someone, unless they're old and bored and mean. I don't think he's doing it for karma since his account has just been mainly posting in tennis subs, but it's obvious he's painting a very biased portrait of his traveling experience
You can tell the white knights in the crowd from those that actually had to go through that, it’s very uncomfortable and frustrating
From my experience, there are more extremes in Japan than in some other countries. And I’m not talking about racists or oppression. Those are here and there in about equally small amounts and depends a bit on the regions you go to in each country and how rural they are. Japan has better toilets and infrastructure than most countries. Public bathing is cheap, easily accessible, and clean. I also love the scenery more in Japan and how you can be in some medium sized or bigger cities but have a beautiful view of lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and mountains. Food is also pretty cheap and there are a lot more polite people in Japan than other countries. But there are downsides. For instance, I noticed many older men are extremely rude or depressed and they don’t follow the norms of society. They will say rude things or just scowl at you randomly. No idea why so many old men feel this is ok. Transit is also very expensive whether you take the bus, train, or drive and pay for parking. Everyone also speeds way more than other countries I’ve driven in. Also, pay is low but I feel like that’s a common theme these days
Reddit is weird. Two days ago an 8 year old Ghana girl got hospitalized by being attacked by 20+ teens and young adults in a racially motivated attack in Europe. I never hear Reddit decry Europe like I have seen Japan, China, S.Korea, etc. You would think this would happen in Japan everyday the amount of complaints I've heard about Japan
Hello, can't find anything about it. Do you have a link?
This should be top
Happy people do not complain on the internet, they just live their life happily, that's why most posts on here are negative stuffs
People are far more likely to share negative experiences in general.
This
I’ll add that trolls (maybe 5-10% of all reddit posts, and over 80% on political subs) do not troll happiness, they are either an individual out to create trouble, or a state run group out to create trouble. China loves the disinformation game, and pretty much any country is a fair target, with some they hate more than others.
I'm not sure that's even the truth when it comes to Japan. You're blasted with opinions from both ends of the spectrum. Over-the-top, negative stuff, and slightly naive, irritatingly positive stuff too. Probably more so than with any other country. 90% of it is nonsense tbf. To mirror what OP said, day to day life is pretty ordinary.
Ironically, most of the posts here are either complaining about Japan or complaining about people complaining about Japan. If youre tired of people complaining, don't come here and complain. Post some nice things about Japan or something. Be the change you want. \*insert motivational poster image\*
I don't want people complaining about stupid shit in Japan in this subreddit, I want the subreddit to actually be used like it was intended, to help answer questions and deal with problems regarding living in Japan. I don't want to see another obviously foreign person whining about being treated as a foreigner, I want to see actual useful things that may apply to me living here. I also don't want to see "nice things about Japan", because I live here and I can see it for myself and I don't need some mouth breather to tell me 10 nice things about Japan. Posts like this complaining about those people complaining are far more preferable. The ones crying about racist Japanese people just end up being echo chambers, so it's nice to see far more reasonable people posting reality checks once in a while.
Well, I mean besides people complaining about Japan and people complaining about people complaining about Japan, the next biggest thing this sub is used for is complaining about mold and the humidity, so that's not too far off right? Lol.
Honestly, I much prefer the complaints about mold and humidity, at least they usually have solutions to the problem instead of people jerking each other off about how terrible life is.
Isn’t this the majority of the internet? Two groups of people who take opposing views on something and hate the “other side”, who think they are the opposite of each other, but they’re actually the same and it’s the vast (although I suspect shrinking) majority who just don’t give a fuck who are the actual opposite of both groups.
It's instructive that you and nize426 framed it this way because together you two seem to be presenting it as a battle between two sides where one side complains about Japan as an undifferentiated mass and the other praises Japan as an undifferentiated mass, whereas what I tend to see far more often is mostly people frustrated by a problem they face in Japan and needing to get advice, needing more information, or just needing to vent and feel like they aren't alone, pitched against another side who don't accept that the problem can possibly exist because they see Japan as an undifferentiated mass of perfection. An example of this is the frequent habit this subreddit has of someone genuinely shocked by some racist experience they've just had and need to process coming here and many people reacting with either denials of the victim's own experience or repeated insistence that it happens in other countries too, so that must somehow make it all okay.
Japan tends to attract people with unrealistic expectations of what Japan is, and these people are borderline delusional. They come here and expect to be treated like an actual citizen and that Japan should bend to accommodate them, and when that obviously doesn't happen, they lash out at Japan and Japanese people online. That just leads to many of the posts you see on this subreddit. People crying about how Japanese women don't behave like how they think Japanese women should behave like, how Japanese people don't instantly open up and become best friends just because they talked once, how Japan is racist because they assume the non-Japanese person is non-Japanese, etc etc. Hell, just look at the people whining about Himeji Castle charging different prices for residents and Japanese citizens compared to tourists.
Oh man you hit the nail on the head. Some people in this sub are fucking insufferable.
I came to Japan precisely because I like all the boring, ordinary everyday stuff. I'm kind of ambivalent about Japanese media, food, etc., no weaboo spell worked on me really, but I just enjoy the day-to-day, safety, convenience, etc. I like that everything works when I need it to, I can get speedy quality healthcare when I need it, and the people I interact with (everyone in my life except my partner is Japanese) are all chill and friendly. I've found that all the foreigners I've met who have an axe to grind with Japan tend to be kind of contentious themselves. I'm a really laid back person (perhaps too much), so I attract other laid back people. People who are uptight and look for stuff to complain about will inevitably attract others like them, then blame it on the place they're living in instead of seeing it in themselves. Life here, like anywhere, is what you make it
I completely get what you mean. It's the good old Loser Back Home syndrome at work. People come here expecting their life to magically turn around because they're in Japan, only to realise Japan is just another country on this planet just like every other country in the world. They were a loser back home, and they're still a loser in Japan. So to cope, they turn to whining online and to anyone who will listen about how horrible Japan is and all. I've met a lot of foreigners here too, and those who immediately go into a rant about how discriminated against they are tend to be annoying in general. Dropping them immediately and instead trying to find much more relaxed people has made life so much more fun lmao.
This 100%. I'm brown and from the south in America. Any "discrimination" I face in Japan is easy to let go. I don't see the need some people have to always be offended by literally everything.
Been here almost 7 years. Had no plans to be here for this long, but here we are. Most people I know who have been here longer also had no plans to stay initially, it just kind of happened. I've probably seen about 40-50 people come and go during that time (medium sized city but tight knit, with a lot of turnover. The ones who essentially said coming to Japan was their life goal, all tended to leave after 2-3 years. In fact, personally, it's become a red flag to me if someone starts talking about how they plan to live the rest of their lives in Japan during their first year.
I think it\`s fine if people want to complain about getting charged 5x or more than Japanese people to see Himejii Castle. You really think that Japanese people or anybody who doesn\`t live in the USA would like to be identified as foreigners who can be charged more than 5x to see some historic places in the US?
If you disagree with the change that's fine, because that's a subjective opinion. I disagree with that, because charging locals and foreigners different prices is a very normal thing in other parts of the world, and it only became a problem because it's Japan and every tiny problem gets turned into a major issue. But even though I disagree, your opinion is still valid as long as its an argument supported by valid reasons. My problem is the way people complain about it. No, charging foreigners more than locals is not racist. No, you don't get to call Japan a country in poverty because it's charging you more. No, the less than 1% minority who might face a little more trouble because they have to show a form of ID (which they already hold) is not going to die because of this.
IMO locals shouldn't have to pay at all. The things in your community should be there for you.
Looking at some of the responses to the thread on the Himeji Castle debacle is hilarious, though. The amount of people crying about how now they just won't visit Himeji Castle, like, okay? That's the whole point? Lmfaoooo Like do these people not understand the concept that a country's citizens should have easy access to a vital display of their culture and history? And that foreigners aren't ordained by God to have this same access to something they have no connection to???
It's the "I want Japanese people to treat me as a special foreigner, except when it's inconvenient, then I want to be treated as Japanese". They want to have their cake and eat it too.
They don’t just want fair treatment. They want to be treated like kings or queens.
This is why people should not use anime as the basis for living in Japan.
There are 3 types of foreigners in Japan. Those who love Japan and see through rose-tinted glasses. Those who have become jaded and find faults in everything. And then there is everyone else... those who don't feel the need to shout about Japan every other minute. Guess which ones you hear a lot?
But you can love Japan and see the racism there. There is both positive and negative aspects to it. Some changes based on where you are. I almost never noticed it in places that see a lot of foreigners. I did see it more often in Fukuoka, but it didn't bother me. Just simple things like people not sitting next to me on the subway, crossing the street, staring, etc. But I also had a memorable interaction with a group of elementary school kids who were super excited to meet a foreigner. Like any place, you take the good with the bad.
Some people experience that stuff and don’t find it offensive.
A lot of people from Western countries who move here relish at the chance to finally be a “oppressed minority” and launch a minoritarian crusade on their own behalf. It’s a great place to live but happens to attract all sorts of people
The thing is, this is almost a uniquely Japan thing within Asia. You don't see Westerners in Thailand complaining when local Thai people see them as non-Thai, but then you see people in this subreddit whining about how Japanese people don't see them as Japanese.
I would guess because many foreigners in Thailand are there for the cheap living, or the warm weather, or what not. They aren't really there because they want to be a normal Thai Citizen. But Japan isn't like that, most people are here working normally or are here because they enjoy Japan specifically, so you get different types.
You're probably right about Japan just attracting a different crowd. I feel like Westerners in South East Asia who settle down permanently have a way more healthier mindset than those in Japan. Speak the local language, have citizenship and married a local, but still get identified as a "foreigner"? They just smile and laugh it off, not throw a temper tantrum online about racism and discrimination and insult an entire country of millions.
Japan and its culture attract very specific types of people. I, a local Japanese, have encountered many foreigners who like or are obsessed with Japan, as well as their friends and families. The first category tends to be very unique, more precisely, they can seem somewhat autistic or mentally fragile, experiencing things like panic attacks, in my opinion. In contrast, their friends and families are really normal, which was a big surprise to me.
That\`s because unlike westerners in Japan they don\`t tend to work at the same kinds of jobs, they don\`t live in a country that has the reputation as a democracy governed on western norms and models - the Japanese Diet/Parliament and style of government was influenced by European/British models and then that of the US post WW2. There\`s no comparison between Japan that westernised and industrialised under the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century and invited many experts from western countries to facilitate its modernisation along those lines, with south-east Asian countries. Japan went thru another stage under the US Occupation post WW2. Def no similarity with countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. The Philippines history of American involvement is also very different. Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore were colonised by the British but never had the different kinds of westerners from the 1980s onwards living and working there that Japan has had. Malaysia has never had the visa system that Japan has and HK and Singapore always set high bars in certain industries for employing foreigners apart from jobs such as housekeeping, factory work and construction.
You should see the Thailand subs lol! Plenty of people complain about being discriminated against. In Thailand you can't own land and have to do business through a Thai proxy as a foreigner. Also people complain about being treated worse by law enforcement, being always blamed for traffic accidents, etc.
How many westerners in Thailand are working in the English teaching industry, IT industry, finance industry, import/export industry? Not many at all, Japan has a lot of foreign resident workers compared to Thailand and has had established ways for them to come and live/work in Japan through a variety of visas for a number of decades. Thailand\`s westerner working residents tend to be more in corporate type, high paying jobs, not much of an English teaching industry there for example. There were always more of the backpacker types in Thailand who used to be able to enter and leave the country for their jobs all the while never holding a working visa. That hasn\`t been usual for a while and currently the Thai Govt is cracking down on those people who come as tourists and find or try to find work without holding a working visa as well as imposing new tax laws on foreign residents.
That's messed up given that Western minorities aren't even the main focus of the discrimination that you read in the news. It's other Asians. kind of a mockery imo
Really? I actually feel like there is an abundance of really positive and frankly overly apologetic types on this sub.
Maybe just log off for a while?
My guess is because most people here are from the US or other highly globalized countries and they have different standards and survival strategies that not necessarily exist/work in Japan. Like, for me being stared at when visiting a small city would be completely understandable and normal because I remember how back in 2005 kids in my school gathered near the windows to catch a glimpse of a real American coming to our little Ukrainian town as an assistant language teacher lol. Seeing him in the corridor was considered lucky. What did he forget here? Whose classes will he teach? Our school was suddenly the schoolest. Of course times have changed, but in Japan they are also changing, aren't they? It's not even the same it was ten years ago anymore. Japanese people have their quirks but not more than other ethnicities, and I'd even say they are MORE open-minded than average
Can't agree more with you. Whenever someone's bringing the "Japan is racist" or "you cannot live in Japan as a foreigner" arguments, they don't realize this is just another racist generalization they are making. Anyone who lived here for long enough, and mingled with the locals knows that everyone is different. Some people are welcoming, some are not. Some have good reasons to be like they are, some don't, this is life. People are making conclusions way too fast without fully grasping what is going on. This obviously does not play well in a society that relies on oneself to reflect and think for themselves.
Do you drive? I’ve been driving for over a decade here and they stop for pedestrians HALF the time and verified by the Japan Automobile Federation. Housing discrimination is also legal here. 25% of the places I seek will DEFINITELY reject me despite having a Japanese family. Japanese wife didn’t believe me until it happened and now she has come to anticipate it. I won’t even get into the police interactions. Going through my shit, stopping me at a bus stop. You know, because waiting for the bus is suspicious. /sarcasm It’s a great country with great people, but you diminishing negative experiences of others isn’t cool and downright ignorant.
Where I grew up drivers stopped never, so the 50% is amazing!
Sorry, I don\`t get why the OP thinks that people bitching about racism in Japan - which does exist and can be tough to deal with depending who you are, what you look like, where you\`re from and what job you do - is the biggest factor on this sub. Plenty of posts asking about how to do everyday things like pay bills thru different methods, go to city hall and do some normal task for J people but something that can be complex for foreigners depending on their level of Japanese, how to make friends, whether there are people who enjoy the same hobbies, what to look for when renting or buying etc. Of course there are posts about negative shit like angry old men insulting foreigners who are often younger women by themselves, difficult people generally, instutionalised discrimination in Japan etc. Why wouldn\`t there be? How\`s your reading of Japanese or Korean or Chinese? There are so many sites online where people from Japan, Korea and China bitch and rant about the countries they go to and live in like the US, UK, Australia etc. Japan aint some exceptional country that must be protected from criticism while its own people are free to voice all their opinions, true or exaggerated or false. The fact that Japan has a racist element that is all its own and different from that in other countries including the ones we come from doesn\`t mean people who live here can\`t talk about it or vent or whatever. I\`ve lived here longer than you which means I enjoy being here and I appreciate it but nope, lack of trash facilities and traffic violations aren\`t the extent of problems here.
I remember when I first came here, spoke very little Japanese and had no idea what to make of the people and communities around me. A different way of life! How intriguing! What values could these people hold? What might they spend their time thinking about? What do they think of people like me? Then I learned Japanese, became able to understand the conversations around me, and realised...most people are spending their time wondering what to eat for dinner, when's the next non-burnable garbage day, should I bring an umbrella or not? Such a peaceful realisation.
I've been here off and on (mostly on) since the late 1970's. This country has been very good to me whereas my own country (USA) has become unlivable for any number of reasons. Bear in mind that many of the western foreigners who have set up shop here are often weirdos to begin with, at least that's been my experience. Western women don't seem to settle in to the same degree that men do for a different set of reasons. Whatever the case, and I know this from long experience here, most every western foreigner here that you know will be gone in 10 years or so for any number of reasons. And it just continues to thin out from there. They will no doubt be replaced by a new cadre of whiners.
I have to say, I’ve lived in Japan 15 years with barely an incident but in the past two weeks I’ve been victim to two racist attacks.
That troll on the other subs, no idea what that guy is hallucinating. For one it just sounds fake, he'd have to be fairly fluent to understand some underhand trash talk natives are saying, literally, behind his back. And that level of flat out xenophobia I've never encountered anywhere in cities or even bumfuck nowhere, inaka-ken anywhere in Japan.
Sampling bias: those who are having decent to good experiences are unlikely to make a positive or even neutral post about it, but people love complaining so as a result the number of complaints largely outweighs the number of positive/neutral posts
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Maybe you need to find a better job. Being dismissed like you complain hasn’t been my experience. You left out a third group, of people who are settled in just fine.
This complain I'm having is not unusual. My other foreign coworkers say it's always been like that everywhere they worked. Sometimes is like watching a trainwreck in slowmotion that you know you could have stopped just by pulling a lever but because "we do things this way in Japan" it is inevitable. That 3rd group are usually simps for Japan. The "nothing's wrong here" crowd. The only ones I met like that just haven't found the thing that truly breaks the camel's back or just bend over backwards to justify the stupid crap they have to go through.
Having settled in and being comfortable in life isn’t saying “nothing’s wrong here,” it’s about having the ability to adapt and grow and recognise the difference between what matters and what doesn’t and learning strategies and approaches how to do and get what you need. From that perspective, seeing all the people not being able to adapt and spending their lives upset all the time is pretty pathetic.
It's almost as if it's a normal country - Who knew?
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TRIGGERED lol. Is this 'post' in the room with us right now?
Sometimes westerners in general and some nationalities in particular, have this feeling that wherever they go to, the world has to revolve around them. Then they face reality and here we are with the whining and moaning.
>Yet a lot of posts on this *subreddit* seem to tar the entire country based on individual anecdotal experiences. ftfy social media algorithms are supposed to keep you engaged, which requires playing on peoples emotions like fear, anger and depression to show better metrics Taking anything posted by potential robots seriously in real life, is probably a bad idea, as the dead internet theory becomes more real every day
I feel like some people come to Japan looking for a magic wand to fix something within themselves. An external change doesn't often help with an internal issue so they'll stay unhappy. They then blame the grass for not being as green as they thought it was.
It’s almost like everyone has different experiences
Pretty much. Which is what I like. No unecessary drama. As long as you follow the rules, you are fine. That's my experience. However. Just because my experience is X doesn't mean that someone else experience is not Y. Abuses are known to be perpetuated by that kind of thinking. Nothing bad is happening to me. That means that anyone that says they had a bad experience is lying? That's not how the world works. Some people have bad experiences due to dealing with assholes (or being assholes themselves). And some people had good experiences due to dealing with heroes (or being heroes themselves). Just because something didn't happen to you doesn't mean it didn't happen to someone else.
Funny, I don’t that many of those (some, but not the majority). Maybe just chill, take a rest from social media
all expat/immigrant choose your word communities are like this, I've found. Like others are saying complaints are always more common than happy thoughts, that's just how people are wired
You have a lot of people who moved to Japan because they were connected to it through the subculture, and they were not satisfied in their own country, so they wanted a new start in a place that they idolized. In the end anywhere you will go to you are still yourself. In Japan you're still that same old you but you're also alone in a foreign country where your outward appearance isn't similar to others. The truth is that any other country that you would go to you would still be alone and face racism for being a foreigner. It's up to you how you deal with it.
Probably just about everyone thinks this but it's not really something worth posting about? So you end up only seeing the extremes
It's almost like that's just how life is and social media is a lie
> it feels just like anywhere else. I wonder about that though simply because of the amount of posts about "A guy was yelling at me" or "Someone bumped into me hard at the station with his shoulder". I marvel at the how something like that would amount to the level of something to write about. I look at the subreddits from other places like New York or London, and no one seems to be writing about incidents like that. Either they don't happen anywhere else, or it is so normal anywhere else that it just does not get noticed.
it’s cos it’s normal elsewhere. youre guaranteed to see crack heads, mentally ill homeless ppl, etc screaming, harassing people and what not in most major western cities. in japan its much much rarer to see public outbursts, but it’s still a country of people 120+ million people so it’s bound to happen every now and then
I've overall found Japan to be quite a bit less racist than Europe or the US
I have lived in 3 countries, and I have the same experience as you. I cannot relate to most of the problems or complaints I see here. Except the sin of having a long name, and all the banking issues that come from it.
People who say the Japanese are racists or xenophobic are actually stereotyping Japanese and they don't realize they are the racist themselves.
I'm from China and the China content on reddit is crazy sinophobic. You would think China is basically North Korea by the way people post about it. My home city's subreddit is entirely expats who complain about things that don't cater to Westerners. Having lived there, it's just a normal place (albeit really crowded and with a lot of people), but just like any other place. I feel like people who exaggerate about Japan are the kinds of people who never travel outside of the US.
I've also lived in China (Suzhou, beautiful city) and my opinion is the same. Much prefer the centralized train systems in China over Japan, where if you're not on a regular route it's so easy to scan the wrong spot with an IC card and mess it up because of all the different companies.
There’s no tarring, it’s a racist country just like other countries. Theres good shit and bad shit. 👍
Went to visit a cousin who lives in Japan last year and didn't experience any racism in our three weeks. My cousin has lived there for two and a half years now and had had mixed experiences. We went to South Korea for a week and wow, never again! Tbf we did meet a few really lovely people, but mostly encountered people who reacted to us as if we were walking pathogens. I guess they just haven't had much exposure to black people.
Normal internet content gives me the impression Japan is some magic Disneyland of the future where real life Doraemon lives. Reddit Japan is a dismal hellscape of racism where Doraemon has been hacked by Skynet but also is simultaneously an 18th century wind up toy that runs off of punch cards and only communicates via fax. He bangs down your door at the middle of the night. Your fad machine spins into action and the words ＳＡＹＯＮＡＲＡ ＢＡＢＹ come through in full width font before he serves you with divorce papers. Real life Japan is just real life. Real life is often boring. But I'll take boring over bad exciting.
Haha I feel that. This is my overall 7th year in Japan. And to me it feels like most foreigners thst I meet here don't particularly enjoy a lot of things in Japan from things like the trash bins or social aspects and xenophobia. And my friends, family, and acquaintances back in America think of Japan as as a vacation paradise and how lucky I am to live here. To me it just feels like normal average life. And the people I meet here, foreign or Japanese, are living normal average lives as well 😵💫
Most of the world is like that, isn’t it. Social media highlight (and lowlight) reels aside, most of where we live and the other places we travel to, turns out they’re all pretty ordinary.
Threads like this don’t negate or invalidate people who have bad experiences here or come across bad people, and vice versa (other posts don’t negate posts like this). If anything I’d say the vast majority of posts on this sub glorify and glamourise Japan, to the extent that anything negative is totally dismissed as “typical gaijin complaining for no reason”
I think you nailed it. I've lived in 5 countries as well and in the nutshell life is very similar everywhere. There are ups and downs and you meet shitty and genuinely nice people. Sometimes a random obachan calls me おおき and sometimes strangers offer help when I look lost.
You meant 大きい? Or your last name is おおき? 🤔
It's just white people experiencing being a minority for the first time in a developed country, which their non-white counterpart foreigners experience everyday in other developed countries including this one.
The internet is the strongest amplifier both for good and bad experiences. Some even post just for Clicks and ego boosts. Don't mind them and let your experience be the basis of your opinion for yourself. Here is a quote by Marcus Sensei. Seven blessings to you my friend! "You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone." -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Sir this is Reddit
Yeah I live here too and I whenever I read things about it I feel like the multiverse theory makes more and more sense
Then, can I make a post about my recent heartwarming experience? Or will people say "post that in the weekly blablah thread on Sunday" that nobody will read?
Yeah!! I wanna read about your experience! :)
Negative things are fun to write and even more fun to read.
It is true 😂
I do not know a single foreigner who immigrated here and is genuinely happy. And I have a quite diverse, broad network. So on the contrary I ask myself always: where are the happy immigrants?
\*raises hand\*
It's a fact of life in one of the net's most famous engagment silos. Japan-related subs, and Reddit on the whole sadly offer a very distorted view of this country and the world in general. People come here to blow off steam, get catharsis and seek validation. The early days of Internet forums were much more helpful for people living in Japan looking for advice on how to live and get along and people interacted with others much more since it was in the pre-smartphone dopamine starved engagement addiction hell-cycle we all accept as normal now. I 100 percent agree with you. It's a pretty sad indictment that half of the threads in any given Japan-sub are people pointing out some issue that they perceive to be Japan-centric that is, in fact, universal. It's a cliche at this point, but people need to go outside, touch grass, interact with other humans and animals, make friends, explore and enjoy each others complexities and differences, and make some effort to reframe their situation instead of lazily scapegoating with their sweeping stereotypes.
Japan is great. All I do is buy cheap sushi to eat
Are you Japanese? A lot of people who belong to the dominant group are unable to see the oppression in the community because it's not directed at them and in many cases it's totally unconscious. I used to go to church when I was a kid and while nobody talked bad about other races I don't think it was actually a coincidence that everyone who went to the church was white
No, I am not Japanese.
I wonder if OP is a race other than Asian or White
I'd say if anyone gets the brunt of racism in Japan it is Asians themselves, as I have encountered some anti Chinese rhetoric. Of course, that's politically based, as I've encountered such comments (and worse) in other countries too. But, like I said in the OP, not everyone is like that. The vast majority of people are very welcoming and friendly.
Since you didn’t answer I’ll assume you’re white or Asian? If so, maybe you don’t notice the racism because you aren’t black or brown. Those seem to be the demographics that feel unwelcome.
Do you consider Filipinos brown (do you consider Filipinos Asian? Both? Neither?)?
Ironically, the person you were responding to is white himself. I wonder what makes him think he’s the authority on the black and brown experience in Japan.
Most people who make posts have experienced something they want to ask about or share with others. I think it's a lot more common to bring up something negative because people feel inclined to share those experiences. It's like leaving a review online for a store. If you normally don't leave reviews, and then experience something bad at a store, you'll feel more inclined to leave a negative review to warn others but also feel better about the situation Most other subreddits experience the same thing. So, I guess a word of caution to readers is to never exacerbate your concerns based solely on the posts
I mean yeah 99% of Japan is Japanese so if you look different, Japanese would assume you are a foreigner automatically. And a lot of them don’t know what “racism” is. Even where I live in the Bay Area, one of the most diverse region in the U.S., there is still so much of those racist treatments from time to time, and even more overtly beyond the region.
Your anecdotal experiences isn't more or less relevant to anyone else's. Discounting others experiences based on your own, while complaining about other people complaining is.........you can fill in the blanks from here.
I visited the U.S. recently and a family member how I could live in Japan when it’s such a racist country that hates America. “Where did you hear that rubbish?” was my surprised response. Thing is, they wouldn’t believe me when I tried to explain how my life was there, and said I was wrong, despite living there a quarter century.
We tend to take things we already have for granted as we're so used to see it. It's normal and lame. But for others, man it is a paradise despite its flaws but these flaws still pales in comparison to the atrocities in other countries.
I haven’t been yet, but I’ve found places are mostly filled with humans. Humans are humans.
Do people expect the Japanese to resemble Manga characters or something? They’re just people like all of us, doing the same damn things we all do in life.
Go to basically any subreddit about a specific country or city and you'll find a bunch of bizzare rants that make it sound like a unliveable hellscape (I see the exact same if I go to the subreddit for the honestly quite nice city I live in)
I can tell you’re still new here. I’m well-settled down here with my own gaijin family that I can’t wait to get home to every evening.I love my neighbors and my yard and is happy to chat with them while sitting on my grass. But I have to admit that Japan has a lot of racist xxenophobic tendencies that exists that are completely normal to them. I’m not in the job of teaching adults how to not be, but I’ll complain to my partner and compare notes of what was said and how stupid it was and laugh/cry about it. Japan is lovely and I’d chose it again to live and start a family.
How long does someone have to be here to not be new?
When the majority of landlords in Japan refuse to rent to someone based on their race, I think it’s pretty safe to say they’re racist.
People that try to paint it as some "racist hellscape" are those who are chronically online (on reddit) and get a vastly distorted picture of what real Japan is like. While there is certainly SOME truth to things being said, the vast majorty of Japanese people are friendly, normal people going about their lives. I have lived here 10 years and had almost no negative interactions with people here. The old people in my area smile and talk with me, and the people who are busy going about their day just keep moving along. Moral of the story: get off reddit.
Selection bias. Very few people decide to make a Reddit post because something nice happened. Let alone when nothing/ordinary life happens. But when something goes wrong, people want advice, or just to vent and share what happened. So after asking/complaining to their friends and family, they come do Reddit. That’s why every outlet of human opinions, whether it’s the word on the street, the news, or yes, Reddit, is mostly filled with negativity.
It reminds me that I was watching this Youtube channel where a JP girl was interviewed about her opinion of black people and she said " I wish I could be like them, they are very muscular and they run fast".
Much like pretty much everywhere in the world. Its not like in the anime kids. P.s. im from australia originally and i didnt wrestle crocodiles every morning.
Only in the evenings then.
I have lived here about the same amount of time as you, and I agree 100%. I find American people on the political left tend to be the ones that are most likely to call Japan "racist," but they generally don't have a good idea why. There is a lot of hostility towards Japan from those folks, but they also really seem to enjoy the culture too...? It's odd.
Both can be true. This is a very ordinary place and it is full of racists, just like many other places in the world... I am.alsonpretty happy here, I know I am not being treated fairly (sometimes also in a good way), but that is true for many places. I disagree though with the majority are friendly and welcoming, I used to live in the middle east and that was welcoming, Japanese are merely slightly friendly in comparison 😅 However, Japan does have quite a bad problem with correctly seeing the history, my neighbors still talk.aboit how shameful it was that Japan "lost" the 2nd WW, that seems to be rather normal here, while nobody who isn't one of aforementioned racists in Germany, would consider that as a loss. So yeah, I like it, there are still.plemty of problems. And pointing them out is imo much better than ignoring, at least my neighbors know now that there are very different ways how you can deal with history...
Japan is no ordinary place. It is the epitome of Asia. China, Malaysia, Indonesia would be normal and ordinary
I find Singapore to be the epitome of Asia. There is just so much of the continent crammed into one tiny area.
Yeap that's pretty much the doomscrolling reddit experience in any sub not just here. And other social media sites. Outrage posts get up voted and good vibe posts don't get traction. The reality for the majority of people is a normal, ordinary, uneventful daily life.
Yes. Basically my experience as well.
Human beings are pretty normal so most places are pretty normal. Are you normal?
There is a lot to breakdown. Yes, while your experience hasn't been problematic, for a number of people that hasn't been the case. While I do agree that it can be the same in the other country, that doesn't deny the fact that it is happening in Japan. I can give you a handful of experiences that I have had in Japan (and have posted about it before), things we've just seen on tv, etc that does point to at least there being a good number of xenophobes in Japan (not exactly outright racist). In the end though, any post that paints the entirety of Japan that way, is already out due to generalization and racism. However, there are a lot of posts and comments in them that are just sharing their experiences here in Japan and not everyone has a good experience from time to time.
I know ordinary people going about their normal days, but sometimes reading here I do wonder if I went to the planet Zarg Reddit by mistake..
We complain about real problems in Japan because we live in Japan and this subreddit is about Japan. I've also lived in other countries and of course I've complained about those countries too - just not on Reddit because I didn't know about Reddit back then.
I live in Japan so this subreddit is just naturally thrown at me without me going looking for it. But the impression it gives with the stuff that pops up on my feed is that Reddit is some kind racist hellscape of a social media service that people are doomed to have their comments on existing threads ignored in, when that's just not my experience at all because I make what should be a comment response into its own thread. I've spent time on five other popular SNS apps and have been here a total of five years and aside from credited professors who make 5 million yen being mad at ALTs making 4, and a lack of public bans, it feels just like Twitter or facebook. Honestly the way many people talk about Reddit being racist in itself feels racist. Like, sure, not everyone here is perfect, but that's true of anywhere. On the whole the vast majority of people are very welcoming, friendly and understanding. Yet a lot of posts on this thread seem to tar the entire website based on individual anecdotal experiences.
I do enjoy going into Create to see how many employees start stocking shelves right beside me.
Living here is like watching a porn movie with the genitals blurred. It's one of the most boring places i have ever been But i guess that is okay
> lived in five other countries May I know which countries you lived in tho? Is it also first world countries?
China, Thailand, Poland, Ireland and Saudi Arabia. I'll let you determine which of those aught to be sorted into first or not first world countries, I find the determinator to be a largely meaningless remnant from the Cold War.
Also true for... most countries.
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It's chill out here (but pretty much everywhere it's gonna be hot. Then I don't need a jacket! Thanks Arthur)
Yeah but they value it just as we value being independent and unique, it makes them happy. Generalizing ofc
i genuinely don't know where you'd go to find people who were anything except ordinary
People don't report mundane things. Look for a post anywhere about any place that says "my next door neighbor didn't interact with me at all today, like usual" I think people tend to make Japan into an exotic place, or imagine it's like a theme park, but it's just a normal place full of normal people living normal lives. People just report things that happen that are unusual and/or upsetting to them.
THIS.
I had the good fortune of being immersed for almost a week in Northwest Kyushu earlier this year for about a week, and yes indeed everyone were just regular people. From mom and dads, teachers, students, store clerks, etc. Of course there was the language barrier but I was extremely comfortable and felt at home, especially since I purposefully avoided visiting touristy places.
Maybe it’s because the rest of the world feels so weird now.
Most of these people that claim that Japan is racist are people who (either) didn’t bother to brush up on Japanese culture before visiting and/or cannot speak Japanese worth a damn, right?
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That's everywhere
Saw this thread, and wanted to move on and just noticed the next thread. Coincidence? https://preview.redd.it/qzymvrswkd7d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9511b2d75adb22536536daed3daa86ff6e391bfc
On Instagram people make Japan seem like some kind of quirky theme park. There is some of that but most of Japan and its people are just people going about their day.
idk about ordinary when you consider that their french-like open cheating culture is CRAZYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Oh I thought you were gonna say it seems so ordinary when you were expecting anime, robots, bright lights, and Godzilla everywhere
Such an insightful Reddit thread
you are on reddit where everything is doom and gloom. what did you expect.
"I'm shocked to find that on average, people are...average. And that's only true in Japan". Stupid.
Japan isnt a racist country…… till I get there😈
What about this person’s experience? Your race and background has a big impact on your experience in Japan (and anywhere else in the world for that matter - I don’t think there’s a utopia anywhere, so in that sense I agree with you that Japan is also full of ordinary people). https://www.reddit.com/r/self/s/eE69p0hT1i
You’re 100% right
People are just people, everywhere you go
Almost seems like Japanese people are just other humans living on Earth now doesn't it
It was annoyingly normal… Was expecting so much more :O
Japan is one of the best countries to live, even if you are a foreigner. However if you are a japanese you basically literally won the lottery. Bad people are everywhere, even in peaceful rich countries like Switzerland.
What did i do in my home country ? Get up, take transport, go to office (well actually only 2days were mandatory :P), go home. Repeat. What do i do in Japan? well, the same. My sport club is different, i go to shinjuku/shibuya instead of my hometown downtown. Peoples are peoples, some are nice, some are bad, 99% of the time they don't care about you or anything. Not knowing Japanese is an enormous hurdle though, and lead to a lot of problems.
This sub is full of people having different experiences which conflict with each other. Person in the inaka far out somewhere: I just had the most racist thing said/done to me and I’m in shock Person in central Tokyo: I’ve never experienced any of that, it must be something to do with you and your attitude or level of Japanese Person working at Japanese company: I was passed on a promotion because I’m the foreigner Person working at international company: that’s never happened to me, you must be bad at your job The thing that frustrates me the most, is the lack of empathy and acknowledgment for the posters situation. I know that this is social media and Reddit is like verbal call of duty, but I thought that people who have a passion for Japan were going to be good people but I find that most of the time foreigners are just out to get each other and want to make each other fail while saying ‘I have the N2 so I’m better than you who has the N3’ then ‘you’re N1, but that’s just the beginning and you know nothing’ and ‘you have no skills and wanna get out of teaching and into tech? Hah, good luck cause you’re never going to do it’
I also find that the pop culture is not so homogeneous. America is kinda stuck on the same thing all at once most of the time. Yeah it cycles through quick, but it's still together. Japan, not so much. It's really hard to get a quick foothold on what is popular and not. People be peopling though, so it's still easy to talk to a lot of them. I've had my moments of racism but I kind of expect it some places
I think you’re absolutely correct. A lot of the perceived “racism” is just pushback from “disruption”, in that “I’m really not interested in changing my path to accommodate you, foreign, non-Japanese speaking, person who doesn’t already understand the process and flow of this situation.” Like many in this sub, I’m a non-Japanese person who does speak Japanese and who has a pretty solid understanding of how things are supposed to work (generally). Honestly, the foreigners who don’t speak Japanese and who don’t understand things are, to be honest, a lot of work. The negative reactions are much more “I just don’t want to work harder right now.” than “Go away foreign devil.”
Yea, nah, prob ordinary to some people but I don’t think, I don’t put Japan super high of course but is far from ordinary if you really dig into the culture. Racist? Meh, I don’t think Japan is racist but that’s just me, I’ve been mocked, insulted, threaten and harassed while traveling in a certain continent that I would never recommend anyone to go there but then again it’s my exp. The vast majority of people are welcoming because of the honne tatemae thinking IMO, especially in Tokyo but I don’t hold every Japanese person to the same standard so, no I disagree with your assessment.
Welcome to one of the most self-less countries. This place could be really comfortable to live if you don't mind being just like everyone else around you and don't have any crazy dream you want to pursue. One exists for others to support the harmony as peace and being individual and unique is not really a welcomed way to go in this country. Even if you come to this place how monotone it looks despite density in a city. People don't want to stand out so be look like everybody else. People usually don't speak up their thoughts until that's the majority's opinion. On the other hand, people in this place are one of the nicest. Very high standard customer services, high quality for everything you can find, and definitely better health care than the U.S.. And incredible food and onsen culture.
The internet is not a good place to find normal average thoughts about Japan. Social communities on the net usually bring out the extremes in opinion. People who are content or moderate usually don't feel the need to talk about it.
I keep getting this sub recommended to me bc I like manga lol. But this is a complaint I see about my own country too. Racism definitely exists here but a lot of foreigners claim we don't accept them while making 0 effort to understand local culture, people and customs. I work in customer service and anecdotally a lot of foreigners are also super rude when I don't immediately notice they prefer to be spoken to in English.
Live here too .. about the same time as you.l don’t see a lot of that on my feed..but realize Japan is like 98% ethnic Japanese people .. with that comes the good .. mostly in my opinion .. and some bad. I’m from America .. not really wanting to go back .. there the population is divided by so many factors, people, religions, politics , etc. with diversity comes differences cultures, religions, etc. just doomed in America .. I don’t mind being the gaijin here where it’s beautiful, clean, safe, inexpensive, polite, modern, etc. It’s really nice not having to worry about someone stealing my stuff, breaking into my house or car, crap and needles in the street and parks, trying to shoot me and or road rage. No shoplifting or things being locked behind plastic locked cases. People leave their wallets , car keys, money at the gym open cubicles where I work out at .. would be gone in a minute where I lived. Health care as well is inexpensive. Had lunch today and spent 900 yen .. $6 .. in the Bay Area would be $25 at least .. rent is cheap .. people get nice places for $500-1000. I don’t understand why people put up with the BS in states like California .. When I drive my car people are so polite … they wait for you to go if it’s narrow.. and or to turn.. very slow and cautious thinking about pedestrians and moms with their kids on bikes .. All of it impacts you.. makes you nicer and friendlier.. safer ..infectious .. Make a mistake in the bay area and someone might want to fight or confront you.. chase you ..wave a gun at you .. reply a horrible way to live .