A long time ago it was more acceptable not to like foreign countries because they were just foreign, different and we’re better.
You can’t say that anymore but it’s interesting how via accusations of ist/phobe nowadays you can get back to almost the same thing. Thing is a lot of Americans with very sensitive antennae to ist/phobia think their own country is hopelessly ist/phobe too, or a lot of it anyway.
I’m not dismissing anybody’s actual hatred of other racial, national etc groups where it exists, it should be condemned. I absolutely wouldn’t sweep Japan’s long ago offences in that regard under the rug (or the US’s for that matter). But IME, having live in Japan for awhile, though it’s not the Asian country I’m most familiar with (I speak Korean reasonably well, Japanese a lot less well, I read Japanese passably for my own purposes in studying Pacific War military history), I really feel a lot of the rap on those countries as ist/phobic is relatively surface stuff. Sometimes it’s just people being more honest about how they feel, not involving any malice, because they haven’t been browbeaten into keeping it to themselves the way people in (especially in ‘enlightened’ parts of) the US have. Not ruling out some real difference and if you go to Japan and really think you are the target of ist/phobia, then you’re entitled not to like it, of course. Likewise if you’re of a different background than I am YMMV. But I don’t think it’s likely at all for anyone to come to harm in Japan because of their background, something you can’t say nearly as surely about Europe for example (say you’re Jewish for example and people in certain neighborhoods in France find out).
Again, this is based on having lived there, so I know some of the quasi-comical (though sometimes after awhile it’s not so funny) stuff that can happen re Japanese assumptions about foreigners. I’m not speaking from complete blissful ignorance.
That is a bit of an inaccurate generalization–large Japanese cities are crowded, but rural areas of Japan are emptyingout. What you are saying is like visiting New York City and thinking that you now have a grasp of Montana, too.
Both of which are also true of most of Europe. The way zoning is usually done in Europe (where it is done at all), which involves sending bothersome stuff out of town and that’s it, is completely alien to Americans. With some dishonorable exceptions (dishonorable because everybody who lives there complains about it), even our suburbs tend to look like your downtowns.
I ask because people who at first glance could pass for Japanese have a somewhat different experience in Japan. They can avoid a great deal of the wierd behaviour, like they would never be sitting in a hotel lobby minding their own business and have another guest enter the lobby, look around, and walk straight up to them and demand to know when they are leaving. You get the reverse wierd behavior too, like people you don’t know suddenly asking you to speak at their wedding.
An (American) sailor in a bar told me that, at port (the name of which he told me but I do not recall) in the 1960s, the villagers burned down the tavern they would frequent because the hostess dared to serve and was friendly towards Americans.
But, again, if you turn things around, at the same point in time there were plenty of Americans who did not have warm, fuzzy memories of the war and the Japanese. So it’s hard to draw conclusions about whether xenophobia in Japan is worse, better, or the same as elsewhere. Though if people are still being kicked out of hotels even today, that’s not cool; did that happen in or near a major city, or out in the sticks?
If this is to me, well I wouldn’t say I was kicked out - just asked when I was leaving (in a very gruff manner:p) In the sticks, but at a resort hotel. Wierd stuff happens often but hardly ever happens when I’m with someone who looks Japanese. Been here for 23 years so far, so I have a lot of data, I think.
I never saw any, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I do know that they created female-only train cars so that women wouldn’t have to worry about the ‘chikan’ (pervs). And as I said, I knew Western females who were followed home by random Japanese strangers, or who had their breasts grabbed by random passers by, or who had their panties stolen from their clothes lines. It happened.
*Yes, I know there are some cultural factors at play making Japanese women attractive to some westerners and making Asian men somehow less appealing (there are OkCupid Stats and all), but I still find this kind of remark a little objectifying.
I’m American of Irish background (in London people sometimes assume I’m a native, just another pasty faced dark haired guy in a suit, and ask me directions in the ‘Underground’, not in Tokyo ).
I said YMMV mainly thinking of dark skinned people living in Japan, I don’t know what that’s like. I lived there with my wife who is from Korea. The main common assumption made about her was pretty innocuous, ie. that she was Japanese, for example if I wasn’t getting through in Japanese, they could just talk to her (but she speaks less Japanese than I do). In one now joked about case, though not funny at the time, a street vendor realized she was Korean and refused to sell to her. But that was very much the exception. Many more people were genuinely friendly, knowing she was Korean. But a lot of this is always personal: why wife is also an unusually likable person, I’m biased but it’s still obvious in many situations in various countries for a long time.
Another aspect I’d mention from living/working in Korea and Japan is that it’s not as frowned on to judge people based on their level of formal education, a Confucian thing in part I suppose. Of course Americans do that sometimes too, but traditional US culture has long frowned on admitting that you judge people negatively for a lack of formal education. In some cases where Westerners report they aren’t well treated in those countries, that’s what it might be. I can think of cases where that’s definitely what it was, where people from those countries said so to me as explaining their brusque treatment of another Westerner. And whatever inhibition there is about doing that, it seems lower when it comes to foreigners, IME.
This lady (currently the first result in your search) would be off-putting to a fair number of men in Japan. But I’d venture to guess that for at least 10% of men, she could basically demand almost anything and they’d do it for her.
My impression from everything I’ve seen and read is that they have a very orderly society, and they seem to do a whole lot more with a whole lot less than we do. I, for one, am very impressed by them.
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