Japan may have it's problems but this is ridiculous.
My only question is why did it take him 10 years to "get fed up" with it? Most people who leave do so after a year or so. Most people who stay longer than a couple years tend to stay for a very long time.
> That’s not to say that some nasty malice isn’t present because it most definitely is. I lost count of the times when, say, for example, politely pointing out to someone that there was a queue and they shouldn’t push in that the immediate response was a very angry “BAKA GAIJIN” (stupid foreigner).
Really, that happened often enough that he "lost count"? In 7 years, I haven't seen anything close to this.
I rarely, if ever get harassed by the police. But I know some Asian-American friends who get harassed... eg: the cop thinks he's Vietnamese, so starts giving him trouble. When the cop finds out he's from the U.S., all of a sudden the cop starts acting totally nice. I'd call that racism.