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Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

This is quite something because traditionally Japanese culture has been fairly close to foreigners and probably for a good reason. Japanese people are likely the most courteous and honest people in the world. You can leave your luggage in the middle of the road and come back to find it still there. These folks have little experience with foreigners and often even western culture would be too harsh and rowdy for them. Some people are even afraid of impact of foreigners coming down during Olympics.

Overall, this is interesting times when world's supposedly most open country like USA is closing borders to foreign talent while supposedly most closed country opens up their border for the same.

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This is pure exoticization.

Japan is fairly safe in certain ways - you’re not at risk of getting shot like in the US, sure.

But the police and justice system is very dysfunctional, with crime statistics being under reported, and many murder cases being tossed aside as “suicides” or “heart attacks”.

Even without taking this into account, crime rates in Japan are comparable to those of safe European countries.

And this is not even touching the HUGE pervasive problem that Japan has with sexual assault. If you’re a woman living in Tokyo, you most likely have been sexually assaulted in your life, likely more than once, and likely by a coworker or in public transportation.

Japan is great in certain ways, and still very backwards in many others. But it is not some magical country where there is magically no crime and people are the most honest in the world because of some mysterious Japan only gene. On many metrics, Japan is aligned with the most developed Western European countries (including the famously quoted “fertility rate”, which is actually the same as Austria or Germany). If anything, it is the US that is an anomaly in many ways (crime rate, financial inequality, drug use, etc).

There is a grain of truth to the statement though. I’m just leaving Tokyo to come back to the US. I was pretty amazed at many things. People leave their purses on the table as they go to restroom. They leave their bikes parked with no lock. I didn’t see anybody jay walk, even across narrow streets where the crosswalks were spaced several blocks apart. That is not to say there aren’t lots of problems along other dimensions of society. But coming from DC to Tokyo it reminds me a little bit about how I felt coming from South Asia to the US the first time.

Yes, there are absolutely cultural differences at play. I wouldn’t leave my laptop on a table in a coffee shop in NYC for even one second, whereas I’ve done it in Tokyo.

But with all that said, I have friends who’ve had shit stolen in Tokyo, or been assaulted by a drunk guy, etc.

So I stand by my original point - saying that Japanese people are “the most honest and courteous in the world” is naïveté at best, and exoticization at worst.

In which major European city could you leave your laptop or purse on a table while you use the bathroom?

Japan is incredibly different from Europe and America in thousands of important ways. The idea that it's even similar is absurd. There's very few comparisons you can even make, beyond the very superficial. Everything is different, from childbirth, children, school, dating, food, holidays, marriage, death, etc.

Your only frame of reference seems to be a 30 year old book (about culture, hah!) and a few discussions with friends...

You seem to be missing the point.

I am not saying that food or dating in Japan is the same as Europe (although I am not sure how you think childbirth works, I can assure you that the core of the childbirth experience is quite the same across humanity).

What I am saying is that when you compare things that are actually comparable - graduation rates, unemployment, drug abuse, illiteracy, child vaccination, etc - Japan is in many cases more clustered with the leading European countries than the US is.

Furthermore, when it comes to things like sexual assault, Japan is far behind.

On this basis, it is completely ridiculous to claim that Japanese people are the “most courteous and honest in the world”, unless your definition of a honorable society includes one where most women get groped on the subway as teenagers.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-ass...

The safety (and cleanliness and civility) in Tokyo is especially notable due to its size. Bern is nice, but it's less of a challenge to manage a 500k pop than 13 million. And while I'd consider London or Berlin very safe, they still have a murder rate 4 times or greater than Tokyo. So it isn't fair to call it exoticism, it is just real observation. And as you can attest, it is particularly striking when you go between someplace like San Francisco and Tokyo.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/30/new-yo...

https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp

>I didn’t see anybody jay walk, even across narrow streets where the crosswalks were spaced several blocks apart.

Well that's just silly.

It helps keep traffic flowing.

I'm not jumping on either side of the argument about if Japanese are the nicest or not, but there are certainly some major differences from "nicer" western countries, with some of them hidden behind courteous outward appearances. In addition to common problem of assaults on women there is the whole child porn thing in Japan which strikes me as particularly egregious. Possession of it wasn't made illegal until 2014 and people were given one year to dispose of any they had. Apparently it has not disappeared, with record numbers of cases being reported by police in the three years since the law was passed [1].

[1] http://www.newsweek.com/child-pornography-and-child-abuse-ja...

Do you have any references for the above claims?

For homicide/fertility/etc rates, a simple google search will give you numbers.

For sexual assault/corruption/etc, it’s honestly common knowledge at this point. Googling “Japan underreported crime” will give you plenty of results from a variety of sources.

Additional insight comes from having a few close Japanese female friends who have opened up to me over the years.

If you’re trying to cure yourself of the “Japan is a magical place” myth, I highly recommend “Making Common Sense of Japan”, written by an economist. It’s from 1989, so the data is dated, but most of it still holds to day, and the analytical frameworks it builds are just as relevant.

There was a blog post written on the subject that I saw on HN a long time ago that I will try to dig up, and will update if I find it.

I would rank Taiwan higher than Japan. And in terms of leaving things without them being stolen, singapore higher than japan.

Tokyo people are very fake in their courteousness. Japan is only amazing when you leave Tokyo.

That's quite a roundabout way of saying "foreigners are criminals"...

Seriously, I'm extremely deferential to the local customs when I'm abroad. But I felt being pushed into a subway car during rush hour to be quite "harsh and rowdy". Not to mentioned the drunk guys who spit in my faced an laughed.

Your experience of being spat at in Japan was utterly unrepresentative. In twenty years I never seen, nor can even imagine seeing, such a scenario. Just maybe in Roppongi on a Saturday night.

As for the subway trains. It's certainly not rowdy. Uncomfortable, sure, but it's as ordered as possible under the logisical constraints present.

I spent two and half weeks in Japan recently, didn’t have a single issue.

Not trying to be confrontational but did you do any research before you went to Japan? Online it says to avoid public transit during rush hour. When I checked into my hotel the front desk even went out of their way to tell me which trains to avoid during rush hour because of how crazy it is.

3.7M people pass through Shinjuku Station daily. It’s going to be a bit crazy.

@OP, the narrative you’re painting is also quite exaggerated. Westerners are going to have to learn and respect the traditions/culture of Japan but with how incredibly hard the people work there it’s a great place to start a company.

Over the last 15 years I've spent roughly 6 months in Japan, and have never encountered anything other than respect and courtesy, especially if you make an effort to speak the language and respect the cultural customs. I've spent roughly the same amount of time in San Francisco in those years, and I've seen hundreds of cars with shattered windows, dozens of people shitting on the sidewalk, been harassed by crazy people on Market at least 10 times, almost stepped on needles in parks and on sidewalks, etc.

Consider that San Francisco is more of an extreme than Tokyo. I’ve lived in a bunch of “world” cities, including London, Berlin, Paris, SF/Bay Area, Tokyo, and the outlier there is more San Francisco than Tokyo. The only times (yes, plural) I’ve ever had people die of gunshots on the pavement within 1 block of my house in my life have been in the Bay Area.

You shouldn't be downvoted. Tokyoites will definitely elbow you in the face during rush hour with no remorse at all. I guess getting to work on time is more important than politeness.

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