Comment by blinzy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blinzy | Hacker News Reader

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Not the person you replied to but I've been to Japan twice, with different people, each for a month across Honshu/Kyushu and can definitely say there's a duality in how they behave towards foreigners...

On one hand, as you mention, we experienced lots of acts of politeness, as I would put it, e.g., being helped to find some location as in your example, being helped to understand some menu dishes when I couldn't decipher them (I had at most intermediate level of Japanese), being bowed to upon entering hotels, ryokans, etc.

On the other hand, we also experienced straight up nasty behaviour, e.g., someone standing up and leaving the train wagon when we sat next to him (and then reentering through the next door and sitting far away from us), being forbidden from entering a bar because of being foreigners (despite the fact I can speak Japanese, not great admittedly, but more than sufficient to order, pay, etc.).

When talking with people from my country settled there the common negative theme is "you'll never be accepted/treated as one of them".

>On the other hand, we also experienced straight up nasty behaviour, e.g., someone standing up and leaving the train wagon when we sat next to him (and then reentering through the next door and sitting far away from us), being forbidden from entering a bar because of being foreigners (despite the fact I can speak Japanese, not great admittedly, but more than sufficient to order, pay, etc.).

Sure, I observed some of these things and didn't always feel comfortable about it. But I wouldn't consider them hostile. The way I was told, some of the things about bars not allowing foreigners is more that they get booked for post-work drinking parties. Maybe that's not always the real explanation, but I realized it wasn't a big deal. If you're in a large city like Tokyo, Sapporo, or Kyoto, there are bars and restaurants everywhere, just move on to the next one.

As far as people coming and going out of trains or not sitting next to you, yeah, I had that happen. But I'd be lying if I said I've never observed or even done the same thing here in the US.

The train situation is not "we were sat down --> he entered the train --> he decided not to sit down next to us and sat elsewhere", but "he was sat down --> we entered the train and sat close to him (not literally next to him, just close) --> he stood up, exited the train through the closest door, entered the train again through a different door and sat further away from us" which is a WTF situation in my opinion.

The bar banning foreigners is not just hostile but also illegal in many other countries, if you try that shit in the UK, Germany, or Spain (I can speak from experience having lived there, but I guess it wouldn't fly in the US either?) they'll shut down your venue and possibly fine you.

But that's not a hostile situation. He didn't engage you at all.

He felt uncomfortable and moved away. Maybe over-dramatically, but it didn't cause you or anyone else, including himself, any harm. Again, I encountered this behavior too. It made me feel uncomfortable, but it was understandable. Some people just don't feel comfortable. Honestly I'd rather someone do something to feel more comfortable than let me invade their space and bother them.

Not sure on the rules in the US, but bars and restaurants can certainly restrict people from entering for various reasons.

I believe we are interpreting hostile differently because for me it doesn't necessarily imply actively antagonistic or harmful, it can simply mean inhospitable/unfriendly and that to me is a textbook situation.

Here there are also situations where they can refuse entry/service, e.g., you're not wearing tshirt and shoes, or you're drunk and belligerent, but certainly not because of your race, sex, gender, etc.

In any case, to avoid going back and forth on the same topic, I reiterate that my personal experience (and my 2 friends from the first trip, and my partner from the second) was that although we had wonderful experiences with Japanese people that made us feel generally welcome as tourists, we were left with the impression that if we already had issues like those I wrote about what other problems someone living there permanently could encounter (maybe problems when renting, dating, etc.)

I loved visiting Japan, it's the most unique/different of all countries I've been to, but the bittersweet taste it left in me took away any desire to look for jobs there when I left Germany (not my country of origin either).

That's kind of ironic. Funnily enough, one respect in which Japan is less xenophobic than Germany is the total absence of terrorists and serial killers that target immigrants or any incidences of mob violence like the 2018 Chemnitz riots. I'm sure you've heard of the NSU-Mordserie—or have you?

>In December 2018, five German police officers were suspended from their posts after Seda Basay-Yildiz, a Turkish-German lawyer who had defended the family of one of the victims of the NSU, was faxed a death threat against her two-year-old daughter. The fax was signed "NSU 2.0". An investigation concluded that, just before the fax was sent, a Frankfurt police computer had accessed a confidential database to obtain Basay-Yildiz's address. The phones of the police officers who were on duty at the moment were confiscated, and it was found that many were exchanging racist and far-right messages in a group chat, and posting pictures of Hitler and swastikas.

It seems a little crazy to me that you were perfectly willing to live and work in a country where agents of the state fax death threats to two-year olds in the name of a Nazi terrorist group, but a guy standing up when you enter a train is so xenophobic that even living in the country, like millions of foreigners happily do, is just unthinkable. Know what I'm saying?

There are foreigners who have good reason to avoid Japan, namely indentured workers from southeast Asia. Something tells me that a guy who used to work in Germany and posts on Hacker News is not going to suffer the same problems that they do.

I mean, Germany is not void of issues, or the UK, where I currently reside, or any other country really...

But comparing my example with the NSU makes no sense to me, the NSU is comparable with Aum Shinrikyo (the Japanese cult that caused the sarin attack back in the 90s) in the sense that they both have/had negligible memberships compared to the countries population, i.e., a few hundreds or couple thousands members, so I don't think in either case you can generalise the behaviour of German or Japanese citizens from the existence of 100 or 1000 pieces of shit human beings.

Japan's immigration percentage is also massively different (~2%) from that of Germany, Spain, UK, or USA (each ~15%) and I'm sure that has an impact on the attitude towards foreigners too.

I completely agree though that the issues I may run into in Japan are probably going to be different and possibly less severe than those that eastern/southeastern asian people or dark-skinned people may face.

People invoke Aum Shinrikyō all the time to draw conclusions about the condition of Japan at the time and the wider sociological forces that led to its rise. People invoke the existence of the tiniest, most fringe right-wing groups to draw conclusions about Japanese attitudes as well.

But I'm not even claiming the NSU, or even its allies in the state apparatus, are representative of the attitude of the average German, which are of course very liberal by historical standards—what I'm saying is that despite Germany being a country where the police forces are penetrated by Nazis operating in coordination with murderous terrorists and where right-wing groups were able to mobilize a riot with thousands of participants in Chemnitz alone, none of that stops millions of immigrants from leading peaceful, happy lives in Germany, despite the real, even violent, dangers that some of them face.

In comparison, a stranger not wanting to sit next to you on a train sounds like a very trivial problem—a very first-world problem. And yet, it's enough to cause you to dismiss Japan entirely as some inhospitably xenophobic society, even though there are immigrant communities in the countries that you've lived in who can complain about much worse. I'm sure you've seen the videos of people screaming racist abuse at passengers on the Tube—would it be fair to conclude that Britain is so hostile to immigrants that I shouldn't even consider living or working there?

My contention is simply that the experiences you've described are hardly adequate to demonstrate that Japan is uniquely or exceptionally xenophobic, and it's bizarre to conclude from that alone that it would be difficult to establish a happy life there.

Again my point with Aum is that, like NSU, they're microscopic in terms of percentage of population (NSU membership being 0.0002% of Germany, Aum being 0.001% of Japan) so it's missing the point of discussing behaviours that may encompass a more substantial percentage of each society.

The bar example is way worse than the train example, to the point I already mentioned that said behaviour is illegal in the European countries I've lived in; and I only described two examples as I didn't feel like writing a whole essay on the good and bad, but those certainly weren't the only issues we faced (nothing as severe as death threats or whatever, but enough to make me not want to settle there).

Anyway, I'm pausing this here; hopefully you're not arguing on bad faith, but it's clear this conversation isn't going anywhere productive anymore...

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