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Comment by spike021 | Hacker News Reader

> Aside from the language issue, it is also difficult to integrate socially if you are a foreigner.

So, I do not live in Japan, but I've visited multiple times now. I don't speak Japanese more than a few words here and there and mainly get by usually with Google Translate.

I've had a not-too-difficult time making friends (who I even stay in touch with from here in the US) by finding people there who participate in the same hobbies (car culture and baseball, specifically). Generally, most people I've met in those communities are very friendly. Not everyone enjoys the Google Translate back and forth but many still do.

Anyway, like I said before, I don't live there so it may be different as a long-term resident. But I just feel like based on my experience so far, the "way in" may just be a matter of finding people with similar interests, much like I would here in the US.

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My personal experience having lived here for 8 years (not in a city and not in the tech industry), is you are quickly "welcomed" but to "integrate" takes a long time, if ever, and involves changing a lot of your own behavior. Many of my friends who have lived here much longer than me have the same experience.

Most of us quickly made casual friends as you described, but are yet to make many close friends. As for integrating into society, most of us found society quick to help and welcome us, but struggled to move on from "the foreigner that needs help and teaching" to "the person with ideas and opinions as valid as an equivalent Japanese person", this is irrespective of Japanese ability.

Perhaps that is why many people says it's difficult to integrate, what we immigrants want from integration and what Japanese society wants from integrated immigrants is fundamentaly different.

It's always a strange feeling seeing other foreigners on the train home and thinking... I wonder if they're just a tourist who knows nothing or if they live here and are actually fluent in Japanese. It's such a crapshoot. And that's exactly how everyone else is looking at you.

I would say the same goes for many countries.

As a person who lived in many countries I felt the same in almost every english speaking countries, they could be welcoming but making friends isn't that easy, maybe easier in NZ and OZ than the rest. In Latin countries I felt it was a lot easier, especially coming from one myself.

My impression from friends who immigrated to Japan is that people at work and in official positions are much much less friendly.

Every government official I've dealt with here has been extremely patient with me; I've never had a problem at government offices, or at work, with Japanese people.

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