Ponderings,  Reviews,  Travel

I wanted to like Japan

August 25, 2021 /

I wanted to like Japan. Really, I wanted to… In this blog post, I’m going to be honest about MY experiences and MY true feelings on Japan. In caps because I feel it’s necessary to emphasize the fact that my experience isn’t going to be the same as another foreigner’s experience yet it should be validated nonetheless.

Cold and Heartless

I’m sure not everyone in Japan is cold and heartless but there’s something about Japan that screams cold and heartless to me. It also doesn’t help that every little thing there feels like a business transaction. No joke.

Want to spend more time in a cafe? Pay up.

Single and lonely? Rent a boyfriend or girlfriend! Or if you have the money, go chill at a host(ess) club.

The worst would be how the bulk of people there won’t go out of their way to help you even if it’s obvious you’re confused, lost or trying to figure something out. (Of course, it’s not exactly in my nature to ask for help as I’d rather figure it out on my own, but it does say a lot about the average person’s personality there and let me just say, I wasn’t feeling it especially when they’d opt to give me judgmental looks. Look, if you’re not going to offer to help or help from the heart, mind your face and business, will you? PS. I don’t need your help even if it’ll take me an “hour” to figure out something.)

Talking about help, even people within the service industry (ex. JR employees) were more often than not a pain for me to deal with. Many made it obvious that they didn’t want to help, let alone want to talk to me. I get that they might not have wanted to communicate in English, but the very least a person working in the travel/service industry can do is pretend to want to help and actually help despite not really wanting to. I honestly felt as though these experiences were more than just a coincidental bad hair day with uncalled for cold shoulder treatments. The best way to describe it was a mixture of disgust, hate, microaggression and some form of discrimination. Who knows, though as maybe they were just frustrated at themselves for assuming I was a native? (To the very few that switched to English without any form of attitude, thank you and next.)

Inhospitable

What exactly is Japanese hospitality? I do not know what it is. And I do not comprehend the plethora of people on the net that praise Japanese hospitality.

Did I need to stay at a ritzy ryokan to learn what Japanese hospitality is? Or is this Japanese hospitality thing reserved only for their own people and “preferred” foreigners?

To be fair, I’ve stayed at a hole in the wall type of place before where the employee(s) was beyond nice to me. When I misunderstood something (blame it on the jet lag, will you?), he didn’t get upset one bit. While I’m sure I made him a tad bit anxious, the guy was sweet and a perfect example of what hospitality should be like. I’m glad I encountered him and a few others like him, but not so glad to have encountered others with less than subpar skills in hospitality.

Not Polite

I don’t find many of them to be particularly polite. If you can read between the lines, pick up vibes, or worse understand something you weren’t meant to understand, you’ll see how impolite they can be.

Japanese people in Japan are people. As people, it’s normal to have a mixture of polite and impolite people. The thing is people here don’t have patience for anyone that’s out of the norm. If you’re “different” in any way, they have an issue with you.

They somehow feel it’s their duty to “tell you” whether it be by showing an attitude, giving you bad looks or flat out “gossiping” about you, right in front of your face. If you consider any of those acts as polite, then of course you will find Japan to be a polite country.

But I feel the average person thinks of Japan as polite in terms of their bows, thank yous and sorrys. While that exists and I did indeed encounter people who were polite, I encountered way more impolite people than polite people in Japan. And that’s a shame, considering how the country seems to be known to the rest of the world as polite, for some reason.

Changing the agenda (rules) for their benefit.

Anyone that’s been to Japan will know that Japan has a bad habit of being a stickler for rules. The thing is some of their rules aren’t as rigid as you think they’d be provided that it’s for their own benefit.

There’s a “rule” in Japan that one is supposed to not take photos of others without their permission. There’s a reason why their mobile devices are all equipped with a shutter sound that can’t be turned off after all. While this is to prevent the perverts from photographing girls, it’s probably also to prevent the general population from photographing others anonymously.

As you can guess, the average person in Japan is not cool with foreigners photographing them. I can understand this because I also don’t think it’s okay for people to just take photos of strangers, but there’s something contradictory about all of this.

They’re not okay with it yet you’ll run into people that think it’s okay to take photos of a foreigner (or someone “different”). Like, do these people not get that they’re contradicting themselves?

I’ve had a weirdo photograph me while hiding in a tree. To be fair, he was probably photographing a bunch of other park attendees unbeknownst to them as well. Can we say creepy?

I’ve also had the displeasure of being photographed by junior high school boys. Once, a group of rowdy junior high school boys overheard my travel companion and I conversing in English. They stopped what they were doing and the boldest of the group decided to take pictures of us, while pretending to take selfies of themselves. As an adult and as someone who has above average capabilities in selfie taking, it was obvious that he was not photographing himself. And to make matters worse, he didn’t stop at one photo. Thus, after the third shutter went off, I decided to give the group a glare, which fortunately put an end to their act. I found it disrespectful and twisted. It’d be one thing if they had their attention on us from the getgo but to care specifically after hearing us communicate in English?

While I don’t think my travel companion and I looked Japanese, we often would pass as Japanese provided that we kept our mouths shut. What I’m trying to say here is that a native wouldn’t have an interest (or nerve, I should say) in taking photos of us in the first place when it’s an act that’s looked down upon in their country.

Oh, and if you think something like this happened to me just once, think again.

Copy. Paste. Repeat.

People seem brainless here. I’m not saying they’re dumb because they’re not. Far from that, actually. But they are brainless. Want them to think outside of the box? No can do! And I think this is where cultures clash with each other. Japan has a need to do things a specific way. It boggles their mind to do things differently.

To a lesser degree, I even caught a native copying what I did when I was taking a selfie at a historic site. While I didn’t mind, seeing such sights more than once made me realize that there’s too much of a copy and paste culture here.

Ever noticed that “everyone” in Japan uses those swivel luggages? Well, I was the only odd duck using something that didn’t swivel. And while I didn’t give a flying eff that I wasn’t using something that could swivel 360 degrees, it made me realize that people need to be like the other person here. It’s kind of cringey when you think about it. Oh, and the funny thing about these swivel luggages is that it might not necessarily be in classic gray, black, navy or white, but a bright yellow! Talk about irony when you consider how the average Japanese person dons mellow colored clothing. But I guess luggage is an exception since you usually use luggage for non serious matters, like vacays, right? Meh.

Lack of Genuinity and Multi-Faced

On top of not finding the bulk of them warm, I got the vibe that many just weren’t genuine. They seemed two faced or worse. While I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with three faced Asians before, seeing four faced people in Japan was a new record and I don’t mean this in a good way.

Of course, it’s not that big of a deal if you don’t care to establish authentic friendships and relationships. If your goal is to gain good friends and a partner here, do your best to make sure they’re genuine. Test them out or something!

Also, there’s this thing about the country promoting tourism in an attempt to increase their GDP. I get it. But the issue is that the rest of the country doesn’t seem in on this. I could be wrong but I feel that the average Japanese person does not want foreigners in their country. Those that are open to it are probably the ones living outside of Japan already.

Xenophobia and Profiling

They’re xenophobic as F. Not everyone but practically everyone here is xenophobic. Sooo xenophobic that I have to ask myself what year I’m in when I’m in Japan. Like, did I happen to travel back in time upon arriving to Japan or something? It is mind boggling to see how xenophobic they can be. It’s to the point that I wonder what they’re taught in school and how they’re taught. (What’s in their history books? Do they mention of nisei? Or do they not bother to mention it because they don’t consider Japanese outside of Japan as Japanese? I don’t know what’s up with the way they think, but it’s discriminatory!)

If it’s obvious that you’re a foreigner, you’ll probably get profiled by someone. I shared how I most likely was profiled in Takeshita Street despite “passing” as a so-called native elsewhere. While that was a very subpar experience, I can’t even begin to imagine how bad it must be for someone else who’s an obvious foreigner (ex. Black people, White people, South Asians and some of the Southeast Asians that don’t carry enough East Asian features to pass as Japanese).

I don’t know about you but I am not okay with this type of BS.

The White Foreigner is Best

In continuation from above, let me just say that the White foreigner is the best foreigner here. As a White foreigner, you can talk in your crap level Japanese and be praised for it. I, on the other hand can talk in my crap level Japanese, too but will instead get bad looks for it.

Of course, I also know that not all White foreigners in Japan are treated well (read the blurb about xenophobia and profiling above) but I sure as heck am confident that overall, they’re treated better than the other foreigners in Japan and that isn’t fair nor is it okay.

I actually still remember when an immigration/customs officer smiled brightly at the White foreigners in line before me but was dull as F with me. Those White foreigners came from the same country as me and held the same type of passports as me. The only difference was our race. I did not appreciate this difference in treatment.

Backwards

Japan might not seem backwards with their country free of debris and falling under the category of “first world” country but they’re quite backwards. Women’s rights are far behind in comparison to other “first world” countries.

Oh, and men are still on a pedestal here.

Pride/Superiority Complex

This goes hand in hand with xenophobia and ethnocentrism. I think it’s good when people are proud of their ethnic background (ex. Japanese) and proud of their “fellow” people but it becomes mind boggling when such people start to think or claim that their people/country are better.

Pride gets to some of them so badly that they’ll even make excuses for “bad” Japanese persons by claiming the bad ones are actually not Japanese. Like, what douchery is this? Not all people are good, just like how not all Japanese people are good so quit it with the nonsense, please.

Aggressive

People will call it microaggression but any form of aggression is aggression and needs to be labeled as such. Let’s not belittle aggression, people. Any form, big or small is uncalled for and shows the true color of the person(s) comitting the aggressive act(s).

I remember a native (main island) Japanese tourist that was sitting adjacent to me in a restaurant in Okinawa. She seemed fine until she caught sight of me browsing stuff in English. This was MY electronic device and I had the right to browse in MY preferred language.

The woman was having some form of stifled tantrum towards me, with grunts and all that jazz. It was disturbing and unwelcoming especially when I was just trying to enjoy a meal.

I had no intention of showing off that I knew English and had no desire for her to assume that I’m from whatever country she happens to dislike.

The funny thing about all of this is that she herself was also a visitor to Okinawa. Whether she realizes this is a different story. I bring this up because native Japanese tend to view everyone but themselves as gaijin even when they’re traveling outside of Japan. I get that Okinawa is a part of Japan but it wasn’t always a part of Japan. In other words, this woman would have also been a foreigner had Okinawa not been colonized. It’s interesting how some people will resort to aggression when they don’t have to sit in discomfort themselves.

High Maintenance

With the average Japanese person coming off as quite judgemental, I can’t help but to find the bulk of them to be high maintenance. I know we have high maintenance people everywhere, but I felt as though Japan had a higher level of high maintenance people. Shiny leather shoes on men? Check. No fly hair? Check. A tote with a decent brand on it? Check. Makeup on to make you look like you don’t have makeup on? Check.

So, if you’re a traveler on the go, the likelihood of you having fly hair and a random tote for the random crap you buy is going to be high. And this doesn’t fly well with Japanese people, unfortunately. You can say you won’t care, but deep down, you probably won’t enjoy the judgemental looks you receive from these high maintenance people that really have no business judging others when they’re not the ones paying for your meal, shelter and travels. Enough said, right? Of course, not everyone is like that, but I encountered a lot of judgemental looks to be able to say that many of them are indeed like that.

Overall, I found it very difficult to like Japan. If you can communicate in Japanese and know the bulk of the Japanese etiquette to diminish judgmental looks from natives, Japan could very well be an enjoyable country. I just couldn’t get that experience and definitely cannot relate to the many foreigners that rave about the land of the rising sun. It was just below subpar for me. So below subpar that I was ecstatic to go back home. And going back home was what I did.

If you’re interested in reading/listening to others’ Japan experiences where they don’t rave about their particular experiences in Japan, here are a couple of links: