Unfortunately if you are not so young, you will still run into the same issues. It has nothing to do with young westerners causing problems, if that were the case the discrimination would be limited to young westerners who post on gaijinpot. If you are an old, non-western foreigner you will still have a problem. Similarly the need to avoid annoying other tenants doesn't explain the discrimination elsewhere in society. Oh yeah that's right I can't go into the onsen because I might try to swim backstroke and blow bubbles. I can't go into the nightclub because I might start a fight. I can't stay at the guest house because I might walk all over the futon with my shoes on. I can't join the debating society if I was born in Japan but of korean decent because I might not be able to understand subtle japanese style debating. I can't get the job even though I'm japanese because my distant ancestors worked with leather or were undertakers. Yep, all these forms of discrimination are understandable and just regular japanese trying to protect their business and avoid disturbing other law abiding japanese. Keep telling yourselves that...

Do I have a bad attitude? Yes. Do I plan on improving it? Hell no.

MeNoSavvy Wrote:Unfortunately if you are not so young, you will still run into the same issues. It has nothing to do with young westerners causing problems, if that were the case the discrimination would be limited to young westerners who post on gaijinpot. If you are an old, non-western foreigner you will still have a problem. Similarly the need to avoid annoying other tenants doesn't explain the discrimination elsewhere in society. Oh yeah that's right I can't go into the onsen because I might try to swim backstroke and blow bubbles. I can't go into the nightclub because I might start a fight. I can't stay at the guest house because I might walk all over the futon with my shoes on. I can't join the debating society if I was born in Japan but of korean decent because I might not be able to understand subtle japanese style debating. I can't get the job even though I'm japanese because my distant ancestors worked with leather or were undertakers. Yep, all these forms of discrimination are understandable and just regular japanese trying to protect their business and avoid disturbing other law abiding japanese. Keep telling yourselves that...

Do I have a bad attitude? Yes. Do I plan on improving it? Hell no.

Sounds like every other country in the world to me. The only difference is that in America racist/ignorant/xenophobic people have a harder time due to various "equal opportunity" laws. Unfortunately most people blindly believe that government force = the people of their society being more "accepting" of others. I'd much rather people be able to openly discriminate to my face, when it comes to their own private property/business, than to be forced to hide it out of fear.

About the foreigner housing issue, here's a section of the essay "Conditions of Living Together" by Harumi Befu, Department of Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University:

"Open blatant housing discrimination against foreigners is common in Japan. Foreigners frequently charge that they have been told by landlords that an apartment they ask to see is not open to foreigners. They are provided no other reason for the rejection, but there is little recourse for foreigners in such cases of discrimination. This does not mean that all landlords refuse to rent to all foreigners, but a large number of them do so particularly to non-Caucasian foreigners seeking low-rent housing. Here one openly sees Japanese racism--their prejudice against South and Southeast Asians. The reasons given are, for example, that foreigners do not know Japanese customs, that they, in case of South Asians, cook smelly food and the odor stays in the house, that they do not observe the local waste recycling program, that they do not participate in the neighborhood association events or activities, that they do not understand Japanese, etc. Most Japanese regard these as reasonable excuses for not renting to foreigners, regardless of whether a particular foreigner does or does not understand Japanese, whether or not s/he is familiar with Japanese customs, whether s/he cooks or does not cook smelly food, whether s/he observes or does not observe local recycling program, or whether s/he does or does not participate in neighborhood association activities.

Virtually all of the newly arrived foreign workers look for relatively inexpensive housing. Also, new arrivals tend first to live with relatives or friends who are already established in Japan and end up renting in the same neighborhood or nearby. As their numbers increase, the resident Japanese, disliking their foreign neighbors, tend to leave, allowing more foreigners to move in, as Ishiyama describes with respect to the Philippine workers in Nagoya. The result is an ethnic ghetto, which proves solace for the minority and a basis for solidarity to them. But it tends to isolate them from the larger Japanese community and retard integration with it. Also, physical concentration of minorities results in their conspicuousness, which can heighten the animosity of the neighboring Japanese."

It seems that every academic source I've ever read about people being refused housing in Japan points out that this is particularly a problem for Southeast Asians. It makes it really hard to buy the "loud-stupid gaijin" excuse. Imagine it was, say, 1890 in America, and there were a whole list of common attributes associated with black people at the time. If landlords were denying apartments to people and using this attributes as 'justifiable reasons' it would sure as hell be racist. I mean, it's not like this picture is fiction. It was racist then, and it's racist when people in Japan do it today.

Part of confronting racism is learning to deal with people who's culture is different from your own, and not allowing foreign tenants is giving up on dealing with cultural differences. It's absurd to me that people don't realize that cultural differences tend to annoy in one direction, but that doesn't meant that one of the ways of life is worse. The obvious example of this is noise level, where people from softer speaking cultures are annoyed by people from louder speaking cultures (but not the other way around). Of course people living in Japan should try to adopt Japanese customs, but the fact is that changing ones cultural traits can take a long time. Things that seem like perfectly conscious decisions, like whether or not to have a bunch of people in your apartment, and unconscious decisions like how close you stand to someone or how you sit in a chair, actually are both very difficult to change regardless of whether we consider them deliberate (largely because our decision making isn't as deliberate as we'd like to think).

I think you should be more worried about living with a Japanese guy or a roomate.
That's probably the biggest question I think. Do you think you can?
You guys do have an age difference. Some 20 something year old guys are mature, but some aren't. Just saying- I go to university here in Japan and know lots of J-guys. Some I think would be good roomates (like my bf) others I cringe...then again, I probably have different standards being a girl.

I don't think there are any other problems with it. Worst comes to worst, you can say you are visiting or 'lovers'. lol

I would be more worried about the rooming/living together/trash/what to do if girl comes over part/closet/cleaning/kitchen etc.

Diana Wrote:I think you should be more worried about living with a Japanese guy or a roomate.
That's probably the biggest question I think. Do you think you can?
You guys do have an age difference. Some 20 something year old guys are mature, but some aren't. Just saying- I go to university here in Japan and know lots of J-guys. Some I think would be good roomates (like my bf) others I cringe...then again, I probably have different standards being a girl.

I don't think there are any other problems with it. Worst comes to worst, you can say you are visiting or 'lovers'. lol

I would be more worried about the rooming/living together/trash/what to do if girl comes over part/closet/cleaning/kitchen etc.

He's a serious guy, and definitely not a typical university student. If he was I wouldn't be considering living with him. Also note that he has never been a Japanese college student, which we all know is play time for Japanese guys. He's been in America for the past 4 years taking 18hrs a semester and just got a job from one of the largest corporations in Japan so I think he has his head on relatively straight.

That all being said it wouldn't be adventure if everything went as planned.

Jarvik7 Wrote:For the most part I think that they are justified (just take a look at gaijinpot forums to see the average foreigner in Japan), but it sucks for the rest of us well-behaved Japanese speaking foreigners.

The Gaijinpot forums are not a good indication of anything going on with the foreign population in Japan.

Quote:Koreans composed the largest group (607,000), followed by Chinese (488,000), Brazilians (287,000), and Filipinos (199,000). Well over 90 percent of resident foreigners came from either Asia (74 percent) or South America (18 percent).

Approximately 41 percent of registered foreigners are permanent residents, including 466,000 "special permanent residents," or former colonial migrants and their descendants.

Roughly one out of two foreign nationals in "nonpermanent resident" categories holds a status with no employment restrictions, such as "long-term resident" status. A long-term resident can be a Japanese relative, a child of Japanese descent, or the child of a foreign-national spouse from a previous marriage. Such individuals may stay in the country for a designated length of time (three years, one year, or less than one year as may be specified by the Minister of Justice).

http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feat...cfm?id=487

As you can see, about half of the foreigners in Japan have permanent residency. Those are not people who are going to be picking and leaving right away without paying their bills, and most of the other half have long term obligations in Japan.

epsilondelta Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Many see Japan as a temporary playground, and so have no qualms about leaving the country without paying off their cellphone bills or rent, leaving the apartment a wreck, having loud parties or otherwise being loud, not sorting garbage, not understanding customary move-out etc fees, and so on. That's not even including the fact that the landlord cannot directly communicate to most foreigners due to the language barrier. It makes sense that a landlord will want to avoid working with a foreign tenant when it is so much more (potential) hassle for him/her.

I've never rented an apartment in Japan, but if you make the initial contact in fluent Japanese, shouldn't that get you a long way? I imagine it might take away a lot of their concerns about renting to foreigners.

I wouldn't worry his opinion, since what he said there is a complete fabrication.

I think their main concern would be whether you understand the rules and culture regarding the rental of an apartment in Japan, and whether it seems you have the intention to stay in Japan for a while. If you seem like a transient, then that will work against you. If you let them know you're going to complete a degree at a Japanese university for the next four years, their possible worries will be assuaged.

activeaero Wrote:Sounds like every other country in the world to me. The only difference is that in America racist/ignorant/xenophobic people have a harder time due to various "equal opportunity" laws. Unfortunately most people blindly believe that government force = the people of their society being more "accepting" of others. I'd much rather people be able to openly discriminate to my face, when it comes to their own private property/business, than to be forced to hide it out of fear.

I think more North Americans are concerned with self-interest and earning money than other cultures. That is, more care about the colour of the green in your wallet than the colour of your skin, compared to most other countries. The racist element exists, but it is to a much lesser degree than every other culture I've lived in, in which nearly every person can only identify with their tribe. It has been said a lot of times that America is more individualistic than other nations.

I've lived in Korea and Thailand, for example, and the majority of people I met were complete collectivists. They tend to attribute ideas and actions to races rather than individuals, without a method of rational evaluation applied to the individual. Whether these are "positive" or "negative" generalizations don't matter, because they are wrong as such and a blank-out in their thinking. These people I met generally substitute the whole process of judging and evaluating a person based on his character and actions with a snapshot of his face. This kind of collectivist thinking is so low that it's on the perceptual level--a type of way to reduce one's consciousness to that of an animal's to eliminate the burden of evaluation.

Dixon Wrote:

epsilondelta Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Many see Japan as a temporary playground, and so have no qualms about leaving the country without paying off their cellphone bills or rent, leaving the apartment a wreck, having loud parties or otherwise being loud, not sorting garbage, not understanding customary move-out etc fees, and so on. That's not even including the fact that the landlord cannot directly communicate to most foreigners due to the language barrier. It makes sense that a landlord will want to avoid working with a foreign tenant when it is so much more (potential) hassle for him/her.

I've never rented an apartment in Japan, but if you make the initial contact in fluent Japanese, shouldn't that get you a long way? I imagine it might take away a lot of their concerns about renting to foreigners.

I wouldn't worry his opinion, since what he said there is a complete fabrication.

@Dixon - Could you be more specific on why it is "complete fabrication"?

When i was in japan (admittedly 15 years ago) this sort of behaviour was common among westerners who were in Japan for only a year or so. While yes that was a while ago, have things completely changed? Has a diet of crappy reality tv and video games created a new generation that actually takes total responsibilty for their actions when the're outside their own country?

On a side note my parents in law in japan have a number of rental properties. I know for a fact that they prefer to rent to japanese. Why? It's mostly a financial decision for them. If something does go pear shaped they figure they will have more chance of seeing some money back from someone that is unlikely to flea the country. As well though, they simply see it as "easier" as there is less likely to be "misunderstandings".

to Dixon:

I agree with you completely regarding your assessment of collectivist thinking; I believe it is all too common in Japan as well. I talk about this a lot with my Japanese friends, and what it boils down to is a lack of experience in having to deal seriously with these situations for the average person.

to Tzadeck (and Dixon):

Yeah, I think that I was focusing particularly on western foreigners, and I appreciate that you brought up the racism against south/southeast Asians.

Based on my limited knowledge, I think we can say that Koreans have come a long way w/r to organizing power in Japan. The fact that 2nd and 3rd generation Korean-descendents, who grow up attending Japanese schools, marrying Japanese, with Japanese friends, speaking Japanese as a native language, have permeated the whole of Japan has undoubtedly been a huge factor in any successes they have had.

Literacy and fluency, and a presenting a willingness to accomodate, understand, and follow the customs of the host country are indispensable tools, without which a minority is helpless to defend themselves. The question is whether you want things to change from the ground up, with a permeation of "Japanized" foreign populations that grow and blur the lines of JP/non-JP (which will happen inevitably), or whether you want it to come from laws created by politicians who should have enough international awareness to know better. I think the ideal situation is for both to happen in tandem.

I do not agree however that these customs are hard to change among western foreigners, who tend to come to Japan from middle class or wealthy families and generally have a good head on their shoulders. The defining factor is a willingness and interest in letting yourself change and take part in society here, which entails a long process of compromise and gain for first generation immigrants and visiting workers. Having loud parties, not sorting garbage, etc, is something that can easily be decided in less than a week. The continued refusal to accomodate these common sense guidelines cannot be attributed to anything other than inconsiderate, selfish disinterest; as a result, this gives way to self imposed isolation on the part of the minority I happen to be a part of.

The "bad" western foreigners would probably have the easiest time of all minorities getting mainstream acceptance if they would just straighten themselves out and stop being leeches in Japan. However, you cannot make demands of the whole lot of western foreigners, with their varied motivations and circumstances. What should be done on our end?

I don't know what to say about the customs being hard to change. It really depends on whether you look at aggregate trends, or if you try to think of a person as having an individual will and decision making process. What I mean is, supposed you take a relatively large population of people, maybe 5,000 or so. Well, if you stick those 5,000 people in another country, they will continue to do all kinds of things from their original culture for many many years. What they do will gradually get mixed with the culture that they're living in, but they'll continue to exhibit traits from their own culture for a long time. For example, at first they will probably celebrate most of the major holidays from their home country. Gradually, they'll start to sometimes celebrate those holidays, and even if they skip a holiday for a couple of years they might eventually celebrate it again out of the blue.

If you look at the volume of a person's speaking voice it works similarly. At first, when a person from a loud-speaking country comes to a soft-speaking country, the person will often find it difficult to always speak in that sort of low voice. But, after some time they will speak like that the majority of the time. However, even once they have been speaking softly for a long time, chances are they will occasionally revert back to their old volume level (especially if they are excited, drunk, among friends from their home country, etc).

The same thing that happens with holidays and speaking voice seems to happen will things like having parties in your house. Is this really that much more conscious a decision than the others? If you view the way people act in an aggregate way, it seems to work pretty much the same way any other cultural difference does. (And, though I'm repeating myself, people are very bad at determining what decisions in their life are voluntary and which are not. In fact, people are very bad at determining anything about their own consciousness, though they often think they are masters of it; "After all, who would know more about the way I think than me?" See Dan Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" as a good introduction, although there seems to be a huge body of research and literature on it.)

Incidentally, I'm not really basing my argument on the ideas in the above post. The fact is that the really bad kind of racism is when people are systematically forced to have a lower standard of living based on their race. This is exactly what seems to be happening when people are denied housing, since housing is one of the most important factors determining one's standard of living. I'm not denying that it can be an inconvenience for the landlord and the other tenants, but that doesn't seem to make the situation okay. A little annoyance on their behalf doesn't seem to justify a systematic problem.

Hypothetical situation. You are landlord in the United States. You have a choice of two prospective tenants for your only source of income. One is an upper middle class Japanese student doing some soul searching on a 12 month temporary residency visa who can't speak a word of English. The other is an ordinary Average Joe American citizen with a full-time job and a fistful of character references. Would it be "racist" or "discriminatory" to favour the American every time? That seems to be what is being implied here by certain users.

Of course there's bound to be the odd racist landlord, but that's true of everywhere. Being an ethnic minority anywhere is going to throw some obstacles your way. The vast majority of white people living in Japan are having their first experience of being an ethnic minority. And, not surprisingly, a lot don't like it. Most of these evil gaijin-hating landlords probably aren't "racist", they just want to make life as easy as possible for themselves, as we all do.

In the past I've managed to avoid paying utility bills for idiot landlords at places just up the road from my new address, so I can only imagine how easy it would be to do it across continents if you were so inclined.

harhol Wrote:Hypothetical situation. You are landlord in the United States. You have a choice of two prospective tenants for your only source of income. One is an upper middle class Japanese student doing some soul searching on a 12 month temporary residency visa who can't speak a word of English. The other is an ordinary Average Joe American citizen with a full-time job and a fistful of character references. Would it be "racist" or "discriminatory" to favour the American every time? That seems to be what is being implied here by certain users.

The situation is sometimes like that, but a lot of times its a bit more extreme. Looking at apartments in Osaka once, there was a checklist of features of apartments, and one of the checklist items was "Gaijin OK!" This kind of thing is not abnormal in Tokyo or Osaka. That's not weighing options between two tenants when one is obviously better, that's a policy decision made before the decision process even comes into play.

Edit: Incidentally, racism is very very rarely "OMG, I don't like people who are this color." It's almost always very little things that can't be said to be racist if they are taken in isolation. For example, suppose one cop pulls over a black guy who was going 80mph. Now, there are a lot of people who were going 80mph that he didn't pull over. It just so happens that this guy was black. The cop didn't think, "Hey, that guy's black, I don't like black people, I'mma pull him over." So you can't say that the particular event is racist. However, when you look at many many cases and you see that black people get pulled over more for going the same speed as a white person, you can see that the situation taken as a whole is indeed racist. This happens even though the vast majority of the police doing it justify it for other reasons, with very few of them actually thinking, "I don't like black people."

Anyway, as someone said above, about half of foreign tenants are permanent residents. The above checklists I mentioned apply to them as well.

While gaijin technically means foreigner, in practice it means white foreigner. Most Japanese people I've met/overheard will identify a person as:
White:外人
Black:黒人
Chinese: 中国人
S.Korean: 韓国人
N.Korean: 朝鮮人 (making a distinction seems to vary by age)
Unknown Asian (アジア人)
アラブ人／イラク人／アフリカ人
and so on (note: this is not in reference to nationality, but to race)

A Chinese person applying to a "gaijin ok" apartment might still meet resistance. Similarly, some landlords that turn away all westerners will take Japanese speaking Chinese/Koreans.

I made a distinction between western foreigners and Asian foreigners since I believe they are turned away for different reasons. Western foreigners are generally turned away because of fears of meiwaku. While Asians might also be turned away for this, if they speak Japanese (like the majority of Asian foreigners seem to), the reason is more likely pure racism. This is because Asian cultures are much closer to Japanese culture than Western cultures. Chinese and Koreans integrate much better and faster into Japan thanks to the similarity, and so meiwaku concerns are less. There is still the fear of skipping out of the country with unpaid fees though.

Some people (Debito) will scream about racism against whites in Japan, but there really isn't much of any. There is plenty of racism against Chinese/Koreans/other Asians and even sometimes blacks, but I've never seen any directed at whites/latinos/Arabs. What there IS, is xenophobia. While both racism and xenophobia lead to discrimination, they are not the same. For one thing, xenophobia can be overcome a lot easier with education and exposure.

=Scene at a restaurant=
1) Racism
<customer enters a ramen restaurant>
Customer: Hello I'd like a bowl of ramen
Cook: Get the f**k out you damn <slur>

2) Xenophobia
<customer enters a ramen restaurant>
Customer: Hello I'd like a bowl of ramen
Cook: No one here speaks English, so we don't serve foreigners.
Customer: I speak perfect Japanese. I just asked you for that ramen in Japanese. I don't speak English either since I'm from Germany.
Cook: Oh, here is your ramen then
<cook then comments on how well you use chopsticks and how good your Japanese is, asks you if you like Japanese girls, etc while you try to eat>

Both cases suck, but one was overcome.

Back to apartments, you probably won't get a chance to speak to the landlord* unless you keep forcing the issue with the 不動産, but in the majority of the other "Japanese only" cases I've seen on Debito's site, a simple dialogue solved the problem and the sign was removed.

*Most decent size apartment complexes do not have "a landlord", they are owned by a large company that administers many apartments/store-space/office-space/etc. Thus your chances of talking to anyone who can do anything are further slimmed because you are now dealing with bureaucracy. The apartment issue is really something that will only be solved with time or legislation.

Re: whoever mentioned burakumin/Okinawan/Ainu discrimination: you're a few decades out of date. Most people with that mindset are dead or nearly there. Zainichi Korean discrimination is also way down, although their situation is different in a couple ways:
-Many don't hold Japanese citizenship even though they were born in Japan as were their parents. This is by THEIR choice. They can get citizenship extremely easily with a simple application (and cannot be denied), but instead choose to hold South/North Korean citizenship for a cultural link to the fatherland. By doing this they are giving up their rights to contribute and receive benefits fully as a citizen, such as the right to vote.

-Many goto special private schools funded and run by North Korean associations. They teach Korean culture and history etc there. This is good. The bad is that they don't cover all the material that is required of all students nationwide since they have to make room somewhere. This makes access to post-secondary education harder, which in turn makes access to high paying jobs harder. Again, this is caused by their own choices. Korean cultural education is definitely a good thing, but it should be done during 部活 time or at 塾, not instead of required curriculum.

Note: I am not just pulling all of this out of my ass. I have formally studied discrimination and minorities in Japan and toured major areas of discrimination such as triangle park (largest homeless concentration in Japan), the largest zainichi concentration in Japan (Tsuruhashi and the surrounding area), some zainichi schools, and traditional burakumin areas.

harhol Wrote:Hypothetical situation. You are landlord in the United States. You have a choice of two prospective tenants for your only source of income. One is an upper middle class Japanese student doing some soul searching on a 12 month temporary residency visa who can't speak a word of English. The other is an ordinary Average Joe American citizen with a full-time job and a fistful of character references. Would it be "racist" or "discriminatory" to favour the American every time? That seems to be what is being implied here by certain users.

Of course there's bound to be the odd racist landlord, but that's true of everywhere. Being an ethnic minority anywhere is going to throw some obstacles your way. The vast majority of white people living in Japan are having their first experience of being an ethnic minority. And, not surprisingly, a lot don't like it. Most of these evil gaijin-hating landlords probably aren't "racist", they just want to make life as easy as possible for themselves, as we all do.

In the past I've managed to avoid paying utility bills for idiot landlords at places just up the road from my new address, so I can only imagine how easy it would be to do it across continents if you were so inclined.

Umm no the "hypothetical situation" is more like this. The economy is depressed and there is no average joe american who is interested in renting your apartment. In fact the apartment has been vacant for 6 months. The average american joe can't afford the rent because his manufacturing job was shipped to China or Mexico. Similarly the new office job he started a year ago has just been outsourced to India. A japanese guy turns up he wants to rent the place. He is of good character and speaks english well because he has been living and studying in America for quite sometime. He even has good character references, and works for a well known company in the automotive industry. He is quite old and is well past the age of partying. He wants to rent the apartment. Unfortunately the landlord doesn't want to rent to him because his perception is that all Japs are trouble, even though all nobody else has shown interest in the apartment.

So the japanese guy goes down the road to a rental agency. However the rental agency tells him they can't help him, because nobody wants to rent to Japs. It doesn't matter that he has been living in the US for a while and been paying his taxes all those years.

Disappointed he gets on his bicycle and starts to head back to the overpriced accommodation his company provides him. However on his way back the cops pull him over to check that he isn't riding a stolen bicycle. Feeling down in the dumps he goes into a bar and wants to buy a beer. However the bar keeper, although not refusing to serve him, charges him double the price he charges the american joe because he doesn't want japs in his bar.

By the way, last time I checked people pay their utilities to the water company, or the gas company, not to the landlord. So whether people don't pay those is not the landlords concern. Also the inflated key money cost is more than enough to cover any minor issues should the renter disappear.

*Note the term "Jap" has been used in order to reflect the thought process of the hypothetical racist landlord.

Jarvik7 Wrote:A Chinese person applying to a "gaijin ok" apartment might still meet resistance. Similarly, some landlords that turn away all westerners will take Japanese speaking Chinese/Koreans.

I made a distinction between western foreigners and Asian foreigners since I believe they are turned away for different reasons. Western foreigners are generally turned away because of fears of meiwaku. While Asians might also be turned away for this, if they speak Japanese (like the majority of Asian foreigners seem to), the reason is more likely pure racism. This is because Asian cultures are much closer to Japanese culture than Western cultures. Chinese and Koreans integrate much better and faster into Japan thanks to the similarity, and so meiwaku concerns are less. There is still the fear of skipping out of the country with unpaid fees though.

Some people (Debito) will scream about racism against whites in Japan, but there really isn't much of any. There is plenty of racism against Chinese/Koreans/other Asians and even sometimes blacks, but I've never seen any directed at whites/latinos/Arabs. What there IS, is xenophobia. While both racism and xenophobia lead to discrimination, they are not the same. For one thing, xenophobia can be overcome a lot easier with education and exposure.

=Scene at a restaurant=
1) Racism
<customer enters a ramen restaurant>
Customer: Hello I'd like a bowl of ramen
Cook: Get the f**k out you damn <slur>

2) Xenophobia
<customer enters a ramen restaurant>
Customer: Hello I'd like a bowl of ramen
Cook: No one here speaks English, so we don't serve foreigners.
Customer: I speak perfect Japanese. I just asked you for that ramen in Japanese. I don't speak English either since I'm from Germany.
Cook: Oh, here is your ramen then
<cook then comments on how well you use chopsticks and how good your Japanese is, asks you if you like Japanese girls, etc while you try to eat>

Both cases suck, but one was overcome.

.

You say toh-mah-toh, I say toh-may-toh. But I still can't rent the damn apartment !

How about prohibiting house parties instead of banning White people? Kinda sucks to see that you are supporting racial discrimination Jarvik. Whatever the reason, racism or xenophobia, racial discrimination is not acceptable.

@MeNoSavvy, proper forum etiquette for what it's worth suggests that you write more in your response than what you quote.

@Subject,

Yeah, it's an anecdote, but it applies here. I was telling some guy about the difficulty of renting apartments in Japan. Part of it is the language issue, but part of it is the loud parties.

He said "Well what does a party matter, I'm paying for the room, I should be able to have a loud party."

I asked "So what about traveling down a residential road blaring your music".

He said "Same thing, I paid for the car and the stereo, I have a right to play it"

My quick tit for tat thought was "The very mindset that let's you think you should be able to throw a loud party gives way to the mindset that people don't have to rent to you. Same idea being if you have the right to blare music, then a city enforcing the will of those that elected it, can fine you for playing 'your' music on 'their' public street". Nations, states, cities, communities and businesses also have rights and responsibilities too.

I'm not quite sure where I stand on how the government should deal with Discrimination. I see no problem with racist or racism per se as they are mindsets. Like what was written above, these mindsets can become discrimination when put into practice. Guess the only way I can justify anti-discrimination laws is: No man is an island. He operates in a society that provides houses, businesses, cops, military, roads, schools, etc. This is provided by tax paying citizens. Just as a man has rights to say "You're not allowed to do this while in my house, or I will kick you out" a society reserves the right to say "You're not allowed to do this in our jurisdiction or we will kick you out". Society reserves the right to say if they want discrimination past a certain degree allowed in its area. If that society want's to allow discrimination, it's very difficult to stop it unless you change the societal opinion or force it upon them.

Get's complicated pretty quick, but doesn't this boil down to the not just individuals but families, neighborhoods, communities, cities, states and nations? A group's actions become dictated not just by those within its folds but by those that interact with it and those that contain the group. One guy saying he has the right to rent any apartment, another guy saying he has the right to rent out his apartment to anyone he want, another saying if you want to rent in this area you must follow these rules, another saying if you rent out in this area you must follow these rules. There's a lot of competing 'wants' here.

Transparent_Aluminium Wrote:Kinda sucks to see that you are supporting racial discrimination Jarvik. Whatever the reason, racism or xenophobia, racial discrimination is not acceptable.

As I have said several times, I don't support it, I UNDERSTAND it.

Jarvik7 Wrote:As I have said several times, I don't support it, I UNDERSTAND it.

Point taken but you did say:

Jarvik7 Wrote:For the most part I think that they are justified (just take a look at gaijinpot forums to see the average foreigner in Japan), but it sucks for the rest of us well-behaved Japanese speaking foreigners.

and

Jarvik7 Wrote:I didn't say it was a good thing (in fact I said it sucks), but it is justifiable (aka the landlords have some good reasons other than just "I hate the colour of their skin").

and

Jarvik7 Wrote:Yes it's a crappy situation, but try to understand it from their position too.

Now I don't know what is your true position on the matter but I got the impression that you were defending the landlords. It's not as if you said: "This is unacceptable but here are the reasons why landlords think they are justified in discriminating against foreigners". If that's what you wanted to say than that's fine by me.

Nukemarine: My position on the issue is that governments should prohibit discrimination. If you look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internation...rimination you can see that pretty much all of the countries have agreed at least in principle that racial discrimination is a bad thing and should be prohibited. Interestingly, Wikipedia also states that Japan was the first country to propose a ban on racial discrimination in 1919.

As for your friend, his attitude is an example of why landlords discriminate. But what should happen ideally is that landlords should make it clear to foreigners when they rent to them that loud parties are not ok. They can even write some kind of penalty into the contract. Then that makes it clear for everybody.

That's the rub, this ain't about racial discrimination. How Debito ended up winning was when his case turned into a racial matter: he became a Japanese citizen and was still turned away. Until then, he didn't have a legal but a moral issue. The issue with Japan is it allows discrimination against non-citizens.

Now, discrimination is acceptable by many people depending on context. We discriminate on age and sex and job position all the time with nary a complaint by the masses. I add sex in that cause try to walk into a female bathroom because the men's room is full and see how far equal rights will keep you out of trouble. Better yet, compare a female's car insurance rate to that of a male's in the US. Plus, like in the Debito case, the US and many other countries are famous for discriminating on citizenship.

As for racial discrimination, hey, the people power the government and so if the people (ie more than just you) want to prohibit or punish racial discrimination in its jurisdiction more power to them all. I personally find racial discrimination a horrible practice cause your race (more specifically your skin color) says way too little about you.

Still, a little discrimination is useful if not courteous. I discriminate based on appearance to decide if I should use the term "Ma'am" or "Sir". To ascertain that based on an interrogative would be insulting.

Nukemarine, you bring up an interesting point and I like how you've dealt with it here by bringing in the larger context of discrimination outside of politically-charged terminology.

MeNoSavvy, your horror story about the poor Jap that can't get anything to happen right for him is a pretty big exaggeration. Let's bring it into perspective a bit, keeping your reverse analogy - you left out of the picture the 95% or so of other Japanese who speak little to no English, the more-or-less (less, but still) grounded discrimination based on a disturbingly common set of "bad" behaviours... or the fact that most American people have never even had a conversation with a Japanese, and the bizarre psychology of being a nation with a dual love/hatred of all things Japanese and obsessive, prideful fussing over what is truly American. Sounds like a nastier cocktail than you'd like to drink - did I really just say that?

I think this is where I get in line with the people who are suggesting that if you want to fix the problem, you have to see things from the perspective of the other to strategically address it, if nothing else for the purpose of identifying their weak points. This is exactly why conversations in good JP with store owners get signs taken down, and whining does zilch except waste our HP.

If a tree falls in a Japanese forest, does it make a sound? Not if it fell in English. I threw this out a few times on Debito's page, when people get so huffy puffy about stuff - how bout you go talk to somebody about it in Japanese, or use the power structures that are already in place? That hushes about 90% of complainees up in my less-than-statistical analysis; they remain powerless to address their situation effectively. Nobody's going to do us the favor of changing minds.

I'm still asking my question - which ought to come first? A groundswell of well-meaning, well-adjusted foreigners making Obama-esque Japanese speeches, or a top-down law that *might* be grudgingly and painfully enforced by a bloated, farting beaurocracy over the next 50 years until Japan can raise and educate a generation accustomed to living under that law? Are we going to ask for affirmative action in Japan?

Jarvik7 Wrote:...such as triangle park (largest homeless concentration in Japan)...

Really? Triangle park? That's really surprising to me. I've been there many times and didn't get that impression at all. Is this the same spot as the famous night spot in Osaka? Everytime I've been its just been young people walking around drinking, skating on the rails ect.

Transparent_Aluminium Wrote:Now I don't know what is your true position on the matter but I got the impression that you were defending the landlords. It's not as if you said: "This is unacceptable but here are the reasons why landlords think they are justified in discriminating against foreigners". If that's what you wanted to say than that's fine by me.

Essentially I do think that they have a number of good reasons to turn away foreigners, but I think it should be on a case by case basis instead of a blanket ban. If I was a Japanese landlord I would take a Japanese tenant over a foreigner if I was near occupancy, but if I had rooms sitting empty I'd consider it on a case by case basis (meaning I'd want to interview the tenant). If someone has learned Japanese to the extent that they could have a normal conversation, then chances are that they've also learned a bit about the social customs and expectations of Japan. They'd also be able to understand me in the case of a problem.

If I was a landlord in the west I'd have a different opinion (although I'd never accept a tenant that couldn't speak one of my languages), but Japanese apartments and western apartments aren't the same thing:
-You are expected to make ZERO noise at all times of the day in Japan. In the west it is acceptable to make some noise during reasonable hours, hold small parties, etc.
-In smaller Japanese apartments (1K etc), it is frowned upon to have people over to your place at all, due to the higher effective noise level. Unimaginable in the west.
-Japan has strict garbage separation rules in most regions. Failing to comply will get the landlord fined. No such thing in the west, as long as you don't just throw your garbage into the elevator or something.
-Japan has more move-out costs than in the west. Chances are you won't get your deposit back at all, or you might have to pay more. A favourite tactic I've noticed from some foreigners is to just not pay the last month's rent, in order to effectively get the whole deposit back. By the time an eviction notice shows up and comes to enforcement they're already gone. The landlord then has to try to get the money from the guarantor (likely an eikaiwa that the foreigner no longer works at, because they've returned home.

re: other things brought up by MeNoSavvy..

I've noticed many people chalk things up to discrimination/racism, which were actually caused by that person's cultural ignorance or general bad manners, or is just something that happens to EVERYONE, foreign or Japanese, in Japan.

Example: you sit down next to someone on the train and they get up and move. It happens to everyone foreign or not. Many people prefer to sit next to no one on one or both sides. Also, foreigners do stand a better chance of stinking in the summer than Japanese people, because our diets are different. Diets high in protein = stinker sweat. Most foreigners are also not adjusted to the summer heat unless they've been here awhile.

Example: one of my lady friends was stopped by the cops and asked for her bike registration twice in the space of 100 meters. Someone call Debito quick! Oh wait, she is Japanese.

For what it's worth, I haven't encountered a single case of racism/discrimination against me in the >2years I've been in Japan in any of the cities I've lived in. That includes apartment hunting. I've also never been asked for bike registration. The closest to discrimination I've had is the limited job market open to foreigners and the inability to use native recruitment services. That sucks a hell of a lot more than some old lady getting up when you sit next to her on the train.