ronnihonjin Wrote:"I don't follow Japanese news but has there been any high profile race-motivated murders there, similar to the ones that you hear about in the USA once a month?"


There are plenty of examples of Japanese nationals murdering foreigners. They often do not become very high profile cases, if they are even picked u by the local media at all.


Plenty more of these around as well....

Serious question but do you honestly consider that "plenty" of examples? If you think "plenty" of examples requires having to stretch out your timeline over DECADES to find the kind of cases you are looking at to prove your point then I have to tell you that your perspective is just horrendously skewed.

I worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 7 years and let me tell you I could make up a list that would make the above look like a children's fairy tale using a single WEEK's worth of criminal cases in the United States.

Does Japan have crime? Yes. Does it have horrendous crimes? Yes. Does it have both of these things at dramatically lower levels than most other countries on earth? Yes.


The rest is just my personal opinion of course, but when I see someone list a reason that they hate a place being "People acting like kids at Disneyland" I can rest assured that this individual has absolutely no concept of what a truly crappy life is and has been so unbelievably entitled throughout their whole life, whether they realize it or not, that they actually have the time and the ability to be annoyed by people enjoying themselves at a theme park. Or as I think one of the internet meme's call it "First world problems". In fact if I was going to encourage someone in regards to Japan being an ok country to live in it is the "What I hate about Japan" type of threads I would send them to as there is no stronger evidence for the case that Japan is a pretty good place than the droves of foreigners crying about problems that literally 90% of the rest of the world WISHES they could have.

This is just anecdotal evidence from my own experience of living in Japan for almost a year and a half but I seem to find a VERY strong correlation between people who came to Japan already having built themselves a solid life/career back in the states and a lack of whining. The biggest whiners I've encountered when it comes to Japan is almost without fail people who came here when either 1. They were very young with little to no "real world" life experience making a living as an adult in their own country or 2. Older but for lack of a better words not exactly "winners" where they came from.

Now does this mean I don't moan about a lot of Japanese TV? Of course not. I do find it horrible.....for TV, which is such an unbelievably insignificant factor in regards to what accounts for a good life that mentioning it as a reason for me to hate a country would just prove that I have a pretty worthless life to begin. If bad TV significantly effects your life then it isn't the TV that is bad, it is the person's life who actually depends on TV to derive a significant amount of satisfaction from it.

To be fair, the premise of this thread wasn't "Is Japan a good place to live?" but "In what ways has Japan disappointed you?" While these two may interact with each other, they are actually separate issues.

Activeaero, you brought up several good points, but I think the OP was more concerned about being disenchanted with day-to-day life in Japan than comparing living conditions there with those in other countries. In that vein, being disappointed that Japanese adults can be so immature as to run around acting like 11-year-olds at a theme park isn't such a radical complaint, even if the truth is that theme parks like Disneyland seem to attract the less mature adult population and magnify a problem that is actually at best insignificant.

The point of this thread is for people to share stories about how Japan wasn't everything they hoped it could be in some ways. I don't think it's fair to call this "crying" about first-world problems. I think knowing that, under the law, foreigners have zero rights in Japan is pretty DANG important, and something that I might never have learned if not for people sharing their stories here, so don't be so quick to condemn, ok? ;7

I have lived in the US for many years and I would leave tomorrow if I could. But my wife and kids are American and that would mean leaving them behind, which I won't do. So I just make the best of it.

There are many good things about the US and Americans in general, but then again you can say that about EVERY culture and people, so nothing special here.

But what has ground on me over the years is the extreme stupidity of Americans. And that is reflected no better than on American TV, which is god awful. With the exception of a few good dramas and documentaries, TV here is at the level of an 11 year old, and the Americans love it.

Take a trip to Disney Land, where you'll find perfectly sane (but stupid) adult women and men wearing their Mickey Mouse ears and running around acting like, well....11 year olds.

Watch a reality show where after every scene the participants act as if they have just shat their brains out over the most asinine shit in the history of mankind.

Try going to Best Buy where all you want to do is shop for a TV. The stores always crowded and the staff don't have a clue. The stuff is so expensive, and when you go to buy it they won't shut up about insurance plans and getting $100 Monster cables to go along with it. Can't I just buy my TV at a decent price and go home?

The US is also very very boring. There really isn't a whole lot to do here beside going out to eat and drink. As far as sightseeing....the crowds, the prices, and the fat people...no thanks.

I could go on and on...my advice; stay away. A short visit or business trip? Ok I guess. But to live here. Fail.

America Sucks


(I concur JP TV is horrendous....its why everyone watches American TV)

ronnihonjin Wrote:"I don't follow Japanese news but has there been any high profile race-motivated murders there, similar to the ones that you hear about in the USA once a month?"


There are plenty of examples of Japanese nationals murdering foreigners. They often do not become very high profile cases, if they are even picked u by the local media at all.

Hoon "Scott" Kang, a Korean-American national was found dead in the stairwell of a Kabukicho building. Despite video evidence to the contrary and protests from his family, his death is being treated by Tokyo Metropolitan police as accidental.

Lindsey Hawker, British national raped and murdered. Her killer miraculously avoided the death penalty and has even managed to release a book while he has been incarcerated. A new movie is also in the works about his life on the run, despite the protests of the Hawker family. The Hawker case is also notable as it highlights something I mentioned previously, poor translation/interpretation services offered by the courts, in this instance those provided to the Hawker family themselves.

Issei Sagawa, Japanese national who killed, raped and consumed a Dutch woman in that order. He was extradited back to Japan and promptly released. Since then he has enjoyed a macabre celebrity, writing restaurant reviews for magazines, acting in such high brow productions as Uwakizuma: Chijokuzeme (Unfaithful Wife: Shameful Torture), taking part in talk shows and painting and selling nude pictures of women.

Edward N. Allshouse, Jr., 17, An American High school student in Okinawa was murdered following an argument over a girl.

Bishnu Prasad Dhamala, A Neplaese beaten to death on a street in Osaka two weeks ago, despite offering no resistance to his attackers whatsoever. He was kicked repeatedly about the head before a bicycle was dropped on his head as he lay prostrate on the ground. Following his death, his assailants asserted in statements that they did not expect the foreigner to die. Whether this means they believed that foreigners were able to take more of a beating than the average Japanese is quite unclear...

ABUBAKAR AWUDU SURAJ, a Ghanian national murdered during his deportation by Japanese immigration officials. He was married to a Japanese national and had been in Japan for 22 years, but a brief visa overstay in the 1980s rendered him liable for deportation. The incident involved such Monty Python esque farce as immigration officers bringing their own plastic restraints from home and attempting to convince the cabin crew of an Air Egypt flight, that the man they had murdered in their custody, was merely "pretending to be sick" when said crew refused to transport his body. As yet no immigration officials have been indicted for his death. The Economist also made some interesting comments about The SRP system

"The SRP system is an example of the problem. No criteria for eligibility are specified. Instead, published “guidelines” are applied arbitrarily. And people cannot apply directly for an SRP: illegal residents can only request it once in detention, or turn themselves in and try their luck while deportation proceedings are under way. So most illegal residents just stay mum. Mr Suraj fell into the SRP abyss after he was arrested for overstaying his visa. Although he had lived in Japan for 22 years, was fluent in the language and married to a Japanese citizen, his SRP request was denied. "


His wife was also not informed about his deportation and only found out about it after he was already dead ‘‘I have yet to receive any apologies. I want to know what happened,’’

A pretty decent article about the whole affair
http://www.economist.com/node/16113280


Plenty more of these around as well....

I don't know about the Hoon Scott Kang case but the Lindsay Hawker and Issei Sagawa cases were not racially motivated murders. Nor, does it sound like the murder of Edward Allshouse was racially motivated either. You said yourself that it happened because of a fight over a girl. The Bishnu Prasad Dhamala and Abubakar Awudu Suraj cases could possibly have a racial motivation behind them but we really don't know the circumstances. Just because a Japanese person kills a foreigner doesn't automatically make it a racially motivated hate crime.

Actually, those all sound like pretty valid complaints to me, vix. American TV does kinda suck except for a few shows/channels. If you don't have cable or satellite, you really only have three or four shows to watch on a regular basis that aren't terrible. (Sounds like that's still be more than Japanese TV though).

Also, for the most part living in America IS pretty boring. Most of my entertainment comes from the internet because everything else takes money. Unless you live in a bigger city with parks and museums and stuff, in which case, yeah, you don't really have as much of an excuse; but I don't. I live in a small college town where I don't have a lot of friends and there aren't many places to go to MEET friends if I was so inclined (which I'm not, so I'm not really complaining, but for some people this might be a big deal).

While immature people running around Disneyland might be humorous to me at first, it would probably get on my nerves after a while, especially if they were really overt about it (loud, obnoxious, rowdy, getting in my way) to the point where it ruined my experience and made me not want to go back. Thankfully my trip to Disney World when I was younger was nothing like this.

It is silly to judge a WHOLE country based on just these criteria, but if you left your home country, let's say, Japan, to get away from this kind of behavior, then I can see how it might be a huge letdown. This is more of a "the more you know.." type list.

The point is that most everyone that grew up in one country for most of their life; will be way, WAY more forgiving in the BS that happens in their home country vs a foreign one. The grew up and came to accept that BS as a fact of life, "Its home!" They may grumble about it but its still their home. Put them in another country with small problems and most people will be less forgiving of the bad points and over time will simply drum up "home" as such a better place after all.

If you could create a country where no one had to work, everything was done by robots/AI, and people could get whatever they want for free. People would probably bitch about the fact that "at least back home when you did something there was a sense of ACCOMPLISHMENT!" "at least back home people that served your food had emotions and you knew they were real people" "at least back home I could work and not be bored all day."..... "***** Shangri-la is shit! I'd go home if it wasn't for my wife and kids! Who wants to live in a socialist country anyway?!"

I think there might be something in the fact that people tend to come to Japan at a time in their life, when the easy life that is university comes to an end, and they have to deal with a whole bunch of real world realities possibly for the first time. Such people would likely be just as depressed if they had stayed working some boring job in their home countries, basically the "grass is always greener on the other side complex". Not to say that there's nothing wrong with Japan though.

The legal system/government is I'm sure just as shit as it is most places.

I do agree about TV though. 英語圏 TV is generally a lot better in my opinion.

I hardly watch western TV at all (TV is just garbage to keep people in a sedate state for hours a day, I'm horrified that people watch 4 hours a day on average in this country). At least watching Japanese TV provides some education for me and has anime.

Regarding naturalised Japanese citizens, are they hauled down to the police station all the time for not carrying their gaijin card as a perceived alien? :/

If you break your leg on the way to the airport on the day your visa expires and get sent to hospital, do you end up imprisoned, beaten, deported for 5 years/murdered in custody for overstaying?

I feel paranoid now having read debito for the first time..

I agree English TV is mostly garbage too. But I think Japanese TV is a higher grade of garbage, except the occasional decent anime.

I've sometimes been asked to show my gaitou when checking into hotels. I've often contemplated what would happen if I just claimed to be Japanese in such a situation...(not that I actually care)

Decent anime.... man, it's been so long. Maybe I've grown old, or maybe everything is just crap nowadays. Hm, aside from that berserk animation on the way. The manga pace ruins that serie too though.

The free channels are pretty much the worst, hardly anything but (occasionally entertaining) chat shows, CMs and product placement. It did recommend a good cheesecake to me though.

dizmox Wrote:I feel paranoid now having read debito for the first time..

Please do yourself a favor and never look at that site again. That's what his site is all about, creating paranoia and blowing things way out of proportion/turning things into something they're not to prove to himself that Japan is a racist country. You can always find 'evidence' to support your beliefs if you look at things in the 'right' way.

I know you're right, but it has motivated me to keep my passport on my person. I still am curious to know how naturalised citizens are treated with respect to being asked for foreigner registration cards though.

dizmox Wrote:I know you're right, but it has motivated me to keep my passport on my person. I still am curious to know how naturalised citizens are treated with respect to being asked for foreigner registration cards though.

I never show my foreign registration card outside of dealing with immigration. Why? Because people ask you for ID, not specifically your foreign registration card. I show my Japanese drivers license.

But for those of us without drivers licenses, what happens if you claim to be japanese?

I assume if you look Japanese, nothing. But if you're foreign looking and aren't able to produce id, what happens?

thistime Wrote:I don't know about the Hoon Scott Kang case but the Lindsay Hawker and Issei Sagawa cases were not racially motivated murders. Nor, does it sound like the murder of Edward Allshouse was racially motivated either. You said yourself that it happened because of a fight over a girl. The Bishnu Prasad Dhamala and Abubakar Awudu Suraj cases could possibly have a racial motivation behind them but we really don't know the circumstances. Just because a Japanese person kills a foreigner doesn't automatically make it a racially motivated hate crime.

Who decides what a racially motivated murder is? The Japanese courts and police seem to be quite reluctant to use the term at all, therefore it would be very difficult/impossible to provide you with a list which would satisfy your (unstated) criteria.

As for the Sagawa case I am not entirely sure how you came to the conclusion that it was not a racially motivated murder, allow me to post an excerpt from an interview given by Mr. Sagawa to Tomokazu Kosuga;

“[S]o from around the time I entered junior high school I became obsessed with the Western actress Grace Kelly—an obsession that lasted right through high school. That was the beginning of my infatuation with Occidental people. Before I knew it, tall, healthy-looking Western women became the trigger for my cannibalistic fantasies.”

He admits himself that he was obsessed with people of European decent.

http://www.vice.com/read/whos-hungry-502-v16n1

As for Tatsuya Ichihashi, who is to say he didnt have fantasies about Western/european women as well. He specifically sought her out on her commute home from work.

murder is murder...what difference does it make if it's racially motivated or not?

Tzadeck Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:I know you're right, but it has motivated me to keep my passport on my person. I still am curious to know how naturalised citizens are treated with respect to being asked for foreigner registration cards though.

I never show my foreign registration card outside of dealing with immigration. Why? Because people ask you for ID, not specifically your foreign registration card. I show my Japanese drivers license.

I meant, don't the police sometimes ask for it to check you're not an illegal immigrant? By the sounds of it they do stop and searches for that.

ronnihonjin Wrote:

thistime Wrote:I don't know about the Hoon Scott Kang case but the Lindsay Hawker and Issei Sagawa cases were not racially motivated murders. Nor, does it sound like the murder of Edward Allshouse was racially motivated either. You said yourself that it happened because of a fight over a girl. The Bishnu Prasad Dhamala and Abubakar Awudu Suraj cases could possibly have a racial motivation behind them but we really don't know the circumstances. Just because a Japanese person kills a foreigner doesn't automatically make it a racially motivated hate crime.

Who decides what a racially motivated murder is? The Japanese courts and police seem to be quite reluctant to use the term at all, therefore it would be very difficult/impossible to provide you with a list which would satisfy your (unstated) criteria.

As for the Sagawa case I am not entirely sure how you came to the conclusion that it was not a racially motivated murder, allow me to post an excerpt from an interview given by Mr. Sagawa to Tomokazu Kosuga;

“[S]o from around the time I entered junior high school I became obsessed with the Western actress Grace Kelly—an obsession that lasted right through high school. That was the beginning of my infatuation with Occidental people. Before I knew it, tall, healthy-looking Western women became the trigger for my cannibalistic fantasies.”

He admits himself that he was obsessed with people of European decent.

http://www.vice.com/read/whos-hungry-502-v16n1

As for Tatsuya Ichihashi, who is to say he didnt have fantasies about Western/european women as well. He specifically sought her out on her commute home from work.

I guess I was thinking more of a hate crime based on race. I.e. I hate you because you are a different race than me and I, therefore, think you are inferior to me so I am going to kill you. That, at least to me, is how race crimes are typically classified in the states. So, that is why I say they were not racially motivated. Maybe I should say they were not acts of racism? Since that is what I interpreted the original question to have been asking. But, yeah, I guess this will just come down to a difference of perspective.

And even with Ichihashi, we don't know for sure that he was attracted to her because of her race (though I suspect he was). He could have just thought she was pretty. And even if he was attracted to her because she was white, he still didn't kill her because she was white. He killed her because she rejected him and that pissed him off.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Victims of crime being ignored/suspicious deaths being ruled accidents happens to Japanese people too.

My image of police here is just supreme incompetence, not malice towards foreigners.

Reminded me of an episode of Summer Snow (Jdrama), I also find it interesting for the Japanese to point it out on TV.

dizmox Wrote:I meant, don't the police sometimes ask for it to check you're not an illegal immigrant? By the sounds of it they do stop and searches for that.

I've never heard of it happening where I live, to be honest. I travel around Japan a lot and I've never been asked in my four years here.

The only time I've heard of it outside of the internet was when Nova went out of business and the police were trying to find people who were trying to stay in Japan on their work visa despite the fact that they weren't working anymore. That was about four years ago, when I was studying abroad. I lived in Shiga at the time and some people I knew said they were stopped by the police.

`Take a trip to Disney Land, where you'll find perfectly sane (but stupid) adult women and men wearing their Mickey Mouse ears and running around acting like, well....11 year olds`


Apart from the NZ blogger Gala darling, I am not aware of a single Western women who wants to regress back to her childhood and go to Disney.

Thought I'd post this here as it's somewhat relevant: http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comme...osecutors/

Big debate on Japanese racism / Debito.

Diana Wrote:`Take a trip to Disney Land, where you'll find perfectly sane (but stupid) adult women and men wearing their Mickey Mouse ears and running around acting like, well....11 year olds`


Apart from the NZ blogger Gala darling, I am not aware of a single Western women who wants to regress back to her childhood and go to Disney.

Plenty of my friends have yearly passes to Disneyland.

I'm not sure if they act like 11 year olds, though.
I'm also not sure if getting drunk and wasted is any more mature than acting like an 11 year old at Disneyland. See: Las Vegas.

Lets not forget that Tokyo Disneyland is also a place you take your g/f when you are really strong. Its kind of a tradition that has formed in Japan.