Japan hasn't let me down.  I've let Japan down.  Sorry Japan...

Asriel wrote:

Zon70 wrote:

I went to japan and the only thing that I was let down about the whole experience was that i couldnt get a work visa. my only chance is a spouse visa. japan is a lot better than america and i cant wait to go back and this time as a resident.

Really? Why couldn't you get a work visa?
Do you have a Japanese spouse, or serious significant other who's Japanese?

cause i got no 資格 (according to the japanese governments definiton of qualifications anyways) no i dont have a japanese spouse or significant other,  i only said that because i am trying to hold a postive attidute that eventually i willl find one!(couldnt find one in japan, but hopefully i will on the internet haha)

ps
there is one part i forgot to leave out , japan did leave me down when i found out there is no place to sit without paying(in tokyo anyways) and a severe lack of trash cans

Last edited by Zon70 (2012 February 01, 7:11 pm)

Zon70 wrote:

cause i got no 資格 (according to the japanese governments definiton of qualifications anyways) no i dont have a japanese spouse or significant other,  i only said that because i am trying to hold a postive attidute that eventually i willl find one!(couldnt find one in japan, but hopefully i will on the internet haha)

OK, fair enough. I wasn't sure if it was something like that, or you somehow pissed off the government and they had shut you off or something.

Aah yes, finding Japanese girls online. I remember that thread...

Jarvik7 wrote:

I believe there have been studies that show that the presence of public trashcans actually encourages littering.

I can definitely believe this. I was less inclined to bring things along that I knew I would have to throw away if I knew I would have to carry it around. Thinks like candy bars, onigiri.. you know, snacks. That's one reason I liked having a basket on my bike.

Also for comparison, do Japanese people make fun of people with broken Japanese?

It's interesting because on the one hand, people in English countries demand foreigners to hurry up, learn English and assimilate, while on the other hand, making fun of their broken English (Engrish.com, "Me Love You Rong Time" etc) or in extreme cases, treat someone negatively BECAUSE of their less-than-perfect English (companies with foreign call centers for example).


Yes, and yes.
Happens all the time at my company, happens in high school, happened in university to me here.

They actually ran a hidden camera show that proved that Bobby was actually very fluent in Japanese. And by really good I mean he was able to spot typos in ridiculously long legal contracts and name dropping obscure 19th century novelists.

This happens to a lot of people. Sometimes quickly, sometimes after a while. One thing that really got to me in Japan was the lack of diversity. I am American and I see every culture reflected in all the businesses, architecture, people, etc around me every day.
If you are not in certain areas of Tokyo, like the Roppongi hills area,  than everything is Japanese.  This is awesome until you start to miss the whole other world of diversity. Japanese people are very nationalistic too. Many visitors tend to feel like outsiders even if the have been living in Japan for many years, or decades.
There are many people making videos and blogs about there experiences living in Japan. Mixed in with all the folks who are really enjoying themselves will be quite a few people who are ready to return home. It's very important to get this perspective too.

I have lived in Japan for many years and I would leave tomorrow if I could. But my wife and kids are Japanese 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 Japan and the Japanese 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 immaturity of Japanese. And that is reflected no better than on Japanese 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 Japanese love it.

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

Watch a food show where after every bite the participants act as if they have just tasted the best food ever created in the history of mankind.

Try joining a sports club where you have to decide on the 5 day a week course, weekend only course, night time only course, sunny day only course, every other cloudy day course, etc. Can't I just pay my monthly fee and workout?

Japan 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...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.

Japan Sucks

I stand by my rant queer, qweer? 17 years living here has afforded me that.

oyajijeff wrote:

Japan 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...no thanks.

This is a very good point. Japan is boring. As boring as any other country. I think this is where the, "my life sucks here, but if I move to Japan it will be a non-stop party and I'll be the most popular kid in town" folks find themselves very disallusioned.

95% of your life in Japan is going to involve waking up, getting ready, going to work, working, coming home, eating dinner, watching TV, going to bed and then waking up and doing it all over again the next day. That's life in pretty much any 1st world country.

I'm not sure what you had back home that you don't have here that made your life more entertaining but Japan has museums, sports, shopping, shows, movies, tourist attractions, just like any other developped country.

And aside from movies, I think all other things are pretty comparable in price. And yes, you do need to avoid weekends and national holidays if you want to avoid crowds but that's also true of almost anywhere.

Though, I will admit that one thing that really bums me out is special exhibits at museums. They are so crowded you can't get anywhere near the pieces to actually see them. There have been many exhibits that I would have loved to have seen but it just wasn't even worth going because I knew what the crowds would be like.

Great question. I came here for no real reason other than have a bit of fun, and I stayed, so I had no expectations. I didn't read manga or watch anime or anything. Couldn't speak Japanese. So I don't think I have been let down.
But having been here so long, I do get disappointed quite often. I think if people want to complain about multiculturalism, spend a year in Japan first. Or any monoculture. Everyone thinks the same. Everyone says the same thing. Everyone dresses the same. Everyone asks the same questions. And spare me the exceptions. They are so few and far between they are basically insignificant. Living in a culture which has no capacity to change, for better or worse, there is absolutely nothing at stake here. It's funny, they have a weak nostalgia for the Showa era, the 60's basically, yet it can never catch on because it is still basically the same. There are 120 million well educated, healthy people here, but not one of them can change this place. You begin to look at America a little differently, and see how vibrant and passionate it is. Or even the Middle East, where people are being shot protesting for a better life for their children. Here? Jeez, I dunno, engineering better wanking tools? Slippers for pets? This place is an alien ship, protected from the world and worldly things. And they wouldn't have it any other way. They are the Borg.
But hey, I'm not one of them, so big deal right? But I have two kids now, and that's different, and I'm a week away from getting them out of this place.

"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....

Last edited by ronnihonjin (2012 February 01, 11:49 pm)

Oh, almost forgot to mention,

Govinda Prasad Mainali, Nepalese national, who was "falsely" accused and convicted of the murder of Yasuko Watanabe, despite purely circumstancial evidence. Recent (the evidence was hidden by prosecutors at the time of the original trial) DNA tests have further confirmed his innocence, despite a ruling by the Supreme court to the contrary in 2003. As of yet he still sits languishing in a Japanese prison.