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

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.

Last edited by thistime (2012 February 02, 3:45 am)

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 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..

Last edited by dizmox (2012 February 02, 5:36 am)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

`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.

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.