Tamogami Toshio said some stupid shit again.

Maybe they don't downvote everything. But between the wide-eyed idealists who think Japan is a paradise of samurai and mechas and burusera maid cafes, and the bitter ELTs who get into e-shitfights with other expats on every other English-language forum about Japan, I get the impression that /r/Japan can be fairly toxic.

Not as bad as /r/Korea and certainly not as bad as /r/China, but you can sense it in the loaded questions on the front page, meltdowns in the comments whenever Arudou Debito says something, and the /r/japancirclejerk brigades.

It's been something I've been thinking about for about a year now. Why are expat communities in Asia so toxic? Thailand especially. In Japan it's mostly on the internet instead of fistfights like in SEA; Gaijinpot, Japan-Guide, the Japan Times/Japan Today comments sections, etc.

If you ask me, I think it has something to do with dashed expectations. Westerners see the weird game shows and precision walking and Shinkansen and high speed internet and politeness and customer service and low crime and cleaning up after themselves after a soccer match, and get a skewed idea of the country. What they don't know until landing in Japan, or don't notice if they're just visiting, is that:

  • All the trains stop at 1am, and there aren't even nightbuses; you have to shell out money for expensive taxis or crash at a manga cafe or capsule hotel.

  • Pasmo and Suica don't have widespread penetration outside of train lines, fast food restaurants, amusement parks and the Aeon network. Even in central Tokyo, you can be fucked if you don't have 5,000 yen in cash on hand. Then there's the ATMs. Either they have opening hours, or you use conbini ATMs which have steep surcharges or don't accept foreign cards at all. (Japan Post ATMs do, but opening hours...) I mean, I get it, no fear of mugging so you can walk around with a lot of cash unlike in NA or Europe, but when they say Japan is a country of convenience, they don't mean convenience for foreigners.

  • The internet may be fast, but consumer penetration of the internet is almost non-existent. This goes way back. Old computers couldn't display Kanji properly, desktop PCs took up space in small Japanese homes, the rise in mobile technologies meaning everyone now uses their phone for the internet, etc.

  • The game shows and anime are actually relatively rare. In fact, you don't really see much of the weeaboo material unless you're in Akihabara, Shinjuku or Nakano Broadway. Most Japanese TV shows are cooking or panel shows with hack tarentos saying "EEEEEHHHHHH?!?!" every 45 seconds.

  • America has individualism, creativity and customer service. Japan only has the good customer service. The tallest nail gets hammered down. If you conform, you stay in the safe, wa world which is harmonious and crime-free; if you don't conform, you get brushed off into the ura underbelly. In any other country, the bullying epidemic in grade school wouldn't be ignored. In any other country, Jo Kamisaku and his accomplices who killed Junko Furuta would have spent the rest of their lives in prison or a psychiactric hospital. In America, Kamisaku would have been executed. Since Kamisaku was in the ura world, Japanese society just swept it under the rug. Same with Genichi Taniguchi (Miss International Japan's stalker). He was a kigyou shatei so the police just looked the other way and whistled nonchalantly.

  • While Japan seems crime free, that's because most crime happens in the ura world. Police and society will fail to investigate rapes, murders and harassment to protect their harmonious culture. In North America or Europe, a heinous crime would trigger public outrage. I just don't see that kind of outrage in Japan, maybe because most perpetrators are ura or yakuza. Also, America uses the British-style adversarial legal system, which stresses impartiality. Japan's conformist culture and use of the French-style inquisitorial system (derived from Roman law and the Napoleonic Code) seems to be a recipe for disaster. There's no outrage for police or correctional brutality, or forced confessions. Look what Amnesty International has to say about conditions in Japanese prisons, and how the death penalty is applied there. Iwao Hakamada was wrongfully sentenced to death, and spent every day not knowing if he'd be hanged that day, for 48 years. No wonder he went insane!

  • New grad programmers (let's face it, most Redditors are programmers) can start out in a major US city for about 7.3M yen; you won't see the 12M+ yen starting salaries unless you're in San Francisco or Seattle. In Tokyo? More like 3.5-4.5M. The working culture is messed up in Japan and no one wants to change it. If you are skilled and can speak English in almost any other industrialized country, high-paying jobs can be found. In Japan? Mostly ELTs.

  • This is just a rumour I heard, but it sounds true. If the train are even one second late, the driver is subject to humiliating nikkin kyoiku training. This goes for all JR Group companies, private railways, and municipal subways. And the Amagasaki rail crash was triggered by a driver who was speeding to avoid being late and having to go through nikkin kyoiku.

There was a comment made in /r/Japan some time ago that goes like this: "Japan is a boring place unless you're a tourist, studying the culture, or into niche hobbies or nightlife." I would agree. In fact, knowing what I know now about Japanese society, I can see how a newcomer to Japan who stays long-term can become disillusioned with the country.

I fully admit everything I said here might be wrong. If I am, please don't downvote me just because I'm wrong, but tell me what's true and what's false.

/r/japan Thread Parent Link - bbc.com