Thank you Pachipro. You said everything I *wish* I could have said. A perfect explanation of the Gloobey phenomenon that is ever so common.
Seriously, this is why whenever anyone asks me about visiting/working in/living in Japan, I always tell them to avoid other foreigners - particularly English teachers. That was the exact type of person I was referring to when I said:
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The teachers who I have encountered so far have bashed every little bit of Japanese culture. I don`t think it has all that much to do with English-teaching stress, as none of it has much of anything to do with English. Cultural ignorance? Yes. My point is - Do you really want to be around such negative people while you`re trying to learn the language?
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I don`t know if Gloobey is an English teacher. He may not be, but I`ll say the odds are 10 to 1 that he is. There are wonderful and great people teaching English in Japan - Jasonbvr seems to be one of them - but trust me, you`ll encounter far far far more of the Gloobey type. And the funny thing is, just as Pachipro said the better someone knows the language, the less they seem to think that way.
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Or, I could've done a little studying and understood that the reason for this is based on past experience in that many a foreigner trash their apartments, are loud in palces with paper thin walls, Do not take off their shoes, and disturb the "Wa" (harmony) of their neighbors;
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Don`t forget that they also seem to love to run out and leave the country without giving notice so that they don`t have to pay their last month`s rent and utilities... I think that is the *biggest* problem. I know some building owners in the city, and all but one of them has been screwed over by foreigners they rented to. (Not every foreigner, not every time, but at least once.) Apparently short term English teachers are the worst, as they leave everything trashed in their apartment, have left water/electricity running at full blast when they leave - god only knows why, to spite the owners? , Tend not to pay their utilities for a couple months before they leave - leaving the landlord with the bill... And of course, never ever pay the last month`s rent. Because they know that no one is going to come hunt them down once they leave the country. From a business standpoint, it`s just not worth it.
I think this is the biggest reason stuff like not renting to foreigners continues. All those no discrimination groups (Or one pretty high profile one... ) just say that it`s against the law to refuse to rent, that they HAVE to rent to foreigners whether they like it or not, etc... Without ever acknowledging that there are real reasons - caused by the foreigners themselves - at the root of it all. Perhaps things would go better if they worked on making sure the foreigners who were rented to actually followed up on their responsibilities.
As it is, I`m embarrassed to be associated with those Gloobey types - and believe me, they`re a dime a dozen.