[sarasi]

Assuming that "Japan is a racist country" is actually pretty racist in itself, because it falls into the exact same trap as racist people do- thinking that all people of a particular nationality/ethnicity/religion are the same.

I have lived in Japan for 11 years and just had to sit and think hard to see if I could remember any incidents of racism directed towards me. The only one I could come up with was a real estate agent who told my fiance and I that he had no apartments to show us, when it was quite obvious that they had plenty on their books. Other real estate agents and landlords were more than happy to show us around.

In rural areas people can be less tolerant than where I live- I have always lived in/near Tokyo, where Japanese people tend to be pretty used to seeing non-Japanese, and another factor is that I speak pretty reasonable Japanese and already spoke at a conversational level when I arrived due to having studied at university in my home country.

The main worry of many Japanese people when dealing with non-Japanese (e.g. at restaurants or hotels) is the language barrier, and this may lead some of them to turn non-Japanese away. Take away the language barrier and that problem is gone.