[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by Ronin4hire

I dont think its a myth. Exaggerated maybe (I wouldnt know and untill someone does some sort of research on it then we can never say whether it is exaggerated or not)... but not a myth.

I didn`t say it is a myth, nor that it never happens. Just that you hear a lot more friend-of-a-friend, or "I read it online!" stories than first hand accounts.

As for having to have some sort of work history here in Japan to be viable to rent an apartment, according to my teacher the only criteria is that you be able to prove you have a reliable income. With him he was getting a Japanese sponsored GOVERNMENT scholarship so that he could do his Phd.

In Japan, proving you have a reliable income is pretty much the same as asking for job history. The words may be different, but the job history IS what is looked at to prove you have a reliable income. You could be making millions, but if you don`t have the credit then you simply don`t have the credit.

Furthermore the association of foreigners with being unreliable is racist in itself and not an excuse for discrimination.

Not an excuse - but the people who do screw their landlords over and who do initiate that kind of crap use the other direction as an excuse for it. "They`re going to discriminate against me anyway, so why not?" I cannot tell you how many people with that attitude I have encountered - both in real life and online.
Screaming about it without making any attempts to fix the root problem is not going to help. Efforts need to be made on both sides. Japan is not a country where you encounter a foreigner at every turn. If the only dealings that someone ever has with a foreigner end in their being screwed over, no amount of education or activism is going to help. Experience is thousands of times more powerful than words alone. As long as there are countless eikaiwa teachers in Japan who see it as an easy way to party and treat Japan like a playground - things are not going to improve. In fact, at this point a lot of the activism actually looks to be protecting that sort of behavior which is NOT going to help your point.

I would take Debito's stuff with a pinch of salt. He jumps on any little misunderstanding and brands it racism. In fact, he probably gives us gaijin a bad name as troublemakers much more than any good he might do.

And... THIS. He leaps on anything to add it to his activism list, usually without tackling the root problem... Or even really looking into it.