My Experience in Japan
 

I'm not sure how many people have lived in Japan, but here I go.

I was in Japan for 2 months, going to school and staying with a host family. I think one of the major problems people on this forum are having with Japan is the "racism." I'd like to touch base on this, even though I lived in Kawasaki and commuted to Yokohama/Tokyo everyday.

1) I never saw one of those "Japanese Only" signs. However, if I would've seen one, I would've been upset. A lot of people on the forum have been excusing this by saying "OH, I wouldn't like it if foreigners came to my country and blah blah blah." No, this is wrong. Pure and simple. You shouldn't excuse this at all. It's wrong. End of story. If a foreigner (who happens to be Caucasian or black) has Japanese citizenship, they are still discriminated against in these places. That is just plain wrong. What Debito Arudou did was the correct thing to do. Debito Arudou - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2) Japanese people have a lot of so-called stereotypes for different nationalities. Fact of the matter is, if you're country is not by Japan or English speaking country, they probably don't know about it (with exception of Italy, France, and Germany). Most of the stereotypes are good. The people I was around, had no problem whatsoever with anyone. One of the host brothers even started dating a Korean exchange student. And the most popular exchange student was one from Korea. They did tend to point and stare, but that was because they were curious about the exchange students.

My experience in Japan was amazing. I didn't have a problem whatsoever. None of the foreign exchange students did. We often went in groups and got lost in Shibuya and Shinjuku, but we still were treated nicely by all store owners. It was a good experience. I love Japan, moreso than when I first started taking Japanese about 3 years ago. (Btw, I'm still in highschoool, and I went to a Japanese high school)

When I actually talked to some of the students about this stuff (because our handbook basically said that if you're not Caucasian you'll probably have stereotypes thrown at you). They all said that racism is wrong. They think black people are "sugoi" and stuff like that. I believe them. It was a very sincere talk I had with my host brother and his friends. However, whenever I went into a restaurant, they'd give me and this American-Korean girl Japanese menus. They thought I looked Okinawan, which maybe explains why no one moved when I sat down on the train. However, I commuted with 2 other guys. One of them was a red head, and they both stuck out. They never had anyone move away from them on the train. Nor did anyone ever talk down to us. When we were playing with fireworks in the park, the police came and was very VERY kind. (We didn't get in trouble, we were just making too much noise)

All in all, I never had one bad experience in Japan. I loved it. I miss it so much. I hope this might clear some things up.

Great stories! Thank you!

Most Japanese only places are hostess clubs, massage parlors and hentai shops. If you're perverted self feels disappointed you can't get in, no worries there are tons of these shops and clubs that have no quarrels serving you.

I really don't care for these places anyways.

Also, if you feel like pissing them off. You and all your gaijin friends should gather in front of the store drinking, laughing and posing in front of their sign while taking pictures. But make sure you do it at night so as the flash from the camera disturbs all the customers inside.

Yeah, any place that says only Japanese is only going to be full of wankers anyway (probably literally). A friend of mine just wanted to take his picture next to the sign when some trumped up little twat starts telling us to fuck off. We stayed there for the next 20 minutes shouting abuse at him in Japanese (we were very drunk :() I bet he wished he had just let us take the photo as him & his bouncer mates were going to do nothing when faced with 2 100kg+ guys :p

That's funny, and a lot of things happen when you are drunk, but stories like these don't do much to help reduce the stereotypes some Japanese might have about Americans or foriegners in general.

And in that picture above it say "3,500yen All You Can Drink". Do you really want to pay about $30.00 an hour for all the beer or watered down cheap sake you can drink? A beer in Japan is usually about 500 to 600 yen...

i look japanese so i can usualy sneak by hehe

only places i wasnt allowed to go into is the onsens

=P they dont like tattoos

No yeah. We stood in front of BUrberry to try and take a picture (our Japanese teacher is OBSESSED with Burberry, so we thought it'd be funny to take a picture.) The guy came out and yelled at us. Well, mostly at me and the American-Korean girl. Something about letting the gaijin friends do things they shouldn't do. And I was like, dude whatever. This is an American store. Then he got all mad and we took a picture and ran. So fun.

Yeah...however, every time one of the ryuugakusei caused trouble, they would blame the host. Hahaha. It was sooo funny. I brought my iPod to school one time, and they yelled at my host brother. I felt SO bad. But it was cool. He didn't care. Basically, everything we did was blamed on the host students. If we went to karaoke, they'd yell at the hosts. And we wouldn't get in trouble at all. ALso, all the host moms were such sweeties and let us do what we wanted. LOVE THEM.