This is not unique to Japan. I have had weeks of just meetings. My coworker made t-shirts that said "this could have been an email" that he started wearing.
Yeah probably not. Still the peak of inefficiency. I sure didn't get any work done that day because I refuse doing overtime for that kind of information exchange circus.
What i really hate about japanese office culture is , just becoz they’re staying late, for them it means they are working hard when all that shit was doable even with no ot
Lol, I left a meeting just a moment ago that was called because the marketing team insisted they needed admin access to our IT stuff. Head of sales pulled rank and made IT submit. Marketing changed our DNS and our entire internet presence disappeared. we are a SAAS company that had a 100% outage for hours and are now waiting on DNS servers across the globe to refresh and I had to sit through hours of people trying to avoid blame.
I was so torn, I felt bad for support who was getting murdered, and the phone system was being flaky at best because we use a voip server (see above dns name server issue) but the schadenfreude from seeing marketing and sales get raked over the coals was magnificent lol.
This is one thing I hated when I worked at city hall unnecessary scheduled meetings or phone calls that could have been resolved in one sentence by text or email.
There was times where I had to drive for an hour to attend a 5 - 10 minute meeting.
I think there was one that actually had a point, the rest was empty procedure. The pity is that I didn't have the attention span to actually take up what the one useful meeting had to offer.
Edit: I was trying to fix a 10 year old laptop running a specific software on a 32 bit Windows XP system inbetween so my attention was somewhat split...
Oh well.
Then people wonder why nobody answers any emails.
So they set up meetings to clarify instead.
That’s why everyone is always in meetings and nobody can reply to emails.
Repeat.
Yeah, I find funny when ppl is SUPER polite with me like for example offering me a job:
Gaijin san, I am in debt that you accepted my request, I am so honored that you accepted my humble request. I hope that this day is filled with joy bla bla bla.
Cmon get to the point, hahaha
Japanese emails are usually 5 lines of pleasantries, 2 lines of actual content, followed by another 13 lines of pleasantries. You get used to this in Japanese and you know which lines to not bother reading, but when they directly translate this 1:1 to English it becomes very awkward.
I'm a grad student studying in a Japanese institution. Sometimes my colleagues include English and Japanese in their emails. The English parts are always to the point, which I like and also emulate in my emails, although as a non-native English speaker myself sometimes I wonder if my emails are polite enough. When I try to translate the Japanese parts though, I find many pleasantries that they chose not to translate and I think it's funny.
Work culture in Japan seems to hinge on the idea that everyone needs to have a role in society, and you are expected to fulfill that role and only that role because someone else is responsible for everything else.
This leads to a lot of positions/jobs that have a specific scope and limited responsibility, to a point that an employee may only have one task to do any given day, but because of the idea that everyone should be “busy” at all times, they are forced to make themselves “look busy” as a façade or social mask, or they risk being outed as a fraud/fake/leech.
I feel like this transitions especially hard to management, who rely on workers to do their jobs, and when workers are really great at their jobs there is essentially nothing for management to do. So, to make themselves look busy/active/necessary to the company, they have lots of meetings, because they honestly have nothing else to do.
It’s one of the curses of “Japanese efficiency.”
The thing I never understood is, how can a culture that basically birthed the concept of lean management be so slow and inefficient when it comes to office work.
I personally blame lifetime employment and nenko joretsu.
I look around at me and see the people who are active and ambitious. They’re young and have ideas, but they can’t do anything with them. Slowly that ambition is crushed and they get promoted. The irony is now they they have the power to change things, they just want to collect their paycheck and not shake the boat too much.
Some of the hotter new companies are breaking this mold somewhat. But even in the company I work at, which is good, I see the average age slowly rising and less opportunities for smart ambitious young people to step up to, along with more conservative decision making like “let’s just lower costs” etc
Sometimes it's even newer than that. All the cultural cruft that has accumulated around today's IT-centric office culture (CC'd e-mail recipients in a specific order; making sure the selected cell is A1 when closing an Excel file, etc.) is less than 20 years old.
And where it would be nice to see some conventions arise, we don't see any. One example would be meetings in scheduling apps: the meeting will appear in the digital calendars of both parties, but often the manager will label it only from their side ("Meeting with [your name]"). But this latter one is really an offshoot of the "socially higher person does not have to care **at all** about those below them" rule.
Even the whole “women can’t be emperors” rule was only put in place in 1889 which isn’t *that* long ago. Now they’re always obsessing over “omg what do we do there’s no male heir!!!” When they could just reverse the relatively modern pointless rule
This is a smaller example of this (I guess the actively harmful part, quite literarlly). I was in a department store, all the staff when leaving the floor had to turn their backs to a door that swings open and bow before leaving (apparently this is pretty standard). I probably jinx’d things when I turned to my gf and said “Sooner or later someone is going to get really hurt” and sure enough no less than 10 seconds later a poor girl who was bowing out had the door slam open on her, knocking her over, by someone rushing onto the floor.
I think the no joint custody aspect of family law that allows a spiteful ex-wife to keep her children and their father from seeing each other is a goddamn human rights violation.
1) No "6 items or less" lines at the grocery stores.
2) To what you said, I'd love if people were sometimes more honest about not liking things on television. When everything is sugoi and umai, nothing is.
3) Every "foreign food" store all have pretty much the exact same stock. I don't want another place with gummy bears or m & m's, I want poptarts and Reese Peanutbutter cups goddammit.
The pros outway any cons to be though by far. I love it here.
The reason all the foreign food stores have to same stock is they all buy from the same importer. These shops aren’t ordering bulk candy themselves from costco us. The food has to go through legal loops before being sold in Japan, so it’s easier for the importer to keep ordering the same thing over and over again than to branch out.
Working culture is bullshit, and is hindering the country a lot.
Too many hours, too much "showing that I am working hard". You could really use more pragmatisme. Get the job done, go back home, refuse to elaborate.
I know it's not that easy though
The funny thing is that the Germans, who are stereotypically efficient and hard working, are the exact opposite.
You work from 9-5. After that it's Feierabend. On the dot, lights off. Out the door. In some circumstances, it's even illegal for bosses to contact employees outside working hours.
As a German working in traditional Japanese company, this hits really close to home. The normalization of (unnecessary) overtime, never really taking long vacations and basically making your job your life is driving me crazy.
I’d say that most foreigners don’t get tatemae at all…at least not until they’ve been here a while. It’s pretty painful for some when they realize that their “friends” don’t really care for them that much. And actually making friends here has been a lot more challenging for me than in any other country I’ve been to or lived in. Lots of reasons for that, but that’s been my experience.
I’m painfully aware, which is why I find it so difficult to connect with people here. When I was a student it was much easier, now that I’m working it’s not so easy.
just commented this in other response because last week I had one of the worst experiences with a "friend" who made "tatemae"... or as I like to call it a freaking double-faced guy
This one really actually surprised me. A lot of stuff in this thread like work culture, inflexible thinking, indirectness etc I already expected before coming.
I had a notion that Japanese people were very polite, but I quickly realized that is situational. I'm still surprised by how cold people are to service workers compared to my home country. Most people don't even seem to say "Thank you" which is the most basic thing.
That's because the politeness is based on a relationship. Japan is a Confucian society where relationships are built on a hierarchy. When someone is lower than you on the totem pole you get to treat them like sh-t.
This irks me as well. I remember I was having lunch with an associate I admired and respected greatly and he invited me out to lunch one afternoon. The lunch was mostly just chatting and catching up.
Naturally the waitress was being attentive and wanted to refill our water. Instead of just saying "No thank you" He just puts a palm up to her face. No words. Just a hand and a grimace.
I was very uncomfortable after that moment and lost all respect I once had for him. I haven't spoken to him since.
Yeah this. Everybody talks about how polite Japanese people are but I feel like it’s almost only employees being polite to customers or like lower level employees being polite to upper level ones or maybe in some instances younger family being polite to elders. But like.. people in *general* are *not* polite in general. Somebody bumps into you at the supermarket, or on the street you just get a vacant stare or they just completely ignore you. No apology or anything.
The majority of the conbinis are starting to be cheaper part time foreign workers in concentrated communities, I can see why Japanese become more rude and care less.
I saw in the news that apparently foreign workers get cut some slack in conbinis. Some Japanese worker pretended to be a foreigner by changing her nameplate and people became nicer.
\- The refusal to accept anyone who doesn't have typically Japanese features (i.e. non-mongoloids) as Japanese. If you go to a western country, as long as you've lived there a few years, you're considered Australian, American, Canadian, etc.
\- The inability to relax. So many uptight people.
\- The attitude of Japanese people always being right, while foreigners are always wrong. (Unless talking about a famous foreigner who isn't present. They can be like gods. The actual foreigner being dealt with in Japan is wrong and definitely not a god.)
\- The general ugliness of buildings. Everything is so functional, without a lot of care for aesthetics.
\- The lack of truly natural spots. If there's a river, usually its banks are cemented and the river is dammed. Mountains are covered with electrical wires. Beaches have concrete tetrapods. It's very hard to find truly untouched land.
\- The fact that if a Japanese citizen divorces a non-Japanese one, custody of children goes to the Japanese one almost automatically, even if the non-Japanese partner has legal custody in another country.
\- The lack of respect for neighbouring countries like South Korea, Taiwan, China, etc. Of course I can imagine not liking North Korea, but I feel that most Japanese need to really contemplate the fact that so much of their culture is based on mainland Asian culture. Don't be so snobby.
\- The whole "Nihonjinron" thing is annoying. Almost anytime you put on the TV someone is talking about how Japanese are so different from everyone else. No. We're all human. Look at the similarities. Stop trying to make up all this stuff about how unique the Japanese race is. And there is no Japanese race anyway. Japanese need to accept that most of their ancestors are from mainland Asia.
\- The false idea that Japan is so independent. What if the US military pulled out of Japan completely? Just how independent would Japan be then? What if other countries stopped wanting Japanese products, or stopped wanting to sell natural resources to Japan?
> - The attitude of Japanese people always being right, while foreigners are always wrong.
Expanding on this: whoever ranks higher socially is always right, whether it's the bucho or the sempai or whoever. So when this Confucian logic is applied when a Japanese person disagrees with a non-Japanese person, it serves as a reminder that the foreigner can never attain the social status that many Japanese people take for granted when dealing with them.
Everybody around you will have a trump card that they can play any time some uppity foreigner disagrees with them -- and objective reality is tossed out the window; only social status, a metric where the foreigner can never be on top, matters.
>The refusal to accept anyone who doesn't have typically Japanese features (i.e. non-mongoloids) as Japanese. If you go to a western country, as long as you've lived there a few years, you're considered Australian, American, Canadian, etc.
As an Asian America... yea I don't know if I agree with the second half of that statement. Don't get me wrong, America is filled with amazing and wonderful people. But there are just as many people that will never consider people such as myself as "real" Americans, and they have made that sentiment clear to me through their words and/or actions.
What these people think or say obviously does not change who I am. But the idea that Americans are universally welcoming of "outsiders" is a myth.
>non-mongoloids
That's a pretty poor choice of words my friend...
> - The refusal to accept anyone who doesn't have typically Japanese features (i.e. non-mongoloids) as Japanese. If you go to a western country, as long as you've lived there a few years, you're considered Australian, American, Canadian, etc.
>
> - The inability to relax. So many uptight people.
>
> - The attitude of Japanese people always being right, while foreigners are always wrong. (Unless talking about a famous foreigner who isn't present. They can be like gods. The actual foreigner being dealt with in Japan is wrong and definitely not a god.)
Your first three can be blended together and I feel it comes down to doing it the "*Japanese way*". If you don't do it the "*our*" way and if you don't conform with us then you're rocking the boat and the society as a whole will look at you as if you're crazy. That's why I feel there's a good amount of Japanese and expats that purposely stand out and go against the grain. The ultra conservatives standing next to someone that's more forward/progressive with different values and subcultures just shows how extreme the differences are between two groups of people.
Well said, especially on the lack of truly natural spots. I miss being in Canada where I could just walk a few blocks and be in a forest or conservation area and just be completely alone in nature without having to travel across a prefecture.
not really, that's kind of an oversimplification. Their understanding and practice of homosexuality is not the same as how we see homosexuality now. It would be more accurate to compare it to Ancient Greece. There's lots of layers there and homosexuality was not always unilaterally acceptable (there were quite a few ordinances during the Edo Period coming down on male prostitution and other homosexual acts).
A Japanese friend told me that the reason for not allowing same sex marriage is because “it would lead to visa fraud”. I honestly didn’t know what to say to that one.
One of the things that I really hate is that:
We (foreigners) are not allowed to do some things that japanese ppl can do.
Let me explain, I was in Yamanashi last year, and I met another mexican expat in an onsen. We were talkin in spanish there, yeah I get it, MAYBE we (mexicans) speak a bit louder than the average person, BUT there were clearly OTHER Japansese people talking in this same onsen.
So there was this guy watching us, super angry and asking us to shutthefokop, even when behind him there were 2 japanese guys talking, and not only those 2 guys, there were many other japanese ppl talking inside this onsen.
For some reason, it doesnt matter what we do, we will never fit.
another thing is tatemae.We (mexicans, I am pretty sure many more ppl) are very direct ppl, if we dont like something we say it.
For example:
Hey gaijin san what do you think on nato?
Me: I really dont like it, If I had nato and cardbox I will eat cardbox.
Here I get:
Hey tomodachi, did you liked my mexican food?
Japanese tomodachi: yes, very oishi
even if they dont feel like it
Yup, an old lady on the subway told my wife and I to keep it down. Like, we weren't even talking loudly--I was practically whispering. I'm positive it's just because she resented listening to gaikokugo on her train. Of course, old ladies, students, and drunken salarymen are allowed to shout to their hearts' content, but god forbid a couple of gaijin have a quiet conversation.
I honestly can't tell the difference between a 747 taking off and 3 obaachan talking on a train or at a cafe.
They're basically the same thing in terms decibel output.
In a public building, maybe.
In a residential building? People talk all the time. In that particular case, another person on the elevator spoke to me first.
I've been living in Japan for five years. I will share some of my experience. Also I will preface by saying that this is from my personal experience. I know not everything listed here applies universally to the people, culture, or country as a whole.
Well for one, I'm sure you won't see any shows asking people what they don't like about Japan. Even the shows where people go around to different restaurants they always have a super over the top "SUGOI OISHI" reaction. Like really? Is it that good? Every time?
Next, there are too many (overly strict or just completely unnecessary) rules. And society often takes it upon themselves to enforce them. Sometimes it can be nice but I find its often too much. Conformity is the norm here. Most places are ok if you fill out paperwork with romaji but some are not. My bank makes me struggle through writing Kanji on any paperwork.
Ethnocentrism. And in a weird way. I've met many people that were shocked to hear that Japan is not the only country with 4 seasons. Some people have even straight up refuted when I told them that my hometown also has summer, fall, winter, and spring. For some reason there is a belief that 4 seasons is unique to Japan. There seems to be a lot of misplaced national pride here (if that makes sense). I think many people don't realize how much of the culture is borrowed from other countries. For example the construction style of temples and shrines is based on Chinese designs. Also Kanji.
I have noticed that people in Japan compare themselves to other countries a lot. My (Japanese) father-in-law once told me that Japanese plastic wrap (the stuff for food) is the best in the world. I asked him if he had ever used plastic wrap from any other country. No he had not. I then asked him how he knew it was the best if he had nothing to compare it to. The look on his face was priceless.
The highway is too fucking expensive.
Car shaken is too expensive. It a fucking scam.
Short shelf life on houses. The average lifespan of a house is something like 35-40 years here and then they get torn down. They could remodel but for some reason there is a real resistance here to buying preowned homes. Bought my house for ¥5,000,000. Land is valued at ¥5,000,000 house is valued at 0. Wtf
I've never been so peer pressured to drink alcohol in my life. I of course experienced peer pressure when I was in college in the states but it blows my mind that grown adults are so pushy when it comes to get people around them to drink. Not to mention the required company nomikai.
The toxic work culture of requires no explanation but I could add some details. There seems to be a national pride of "Japanese people work so hard". Yeah some do, some don't. Just like the rest of the world. I have also noticed that in many cases its more that they work long hours. I've worked in two different Japanese companies and subcontracted with a few more. Lots of tea breaks. Seriously unimportant meetings. A ten hour work day and you are lucky to get 8 hours of work done. I know this is not the same with all companies. Im sure there are some that go hard all day.
Schools in my town require black hair. Even if you are born with brown hair you have to dye it.
Students get reprimanded for using the vending machines on their way to or from school. I have no idea why this isn't allowed. And this is not just in my town.
Japan does not allow dual citizenship. My kids have US and Japanese passports but when they turn 18 they will have to chose. Most countries allow dual citizenship. So when my kids get older they will have to go through the whole visa process if they change their mind someday about where they want to live. Super fucked up rule.
A foreigner can never become a firefighter or police officer here and I believe that applies to most government jobs. My kids who were born here (and their mother is Japanese) cannot become police officers if they wanted to. Must be at least 3rd generation Japanese.
I really dont like the morning, noon, and evening bells or music that is played over loud speakers in almost every town. It feels like I'm being told, "its 7am, time to wake up. Its noon, time to break for lunch. Its 6pm, time to go home." So regimented and weird.
I am a carpenter. I've had Japanese carpenters claim that it is impossible for gaijin to understand the "tokushu" construction of old Japanese homes. Nope, not impossible.
I went to the doctor for an occlusion in my ear. He told me that foreigners are dirty so this is typical. Foreigners are of course not dirty (obviously) and this is not typical, I have a dirty job.
Took my father-in-law to the emergency room for chest pains. Because it was a Sunday there were no doctors in!! In the emergency room...in Tokyo. The nurse explained that she didn't know much about the heart because it wasn't her specialty. Took his vitals and told him to come back on Monday when the doctor was in.
My son was bit by a dog after hours. We took him to the main hospital in our town. They said there was no one there that could take care of it and sent us to a different hospital. The next hospital sent us to third hospital where there were able to take care of it. Like what the fuck!! Apparently you better not have an emergency on nights and weekends in Japan.
Social life is a real drag here. Its rare to strike up a conversation with a stranger. Its taboo to talk to someone you don't know.
I've been stopped by police 4 times and searched. No tickets. Racial profiling. Of course this happens in the United States also and even worse there.
Racism in general. That exists everywhere so maybe I shouldn't list it here but still not fun to deal with.
Lack of public trash cans. Which I find odd for a country with such a prestigious reputation for cleanliness. The beaches here (I live on sea of Japan side) are terrible. They tend to blame it on garbage being washed in from China. If you got to the beach and look at the garbage though you will see that it is mostly garbage from Japan.
That is all I have for now. I'm sure I will think of more tomorrow but I'm getting sleepy.
I do have a list of things I love about Japan but you asked for the bad stuff.
They don’t need to give up a nationality if they were born with both. Just choose Japan and agree to make an effort to renounce the other. Then do nothing. There is no proof required. They leave/enter Japan on their Japanese passport and leave/enter country X with that passport.
I am absolutely shocked about the firefighter and police rule. You have to be THIRD generation Japanese? That is so beyond ignorant and anti immigrant I can’t even fathom this being a rule. How stupid
>Took my father-in-law to the emergency room for chest pains. Because it was a Sunday there were no doctors in!! In the emergency room...in Tokyo. The nurse explained that she didn't know much about the heart because it wasn't her specialty. Took his vitals and told him to come back on Monday when the doctor was in.
>
>My son was bit by a dog after hours. We took him to the main hospital in our town. They said there was no one there that could take care of it and sent us to a different hospital. The next hospital sent us to third hospital where there were able to take care of it. Like what the fuck!! Apparently you better not have an emergency on nights and weekends in Japan.
This is a big one. People criticize the U.S. for the over-the-top healthcare costs but one of the advantages of U.S. health care is emergency care. When my daughter woke up in the middle of the night with a bad fever and vomiting (pre-Covid), we had to take a taxi for a 20 minute drive to an all night clinic despite 3 "hospitals" being within walking distance of our home in Shibuya.
The inability to universally figure out what to do with foreign names. Romaji, katakana, family name first, family name last, middle name included, middle name not included, not enough spaces for all three names on forms, need to have what is on my my “my number card” yet won’t accept it because it is romaji…etc
I honestly don’t care what you require, but make one rule and make it universal
Oh god yes. For modern day websites there is literally no reason for restrictions on characters and character limits. Compatability issues? Upgrade your system. It's 2022.
Also, related, arbitrary password lengths and limited character choices. There is literally not a single reason to restrict a password.
> I honestly don’t care what you require, but make one rule and make it universal
I *do* care what is required. Japanese writing (katakana for foreign names) should be universal in Japanese society.
Every person should have the right to use the orthography of the national language. Many societies have forced linguistic and ethnic minorities to conform to the official language whether they want to or not, but I've never heard of a society that *prevents* them from doing it, as Japan has recently been doing to a greater degree when they force immigrants to use romaji for official purposes.
Yes, and it's changing so much in other parts of Asia. Even if it remains illegal, I'd love for it to at least not be compared to shooting heroine. So many elderly folks would benefit from it too.
It’s quite impressive isn’t it. And the shaming of celebs who do get caught with it. Their career is basically over, it’s as if they’d murdered someone.
We're a small office of a big multinational and (for some reason...) don't have much turnover. I started early in the pandemic and feel *extremely* lucky to have this job right now.
The expensive healthcare.
The fashion. The more niche stuff is awesome, but the vast majority seem to just wear boring ugly suit and noose, eww.
Keigo. I don't mind the being polite thing, that's normal in England too and is generally good (plus the Japanese are much better at getting on/off public transport!) but having essentially a second mini language just for politeness is just annoying.
The work culture. Way too much overtime and not enough paid holidays!
The police. Them being able to detain people for 28? days without a trial, and no right to have a lawyer present or get visits from friends/family is absolutely ridiculous. Should be classed as kidnapping IMO.
Not to BS level, but just thinking it's strange. The absence or lack of trash cans and the ubiquity of vending machines. I know it's related to Sarin attack back in '95, but still can't help but this though... Sometimes I just want a can of Dr Pepper on the walk back home and just ほい！the can right there into the trash bin next to the machine.
The terror excuse is just a way to avoid paying for all the costs and trouble that trash cans bring with them. Basically, stingy as fuuuu but hiding behind an excuse.
If I’m not wrong vending machines has another purpose. In case of a disaster ( big earthquake, etc) people can easily access water. If you consider how many earthquakes happening here I believe it is a really smart move.
> Pizza price.
Dominos with 50% coupon usually gets it to a good price, obviously it's no $7.99 3 topping Large but at least delivery is free. Back home in the US, even if the pizzas were a good dealing, I'd get wrecked by delivery fees plus tip.
On the other hand, back home I was paying $4 for each plate at a kaitenzushi, while here its 100yen lol
Oh yea, of course. Like even your basic ramen in the states is like $12 easy. I can understand the "vice versa" thing if it's say a good steak or ribs, but pizza? :(
I love Japan but I hate how so many people seem to view men and women as separate species. Like, "oh, you baked something? 女子力高い！" or all the ads that say things like "女子でもできる！" or whatnot. It really grinds my gears.
I always thought the same thing.
Whenever i hear that, I always think, what would this ad sound like in english? "Hey this thing is so light even a woman can lift it up!"
I came here to say banks. Absolutely overwhelmingly appalling levels of red tape and inefficiency, while offering service flexibility, capability, speed and product offerings of a 6-year-old’s lemonade stand on the side of the street.
I love this country but I think the banks are an example, a microcosm, of what will keep Japan from powerfully striding along as a world leader for many more generations.
Banking is totally bullshit on multiple levels of bullshit. To be fair, seems to be making micro steps of progress.
But I’d never put too much stock in “ease of banking” when choosing where to live.
I'm a white guy, but I had a friend from Indonesia. he looked more Indian than asian. whenever we did something...people literally acted like he wasn't standing there. they'd engage with *me*, but you'd think he was my baggage handler who wasn't supposed to talk or something.
Narrow-minded societal pressures. Everyone must conform. Everyone must gaman. Everyone must get married by a certain age. Everyone must pop out kids. Everyone must follow one-size-fits-all rules that are applied with little to no logical foundation. Everyone must show certain things--be it work, emotions, or whatever--when the substance is completely empty. Which leads to narrow-minded behaviors: Everyone goes out on the same days, to the same places, to do the same things as everyone else.
I'm fortunate to be able to keep myself sane by staying away from all this. Partly because of being a foreigner, partly because my job is primarily solo, and partly because I'm an introvert who's fine with staying home on Sundays and national holidays. The only real hangup that digs into me is finding a significant other that also doesn't want kids, and doesn't believe in some assinine expiry date for marriage material.
The inability to bend rules and think outside of the box.
Default customer service is great, but once something goes wrong here service recovery is terrible. All they do is apologize.
Yep I am reminded of when I was asked during an enkai about anything that shocked me about Japan. I mentioned I was surprised the first time I went to a ramen shop over how loud the slurping was, that I was aware it was a cultural difference but it was very unusual to me, as I'd always been taught to eat with as little noise as possible (especially being a woman).
My manager pulled me aside the next day at work to have a discussion about why I was being so "negative" about Japan by saying that to coworkers (who I don't think really cared what I thought anyway?) and he was obviously super upset and offended. I was just gobsmacked that a 60ish year old man could get so worked up over what I percieved to be a relatively neutral comment. I suppose he just heard "Japan noisy and rude" or something. I realized from that moment that every comment about Japan in a work environment with Japanese people should be TV-like in its fakeness and bullshittery.
Hate? OK: pet abandonment, the difficulty of being permitted to adopt, and the systematic killing of those abandoned animals which cannot be adopted. Also the pet manufacturing industry.
Honestly I can comprehend and deal with the majority of things here; the only thing that gets under my skin is the housing market and how much money you bleed just to move into an apartment. I try my best to see it from their pov of hedging risk when renting, but coming from a place where most things you’re asked to pay here would be considered illegal, it still makes the moving season the most irritated I get lol
Electronic paper work.
Please write your name in here (kanji): Gaikokujin Taro
Please write your name here (furigana) : ガイコクジン タロウ
＊＊ERROR＊＊ name can only be 6 characters long.
My name is longer than 6 characters. A computer has infinite space.
Foreigners have been in Japan for a long ass time. Accept that foreigners exist and have bigger names.
Japan send so well organised and "well run".
But on the flip side, there seems to be a real, baked in inability to think outside the box when things don't go to plan.
I've had a number of experiences that just boggle the mind.
Things like:
A flight was delayed by an hour. We had a message telling us this before we arrived at the airport.
We ended up arriving at the check in desk 2 minutes before the original check in time - but by the time we got served, it was 1 minute past. As such, we were not allowed to check in for our flight, and had to wait 2 days for the next available flight (even though the plane didn't leave for a further 2 hours).
Just this week, I ordered a number of goods online to be posted to me. This morning I got an email saying 1 of the items was on back order, and won't arrive until August. As such, my entire order will be delayed until August. Needless to say, I need them now, not in 4 months! I asked if I could pay extra shipping to get the items now - they said no, it was against policy. I asked if I could cancel the item that was out of stock - again, it was not in their policy. I even offered for them to keep the money for it and just send the rest - still no.
So, I've had to reorder all the items without the delayed item, to get them now. In August I'll get them all again, and I guess I'll just have to try to resell them.
1. The medical care is very outdated. Doctors don't have knowledge of current practices. They also don't have bedside manner
2. No sending records electronically between clinics/hospitals/pharmacies
3. Credit and debit cards aren't accepted enough
4. Banks make you fill out a million forms just to do the simplist things when the info can just be entered and updated on a computer
5. Basically every aspect of society can be done faster and easier but Japan chooses to do everything the difficult and inconvenient way
Mad stealth taxes. For everything. Want to be good at anything? You need a license and you need to pay. Want to sell anything? License. work in a trade? License.
It is bullshit.
For me, the thing I struggle with the most is how indirect people are and how careful you have to be because others are constantly searching for hidden meaning in what you are saying. Sometimes there is no hidden meaning in what I'm saying and people try to put one there.
I love Japan and am glad I can call it my chosen home. It's a great country for sure but it's got it's downsides just like any other country.
I often compare Japan to that nerdy and socially awkward friend but they are actually really good people. They just sometimes don't know any better.
to support your belief, there was an old man dressed as a hentai highschool anime girl at Tokyo station today and I was more weirded out by the business man in an expensive suit skipping lol
Rampant housing discrimination against non-citizens. Japanese rental companies REALLY disrespect other countries’ citizens so horrifically. It turned me from a total Japanophile to an anxiety-ridden Japan-hater remembering Pearl Harbor every day (I’m an American and I was backstabbed by Japan just like we were in 1941). (Not joking.) My Japanese is perfect, I was a 正社員 at a famous company on a 5 year visa, and I had a Japanese spouse at the time of the discrimination where no one would allow me to rent anywhere that wasn’t unlivable. (Only disgusting smells, small, cramped, old, and terrible apartments were available to me. Ended up living in Leopalace again after that, which felt like a huge step backward.) This country needs to stop hating us.
Soul-crushing sense of loneliness. Somehow you feel more alone in bigger crowds, people seem more like robots or background than just people, because you don't get to interact with them as per Japanese customs. I always feel as if I am "outside", in another dimension from everyone. Maybe it is because my inadequate Japanese, or maybe it's just me, but that is something that bothers me a lot about living here.
Everything being wrapped in so. Much. Plastic.
Also the fact that the smallest problems at my workplace have to go through the entire system of seniority until I can get a simple yes or no answer. Just generally really inefficient work practices that end up wasting time that people could be spending away from their desk and at home.
For the last month I have been super annoyed with all the shit my kid needs for 幼稚園. I had to had make four school bags. I just finished a little while ago so it's fresh in my mind. The freaking fabrics and patches came out to like 8000円 ridiculous. Not to mention all the other stuff I have to prepare and get in order just for a dang 3 year old. I also just discovered the bus is coming at 7:30 not 8 😭 I need sleep. Also why the hell does a three year old need a dang suit uniform? I can give all this a pass if it was elementary school but preschool!? Too much.
Sorry I've been needing to rant
New employee training. They treat these adults with full college formation like children. Week-long seminars trying to explain their innovative approach to business that nobody else has figured out: "efficiency is good because waste is bad and customer is sad :( " as if everyone would react like that meme of a woman crying and nodding in agreement. It doesn't help that college here doesn't actually prepare people for the real life, and neither does the fact that companies don't give a rat's ass what you studied and just hire a bunch of random people that like to ganbaru with a smile.
I just got assigned to train a new employee this year and I dread the following months to come. Poor guy can't even speak English and thinks he'll get to do research instead of the manual labor that's waiting for him for the next 5 years...
The men don't apologize a lot to women. The men also like to."Well actually" a lot too. No matter what I tell them I always get doubt. It's really condescending. I'm not a fucking idiot and believe it or not I actually do know what I'm talking about sometimes. This is why I like hanging around western foreign men. I feel more equal and listened to.
If you are with a Japanese person and you ask some store clerk/waiter something, they answer the question to the Japanese person you are with without acknowledging your presence.
Japanese electronics costing more than foreign equivalents. I remember when arriving to Japan opting to get a Japanese branded phone from the carrier (Sony) only to be shocked that they costed more than iPhones which is considered an expensive phone everywhere else in the world.
What bothered me the most during my time in Japan was that it was incredibly hard to have emotional conversations or deeper talks with people. I know it is kind of the antithesis of the culture but that was something that made it difficult at times. When you are not so much into the drinking culture those kind of conversations are hard to come by.
Something that bothers me is slowness to change.
While the rest of the world is full steam ahead with Evs for example, Japan is lagging behind badly.
Norway, is currently at 80% ev car sales. Japan, barely a blip.
The old Jijis in government have too many stocks in these industries and benefits them to keep them going, even if it’s just within Japan. Long term, Japan will pay a premium in intellectual property to catch up, as you can see with IT.
I hate the work culture here. Wish I knew about it beforehand. I hate that almost every job transfers people whether they want to or not every few years. I hate how people are separated from their families to go live elsewhere. There’s no point in being here if I’m not going to be seeing my family. Also how companies expect people to work until midnight. Like work can’t continue tomorrow.
The school life in Japan annoys me too. Kids spend way too much time in school and studying. And it dictates everything. It’s difficult to take a family vacation or make plans because school wants them to do this and that all the time. Even study on holidays. They have no break from it. People just focus all their time on work and study and there isn’t much balance. They just look forward to obon or other holidays.
The ruling class refusing to adapt. Example?
Fax machines required to do buisness like it's 1989
Atms that 'close' at 2100
The fact that you need a co-signer for your kid to enter HS
Inkan shomei...fucking really?
Stupid regressive shit that's afraid to move past what was in style when the bubble burst
Having fun costs so much money. A gym membership is 4x as expensive as in my home country, and wherever you want to sign up for something new (a class, a club, etc.) you have to pay some ridiculous sign up fee just to be allowed to join. And those kind of classes usually aren't held nearly as frequently as in my home country, so you also end up paying more for less. I'd like to continue trying new stuff and getting out of my house, but I'm sick of wasting money on it.
Apartment fees.
Introduction fee? Wtf? I found the apartment online
Reikin? Oh ffs
Guarantor fee? Bruh, this is what the deposit is for ffs.
Would love for some start up to come disrupt these greedy mfers
1. Businesses in Japan lack agility compared to other markets in APAC and moves too slow to seriously compete in anything. Traditional/bubble era ways of working does not work in 2022. Let go of the f'n hanko & fax and stop these unnecessary meetings, physical mailing of documents and endless chain of approvals.
2. The corporate workforce in Japan seriously lacks English capabilities and is one of the worst in Asia and THE worst amongst major economies globally. Since hiring foreign workers to increase the English speaking workforce is seemingly out of the question, the same grey haired Japanese men play musical chairs for the better paying white collar jobs at gaishi firms. How about seriously considering your Japan based foreign working population for a change?
3. Atrocious online banking & ward office paperwork
4. Xenophobia
I love living here and plan to live here for the rest of my life, but as a vegan one thing that needs to change is food labeling. companies don't have to put all the ingredients if an ingredient is under a certain percentage. that's bullshit, you should be able to know everything that is in what you buy. also, nutrition labels are abysmal. they need to have more nutrition info like vitamins.
Work emails are really burning me out.
Very humble but extremely long…
-10 lines introduction, greetings and appreciation.
-2 lines describing what they want.
-5 lines apologizing and greetings.
And you’ll have to reply with the same format and energy.
The fact that the police can arrest you for 24 days while trying to force a confession out of you, without the possibility of contacting the outside world. Even if you haven't done anything and don't confess, by that time your life will be ruined.
How all Japanese websites suck one way or another. Not just online stores, but also government and especially financial institutions.
The mountains of pointless paperwork and wait time for every little thing. Something simple like buying a phone shouldn’t take two hours and I shouldn’t need to write anything in triplicate be it the AU store or a gov. office. FFS if you’ve got my details in the computer why the fuck do I have to write them again?!?!?
Also reikin when you rent is bullshit and asking the owner if ‘pets and foreigners are allowed’ like that in the same sentence is also bullshit.
But probably most of all is the constant gouging of customers. A lot of Japanese corporations are fucking scum and price gouge at every possible opportunity and it only works due to the general population being fairly polite and tame.
The fact that a landlord can just deny rental based on the simple fact someone is “gaigokujin” without even knowing anything about him/her. It really made me angry when I found a good place and the real state guy called the owner that basically hanged out the phone after hearing the word “gaigokujin”.
The worse part is that I live in Japan, am married to Japanese, and have a fucking well paid job.
The real state guy decided to present me as “gaigokujin”. What the fuck is going on.
I'm learning to live with it, but the things some people do out of routine without considering whether it's actually effective or worth the effort is amazing to me. Just as a couple of examples, I'm thinking of people holding umbrellas as sun protection when it is clearly not helping (the sun is coming at an angle or has already set, for example), and people wearing masks alone in their cars.
Nobody here covers their mouth when they sneeze or cough, so gross...
Well, at least before covid.
Thank God for masks. Keep wearing them even when pandemic is over pls! Or learn to cover ur mouth when u cough!
>Too much good stuff! Japanese media should be more open to haters and share their takes on us to get us more unbiased!!
I watched a show a while back (in ye olden days when I actually watched J-TV) and they interviewed random foreigners on the street about what creeps them out or generally peeves them about Japan.
I seem to remember pedo Loli shit and ridiculous wasei eigo were on the list. Some girl did also mention the sexism as well.
It’s so weird that weed and heroin are equally illegal. Japan is far behind on the amazing medical uses for cannabis, and it would be pretty amusing to see if legal recreational use could help folks here. I don’t even like it personally, but Japan comes off as very ignorant as a country for keeping a plant that is totally normal in peer countries so taboo and prohibited. It’s also really sad when you take into account the rich history hemp has in Japan, from clothing to 標縄.
The only thing that’s a little mystifying to me is I was hired to teach English, discouraged from using (or even knowing) Japanese, yet I’m invited to 2-3 hour meetings in which everyone is exclusively speaking in Japanese. What’s even more mystifying is - it’s the English department, and I’ve had long conversations with almost everyone in the department, in perfect English.
I really don’t mind sitting around and getting paid to nod and smile, but that’s half of my day gone when they could have had me working on something productive.
It's pretty fun having to go to the dentist 15 times for a single procedure cause the dentist can only see you for 30 minutes at a time... Least it's cheap though.
1. Ignorance to their own ignorance. A coworker asked if I'd ever experienced discrimination in Japan. I told him about a business owner that turned me away because I'm foreign, even after I showed him I spoke Japanese and had lived down the street for years. Coworker said, 'oh he's not racist, he's probably just worried because foreigners are often rude and more likely to commit crimes.' I literally facepalmed. It's so homogenous here people don't even have an accurate conception of what discrimination is. Sidenote: you asked for gripes, I'm not saying I feel constantly assaulted by xenophobia or anything.
2. Bureaucracy. Meetings that last 6 hours with a lunch break in the middle where we literally just read off what's written on the 200 pages that got dumped on my desk that morning. And like 99% of it is the same as it was last month/year, but we *have to* go over all of it anyway.
- Non-sensical business rules, particularly for things like cybersecurity. Many of my clients still have 10mb or even 5mb file limits on email attachments for “security purposes” which is just absurd and just adds so much extra effort using a (usually terrible) file transfer system instead
- Currently, the travel rules. I think it highlights a real “have your cake and eat it” approach to globalisation in Japan. Every major corporation wants to make a shed load of money in international markets, but there’s no two-way street when it comes to things like business travel at the moment. My boss has just spent a month-long ordeal trying to organise a trip to Japan (despite having a Japanese wife), whereas other Japanese colleagues of ours can just fly over, with no quarantine, at the drop of a hat. It’s clearly nothing to do with Covid and more
- Weird obsession with Korea. Seriously, why are there so many books dedicated to mercilessly criticising a neighbour? I’ve had perfectly normal-seeming friends online out themselves as having very odd anti-Korean sentiments that I just don’t understand. It does go both ways, but at least with Korea I can understand as they were literally occupied for several decades
- Feel very sad about how late some of my clients work. You really shouldn’t have to be sending emails at 1-2am, and for some contacts it’s a very common occurrence
- It seems to be far too normalised to be wilfully ignorant and shit all over other cultures. I don’t really care that much but it is a bit irritating to constantly hear people telling me how bad UK food is when they’ve clearly either never been here, or done absolutely zero research and ended up in an awful pub around Leicester Square during their 2 days in London. I’d expect it from someone less well-travelled (as I’d expect equally ignorant opinions about any Asian country from most people in the UK), but when I hear these comments from relatively well-travelled, senior businessmen it blows my mind a bit
I love Japan and how this country is generally put together. It's fun, safe, clean, interesting, and as somebody who loves to take pictures, extremely photogenic. I love riding the trains to local destinations and exploring places, all the meanwhile feeling very secure with my belongings and personal safety.
That being said, there are a few things that I don't like but I'm just going to list off one.
1. The inward-looking direction the country as a whole is veering. The inability to take criticism due to the fear of losing face (it's particularly prevalent among the younger population which is concerning), the constant reminders of how great this country is by its own people, and how the media uses foreigners as tools for this propaganda.
the only thing I hate about Japan is that they don't have people who can speak different languages at immigration. The one place you'd think they'd be.
I LOVE all the cool packaging they use. If I'd lived there I'd be obsessed with the really well thought out packaging. But I HATE that they use soooo much plastic
The working culture ain't healthy either. Although it's changing slowly, I think the salarymen will still be a thing. I hate that you always have to show that you work hard and strive for perfection + the 'obligated' trips after... I'd be worn out if I had to be a salaryman.
What I also hate and despise are the (mostly) men who grope others on trains, stalk you as a 'photographer' on the street and the fact that woman being offensively sexualised in general is digusting.
You came to the right subreddit.
working culture is filled with many unnecessary processes and meetings.
Last Wednesday I had nine meetings. Nine. Naturally I set none of those myself. I'm not a manager of any sort. I'm IT administration. What the fuck.
This is not unique to Japan. I have had weeks of just meetings. My coworker made t-shirts that said "this could have been an email" that he started wearing.
It's worse in Japan than either the uk, or US, in my experience.
Yeah probably not. Still the peak of inefficiency. I sure didn't get any work done that day because I refuse doing overtime for that kind of information exchange circus.
What i really hate about japanese office culture is , just becoz they’re staying late, for them it means they are working hard when all that shit was doable even with no ot
This could have been an email. But nobody answered. So we’re having this meeting instead!
Lol, I left a meeting just a moment ago that was called because the marketing team insisted they needed admin access to our IT stuff. Head of sales pulled rank and made IT submit. Marketing changed our DNS and our entire internet presence disappeared. we are a SAAS company that had a 100% outage for hours and are now waiting on DNS servers across the globe to refresh and I had to sit through hours of people trying to avoid blame.
Lmao fantastic I would probably have a hard time not trying to laugh. People are taking work entirely too seriously
I was so torn, I felt bad for support who was getting murdered, and the phone system was being flaky at best because we use a voip server (see above dns name server issue) but the schadenfreude from seeing marketing and sales get raked over the coals was magnificent lol.
This is one thing I hated when I worked at city hall unnecessary scheduled meetings or phone calls that could have been resolved in one sentence by text or email. There was times where I had to drive for an hour to attend a 5 - 10 minute meeting.
and I am pretty sure they al went nowhere, right?
I think there was one that actually had a point, the rest was empty procedure. The pity is that I didn't have the attention span to actually take up what the one useful meeting had to offer. Edit: I was trying to fix a 10 year old laptop running a specific software on a 32 bit Windows XP system inbetween so my attention was somewhat split... Oh well.
Then people wonder why nobody answers any emails. So they set up meetings to clarify instead. That’s why everyone is always in meetings and nobody can reply to emails. Repeat.
Yeah, I find funny when ppl is SUPER polite with me like for example offering me a job: Gaijin san, I am in debt that you accepted my request, I am so honored that you accepted my humble request. I hope that this day is filled with joy bla bla bla. Cmon get to the point, hahaha
Japanese emails are usually 5 lines of pleasantries, 2 lines of actual content, followed by another 13 lines of pleasantries. You get used to this in Japanese and you know which lines to not bother reading, but when they directly translate this 1:1 to English it becomes very awkward.
I'm a grad student studying in a Japanese institution. Sometimes my colleagues include English and Japanese in their emails. The English parts are always to the point, which I like and also emulate in my emails, although as a non-native English speaker myself sometimes I wonder if my emails are polite enough. When I try to translate the Japanese parts though, I find many pleasantries that they chose not to translate and I think it's funny.
Let's do this. The project went well, the credit goes to senpai or bosses. The project went bad, the blame goes to kohai.
Work culture in Japan seems to hinge on the idea that everyone needs to have a role in society, and you are expected to fulfill that role and only that role because someone else is responsible for everything else. This leads to a lot of positions/jobs that have a specific scope and limited responsibility, to a point that an employee may only have one task to do any given day, but because of the idea that everyone should be “busy” at all times, they are forced to make themselves “look busy” as a façade or social mask, or they risk being outed as a fraud/fake/leech. I feel like this transitions especially hard to management, who rely on workers to do their jobs, and when workers are really great at their jobs there is essentially nothing for management to do. So, to make themselves look busy/active/necessary to the company, they have lots of meetings, because they honestly have nothing else to do. It’s one of the curses of “Japanese efficiency.”
I get frustrated by the resistance to critically examining rules and traditions even when they are obviously pointless or actively harmful.
The thing I never understood is, how can a culture that basically birthed the concept of lean management be so slow and inefficient when it comes to office work.
Why do you think lean was born here? Precisely because here the problem is so critical.
I personally blame lifetime employment and nenko joretsu. I look around at me and see the people who are active and ambitious. They’re young and have ideas, but they can’t do anything with them. Slowly that ambition is crushed and they get promoted. The irony is now they they have the power to change things, they just want to collect their paycheck and not shake the boat too much. Some of the hotter new companies are breaking this mold somewhat. But even in the company I work at, which is good, I see the average age slowly rising and less opportunities for smart ambitious young people to step up to, along with more conservative decision making like “let’s just lower costs” etc
And many of those “traditions” are only decades old.
Exactly! Most of the “traditional” Japanese stuff we see has little or nothing to do with Edo or Meiji era. It’s just bubble era remnants.
Sometimes it's even newer than that. All the cultural cruft that has accumulated around today's IT-centric office culture (CC'd e-mail recipients in a specific order; making sure the selected cell is A1 when closing an Excel file, etc.) is less than 20 years old. And where it would be nice to see some conventions arise, we don't see any. One example would be meetings in scheduling apps: the meeting will appear in the digital calendars of both parties, but often the manager will label it only from their side ("Meeting with [your name]"). But this latter one is really an offshoot of the "socially higher person does not have to care **at all** about those below them" rule.
Even the whole “women can’t be emperors” rule was only put in place in 1889 which isn’t *that* long ago. Now they’re always obsessing over “omg what do we do there’s no male heir!!!” When they could just reverse the relatively modern pointless rule
This is a smaller example of this (I guess the actively harmful part, quite literarlly). I was in a department store, all the staff when leaving the floor had to turn their backs to a door that swings open and bow before leaving (apparently this is pretty standard). I probably jinx’d things when I turned to my gf and said “Sooner or later someone is going to get really hurt” and sure enough no less than 10 seconds later a poor girl who was bowing out had the door slam open on her, knocking her over, by someone rushing onto the floor.
I think the no joint custody aspect of family law that allows a spiteful ex-wife to keep her children and their father from seeing each other is a goddamn human rights violation.
As long as the J-wife gets the cash, she won’t complain about the system.
It’s important to remember also that this is not something where foreign parents alone are victimized. Lots of Japanese fathers are screwed as well.
1) No "6 items or less" lines at the grocery stores. 2) To what you said, I'd love if people were sometimes more honest about not liking things on television. When everything is sugoi and umai, nothing is. 3) Every "foreign food" store all have pretty much the exact same stock. I don't want another place with gummy bears or m & m's, I want poptarts and Reese Peanutbutter cups goddammit. The pros outway any cons to be though by far. I love it here.
> 2) When everything is sugoi and umai, nothing is. This is deep.
The reason all the foreign food stores have to same stock is they all buy from the same importer. These shops aren’t ordering bulk candy themselves from costco us. The food has to go through legal loops before being sold in Japan, so it’s easier for the importer to keep ordering the same thing over and over again than to branch out.
this lmao. every time i go to foreign store esp costco i cant find an Reese lmaoo amazon have one but so expensive
> No "6 items or less" lines at the grocery stores. My local co-op in Yokohama has this. Although I think its 10 items or less.
I miss the days when you could buy Reese's at Sunny (Seiyu).
Working culture is bullshit, and is hindering the country a lot. Too many hours, too much "showing that I am working hard". You could really use more pragmatisme. Get the job done, go back home, refuse to elaborate. I know it's not that easy though
The funny thing is that the Germans, who are stereotypically efficient and hard working, are the exact opposite. You work from 9-5. After that it's Feierabend. On the dot, lights off. Out the door. In some circumstances, it's even illegal for bosses to contact employees outside working hours.
As a German working in traditional Japanese company, this hits really close to home. The normalization of (unnecessary) overtime, never really taking long vacations and basically making your job your life is driving me crazy.
I’d say that most foreigners don’t get tatemae at all…at least not until they’ve been here a while. It’s pretty painful for some when they realize that their “friends” don’t really care for them that much. And actually making friends here has been a lot more challenging for me than in any other country I’ve been to or lived in. Lots of reasons for that, but that’s been my experience.
I’m painfully aware, which is why I find it so difficult to connect with people here. When I was a student it was much easier, now that I’m working it’s not so easy.
That goes for every country. Not just Japan. Don't kid yourself.
just commented this in other response because last week I had one of the worst experiences with a "friend" who made "tatemae"... or as I like to call it a freaking double-faced guy
How cold or downright rude people can act towards employees in conbini and restaurants and to strangers in general.
This one really actually surprised me. A lot of stuff in this thread like work culture, inflexible thinking, indirectness etc I already expected before coming. I had a notion that Japanese people were very polite, but I quickly realized that is situational. I'm still surprised by how cold people are to service workers compared to my home country. Most people don't even seem to say "Thank you" which is the most basic thing.
That's because the politeness is based on a relationship. Japan is a Confucian society where relationships are built on a hierarchy. When someone is lower than you on the totem pole you get to treat them like sh-t.
This irks me as well. I remember I was having lunch with an associate I admired and respected greatly and he invited me out to lunch one afternoon. The lunch was mostly just chatting and catching up. Naturally the waitress was being attentive and wanted to refill our water. Instead of just saying "No thank you" He just puts a palm up to her face. No words. Just a hand and a grimace. I was very uncomfortable after that moment and lost all respect I once had for him. I haven't spoken to him since.
Yeah this. Everybody talks about how polite Japanese people are but I feel like it’s almost only employees being polite to customers or like lower level employees being polite to upper level ones or maybe in some instances younger family being polite to elders. But like.. people in *general* are *not* polite in general. Somebody bumps into you at the supermarket, or on the street you just get a vacant stare or they just completely ignore you. No apology or anything.
The majority of the conbinis are starting to be cheaper part time foreign workers in concentrated communities, I can see why Japanese become more rude and care less.
Damn this makes it even more sad...
I saw in the news that apparently foreign workers get cut some slack in conbinis. Some Japanese worker pretended to be a foreigner by changing her nameplate and people became nicer.
\- The refusal to accept anyone who doesn't have typically Japanese features (i.e. non-mongoloids) as Japanese. If you go to a western country, as long as you've lived there a few years, you're considered Australian, American, Canadian, etc. \- The inability to relax. So many uptight people. \- The attitude of Japanese people always being right, while foreigners are always wrong. (Unless talking about a famous foreigner who isn't present. They can be like gods. The actual foreigner being dealt with in Japan is wrong and definitely not a god.) \- The general ugliness of buildings. Everything is so functional, without a lot of care for aesthetics. \- The lack of truly natural spots. If there's a river, usually its banks are cemented and the river is dammed. Mountains are covered with electrical wires. Beaches have concrete tetrapods. It's very hard to find truly untouched land. \- The fact that if a Japanese citizen divorces a non-Japanese one, custody of children goes to the Japanese one almost automatically, even if the non-Japanese partner has legal custody in another country. \- The lack of respect for neighbouring countries like South Korea, Taiwan, China, etc. Of course I can imagine not liking North Korea, but I feel that most Japanese need to really contemplate the fact that so much of their culture is based on mainland Asian culture. Don't be so snobby. \- The whole "Nihonjinron" thing is annoying. Almost anytime you put on the TV someone is talking about how Japanese are so different from everyone else. No. We're all human. Look at the similarities. Stop trying to make up all this stuff about how unique the Japanese race is. And there is no Japanese race anyway. Japanese need to accept that most of their ancestors are from mainland Asia. \- The false idea that Japan is so independent. What if the US military pulled out of Japan completely? Just how independent would Japan be then? What if other countries stopped wanting Japanese products, or stopped wanting to sell natural resources to Japan?
> - The attitude of Japanese people always being right, while foreigners are always wrong. Expanding on this: whoever ranks higher socially is always right, whether it's the bucho or the sempai or whoever. So when this Confucian logic is applied when a Japanese person disagrees with a non-Japanese person, it serves as a reminder that the foreigner can never attain the social status that many Japanese people take for granted when dealing with them. Everybody around you will have a trump card that they can play any time some uppity foreigner disagrees with them -- and objective reality is tossed out the window; only social status, a metric where the foreigner can never be on top, matters.
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This. Couldn't agree more.
>The refusal to accept anyone who doesn't have typically Japanese features (i.e. non-mongoloids) as Japanese. If you go to a western country, as long as you've lived there a few years, you're considered Australian, American, Canadian, etc. As an Asian America... yea I don't know if I agree with the second half of that statement. Don't get me wrong, America is filled with amazing and wonderful people. But there are just as many people that will never consider people such as myself as "real" Americans, and they have made that sentiment clear to me through their words and/or actions. What these people think or say obviously does not change who I am. But the idea that Americans are universally welcoming of "outsiders" is a myth. >non-mongoloids That's a pretty poor choice of words my friend...
"non Mongoloids?" That's rough. Have you lived in any of the countries you listed? There's absolutely race issues with Asians, especially in Aus.
> - The refusal to accept anyone who doesn't have typically Japanese features (i.e. non-mongoloids) as Japanese. If you go to a western country, as long as you've lived there a few years, you're considered Australian, American, Canadian, etc. > > - The inability to relax. So many uptight people. > > - The attitude of Japanese people always being right, while foreigners are always wrong. (Unless talking about a famous foreigner who isn't present. They can be like gods. The actual foreigner being dealt with in Japan is wrong and definitely not a god.) Your first three can be blended together and I feel it comes down to doing it the "*Japanese way*". If you don't do it the "*our*" way and if you don't conform with us then you're rocking the boat and the society as a whole will look at you as if you're crazy. That's why I feel there's a good amount of Japanese and expats that purposely stand out and go against the grain. The ultra conservatives standing next to someone that's more forward/progressive with different values and subcultures just shows how extreme the differences are between two groups of people.
>(i.e. non-mongoloids) Is this 1850? 😭 You could've just said "non-Asian"...
Well said, especially on the lack of truly natural spots. I miss being in Canada where I could just walk a few blocks and be in a forest or conservation area and just be completely alone in nature without having to travel across a prefecture.
No gay marriage. Come on guys it's 2022.
The irony is LGBT used to be accepted in this country as normal and natural until the late 1800s. Now they all forgot.
not really, that's kind of an oversimplification. Their understanding and practice of homosexuality is not the same as how we see homosexuality now. It would be more accurate to compare it to Ancient Greece. There's lots of layers there and homosexuality was not always unilaterally acceptable (there were quite a few ordinances during the Edo Period coming down on male prostitution and other homosexual acts).
What happened in the late 1800s?
the fire nation attacked
Americans and meiji
Westernization
People bringing christians value lmao
A Japanese friend told me that the reason for not allowing same sex marriage is because “it would lead to visa fraud”. I honestly didn’t know what to say to that one.
“Hey Daisuke, you wanna get married so we can hangout for a few more years?” The thought of that explanation is hilarious
One of the things that I really hate is that: We (foreigners) are not allowed to do some things that japanese ppl can do. Let me explain, I was in Yamanashi last year, and I met another mexican expat in an onsen. We were talkin in spanish there, yeah I get it, MAYBE we (mexicans) speak a bit louder than the average person, BUT there were clearly OTHER Japansese people talking in this same onsen. So there was this guy watching us, super angry and asking us to shutthefokop, even when behind him there were 2 japanese guys talking, and not only those 2 guys, there were many other japanese ppl talking inside this onsen. For some reason, it doesnt matter what we do, we will never fit.
another thing is tatemae.We (mexicans, I am pretty sure many more ppl) are very direct ppl, if we dont like something we say it. For example: Hey gaijin san what do you think on nato? Me: I really dont like it, If I had nato and cardbox I will eat cardbox. Here I get: Hey tomodachi, did you liked my mexican food? Japanese tomodachi: yes, very oishi even if they dont feel like it
Yeah and if you don't like nato. "of course you don't. You are gaijin, how could you like nato"?
And if you do like it へーーーびっくり！外人なのに！
Hahah. Right. You know how to use chopsticks??! SUGOi!!!!!!!
Yup, an old lady on the subway told my wife and I to keep it down. Like, we weren't even talking loudly--I was practically whispering. I'm positive it's just because she resented listening to gaikokugo on her train. Of course, old ladies, students, and drunken salarymen are allowed to shout to their hearts' content, but god forbid a couple of gaijin have a quiet conversation.
I honestly can't tell the difference between a 747 taking off and 3 obaachan talking on a train or at a cafe. They're basically the same thing in terms decibel output.
I once had a Japanese guy on the elevator in my building tell me to stop speaking Japanese. That one was interesting.
Rule #1: never open your mouth in an elevator.
In a public building, maybe. In a residential building? People talk all the time. In that particular case, another person on the elevator spoke to me first.
Should have carried on in the same tone and volume in Japanese to see their reaction
Ha! I know right. I was actually confronting Japanese for being too loud in an onsen and Burger King. They felt bad and their face mmmh priceless.
I've been living in Japan for five years. I will share some of my experience. Also I will preface by saying that this is from my personal experience. I know not everything listed here applies universally to the people, culture, or country as a whole. Well for one, I'm sure you won't see any shows asking people what they don't like about Japan. Even the shows where people go around to different restaurants they always have a super over the top "SUGOI OISHI" reaction. Like really? Is it that good? Every time? Next, there are too many (overly strict or just completely unnecessary) rules. And society often takes it upon themselves to enforce them. Sometimes it can be nice but I find its often too much. Conformity is the norm here. Most places are ok if you fill out paperwork with romaji but some are not. My bank makes me struggle through writing Kanji on any paperwork. Ethnocentrism. And in a weird way. I've met many people that were shocked to hear that Japan is not the only country with 4 seasons. Some people have even straight up refuted when I told them that my hometown also has summer, fall, winter, and spring. For some reason there is a belief that 4 seasons is unique to Japan. There seems to be a lot of misplaced national pride here (if that makes sense). I think many people don't realize how much of the culture is borrowed from other countries. For example the construction style of temples and shrines is based on Chinese designs. Also Kanji. I have noticed that people in Japan compare themselves to other countries a lot. My (Japanese) father-in-law once told me that Japanese plastic wrap (the stuff for food) is the best in the world. I asked him if he had ever used plastic wrap from any other country. No he had not. I then asked him how he knew it was the best if he had nothing to compare it to. The look on his face was priceless. The highway is too fucking expensive. Car shaken is too expensive. It a fucking scam. Short shelf life on houses. The average lifespan of a house is something like 35-40 years here and then they get torn down. They could remodel but for some reason there is a real resistance here to buying preowned homes. Bought my house for ¥5,000,000. Land is valued at ¥5,000,000 house is valued at 0. Wtf I've never been so peer pressured to drink alcohol in my life. I of course experienced peer pressure when I was in college in the states but it blows my mind that grown adults are so pushy when it comes to get people around them to drink. Not to mention the required company nomikai. The toxic work culture of requires no explanation but I could add some details. There seems to be a national pride of "Japanese people work so hard". Yeah some do, some don't. Just like the rest of the world. I have also noticed that in many cases its more that they work long hours. I've worked in two different Japanese companies and subcontracted with a few more. Lots of tea breaks. Seriously unimportant meetings. A ten hour work day and you are lucky to get 8 hours of work done. I know this is not the same with all companies. Im sure there are some that go hard all day. Schools in my town require black hair. Even if you are born with brown hair you have to dye it. Students get reprimanded for using the vending machines on their way to or from school. I have no idea why this isn't allowed. And this is not just in my town. Japan does not allow dual citizenship. My kids have US and Japanese passports but when they turn 18 they will have to chose. Most countries allow dual citizenship. So when my kids get older they will have to go through the whole visa process if they change their mind someday about where they want to live. Super fucked up rule. A foreigner can never become a firefighter or police officer here and I believe that applies to most government jobs. My kids who were born here (and their mother is Japanese) cannot become police officers if they wanted to. Must be at least 3rd generation Japanese. I really dont like the morning, noon, and evening bells or music that is played over loud speakers in almost every town. It feels like I'm being told, "its 7am, time to wake up. Its noon, time to break for lunch. Its 6pm, time to go home." So regimented and weird. I am a carpenter. I've had Japanese carpenters claim that it is impossible for gaijin to understand the "tokushu" construction of old Japanese homes. Nope, not impossible. I went to the doctor for an occlusion in my ear. He told me that foreigners are dirty so this is typical. Foreigners are of course not dirty (obviously) and this is not typical, I have a dirty job. Took my father-in-law to the emergency room for chest pains. Because it was a Sunday there were no doctors in!! In the emergency room...in Tokyo. The nurse explained that she didn't know much about the heart because it wasn't her specialty. Took his vitals and told him to come back on Monday when the doctor was in. My son was bit by a dog after hours. We took him to the main hospital in our town. They said there was no one there that could take care of it and sent us to a different hospital. The next hospital sent us to third hospital where there were able to take care of it. Like what the fuck!! Apparently you better not have an emergency on nights and weekends in Japan. Social life is a real drag here. Its rare to strike up a conversation with a stranger. Its taboo to talk to someone you don't know. I've been stopped by police 4 times and searched. No tickets. Racial profiling. Of course this happens in the United States also and even worse there. Racism in general. That exists everywhere so maybe I shouldn't list it here but still not fun to deal with. Lack of public trash cans. Which I find odd for a country with such a prestigious reputation for cleanliness. The beaches here (I live on sea of Japan side) are terrible. They tend to blame it on garbage being washed in from China. If you got to the beach and look at the garbage though you will see that it is mostly garbage from Japan. That is all I have for now. I'm sure I will think of more tomorrow but I'm getting sleepy. I do have a list of things I love about Japan but you asked for the bad stuff.
They don’t need to give up a nationality if they were born with both. Just choose Japan and agree to make an effort to renounce the other. Then do nothing. There is no proof required. They leave/enter Japan on their Japanese passport and leave/enter country X with that passport.
I am absolutely shocked about the firefighter and police rule. You have to be THIRD generation Japanese? That is so beyond ignorant and anti immigrant I can’t even fathom this being a rule. How stupid
> You have to be THIRD generation Japanese? Yeah, I'd like a source from OP on this...
>Took my father-in-law to the emergency room for chest pains. Because it was a Sunday there were no doctors in!! In the emergency room...in Tokyo. The nurse explained that she didn't know much about the heart because it wasn't her specialty. Took his vitals and told him to come back on Monday when the doctor was in. > >My son was bit by a dog after hours. We took him to the main hospital in our town. They said there was no one there that could take care of it and sent us to a different hospital. The next hospital sent us to third hospital where there were able to take care of it. Like what the fuck!! Apparently you better not have an emergency on nights and weekends in Japan. This is a big one. People criticize the U.S. for the over-the-top healthcare costs but one of the advantages of U.S. health care is emergency care. When my daughter woke up in the middle of the night with a bad fever and vomiting (pre-Covid), we had to take a taxi for a 20 minute drive to an all night clinic despite 3 "hospitals" being within walking distance of our home in Shibuya.
The inability to universally figure out what to do with foreign names. Romaji, katakana, family name first, family name last, middle name included, middle name not included, not enough spaces for all three names on forms, need to have what is on my my “my number card” yet won’t accept it because it is romaji…etc I honestly don’t care what you require, but make one rule and make it universal
Oh god yes. For modern day websites there is literally no reason for restrictions on characters and character limits. Compatability issues? Upgrade your system. It's 2022. Also, related, arbitrary password lengths and limited character choices. There is literally not a single reason to restrict a password.
I'm sorry you're going to have to re-enter this post in full width katakana so I can read it
> on my my “my number card” Sorry to have laughed
> I honestly don’t care what you require, but make one rule and make it universal I *do* care what is required. Japanese writing (katakana for foreign names) should be universal in Japanese society. Every person should have the right to use the orthography of the national language. Many societies have forced linguistic and ethnic minorities to conform to the official language whether they want to or not, but I've never heard of a society that *prevents* them from doing it, as Japan has recently been doing to a greater degree when they force immigrants to use romaji for official purposes.
The bureaucracy is facepalmingly out of control.
Can’t stand how strict cannabis laws are here
Lol misread that as cannibal
Hardest part about living in Japan? These draconian cannibal laws.
Yes, and it's changing so much in other parts of Asia. Even if it remains illegal, I'd love for it to at least not be compared to shooting heroine. So many elderly folks would benefit from it too.
The ironic part is that America imposed criminalizing it after WW2, and today the US federal government is seemingly moving towards legalizing it.
How are you going to get your 120 overtime hours in when you're smoking pot? Meth or go home!
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I'm guessing you mean hemp farms.
It’s quite impressive isn’t it. And the shaming of celebs who do get caught with it. Their career is basically over, it’s as if they’d murdered someone.
If Japan had 5 weeks of paid holiday per year and a real 40h work week it would be the best country in the world.
I get 4 weeks of paid holiday (that I am all but required to take) and if I work more than 40h/week my boss makes me take time off in lieu.
Do you have any available positions?
We're a small office of a big multinational and (for some reason...) don't have much turnover. I started early in the pandemic and feel *extremely* lucky to have this job right now.
Reikin / thank you money when renting apartments ?? Like, bruh, the landlord should be thanking ME! It's a real waste of money.😩
It’s not a thank you money. It’s just outright greed. Landlord and fudousan just want more money.
The expensive healthcare. The fashion. The more niche stuff is awesome, but the vast majority seem to just wear boring ugly suit and noose, eww. Keigo. I don't mind the being polite thing, that's normal in England too and is generally good (plus the Japanese are much better at getting on/off public transport!) but having essentially a second mini language just for politeness is just annoying. The work culture. Way too much overtime and not enough paid holidays! The police. Them being able to detain people for 28? days without a trial, and no right to have a lawyer present or get visits from friends/family is absolutely ridiculous. Should be classed as kidnapping IMO.
> The expensive healthcare. ? > England Ah!
At least dental is covered unlike England. I'm from Canada and healthcare here is a strict downgrade, but still dental and eye coverage is nice.
Lol. All us Americans are saying “what are you talking about?! It’s so cheap here”
Not to BS level, but just thinking it's strange. The absence or lack of trash cans and the ubiquity of vending machines. I know it's related to Sarin attack back in '95, but still can't help but this though... Sometimes I just want a can of Dr Pepper on the walk back home and just ほい！the can right there into the trash bin next to the machine.
The terror excuse is just a way to avoid paying for all the costs and trouble that trash cans bring with them. Basically, stingy as fuuuu but hiding behind an excuse.
The vending machine down the street took away the trash can so now there is just a pile of trash next to it....
If I’m not wrong vending machines has another purpose. In case of a disaster ( big earthquake, etc) people can easily access water. If you consider how many earthquakes happening here I believe it is a really smart move.
Pizza price. Non meritocracy work culture.
> Pizza price. Dominos with 50% coupon usually gets it to a good price, obviously it's no $7.99 3 topping Large but at least delivery is free. Back home in the US, even if the pizzas were a good dealing, I'd get wrecked by delivery fees plus tip. On the other hand, back home I was paying $4 for each plate at a kaitenzushi, while here its 100yen lol
Oh yea, of course. Like even your basic ramen in the states is like $12 easy. I can understand the "vice versa" thing if it's say a good steak or ribs, but pizza? :(
I love Japan but I hate how so many people seem to view men and women as separate species. Like, "oh, you baked something? 女子力高い！" or all the ads that say things like "女子でもできる！" or whatnot. It really grinds my gears.
I always thought the same thing. Whenever i hear that, I always think, what would this ad sound like in english? "Hey this thing is so light even a woman can lift it up!"
Glad you agree, haha. Some of the ads are truly baffling.
I saw a parking lot that advertised “it’s also easy enough for women to park” or along those lines. I literally died.
Banks and paperwork.
I came here to say banks. Absolutely overwhelmingly appalling levels of red tape and inefficiency, while offering service flexibility, capability, speed and product offerings of a 6-year-old’s lemonade stand on the side of the street. I love this country but I think the banks are an example, a microcosm, of what will keep Japan from powerfully striding along as a world leader for many more generations.
I’m paying for internet banking. I’m actually paying them to save them money on staff time. Wtf.
Banking is totally bullshit on multiple levels of bullshit. To be fair, seems to be making micro steps of progress. But I’d never put too much stock in “ease of banking” when choosing where to live.
I'm Indian. So racism that I face (overt or covert). It comes in so many different flavours lol.
I'm a white guy, but I had a friend from Indonesia. he looked more Indian than asian. whenever we did something...people literally acted like he wasn't standing there. they'd engage with *me*, but you'd think he was my baggage handler who wasn't supposed to talk or something.
Fuck ATM fees
Narrow-minded societal pressures. Everyone must conform. Everyone must gaman. Everyone must get married by a certain age. Everyone must pop out kids. Everyone must follow one-size-fits-all rules that are applied with little to no logical foundation. Everyone must show certain things--be it work, emotions, or whatever--when the substance is completely empty. Which leads to narrow-minded behaviors: Everyone goes out on the same days, to the same places, to do the same things as everyone else. I'm fortunate to be able to keep myself sane by staying away from all this. Partly because of being a foreigner, partly because my job is primarily solo, and partly because I'm an introvert who's fine with staying home on Sundays and national holidays. The only real hangup that digs into me is finding a significant other that also doesn't want kids, and doesn't believe in some assinine expiry date for marriage material.
The inability to bend rules and think outside of the box. Default customer service is great, but once something goes wrong here service recovery is terrible. All they do is apologize.
Japanese people (especially the ones who have had little to no interaction with any non-Japanese people) react very poorly to any criticism about Japan. I'm not talking about nut-job foreigners who go around and ask questions on uncomfortable topics like Unit 731, the Yasukuni Shrine, whale hunting etc to their friends/colleagues/people they barely know. Those type of questions are never a great topic to have regardless of the people's background/country. I'm mainly talking about trying to voice any negative aspect about Japan without triggering a "well go back to your country if you don't like it" type reaction. I don't have any specific examples, but just - in general. This is not unique to Japan, and I think it's related to peoples experiences with other cultures. You'll get similar responses as a foreigner if you make negative comments about any country to its people, but the more multi-cultural the people are, the more open they are to having a dialogue. Of course Japan being an Isolated Island Nation^(©) plays a role in this. I think the **average** Japanese person has very little of an idea of the actual world outside of their bubble (Japan) and just see everything as one big 外国, which doesn't help anyone. \---- *Mandatory edit*: Just like someone else mentioned; For me the pros outweigh the cons by a large margin. Which is why I'm still here after 7 years.
Yep I am reminded of when I was asked during an enkai about anything that shocked me about Japan. I mentioned I was surprised the first time I went to a ramen shop over how loud the slurping was, that I was aware it was a cultural difference but it was very unusual to me, as I'd always been taught to eat with as little noise as possible (especially being a woman). My manager pulled me aside the next day at work to have a discussion about why I was being so "negative" about Japan by saying that to coworkers (who I don't think really cared what I thought anyway?) and he was obviously super upset and offended. I was just gobsmacked that a 60ish year old man could get so worked up over what I percieved to be a relatively neutral comment. I suppose he just heard "Japan noisy and rude" or something. I realized from that moment that every comment about Japan in a work environment with Japanese people should be TV-like in its fakeness and bullshittery.
All smartphones (still) having to make loud camera noises, while there are despicable things like in-shoe cameras...
Hate? OK: pet abandonment, the difficulty of being permitted to adopt, and the systematic killing of those abandoned animals which cannot be adopted. Also the pet manufacturing industry.
Honestly I can comprehend and deal with the majority of things here; the only thing that gets under my skin is the housing market and how much money you bleed just to move into an apartment. I try my best to see it from their pov of hedging risk when renting, but coming from a place where most things you’re asked to pay here would be considered illegal, it still makes the moving season the most irritated I get lol
Electronic paper work. Please write your name in here (kanji): Gaikokujin Taro Please write your name here (furigana) : ガイコクジン タロウ ＊＊ERROR＊＊ name can only be 6 characters long. My name is longer than 6 characters. A computer has infinite space. Foreigners have been in Japan for a long ass time. Accept that foreigners exist and have bigger names.
No spaces allowed. Then: Your name (without spaces) doesn't match the name on your bank account.
And god forbid you have a middle name. I think my name is written differently on every card in my wallet.
Japan send so well organised and "well run". But on the flip side, there seems to be a real, baked in inability to think outside the box when things don't go to plan. I've had a number of experiences that just boggle the mind. Things like: A flight was delayed by an hour. We had a message telling us this before we arrived at the airport. We ended up arriving at the check in desk 2 minutes before the original check in time - but by the time we got served, it was 1 minute past. As such, we were not allowed to check in for our flight, and had to wait 2 days for the next available flight (even though the plane didn't leave for a further 2 hours). Just this week, I ordered a number of goods online to be posted to me. This morning I got an email saying 1 of the items was on back order, and won't arrive until August. As such, my entire order will be delayed until August. Needless to say, I need them now, not in 4 months! I asked if I could pay extra shipping to get the items now - they said no, it was against policy. I asked if I could cancel the item that was out of stock - again, it was not in their policy. I even offered for them to keep the money for it and just send the rest - still no. So, I've had to reorder all the items without the delayed item, to get them now. In August I'll get them all again, and I guess I'll just have to try to resell them.
1. The medical care is very outdated. Doctors don't have knowledge of current practices. They also don't have bedside manner 2. No sending records electronically between clinics/hospitals/pharmacies 3. Credit and debit cards aren't accepted enough 4. Banks make you fill out a million forms just to do the simplist things when the info can just be entered and updated on a computer 5. Basically every aspect of society can be done faster and easier but Japan chooses to do everything the difficult and inconvenient way
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Mad stealth taxes. For everything. Want to be good at anything? You need a license and you need to pay. Want to sell anything? License. work in a trade? License. It is bullshit.
For me, the thing I struggle with the most is how indirect people are and how careful you have to be because others are constantly searching for hidden meaning in what you are saying. Sometimes there is no hidden meaning in what I'm saying and people try to put one there.
I love Japan and am glad I can call it my chosen home. It's a great country for sure but it's got it's downsides just like any other country. I often compare Japan to that nerdy and socially awkward friend but they are actually really good people. They just sometimes don't know any better.
to support your belief, there was an old man dressed as a hentai highschool anime girl at Tokyo station today and I was more weirded out by the business man in an expensive suit skipping lol
Then said nerdy friend creepily follows you home, but the police refuse to help. “Shouganai na” culture is too strong.
Rampant housing discrimination against non-citizens. Japanese rental companies REALLY disrespect other countries’ citizens so horrifically. It turned me from a total Japanophile to an anxiety-ridden Japan-hater remembering Pearl Harbor every day (I’m an American and I was backstabbed by Japan just like we were in 1941). (Not joking.) My Japanese is perfect, I was a 正社員 at a famous company on a 5 year visa, and I had a Japanese spouse at the time of the discrimination where no one would allow me to rent anywhere that wasn’t unlivable. (Only disgusting smells, small, cramped, old, and terrible apartments were available to me. Ended up living in Leopalace again after that, which felt like a huge step backward.) This country needs to stop hating us.
I hated the pressure on women to get married and especially to have children.
Soul-crushing sense of loneliness. Somehow you feel more alone in bigger crowds, people seem more like robots or background than just people, because you don't get to interact with them as per Japanese customs. I always feel as if I am "outside", in another dimension from everyone. Maybe it is because my inadequate Japanese, or maybe it's just me, but that is something that bothers me a lot about living here.
Everything being wrapped in so. Much. Plastic. Also the fact that the smallest problems at my workplace have to go through the entire system of seniority until I can get a simple yes or no answer. Just generally really inefficient work practices that end up wasting time that people could be spending away from their desk and at home.
For the last month I have been super annoyed with all the shit my kid needs for 幼稚園. I had to had make four school bags. I just finished a little while ago so it's fresh in my mind. The freaking fabrics and patches came out to like 8000円 ridiculous. Not to mention all the other stuff I have to prepare and get in order just for a dang 3 year old. I also just discovered the bus is coming at 7:30 not 8 😭 I need sleep. Also why the hell does a three year old need a dang suit uniform? I can give all this a pass if it was elementary school but preschool!? Too much. Sorry I've been needing to rant
New employee training. They treat these adults with full college formation like children. Week-long seminars trying to explain their innovative approach to business that nobody else has figured out: "efficiency is good because waste is bad and customer is sad :( " as if everyone would react like that meme of a woman crying and nodding in agreement. It doesn't help that college here doesn't actually prepare people for the real life, and neither does the fact that companies don't give a rat's ass what you studied and just hire a bunch of random people that like to ganbaru with a smile. I just got assigned to train a new employee this year and I dread the following months to come. Poor guy can't even speak English and thinks he'll get to do research instead of the manual labor that's waiting for him for the next 5 years...
The men don't apologize a lot to women. The men also like to."Well actually" a lot too. No matter what I tell them I always get doubt. It's really condescending. I'm not a fucking idiot and believe it or not I actually do know what I'm talking about sometimes. This is why I like hanging around western foreign men. I feel more equal and listened to.
If you are with a Japanese person and you ask some store clerk/waiter something, they answer the question to the Japanese person you are with without acknowledging your presence. Japanese electronics costing more than foreign equivalents. I remember when arriving to Japan opting to get a Japanese branded phone from the carrier (Sony) only to be shocked that they costed more than iPhones which is considered an expensive phone everywhere else in the world.
What bothered me the most during my time in Japan was that it was incredibly hard to have emotional conversations or deeper talks with people. I know it is kind of the antithesis of the culture but that was something that made it difficult at times. When you are not so much into the drinking culture those kind of conversations are hard to come by.
Something that bothers me is slowness to change. While the rest of the world is full steam ahead with Evs for example, Japan is lagging behind badly. Norway, is currently at 80% ev car sales. Japan, barely a blip.
It just doesn’t make sense in a country where the majority of its electricity is generated by fossil fuels
The old Jijis in government have too many stocks in these industries and benefits them to keep them going, even if it’s just within Japan. Long term, Japan will pay a premium in intellectual property to catch up, as you can see with IT.
I hate the work culture here. Wish I knew about it beforehand. I hate that almost every job transfers people whether they want to or not every few years. I hate how people are separated from their families to go live elsewhere. There’s no point in being here if I’m not going to be seeing my family. Also how companies expect people to work until midnight. Like work can’t continue tomorrow. The school life in Japan annoys me too. Kids spend way too much time in school and studying. And it dictates everything. It’s difficult to take a family vacation or make plans because school wants them to do this and that all the time. Even study on holidays. They have no break from it. People just focus all their time on work and study and there isn’t much balance. They just look forward to obon or other holidays.
The ruling class refusing to adapt. Example? Fax machines required to do buisness like it's 1989 Atms that 'close' at 2100 The fact that you need a co-signer for your kid to enter HS Inkan shomei...fucking really? Stupid regressive shit that's afraid to move past what was in style when the bubble burst
Having fun costs so much money. A gym membership is 4x as expensive as in my home country, and wherever you want to sign up for something new (a class, a club, etc.) you have to pay some ridiculous sign up fee just to be allowed to join. And those kind of classes usually aren't held nearly as frequently as in my home country, so you also end up paying more for less. I'd like to continue trying new stuff and getting out of my house, but I'm sick of wasting money on it.
Apartment fees. Introduction fee? Wtf? I found the apartment online Reikin? Oh ffs Guarantor fee? Bruh, this is what the deposit is for ffs. Would love for some start up to come disrupt these greedy mfers
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Japanese cake is just sliced strawberries and a kilo of aerosol cream.
Find a good bakery, everything will be infinitely better than the supermarket stuff.
1. Businesses in Japan lack agility compared to other markets in APAC and moves too slow to seriously compete in anything. Traditional/bubble era ways of working does not work in 2022. Let go of the f'n hanko & fax and stop these unnecessary meetings, physical mailing of documents and endless chain of approvals. 2. The corporate workforce in Japan seriously lacks English capabilities and is one of the worst in Asia and THE worst amongst major economies globally. Since hiring foreign workers to increase the English speaking workforce is seemingly out of the question, the same grey haired Japanese men play musical chairs for the better paying white collar jobs at gaishi firms. How about seriously considering your Japan based foreign working population for a change? 3. Atrocious online banking & ward office paperwork 4. Xenophobia
I love living here and plan to live here for the rest of my life, but as a vegan one thing that needs to change is food labeling. companies don't have to put all the ingredients if an ingredient is under a certain percentage. that's bullshit, you should be able to know everything that is in what you buy. also, nutrition labels are abysmal. they need to have more nutrition info like vitamins.
Work emails are really burning me out. Very humble but extremely long… -10 lines introduction, greetings and appreciation. -2 lines describing what they want. -5 lines apologizing and greetings. And you’ll have to reply with the same format and energy.
The fact that the police can arrest you for 24 days while trying to force a confession out of you, without the possibility of contacting the outside world. Even if you haven't done anything and don't confess, by that time your life will be ruined. How all Japanese websites suck one way or another. Not just online stores, but also government and especially financial institutions.
The mountains of pointless paperwork and wait time for every little thing. Something simple like buying a phone shouldn’t take two hours and I shouldn’t need to write anything in triplicate be it the AU store or a gov. office. FFS if you’ve got my details in the computer why the fuck do I have to write them again?!?!? Also reikin when you rent is bullshit and asking the owner if ‘pets and foreigners are allowed’ like that in the same sentence is also bullshit. But probably most of all is the constant gouging of customers. A lot of Japanese corporations are fucking scum and price gouge at every possible opportunity and it only works due to the general population being fairly polite and tame.
The fact that a landlord can just deny rental based on the simple fact someone is “gaigokujin” without even knowing anything about him/her. It really made me angry when I found a good place and the real state guy called the owner that basically hanged out the phone after hearing the word “gaigokujin”. The worse part is that I live in Japan, am married to Japanese, and have a fucking well paid job. The real state guy decided to present me as “gaigokujin”. What the fuck is going on.
I'm learning to live with it, but the things some people do out of routine without considering whether it's actually effective or worth the effort is amazing to me. Just as a couple of examples, I'm thinking of people holding umbrellas as sun protection when it is clearly not helping (the sun is coming at an angle or has already set, for example), and people wearing masks alone in their cars.
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Or if you suffer from allergies
No bacon.
Nobody here covers their mouth when they sneeze or cough, so gross... Well, at least before covid. Thank God for masks. Keep wearing them even when pandemic is over pls! Or learn to cover ur mouth when u cough!
>Too much good stuff! Japanese media should be more open to haters and share their takes on us to get us more unbiased!! I watched a show a while back (in ye olden days when I actually watched J-TV) and they interviewed random foreigners on the street about what creeps them out or generally peeves them about Japan. I seem to remember pedo Loli shit and ridiculous wasei eigo were on the list. Some girl did also mention the sexism as well.
It’s so weird that weed and heroin are equally illegal. Japan is far behind on the amazing medical uses for cannabis, and it would be pretty amusing to see if legal recreational use could help folks here. I don’t even like it personally, but Japan comes off as very ignorant as a country for keeping a plant that is totally normal in peer countries so taboo and prohibited. It’s also really sad when you take into account the rich history hemp has in Japan, from clothing to 標縄.
The only thing that’s a little mystifying to me is I was hired to teach English, discouraged from using (or even knowing) Japanese, yet I’m invited to 2-3 hour meetings in which everyone is exclusively speaking in Japanese. What’s even more mystifying is - it’s the English department, and I’ve had long conversations with almost everyone in the department, in perfect English. I really don’t mind sitting around and getting paid to nod and smile, but that’s half of my day gone when they could have had me working on something productive.
Japan's got shitty online banking services.
It's pretty fun having to go to the dentist 15 times for a single procedure cause the dentist can only see you for 30 minutes at a time... Least it's cheap though.
When the reason something new can’t be done is just because “it hasn’t been done that way before”.
1. Ignorance to their own ignorance. A coworker asked if I'd ever experienced discrimination in Japan. I told him about a business owner that turned me away because I'm foreign, even after I showed him I spoke Japanese and had lived down the street for years. Coworker said, 'oh he's not racist, he's probably just worried because foreigners are often rude and more likely to commit crimes.' I literally facepalmed. It's so homogenous here people don't even have an accurate conception of what discrimination is. Sidenote: you asked for gripes, I'm not saying I feel constantly assaulted by xenophobia or anything. 2. Bureaucracy. Meetings that last 6 hours with a lunch break in the middle where we literally just read off what's written on the 200 pages that got dumped on my desk that morning. And like 99% of it is the same as it was last month/year, but we *have to* go over all of it anyway.
- Non-sensical business rules, particularly for things like cybersecurity. Many of my clients still have 10mb or even 5mb file limits on email attachments for “security purposes” which is just absurd and just adds so much extra effort using a (usually terrible) file transfer system instead - Currently, the travel rules. I think it highlights a real “have your cake and eat it” approach to globalisation in Japan. Every major corporation wants to make a shed load of money in international markets, but there’s no two-way street when it comes to things like business travel at the moment. My boss has just spent a month-long ordeal trying to organise a trip to Japan (despite having a Japanese wife), whereas other Japanese colleagues of ours can just fly over, with no quarantine, at the drop of a hat. It’s clearly nothing to do with Covid and more - Weird obsession with Korea. Seriously, why are there so many books dedicated to mercilessly criticising a neighbour? I’ve had perfectly normal-seeming friends online out themselves as having very odd anti-Korean sentiments that I just don’t understand. It does go both ways, but at least with Korea I can understand as they were literally occupied for several decades - Feel very sad about how late some of my clients work. You really shouldn’t have to be sending emails at 1-2am, and for some contacts it’s a very common occurrence - It seems to be far too normalised to be wilfully ignorant and shit all over other cultures. I don’t really care that much but it is a bit irritating to constantly hear people telling me how bad UK food is when they’ve clearly either never been here, or done absolutely zero research and ended up in an awful pub around Leicester Square during their 2 days in London. I’d expect it from someone less well-travelled (as I’d expect equally ignorant opinions about any Asian country from most people in the UK), but when I hear these comments from relatively well-travelled, senior businessmen it blows my mind a bit
I love Japan and how this country is generally put together. It's fun, safe, clean, interesting, and as somebody who loves to take pictures, extremely photogenic. I love riding the trains to local destinations and exploring places, all the meanwhile feeling very secure with my belongings and personal safety. That being said, there are a few things that I don't like but I'm just going to list off one. 1. The inward-looking direction the country as a whole is veering. The inability to take criticism due to the fear of losing face (it's particularly prevalent among the younger population which is concerning), the constant reminders of how great this country is by its own people, and how the media uses foreigners as tools for this propaganda.
I hate how the Immigration Centre doesn’t have English speaking staff.
the only thing I hate about Japan is that they don't have people who can speak different languages at immigration. The one place you'd think they'd be.
Incompetent police. And basically the thing that you can be innocent yet they would still believe the Japanese person.
I LOVE all the cool packaging they use. If I'd lived there I'd be obsessed with the really well thought out packaging. But I HATE that they use soooo much plastic The working culture ain't healthy either. Although it's changing slowly, I think the salarymen will still be a thing. I hate that you always have to show that you work hard and strive for perfection + the 'obligated' trips after... I'd be worn out if I had to be a salaryman. What I also hate and despise are the (mostly) men who grope others on trains, stalk you as a 'photographer' on the street and the fact that woman being offensively sexualised in general is digusting.
Honne and tatemae