I've been very lucky to have visited Japan. I can say, having visited many other places, there is no such place like it. The social awareness of the Japanese people is on a level never seen elsewhere. One truly great nation, with a truly great population.
I can give you some examples for what can be described as micro-aggression (even if SJWs are totally abusing this term and take away any legitimacy when claiming to be a victim of it) Keep in mind that either of these things happen to me on a daily basis.
1) I speak JLPT ~N2 level with almost no accent, but get handed the English menu in a restaurant in Tokyo.
2) I get complimented for being able to eat various Japanese things (natto, umeboshi) or being able to handle chopsticks.
3) I get compliments for being able to read Kanji after talking to someone for the past few hours. How do they think I learned the language? With romaji?
4) Speaking to staff in Japanese, staff answers to my Japanese friends instead of speaking with me.
The last three ones are almost symptomatic for 日本人論, where it is common to think that certain Japanese cultural habits or attributes cannot be mastered or understood by outsiders, thus it is necessary to point them out or try to compensate for them.
Some of these attributes are reasoned to exist because of biological differences (google Japanese Brain), others because of the 'rich' cultural heritage of Japan that was never tainted by other countries (as if China and Korea are not close to Japan...).
Don't take this as me being unhappy to be in Japan. I just wish that people were a bit more self-aware around here. The problem is just that there is not the necessary vocabulary around to address these problems. It's not as if 人種差別 is a popular subject.
1. I get that a lot too. At least they're trying to be helpful; from their perspective it would be embarrassing if they gave someone obviously foreign the Japanese menu. Most people's exposure to westerners here starts and ends with English teachers, so I would forgive them for this one.
for 2 and 3, I think it is because they are actually surprised; there are a lot of (Japanese) people who don't like natto or umeboshi either, and kanji is something they spend hours per week studying for 10 years to be literate in.
4 is a hard one. They assume that a foreigner obviously can't speak Japanese. It can be super annoying.
I've lived in Japan for 14 years, and I'm doing a startup here.
In my experience, if you stay in Japan for more than a year, you go through several phases.
The first phase is confusion. Why am I being treated differently, even though I'm doing and saying the same things as another Japanese person.
The second phase that quickly follows is anger. This is bullshit! I know my accent and pronunciation is correct! Why are they saying they don't understand me! WTF!
The third is dull acceptance. You're not going to change Japan. They're not like this because they're bad people. They're just inexperienced with foreigners and foreign things, and they're overcompensating and trying to be nice in the way they think is nice.
The final stage is fun. This is the best stage. You understand all the social patterns and why everything is happening, so you just relax and start enjoying it.
When you go into a restaurant and order in Japanese and the waiters response is "I can't speak English! Sorry!" you respond in Japanese "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. Is there anyone here who speaks Japanese?"
This often (not always) has the interesting effect of changing the "foreigners cannot speak or understand Japanese" mindset, if only for a moment.
Sounds like you're in between stages two and three. It gets better.
To quickly respond to your list:
1) It's your face. It's nothing personal. They're just trying to be accommodating.
2) My typical response is "I've been using chopsticks since I've been four, since we used to order Chinese takeout. So complimenting me on my chopstick skills feels the same as me complimenting you on your deft fork techniques." This may result in enlightening your Japanese friends as to why it's challenging to be overly grateful for their well-intended compliment.
3) Kanji is hard. They're just impressed that you can read it, since they spent years as kids studying and repeating kanji over and over again. Having said that, my typical response here is "Actually, I think English is much, much harder than Japanese. Sure Japanese is difficult, but it's logical. English is full of exceptions, weird spellings, inconsistent grammar, because it's a mix of languages. If I wasn't born a native speaker, I can't imagine how I'd learn English from scratch."
4) Yep - you're definitely not alone. It can be hard to avoid feeling a bit slighted here. If you haven't seen this already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLt5qSm9U80 I gently correct people here. "Excuse me - since I'm ordering, could you please look at me?"
By the way, thinking of these things as "micro-aggressions" is a terrible way to think. They're not being aggressive. They're often just not very familiar with foreign people, and they're doing their best to be accommodating. Once you get to stage four, this becomes a lot easier.
Good luck, and don't forget to swing by the Hacker News Tokyo Meetups if you're in Tokyo - https://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/ - we're just about to announce another one.
Thank you a lot for the nice response and the kind explanation. You are definitely right that there are never any bad intentions behind the various experiences that can be had as a foreigner.
Perhaps my problem is not really the experience itself, but that I don't know how to deal with certain situations in a smooth and sociable way. I also have not lived in Japan long enough to really master all social interactions. It's quite easy to forget when you're from another culture how much routine your own culture already has and how different it can be.
The same way as you're abusing it. Maybe they're genuinely happy and proud that you can do it, or are just trying to make you feel better and help you however they can? Normal people call this "being nice" or "compliments".
Hi ido!
Maybe this comment is a little bit out from this topic, but I saw from an earlier topic where u commented about the self-employed thing for a programmer in Vienna. I'm expecting to move soon in Vienna so can you tell me some start tips about self-employed as programmer? I didn't see any e-mail or other contact so this was the only way to contact you. Please forgive me.
Few examples I've observed on my 3 month visit there that I haven't seen anywhere else:
1. You can walk in the crowd at the shibuya crossing with your wallet sticking out of your back pocket filled with cash and not worry about getting pick pocketed.
2. Everyone carries around a portable ash tray with them when they smoke and never throw cigarette butts on the ground.
3. No one throws any trash on the ground. Garbage cans are hard to find too and everyone just carries their trash with them.
You don't need "social awareness" to explain any of your observations:
1) Low income inequality / strong welfare system
2) This is actually a counter example. Nothing more socially offensive than second hand smoke.
3) Trash cans disappeared from the streets of Tokyo shortly after the sarin gas subway attack by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995, and they've never reappeared.
But even without trash cans, Japanese people don't litter, ever. In contrast, Berlin, where I currently live, has lots of trash cans but the streets are full of litter.
Berlin doesn't get cleaned enough by the city. Yesterday it was still covered in fireworks and empty wine bottles from New Year's Eve. The only reason it looks clean today is because it's covered in snow.
If it were cleaned more regularly people wouldn't litter so much. (Not a defence of people who litter, and it's the one thing I hate most about living here.)
One time last year I had to stay overnight in Japan to reach a connecting flight. The airport allowed people to sleep on the benches (very comfortable with no arm rests), and a police man stands there all night and watches over everyone to keep them and their belongings safe.
To top it all off, there is a sign addressed to people sleeping there that at 3 AM the airport personnel need to polish the floors and they apologize for the noise!
Similar experience. I was in a Ryokan in Kyoto where some workers were about to repair some fittings in the street and make some noise. We were given a leaflet in English apologising for the noise made and the next day when we got out the supervisor was ready with a candy and a small toy for our daughter.
The only times you will hear this, is out of the mouths of Chinese/Korean nationalists looking to bash the country (their own bigotry), or Gaijin blogs from young white (usually affluent) kids who are/were upset they weren't treated like kings when the got off the plane. They were upset that the girls didn't throw themselves at them and that people didn't rush to attend their every whim.
If you look at actual scientific studies, you'll find Japan is on-par with the rest of the world when it comes to their racism. Japan is actually less racist than France and equal to places like Finland or Germany.
That's terrible methodology. For example maybe in a country with very few foreigners people aren't as worried about foreign neighbours as other things. It doesn't demonstrate anything.
It's excellent methodology because they asked indirect questions. Coming out and asking someone "Hey, are you a racist?" wouldn't be effective.
Asking someone in an unrelated economic experiment something like "Would you mind if your neighbors were black?" is more accurate because it tricks people into revealing their true biases.
But this didn't ask them would you mind if your neighbours were black. This made them pick what they're most worried about. That question can only be asked in context of my country. If there's almost no change of a foreigner living next to me but there's a high chance of crime in my area even though I'm massively racists and would actually care about more about a foriegner living next to me (all things being equal) because of my circumstances I'm actually more worried about crime atm.
