jawa asks...Is Japan living and culture as good as it appears to be?

Is Japan living and culture as good as it appears to be?

I have never been to Japan and I don't know too much about the country. However, I've found myself watching a few vids about the place and I've started to feel that I am forming a few thoughts about it.

I invite you to please take a look over my perceptions and comment in this thread if you feel that any of them are right or wrong!

+ Japanese people are generally very polite.
+ There is a common culture of respecting others and putting their wishes on a par with your own. We, not Me!
+ People hold themselves to high standards and are eager to comply with social norms.
+ People generally dress as well as they are able to; they wish to look smart.
+ The streets are clean; people are careful in disposing of their rubbish and they often clean the area outside of their homes.
- Work is often very demanding with long hours and short holidays; it can be the focus for life.

If there are other aspects - good or bad! - that you have experienced or are aware of, please do share them, too.

I don't think very many of us on here are well qualified to tell you, but maybe Aaron and Qikz will weigh in. I'd try not to judge Japan based on its prevailing stereotypes and pop culture. Every country has its own nuanced positives and negatives -- and within Japan, the local culture and socioeconomic factors in (say) Okinawa or Hokkaido will be quite different to Tokyo.

Paging Parksey to the thread

well the british are supposed to be very polite and we all know that's not true

Currently reading Abroad In Japan at the moment and that’s the gist of what I have got from the book. I’m saving up for my first ever trip to Japan which I hope to do in the next couple of years.

I've never been there and so have no idea.

But I'd imagine the stereotypical image of Japan is as accurate as the stereotypical image of any other country.

lol no

Me and the wife were in Japan for 3 weeks just in March.

On the whole we did find people to be very polite, even in touristy areas like theme parks we never really noticed any issues with rudeness or anything. Probably the closest we had was with people essentially pushing their way into trains and elevators that are clearly already full, even when there's another train going the same place literally minutes behind, but that seems to be just a cultural thing.

One thing I have read about though is that a lot of the politeness can be quite surface level. Below the surface Japan has a history of being generally Xenophobic, which can still be seen in a lot of the policies surrounding immigration and foreign workers, which are only really starting to relax a little now due to Japan facing imminent labour shortages from declining birth rates and an increasingly aging population.
My understanding is also that people of colour will generally have a worse time in Japan, with some Japanese people treating them as almost a novelty and doing things like staring or even just touching their hair or skin without permission, just totally out of the blue. Part of this is born out of ignorance rather than malice, at least in some cases, which again can be somewhat traced back to the historical xenophobic policies.

In my very limited experience I would say that Japan is an amazing place to visit, but the work culture in itself is enough to make me not want to live there. The long work hours aren't where it stops, for junior employees it will often be expected that they go for after work drinks and essentially there's an expectation of them not leaving until the boss decides it's time for themselves to leave, so that long 10 hour work day can easily have an extra 2-4 hours added ontop of it.

From what I can gather, Japan is just like any other country in that there are good and bad things.

The negative aspects I've heard of:

- Japanese society is still quite misogynistic with women still seen as second class, sexual harassment/assault on public transport is fairly common
- Ageism, younger people can find their opinions get ignored in favour of older people.
- Working in Japan sounds hellish, long hours, people not taking holidays/sick days (even when ill) and burnout.
- School/education in Japan sounds hideous, 6 day weeks, studying till late at night every day, high student suicide rates
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aayl1 wrote:lol no

Aaron lived there so he's probably had more direct experience himself, but I think I can answer better than this

+ Japanese people are generally very polite.
This depends where you are - if you're in the countryside or pretty much any major area outside of maybe Tokyo this is very true. People in Tokyo are pretty much exactly like the people in London. Head down, stay away from others and just get what you need to get done and get out. While this isn't the same for everyone a lot of people from the Kantou area are like this - people are still pretty helpful but even then you have to be careful as a lot of people like in Britain are outwardly polite while hiding how they actually feel. There's terms in Japanese for this called tatemae (how you appear) and honne (what you're actually thinking).

+ There is a common culture of respecting others and putting their wishes on a par with your own. We, not Me!
This again is for the most part true, but it depends on where you are and it's also in some cases a negative. For the most part a lot of this is bred through a feeling of fear of standing out from others or feeling like others will judge you if you are too different. It leads to bullying when it comes to kids in some cases. A lot of people especially in the countryside will go out of their way to help each other, but I'd say that's the same in most places. Cities again it's a lot more insular like you'd expect outside of Osaka where even in Japan they're stereotyped as all being super friendly which for the most part is actually true - this is the same for a lot of people in Kansai in general. Even though there's a lot of big cities and towns people are a lot more relaxed and it even shows in the dialect they speak, it's a hell of a lot less formal than most Japanese.

+ People hold themselves to high standards and are eager to comply with social norms.
This is somewhat true, but a lot of it does come down to fear of standing out. I will say in the end it leads to positives overall since a lot more people are willing to follow rules that have been set up to keep others safe. This is somewhat drilled into Japanese people through the schooling system as well. There are negatives though with a big strive for perfection since it puts a hell of a lot of pressure on people and leads to some of the major problems Japanese people face with stress, depression and ultimately suicide.

+ People generally dress as well as they are able to; they wish to look smart.
This is a stereotype for sure, this depends entirely on the person. Japanese fashion brands even the cheap ones look pretty cool though which hides it for a lot of people I think.

+ The streets are clean; people are careful in disposing of their rubbish and they often clean the area outside of their homes.
This is true in the countryside, but if you're in a big city you'll see rubbish all over the place. The one thing Tokyo does compared to London though is they have a lot of cleaning crews working around the day. If you get to somewhere like Shibuya or Shinjuku in the morning though there's usually mountains of rubbish where cleaners overnight have gathered it all up to throw it into trucks throughout the day.


- Work is often very demanding with long hours and short holidays; it can be the focus for life.
For Japanese people it is life, they don't have a choice. This is absolutely the worst part of Japan and it affects my partner and every single one of my Japanese friends who work. You're expected to work long hours, you don't get paid very much especially after the bubble burst in the 80s and longer holidays are essentially impossible. For shift workers you can go weeks without 2 days off in a row, but that could be the same here I'm not sure. My partner for instance only has one chance a year to take a 7 day holiday and he can barely ever book it.

A lot of Japanese companies give you unlimited paid time off, but then never actually let you take any or pressure you heavily into not taking them as you'll cause problems for the rest of the people there. A lot of Japanese companies are understaffed so if anyones off it puts a lot of pressure on the remaining staff and rather than hire more people a lot of bosses will end up using an example of someone being off to create discontent amongst the other staff meaning people feel guilty taking time off even if it's when they're sick.

It's why so many Japanese people have drinking problems as well. Most people drink to deal with the stress of work.

To add another negative you're always at risks of massive natural disasters - there's common earthquakes all the time, typhoons during typhoon season, active volcanoes and every once in a while a tsunami. Japanese people just kinda deal with it because there's nothing they can do, but as an outsider it's scary as hell to think about living with that.

Japan overall has a lot of positives but at least anecdotally there's a hell of a lot of negatives as well. Most of the stuff I've said here comes from my two relatively short trips to Japan and a hell of a lot of hours conversing with Japanese people be them my partner, friends or randomers I've met over the last few years online.

I absolutely love Japan and my partner wants me to do my best to live there, but getting a work visa is difficult and uh honestly I don't want to work for a Japanese company due to all the horror stories I've heard from pretty much every Japanese person I've ever met. There's so much from Japanese culture that I love and I'm glad learning Japanese introduced me to it all and allowed me to experience it and learn so much. I wouldn't change it for the world.

Hey, folks - thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences! There looks to be some interesting stuff here and I want to take time looking over it before I post responses. Ta v much!

jawa_ wrote:I invite you to please take a look over my perceptions and comment in this thread if you feel that any of them are right or wrong!

I've been several times and my current degree is in East Asian Studies in which I largely (but not exclusively) concentrated on Japan

+ Japanese people are generally very polite.

From personal experience, yes. I don't know how much of that was because I was a tourist. I've had some Japanese people be rude to me. Not loads but a few.

+ People hold themselves to high standards and are eager to comply with social norms.

I guess...I've seen obnoxious behavior from Japanese people so wouldn't say it's a hard and fast rule

+ The streets are clean; people are careful in disposing of their rubbish and they often clean the area outside of their homes.

Kind of. Their are hotspots that end up looking like tips at the end of a day <cough>Ueno park during cherry blossom season</cough>. Fly tipping can and does happen in the Japanese countryside

If there are other aspects - good or bad! - that you have experienced or are aware of, please do share them, too.

Negatives - scams can and do happen in Japan. It's a safe country but you still need to be sensible. A lot of rural areas are dying as people move to major cities. Homelessness is an issue and homeless hotspot were cleared out for the Olympics. LGBT rights could be better (forced sterilisation of transgender people was only found unconstitutional in court in 2023). Issues around race and culture (Ainu, Ryukyu/Okinawans, Zainichi Koreans to name a few)

There's a concept called 'Nihonjinron' which in a nutshell talks about the uniqueness of Japan. Only it's not really any more unique than any other country. Sure there are cultural differences but social and employment precarity, struggles within a neoliberal, capitalist society, environmental issues, lgbt issues, sexism are all things you can find in Japan. I'm saying this as someone who loves the country. I can honestly say I didn't find it any more unique than say, Taiwan, Hong Kong or the UK. Sure there are differences but there's a lot of commonalities too.

I think, especially on the politeness front, it's worth remembering that it's not politeness per se that permeates the whole society; politeness is simply the most palatable aspect of what is actually an incredibly rigid and traditional system of social interaction. Sure, you'll probably notice the politeness most as a tourist or only living there for a short time, but when you get deeper into the unspoken social rules and the rigid expectations in work or gender or whatever you see that politeness is really just a nice sheen on an otherwise deeply unhappy system.

Conbini food is awesome though so there's balance.

On the one hand you have a workaholic culture with strict social interaction that ends up driving a lot of people to suicide.

But on the other hand, you get reliable cars and Nintendo games.

Not sure about the polite stuff, I was called a "strawberry floating monkey" by a passerby when I visited Asakusa. Shat me right up it did.

They also have signs on their public transport network asking men not to take upskirt pictures of women, or did in 2016 anyway. Aaron told me last night you can't turn the photo-click sound off on Japanese phones for this reason, and they have safe, women-only cars on their trains. So attitudes to women seem to be pretty grim.

I've heard from colleagues that the work culture in Japanese universities for staff is untenable, which tracks with what Skarjo and others have said about the stiff, rigid, uncompromising system. The old stereotype of the drunken salaryman kind of tracks with this as well.

Japan also, I believe, has an incredibly low birth rate and has for a while, so they have a very quickly aging society and potentially don't have the infrastructure to adequately deal with this.

This is possibly slightly weirder or more esoteric, but Ironhide mentioned their deference to age and the difficulty younger folks have in making their opinions heard. There are a couple of examples of this in professional sport, the highest profile example possibly being Kazuyoshi Miura who plays as a forward for Yokohama FC. He's 57 years old. He played in Europe, for Genoa, the season Blackburn won the Premier League. He played at the Asian Games...in 1990. He's signed on an indefinite loan spell in Portugal at Oliveirense, who are Japanese-owned. So he's taking a wage and spot in the squad, but has made eight sub appearances, across something like 18 minutes of football, in two seasons. It's emblematic, I think, of the problems that can be caused by having such a rigid structure of deference. Nobody wants him to retire, when he should have retired twenty years ago. He takes the place now that should be occupied by a younger, more competitive footballer.

RetroCora wrote:Not sure about the polite stuff, I was called a "strawberry floating monkey" by a passerby when I visited Asakusa. Shat me right up it did.

They also have signs on their public transport network asking men not to take upskirt pictures of women, or did in 2016 anyway. Aaron told me last night you can't turn the photo-click sound off on Japanese phones for this reason, and they have safe, women-only cars on their trains. So attitudes to women seem to be pretty grim.

I've heard from colleagues that the work culture in Japanese universities for staff is untenable, which tracks with what Skarjo and others have said about the stiff, rigid, uncompromising system. The old stereotype of the drunken salaryman kind of tracks with this as well.

Japan also, I believe, has an incredibly low birth rate and has for a while, so they have a very quickly aging society and potentially don't have the infrastructure to adequately deal with this.

I read on the BBC not to long a go that a nappie manufacturer is switching to making nappies for the elderly rather than baby's because of this!!!

Oh it's decades behind on so many social issues. It is improving but when I was there I was truly gobsmacked by how regressive their views on so many things were, and just how open and confident about it they were. Otherwise really forward thinking and worldly people just casually dropping how they don't have gay people in Japan and that it's a foreign thing. Beating the gooseberry fool out your kids as discipline just being a completely normal thing. A woman not being married by 30 being a complete waste. And Christ the less said about their attitude towards underage sex and child abuse the better.

However, I can't stress this enough, the food is very nice.

I think my post was quite negative, but for what it's worth I absolutely loved my trip to Japan, and I love what Japan has done for me as well.


Daizen/Kyogo/Hatate/Nakamura

poshrule_uk wrote:

RetroCora wrote:Not sure about the polite stuff, I was called a "strawberry floating monkey" by a passerby when I visited Asakusa. Shat me right up it did.

They also have signs on their public transport network asking men not to take upskirt pictures of women, or did in 2016 anyway. Aaron told me last night you can't turn the photo-click sound off on Japanese phones for this reason, and they have safe, women-only cars on their trains. So attitudes to women seem to be pretty grim.

I've heard from colleagues that the work culture in Japanese universities for staff is untenable, which tracks with what Skarjo and others have said about the stiff, rigid, uncompromising system. The old stereotype of the drunken salaryman kind of tracks with this as well.

Japan also, I believe, has an incredibly low birth rate and has for a while, so they have a very quickly aging society and potentially don't have the infrastructure to adequately deal with this.

I read on the BBC not to long a go that a nappie manufacturer is switching to making nappies for the elderly rather than baby's because of this!!!

Great opportunity in America for them right now with the MAGA idiots following Trump's lead.

It's truly a unique country that's for sure. Unique language, culture, sensibilities, history. I guess Japan's rigid culture is both its strength and its weakness.