Originally Posted by
evergrn
So then bring in immigrants, right? And the reality is many sectors of Jpn now depend on immigrants, yet Jpn remains xenophobic and will not make their acceptance official. They accept <50 refugees a year.
On the other hand, that policy seems to pay out when it comes to petty crime, public safety, adherence to rules and common courtesy. Very hard to spot a crime-ridden neighbourhood, dirty public/private spaces.
That's a point I like about Japan: There's no disgusting smell covering the streets. Everything's clean. Everyone queues where it is expected. Try that in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami, Los Angeles, London, Paris, etc. . You can obviously hold blind adherence to rules against Japanese as it often proofs to be a barrier to flexible solutions.
Originally Posted by
evergrn
If you participate in Japanese people's forums like I do, the amount of xenophobia expressed is disgusting. The overwhelming sentiment is that foreigners are not welcome no matter what the macroeconomics dictate.
A forum is certainly not the best place to determine the general attitude of an entire population. I'm not claiming that there isn't a good dose of xenophobia in the mix, but there are a lot of Japanese that genuinely welcome foreigners.
In some cases, I have found it difficult to make the difference between xenophobia and the language barrier. To this day, I'm surprised that JAL can't [redacted] release an English version of their app. Don't they have foreign customers? Do all JL passenger navigate the Japanese version of their app?