AVOID JAPAN

[flowerthief00]

I think whether a person can enjoy living in Japan will, more than anything else, come down to his work situation. The work culture is everyone's #1 complaint about Japan.

I knew a foreigner guy who basically told his company "f**k your long hours. f**k working on weekends. If you want to hire me I'm gonna do my job and go home when it's time to go home." (more nicely than that) They hired him, so I guess his skills (software) were important enough to the company. And he was able to have a good life in Japan.

If you are able to pull that off, great. Most will not be so fortunate, I think. Look around Youtube and blogs and you will hear no end of horror stories about the actual experiences foreigners have had working in Japan. The ones who believed that teaching English in Japan would be fun especially tend to regret it.

[Yohan]

I think whether a person can enjoy living in Japan will, more than anything else, come down to his work situation. The work culture is everyone's #1 complaint about Japan.
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The ones who believed that teaching English in Japan would be fun especially tend to regret it.

In Japan, if you are a foreign man you need a job, otherwise you would totally run out of money within even a few months.
However which job you can do depends on your qualification you can offer to employers.

A good knowledge of the Japanese language in both, spoken and written, is very useful. Japanese people are not known to be good in foreign languages.

In Japan as a foreigner you can surely find employment which is not bad at all. There are plenty of jobs within international hotels, speciality restaurants, import/export companies, shipping/moving companies, fairs and exhibition management, foreign government related offices, international schools and so on.

About 'English teacher' - many of them do not have any knowledge of Japanese and cannot show any experience of being a 'teacher' and in general such jobs are good only for beginning, as such language schools can often offer a proper working visa and a simple accommodation - I would say, you should find a different employment within 1 or 2 years - and if not, better move on - and indeed many are leaving.

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However, the job is not the only important criteria. I can say when looking around the few people from my own native country who are living in Japan since many years, they all have Japanese families. Similar to myself, it's not only about job, there are private reasons why foreign men continue to live in Japan over decades.

I created my own 'escape route', as life in Japan gets a bit boring over the time. I bought a 'second home' in Thailand for vacation and also for retirement. I also have a foster daughter in Philippines I visit sometimes. - Sometimes you really need to get out of Japan for a few weeks to see other countries and different people. Japan is suffering somehow of monotony - everywhere you go it is about the same...

[E Irizarry R&B Singer]

I think whether a person can enjoy living in Japan will, more than anything else, come down to his work situation. The work culture is everyone's #1 complaint about Japan.

I knew a foreigner guy who basically told his company "f**k your long hours. f**k working on weekends. If you want to hire me I'm gonna do my job and go home when it's time to go home." (more nicely than that) They hired him, so I guess his skills (software) were important enough to the company. And he was able to have a good life in Japan.

If you are able to pull that off, great. Most will not be so fortunate, I think. Look around Youtube and blogs and you will hear no end of horror stories about the actual experiences foreigners have had working in Japan. The ones who believed that teaching English in Japan would be fun especially tend to regret it.

Good sh*t! You have to be stern to these software companies....especially if you were to go through East Indian recruiters, they can be a bit stern and adamant on the job description. You just have to be firmer than they; that's all.

[chanta76]

Learning Japanese is hard. I tried it. It's hard. ESL is more or less a dead end job in Asia. Unless if you open your own school or do allot of private tutoring but the reality is that Japan just like any of those 1st world Asian countries the working condition is tough.

[Yohan]

It depends - Japanese is hard to learn compared to which language?

Many Asian languages are rather complicated and often have a different writing system too.

I don't know what is more difficut compared to Japanese, but Burmese spoken in Myanmar is difficult too, and Khmer in Cambodia is known as complicated and it is not even a tonal language. Vietnamese is not easy to study, despite its writing is in Roman letters, Korean is at least equal time consuming to learn as Japanese...Indian languages like Hindi or Tamil are known a headache for any newcomer who never had anything to do with such languages....

The only not really so difficult Asian languages which come to my mind are Indonesian/Malay and also Tagalog...but otherwise?
Chinese is not easy, and to study languages of Asian countries like Pakistan - Urdu/Punjabi etc. - and Iran - Farsi - might also not a simple task.

@chanta76 - I was thinking you can speak/read Chinese and/or Korean and you are Asian-American - or not? I am not sure, maybe I am wrong.
What is your native language?

[josephty2]

First let me start off by saying that the same old tired advice that has been circulating for years like "be white" and "go to Gas Panic" is simply outdated bullshit.

Roppongi is nothing but a bunch of aggressive African street touts now. That place sucks now and everyone who has actually been to Japan recently knows it. Too many people who have never actually been to Japan are passing around bullshit advice.

I went to Japan because it is a safe 1st World Country. The world appears to be more dangerous now so I avoided many places that Winston has traveled to in the past. I wanted to go to these places but I went with Japan instead.

The only thing that is going to save this trip are some easily accessible AND legal P4P options like Tokyo Hentai Club. I have not been there yet but that is the only shot I have left. I don't have the patience to chase after women online here. They have no interest in anything other than their cell phones. They are not loud or fat like American women but their cell phones are almost glued to the front of their faces. It is like a disease.

Japan is racist as well, I tried to go into a girls bar/snack bar and got told "no foreigners" I guess that is nothing new. I thought being a white guy would give me an edge, maybe in the past that was true but now most people could care less. Japanese women barely even care about other Japanese guys from what I hear. The fun is over in this country, I officially declare "GAME OVER" for visiting Japan.

The fun, cute and feminine Japanese Female personalities are gone. Nothing but a bunch of boring robots here. I should have listed to all of the posts I read online about Japan, I didn't want to believe it. I wanted to believe that the Glory Days are still possible in Japan. What a f***ing waste of time and money. Better to have this dream die quickly than to continue to waste my time.

Can you write the exact snack bar? Address not needed, though city and province needed.

[Lucas88]

This is a good old thread that's been revived!

I spent the summer of 2008 in Gifu at a Japanese language school and then lived in Kobe for a year in the very early 2010s.

In hindsight, going to Japan was a mistake and somewhat uncharacteristic of me. My first envisioned HA location was Spain or Latin America but, for some bizarre reason that only the deepest and darkest recess of my soul could ever know, I decided that I wanted to try a more exotic location and ended up going to Japan since I was already getting good at Japanese which was at that time my second foreign language.

Even as a Caucasian foreigner who spoke the language to a high level, I wasn't able to cultivate a lasting love for the country. The first few months in Kobe were fascinating but then the feeling of alienation got to me. I remember that moment of epiphany quite vividly. I was leaving a train station near the city center and was looking around at all of the tall buildings when all of a sudden I was overcome by a deep spiritual pain as though my psyche were about to be torn apart. All of the dense concrete jungles, grey buildings, scenic monotony, loneliness, unnatural roboticism and lack of anything remotely resembling vivaciousness had started to weigh on me. From that moment onwards I would become increasingly depressed.

Japan is a first-world country but I don't think that it's any better than Europe. Japan is expensive and the kind of work that you can realistically do as a foreigner is limited. It's not the kind of country where you can comfortably live off passive income. Like the US, Japan is a country designed for work and consumption and not much else. The grind starts to feel soulless extremely quickly. Expect to spend a lot of time alone in your apartment or exploring the city alone. Your Japanese acquaintances/friends are usually too busy to hang around with you.

Japanese cities, while clean and orderly, are extremely monotonous and have bad energy. I always say that once you've seen about 5 blocks almost everywhere looks the same. The ugly grey buildings everywhere will eventually suck the life out of you and make you feel depressed. Before long I was constantly longing for the truly soulful cities of Southern Europe with their charming and uplifting architecture. In fact, not far from where I was living, there was this one unique apartment block which looked Mediterranean and resembled an attractive apartment block that I'd seen in Spain. I used to take that route as much as possible and sometimes just loiter around near there just to derive pleasure from the aesthetics of that one unique Mediterraneanesque apartment block and thereby keep myself sane.

I didn't reckon much to the women. Most of the girls seemed childlike and robotic, quite boring with no real topics of conversation beyond the most mundane things, and lacked ass. Fortunately, in some cities, you can find foreign women like Chinese, Filipinas and even Brazilians. Such foreign women tend to be much easier to talk to. While many Japanese women do find White Western men attractive, they are often incredibly shy around foreigners and feel that cultural differences would make any kind of relationship difficult. Japanese people generally don't know how to act when they encounter a Westerner (they just become embarrassed and don't know what to say). However, there are some "gaijin hunter" types who fetishize White guys and everything Western. I imagine that it would be relatively easy to slay some of those if you're a reasonably okay-looking Westerner.

Japanese people are very group-oriented. If you want to make friends and hang out with people, you have to become part of an ingroup, whether it be a sports club or a religious cult. Once you are part of such an ingroup, people will start to trust you, invite you to places and activities and introduce you to new people. Then your social life will improve and you'll encounter some degree of social acceptance. Obviously you need a decent level of Japanese for this. I've heard stories about foreigners being denied entry into businesses like clubs and onsen. However, I've never experienced it myself and it doesn't happen when you go with a group of Japanese people and are therefore perceived as an ingroup members. When Japanese people see you integrated into a group of other Japanese people the perception of trustworthiness increases.

While I did have some good experiences in Japan, after a year of living in Kobe I felt that it was time to move on. The monotony and alienation had gotten too much for me and I longed to go back to Spain. Japan and Spain are two worlds apart. Japan is very soulless and monotonous and often lonely for both natives and foreigners while Spain is always bursting with fun and vivaciousness, has superior aesthetics, offers a vibrant social life and is full of hot passionate ladies.

I feel that my stay in Japan was a process of self-discovery - I learned that I'm only compatible with certain cultures, those which are open, vibrant and sociable, countries like Spain and Latin America. I'm simply a Latin soul.

[Lucas88]

I've not been in Japan since the early 2010s so my knowledge of the country might be outdated by about a decade (I don't really follow what's going on there anymore). I wonder what would be the best way for a foreign guy to score with the women nowadays.

My guess would be dating/hookup apps like Tinder, although there are some others native to Japan. If you're a reasonably attractive White guy from the US or Western Europe, you might be able to catch the attention of a Japanese university student, single career woman or bored and sexually frustrated milf who might be curious about Western guys and is looking for a raunchy bonk with such a gaijin on the weekends or whenever. The idea is that you capitalize on your perceived exoticness. This would be a good option is you're in good shape and have a decent tarse.

Here is an article about dating/hookup apps in Japan:

https://fairness-world.com/dating-apps- ... earch%20by.

Again, it's probably best to know at least some Japanese. Most Japanese people either don't know English or don't speak it well and are afraid to interact with foreigners because of it. Knowing the language would greatly increase your options.

[Yohan]

I've not been in Japan since the early 2010s so my knowledge of the country might be outdated by about a decade (I don't really follow what's going on there anymore).

@Lucas88

Thank you for your two comments above - I am living in Japan since more than 40 years I can assure you that your impression about Japan is spot-on and surely not outdated at all. It is still more or less the same situation - I agree with all what you mentioned.

About myself, and some other few countrymen from my native country in Europe, you need for living long-term in Japan a family with you - otherwise like many lonely Japanese (mostly men) you will end up alone in a tiny room doing some occasional jobs and playing with a computer after work with nowhere to go.

Japanese people in general are not very communicative and I also need to get out of Japan about 2 or 3 times a year, away for 2 or 3 months, and I spend some time mostly in Philippines (meeting my Filipina fosterdaughter) and in Thailand (where I have a second home). I never came back to Europe.

Life is now easy for me in Japan as I am fully retired, we also moved away from the big city of Tokyo but there is only a good job possible for a foreigner in the large cities. - We are living now a bit outside of Okayama City, much more space for us, a lot of greenery, river and forests, and not much traffic around - but of course the Japanese people are the same... and true, if you don't have your family around with you as in my case it will become rather boring...

Japanese themselves - and not only foreigners - are complaining about being treated in Japan often as 'invisible' ...

Good in Japan is that it offers a very good health insurance, it is a safe place you can go everywhere day and night, services are functioning, like power and water supply, garbage collection etc. - It has however also rather high taxes, similar to Europe, not so much difference now.

The situation about personal contacts is not getting better but worse in Japan, due to replacing humans with robots, instead meeting people face to face you have to use internet (for example banking) or call centers... Covid-19 made the situation worse, less income, more isolation in their own rooms....

For example the family restaurant I use since many years has almost no service staff anymore, you enter and a robot is asking you how many you are and offers you a number for a table, on the table is a tablet computer with menu, you order by touching the screen and a robot will come and serve you with the ordered food.

I was surprised in another restaurant, still staff welcomes you, but the waiter has no menu, only a plastic card with Wifi and barcode, you have to use your i-Phone to order and also you can pay the bill with it.

Smaller shops where I met the owner personally are often closed now and replaced by convenience shops etc. with part-time staff, who are often not even Japanese, but from Indonesia or Vietnam...

About Japanese women, I often made comments also here in this forum that Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are importers of foreign women for local men - Japanese men married with foreign wives outnumber Japanese women married with foreign men more than 2:1.

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan cannot be compared with Philippines or Thailand. Most Japanese couple still meet each other by introduction - this works fairly nice if you have a lot of relatives... but there are also Japanese men around who don't know anybody and rarely talk to other people.

In the large cities you have still a chance meeting and talking to somebody, but if you drive around in rural areas, it might take you hours to see even a single person - usually you will meet only elderly people - plenty of empty farm houses, closed schools...

About living costs, it is not so expensive anymore in Japan except housing inside the very large cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka...
plenty of empty houses and also some condominium buildings a bit away from the cities which you can rent or buy .... cheaper than in Europe for sure with very honest real estate brokers. Medical care is good and not overpriced like in the States. Nothing to worry about street crime....
Also very expensive is still higher education, but universities etc. in USA are also not cheap at all...

For foreigners like myself, no hassle with visa - permanent resident status is almost the same as citizenship, I report only 7 years 1 time to immigration, also hold a re-entry for automatic gates at the airports, I can leave Japan any time as often as I like but have to re-enter Japan within one year to keep my visa status. I am owner with my name in the landtitle of our condominium unit.

Finally, you mentioned in one comment about 'no foreigners' clubs, restaurants, onsen etc...more than 10 years ago. This situation changed somehow, as owners of such a business try to avoid confrontation regarding discrimination (there are also Asian foreigners in Japan) and changed their policy into membership - often membership linked to introduction etc... being refused because you look foreign or being refused to enter because you are not a member are two totally different legal situations...

And yes, Japanese are not very good in foreign languages and to be able to communicate somehow in Japanese is an advantage (you will find the same situation also in South Korea) - unfortunately Asian languages are not easy for people from Western countries.
Now in Japan you will notice however that much more information in the cities makes it easier for you to find your way - there are a lot of traffic signs, leaflets etc. which are not only in Japanese, but also in English, Chinese and Korean...

Life is not so bad in Japan compared to many other places in Asia... I think, still the best country in Asia - but of course it depends on the individual Western foreigner to live here for long-term or to leave within a few years. - My impression and experience so far, many leave and only a few stay (and these foreigner, mostly men, as far as I know them have all a Japanese family...)

[Lucas88]

I've not been in Japan since the early 2010s so my knowledge of the country might be outdated by about a decade (I don't really follow what's going on there anymore).

@Lucas88

Thank you for your two comments above - I am living in Japan since more than 40 years I can assure you that your impression about Japan is spot-on and surely not outdated at all. It is still more or less the same situation - I agree with all what you mentioned.

About myself, and some other few countrymen from my native country in Europe, you need for living long-term in Japan a family with you - otherwise like many lonely Japanese (mostly men) you will end up alone in a tiny room doing some occasional jobs and playing with a computer after work with nowhere to go.

Thank you for your detailed and insightful response about life in Japan, @Yohan. I myself only got a brief peek into Japanese society in the early 2010s - and also in 2008 when I did a homestay program with a Japanese family in Gifu - but you on the other hand have decades of experience living in the country. Your contribution is much appreciated.

It's true that I didn't ever have a family or even a Japanese girlfriend in Kobe. I dated a Chinese girl for a while but it didn't go anywhere. I was too socially awkward to get girls with any degree of consistency back then.

In Kobe I lived a mostly lonely life. I spent a lot of time alone in my room with my computer, going to onsens and karaoke alone, and hiking up the mountains alone (there were actually some small mountains and woodlands in walking distance from where I was living, which was really cool). Emphasis on the reiterated "alone". However, once in a while I'd go out to a restaurant or some kind of event with somebody from my small circle of friends, either Japanese or an Asian foreigner.

My life in Gifu during my homestay program was completely different. Even though I was living in a small town, I had a much richer social life with my Japanese host family often taking me out to places and introducing me to relatives, neighbors and family friends. Before long I was part of a Japanese dance group (I was the hatamochi, lol!), joined the town's volleyball club, and formed a friendship with a Hispanophile Buddhist lady to whom I gave Spanish lessons at her temple and who took me out to do fun things in return. I enjoyed my time in Gifu more than I did in Kobe. I suppose that, while I didn't have a family in the traditional sense, my homestay experience confirms your point about the importance of having a Japanese family in order to successfully integrate into Japan.

Maybe individual personality could also contribute to whether or not a foreigner is able to adapt to Japanese society. I myself am passionate, expressive and free-spirited and dislike strict rules, inhibition and uptightness. Because of my innate psychological constitution, I don't think that I'm well-suited to Japanese society and indeed always perceived that I just didn't quite fit in with others. Conversely, when I moved to Spain, I immediately felt at home and made a lot of friends (both Spaniards and Latin Americans) really quickly. I even started dating girls and found my first Latina girlfriend within months. I soon realized that Latin cultures are where I belong.

I also theorize that some people could have more psychological compatibility with certain languages rather than others, on an individual basis. I reached a high level of Japanese (JLPT level 1) and was frequently praised by both natives and fellow L2 speakers alike for my language proficiency (sincere praise, not the "nihongo ga jouzu desu ne!" kind of praise, lol!), but I admit that I never felt 100% comfortable with the language, not because my Japanese was deficient, but rather because I always perceived that Japanese as a medium of communication had the effect of constraining my thought and expression in specific ways and making me think and express myself more like a Japanese person. Which is not inherently a bad thing of course, just that I never felt like that was truly me or a reflection of my true personality. In contrast, whenever I speak Spanish, I feel like I can express myself with much more authenticity, from the heart and in ways that really reflect my true nature. Spanish as a medium accentuates expressiveness and emotion while Japanese constrains those things. At least that has been my subjective experience as a L2 speaker of both of these languages.

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

I heard many good things about Japan despite their rather rigid and stifling approach to life.
Many Koreans also prefer Japan than S Korea, because compared to S. Korea, Japan moves slower, Japanese are more polite compared to South Koreans ,Japan retain most of their traditions and there is lot of job opportunities especially in IT in Japan. Japan needs lot of IT people.

South Korea is too brutally competitive, and lacks of good job opportunities. Even the SKY(Seoul, Koryo, Yeunsae) graduates are having a hard time finding decent jobs.