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Japan’s Plan to Allow More Foreign Workers Meets Protests
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They want low income workers but they won't allow them to bring their families. Just gonna be a lot of single young men probably from south east asia because I can't imagine it being worth it to travel a long distance at high cost to get into Japan for a low income job with little prospect of moving up or having permanent residence. I'm sure some weaboos from the west will jump at the chance though.
It does seem somewhat appealing to high skilled workers but why would they want to work in a country like Japan that overworks everyone when they will probably have much better hours and benefits in many other countries?
It does seem somewhat appealing to high skilled workers but why would they want to work in a country like Japan that overworks everyone when they will probably have much better hours and benefits in many other countries?
In other news, about 40% of the Singapore population are foreigners.
(P.S. Am Singaporean)
Lol yeah if you're even thinking about moving there, you should learn Japanese...
Which there's an OT for!
https://www.resetera.com/threads/learning-japanese-•-日本語の勉強-これはotです-ゆっくりしていいぞ！.551/
Which there's an OT for!
https://www.resetera.com/threads/learning-japanese-•-日本語の勉強-これはotです-ゆっくりしていいぞ！.551/
A lot of south east asian countries are every bit as open to immigration as western countries are.
This. I'd hope people wouldn't abandon ship for other countries with racists and help everyone here(U.S.) combat the shit.
I don't get how its your business if someone wants to go live in other country regardless of the reason?
He can do whatever he/she wants. I don't provide his/her paychecks. I was just assuming they wanted to bail due to racism as though that doesn't exist all around the world.
This always seems to come up, but living in Osaka/Fukuoka for 12 years now I have never been denied service anywhere.
The real issue is housing as a lot of renters will discriminate against foreigners who don't have permanent residency.
It's still pretty easy to find a place to live as a foreigner, but I know people who have been denied housing for that reason.
Haha, I've been yelled at by guys on those float-trucks outside Shinjuku station. At first I thought it was funny because it looked like the dude with the megaphone was talking about me. And then I realized he was. And once a Salaryman tried to pee on my at Tokyo station. Anyway, it's good to remember that there are people so racist and nationalistic, that they would rather let their country divebomb into a population-based decline that it may never recover from if change doesn't occur. We've got different population and employment issues - but our agriculture collapses overnight without immigrant (legal and illegal) labor.
Based on the retail sticker shock of Japanese Blu-ray pricing, they probably can't afford to lose a couple of Weeaboos visiting Akihabara.
I live in TN and know minorities and people in the LGBTQ+ community that have not been denied service(includes wedding cakes). It's anecdotal.
Yes - some of it is harmless - the business is crazy complex and they can't efficiently handle tourist business or curiosity - some of it is reactionary defensiveness based on real fears - like the pretty unfortunately frequent rapes, assaults and murders that come with a (any) big military base in Okinawa. Some of it is insulting but structured - Onsen bath/spas being the biggest offender in my experience.
I sometimes think about my indignation, which has happened basically three or four times in 40-plus years of being alive, and think about how that feels, every day, every time you read the news, or get pulled over for minor traffic infractions, or go anywhere near Twitter and I just put it away, because what has happened to me in Japan (and China but less so) is just baby-racism.
And some of it is hypernationalist racism (literally) yelled from vans and trucks.
Yeah the experience of minorities in many Western countries is probably a lot worse on the whole, but the government isn't even trying to crack down on it. And it even affects Japanese citizens. I read of one mixed-race family where one child was allowed in the onsen because they looked Japanese enough while their sibling was denied.
Spot on. Every country that goes through waves of migration has this problem but Japan is particularly ill-equipped for it because they've built a society that, while hospitable to visitors to a fault, is also fairly impenetrable to outsiders who want to belong. There's going to be a need for loosening certain definitions of Japanese-ness that are too petty to matter (small cultural norms that the Japanese yet take umbrage if violated).
I wasn't very well informed I'm going to try and see what comes of it
Yes, it's anecdotal just like your first comment that it happens at a "bunch of businesses" as if it was a widespread problem.
It really isn't and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably being a professional expat drama queen like that one loser whose name I have purged from my memory.
Japan is one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world.
99% of shops/businesses are open to business from foreigners.
Being denied housing is a much more prevalent issue.
As I said in that very post. I could be wrong and wanted someone to show me otherwise if I heard wrong, which a poster has.
The particular type of stuff that's so Japanese (no tattoos at certain places because of their connections with the Yakuza and such as just an example) is going to be hard to break. Being traditional to a fault.
I'm trying to understand the reason why people would bring out Imperial flags in 2018. For whatever reason they make my mouth twist in distaste when I see one.
There have been studies in the last few years, and if I remember right it was something like 0.05% of the surveyed people had ran into a situation
where they were denied service or discriminated against.
So, yeah it exists but it shouldn't really be a worry for someone considering to move here.
Its always interesting reading about Japan's challenges. I hope the Japanese slowly address at least some of the issues.
Yea I thought it was worse than that. Guess I shouldn't believe everything I read. Thanks for the info.
Outside of the hypernationalist bullshit spouted by the racists in the vans, most racism/xenophobia present here is just petty passive aggressive stuff to be honest.
It rarely happens to me, but the most common complaint I hear from other expats is people not sitting next to them on the trains.
I kinda wish that happened to me more often because those seats are already tiny and cramped!
Why are we focusing on the "protest" when that's the least important part of the story? Not even 100 people in a city of 30 million.
The young not being politically active is common to most democracies. In Japan it's even worse because a) way too many old people so politicians only care about them and either b) things aren't dire enough to get involved or c) things are dire but it's a lost cause/political fatalism.
There's a group, but I wouldn't call it large.
I'm sure they exist, but I've yet to see one. I've (very infrequently) had restaurants tell me in broken English that they have no English menu, to which I ask in Japanese if they have a menu in French instead. They let me in after that.
edit: :point-down: ah yes, gotta love the casual racism of the "pets OK! gaijin OK!" listings
The young not being politically active is common to most democracies. In Japan it's even worse because a) way too many old people so politicians only care about them and either b) things aren't dire enough to get involved or c) things are dire but it's a lost cause/political fatalism.
There's a group, but I wouldn't call it large.
I'm sure they exist, but I've yet to see one. I've (very infrequently) had restaurants tell me in broken English that they have no English menu, to which I ask in Japanese if they have a menu in French instead. They let me in after that.
edit: :point-down: ah yes, gotta love the casual racism of the "pets OK! gaijin OK!" listings
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I missed the part about you living there. Thought you were just sharing stories passed on. Sorry.
Have you personally experience anything? I know you haven't been denied service(thought you were a visitor). Anything like someone not letting you sit beside them on the bus etc.? I've never been to Japan, but most of the things I've read paints the place as very racist which is why I'm not so educated I suppose.
Yeah I've found Japan to be largely friendly and accommodating to tourists. Though in my quest to go off the beaten path I've been denied largely due to not speaking Japanese etc.
But This isn't that unusual, last Paris Games Show I was at, called a restaurant that is definitely a local spot but not unknown to tourists and was denied a reservation "we are full, monster." My hotel called in French and secured one easily. The restaurant wasn't full.
I have heard from expats that it's a tough system to navigate if you live there.
I think had I visited When I was younger I would've been all about trying to live there for a few years at least
Not me personally, outside of dealing with the racists shouting BS from their vans on occasion.
The worst treatment I had was actually in Okinawa many years ago. We weren't denied service but were basically shoved in a corner
and given an English menu that had almost as many rules written on it as anything else. Stuff like "Don't be an asshole. Don't shout." etc.
They were definitely giving us the cold shoulder.
Eventually we started talking with the waiter in Japanese, explained we were actually teachers in Osaka, and he warmed up to us immediately.
So, that was just a case of them stereotyping us to be US military, and considering the bullshit our servicemen have pulled over the years it is hard to really blame them in that respect.
I do have mixed-race children now, and my biggest worry is less discrimination and more in regards to fetishization as they get older.
It's already very common to hear comments that border on that and my eldest is only 4.
Yeah, a lot of the barriers that do pop up stem from the language barrier. My first visit here I already had basic conversational Japanese
so I've never really been put in that spot.
You are getting ahead of yourself. No one knows English in Japan.
OH SHIT, I remember that. That was a great night once they realized we weren't military, though.
I imagine that they would if there were better options for having children there. Artificial insemination by strangers is NOT a thing that's encouraged in the slightest and neither is children outside of marriage. The cultural expectation of only children through marriage borders on being more of a demand and orphaned children are basically inherited like property to other family members, with little to no non-familial adoption. So Japanese women have heavy societal pressures put on them for how to achieve motherhood and decided that they'd rather just opt out than take what they consider to be their only other option of marrying someone to have kids, likely a man that they have no genuine affection for. I can't blame them in the slightest for that.
I visited for about a month, had some basic Japanese down and didn't experience any racism or anything i'd consider unusual. Hearing that there may be policy changes coming down the line i'm tentatively interested; I work in cyber security and i'd imagine finding a job wouldn't be too difficult; however the language barrier is a rough patch to work through and finding a place to live sounds challenging. Also not very fond of long shifts. I know both of these things are slowly changing.
Finally my plan to terrorize Japanese with my American hot dog stand is one step closer to being reality.
Men not being paid like their fathers were and not having even close to the same level of job stability over the long run.
Women becoming increasingly expected to work more and contribute to tax revenue, but unable to count on men to step up in the household chores/childrearing department so that they can actually work without burning out.
That tends to discourage people from having babies, let alone getting married.
To be fair, the persistent cultural stigmas that keep men from stepping up in that department also work both ways -- women here by and large expect to be taken care of financially whether they work or not.
Very impressed that the turnout for the counter protest dwarfed what I had assumed would be Abe's natural base.
OP
OP
I wonder if most of them had planned to attend or one guy just told the Chinese tour buses outside Ginza Six that bigots were talking shit and handed a bunch of signs out.
These protests are always embarrassing as hell though. Seeing people march about shit like useless island disputes with Korea is always smh worthy.
And it's always the same group of older, out of work salarymen who dress up like F-list gestapo and pretend to be important. I wanna know who keeps giving them permits to disrupt foot traffic for this crap cause it got on my nerves a few times.
If you're willing to learn Korean past just a basic-conversational level an F-Visa wouldn't be too hard to get.
Finding a place to live isn't that challenging as there really is no shortage of apartments and houses.
It can just be frustrating if you find a good place that seems perfect and get denied because you are a foreigner.
I haven't had that happen to me, but several other people I know have.
And yeah, things are getting better and it really comes down to the specific company's culture.
In my experience, tech and gaming companies tend to be better or at least improving at a brisker pace.
I can't really speak to cyber security industry however.
I feel like most of the worst stories come out of real estate, finance, and advertising industries.
Especially advertising. Fuck Dentsu.
I would say that if you seriously do consider it make sure you don't sell yourself short.
With the amount of companies battling underemployment at this point, wages should be increasing at a quicker pace.
I feel like one reason wages stagnate here so badly even in the face of dire demographic shifts is the fact that so many people are unwilling
to actually demand more from their employers.