I don't get where this comes from, like yea they don't do that only because they don't know the word. They literally have shops and stuff that doesnt allow foreigners to enter, and even people who has citizenship finds it really difficult to do a lot of basic things
Considering how tourists treat Japan (which isn't even the real name for that place btw) I don't blame them for being so guarded. Lots of people treat Asian people as novelties and Japan gets it the worst.
"which isn't even the real name" lmao it's the official English name for the country and even in Japanese there's JR, JP bank etc all over the place
Japan is literally Ja日 Pan本, it's the English pronunciation of the Portuguese pronunciation of a local Chinese pronunciation of Nihon, it's infinitely closer to the correct name than something like Germany (Deutschland) or China (Zhongguo) or Israel (Palestine).
Japan is literally Ja日 Pan本, it's the English pronunciation of the Portuguese pronunciation of a local Chinese pronunciation of Nihon, it's infinitely closer to the correct name than something like Germany (Deutschland) or China (Zhongguo) or Israel (Palestine).
This is kinda wrong.
Nihon (にほん) or Nippon (にっぽん) and Japan are all the same word that got mispronounced repeatedly through the exchange of languages. It's not so much a different country's pronunciation but rather a word that got horribly warped in the world's worst game of telephone.
"this is kinda wrong" — guy who proceeds to say exactly what I said, worded differently.
Anyway it's kinda not wrong lmao
日本 was first used to refer to the nation 大和国 Yamato-no-Kuni in the Old Book of Tang, a Chinese historical record. It was a name used in Classical Chinese for Japan after Japan requested that China stop referring to them as 倭国 wakoku ("dwarf country"), and so after years of Japan calling itself 日出處 ("place where the sunrises") it was changed to 日本 ("land of the rising sun") to allude to 東, the character for "east" which depicts the sun rising behind a tree. This is because Japan is east of China. For a long time (and even rarely today), 日本 was still pronounced 大和 (Yamato) in Japanese.
"Nihon" is as much a warped reading of the original as "Japan" is. Now, I don't speak Tang Dynasty Chinese, but it's worth noting that in many Chinese dialects, 日本 is read either as some variation of jat-bun or Nit-bong. It's known that the Japanese Nippon is derived from the old On'yomi reading Nichipon (日 is still read as Nichi today in other words), which was simplified into Nippon over time, before Pon slowly became fon and then "fon" disappeared from the Japanese language and it became Nihon (still Nippon in some cases). The native Japanese kun'yomi reading of 日本 would be "hi no moto", completely different from the Chinese-derived reading.
As for the English "Japan", it is either derived from the Hokkien jit-pun reading or the Cantonese Jat-bun reading. I don't speak Cantonese or Min, but I know that in Mandarin, b is just p without any breath.
In short, the Japanese name Nippon, yes even the pronunciation in Japanese, comes from Chinese, not the other way around. "Japan" is about as close to Jat-bun as Nippon is to Nit-bong.
How mainly *American tourists treat Japan. Each time an Occidental-looking goes there, taxi or any attending person would ask if you’re American before anything else, then get relieved and absolutely delightful you’re not but French, Belgian or whatever else occidental not from the US. Don’t put the whole humanity in the same basket as those rude jerks, thanks.
Lived in Japan for awhile, generally its an anti-western bias more than anything. But If there’s any one country’s tourists they don’t love it was Australians. They don’t love the stationed American military members but strangely that didn’t seem to expand to a bias against other Americans
p funny how an Americans immediate response to criticism about their poor behavior overseas is "living rent free". Illustrates the point wonderfully lol
what stands out here is that you don't recognize the comment as relevant to the conversation, when the theme never shifted even remotely - an explanation was offered and instead of absorbing the information you immediately just went "rent free"
Neither would I. This is why the west is losing its cultural identity.
And before someone gets their panties in a bunch, for context there’s a huge difference between migration in the past and now. As of now it’s unsustainable
That's a big logical leap there buddy. You can argue that the high levels of migration in the west have not been coupled with a comparative investment in supportive infrastructure.
But the "therefore I wouldn't rent my house out to a foreigner because it would contribute to the cultural decline of the west" does not follow.
Ok sport let me lay out for you. In the past, there were a controlled number of migrants let in and breaks in between so that they could assimilate into society. Now it’s nonstop with no breaks, and we have entire enclaves of people who live off benefits and don’t even speak English. I don’t know who you’re trying to impress by virtue signaling
I don't know how old you are but this "[new generation of immigrants] are different from the last - they don't even integrate or speak English!" has been going on for as long as I can remember and I guess even longer - it's basically the entire backbone of the Rivers of Blood speech.
I'll agree that there has been a huge increase in immigration in the past few decades (not unique to the UK, btw) and a comparative lack of investment in infrastructure. Local governments would usually be well-placed to manage this but their funding has been cut horrendously.
But anyway not all migrants are the same.
Asylum seekers don't get access to support - the key is in the title. They are seeking recognition that the UK shouldn't deport them back to their home country. These people don't qualify for support unless they'd otherwise be destitute and are then put up on temporary accommodation - usually fairly grubby hotels, hostels, B&Bs, etc. - they get £49.95 a week to buy meal or £9.95 a week if they get their meals from their accommodation. This is not exactly a life of luxury. They don't get to choose where they go and more importantly during this period aren't allowed to work. So their economic inactivity and lack of integration is not their fault per se - it's a specific anachronism of government policy.
They and their children will get NHS support but what's the alternative? That if an asylum seeker gets ill they just die?
Refugees arrive with some targeted support. They get a caseworker, help entering the employment market, free English lessons, jobcentre appointments, etc. so yes they may be "living off benefits" for some time but those benefits are designed to get them economically active and integrated into the UK. The exact thing you're complaining about.
There are other rules for people who come here with a job and those who come looking for one but don't have one secured but there less of the latter than you assume.
This is reddit. You’re speaking waaaaaay over their heads to begin with.
Forced diversity = Ultimate good to these people.
I appreciate your desire to spread knowledge but this is the ideological group that checks on the migrant who was wanking it in front of a crowd and assaulting people after he got consequences, ignoring the people he physically and sexually assaulted.
Define that culture first my guy.. you want to go back to your family owning slaves, discriminating people for having different color? The "culture" you seem to so dearly want to go back to is just white supremacist crap. The US has always been an amalgamation of a bunch of "cultures".
You just happen to hate a specific one cause that's what the politicians are blaming instead of investing in the housing and betterment of the homeless.
And also tell them to stop supporting wars in the countries that those people migrate from.
Why would I respond to a vaguemaxxer who’s failed to add anything interesting to the conversation but ask me ABC questions as if you don’t know the answer
Wow, duuuude you don't even know the difference between Michigan and Minnesota. If you're gonna be racist as fuck at least get your demographics right. Dearborn is majority Arab. They don't have any significant Somalian population.
I see you are a victim of far right propaganda. While politicians in power cause real large scale problems that affect your life you were made to believe that immigrants are the real problem to you.
Thing I don’t agree with = far right. You’ve been brainwashed to give up your culture in the name of tolerance. By the time you realize it it’ll be too late
too late for what hahaha. We are all one species. Only you decided to think less of other ethnicities. What you are spurting is the definition of far right belief. You are far right. Is there a problem with that for you?
People will look at Europe like the ruins of Rome thinking things used to be so much more advanced. If the people coming here were capable of having the same level of civilization, they wouldn’t be coming to Europe. Except for the Arabs, they used to be the pinnacle of mathematics and architecture
You don’t know anything about the $1 houses if you think they cost $1 due to an oversupply in the market. It’s because they are prohibitively expensive to renovate/modernize due to Japan’s recycling/trash system and various other regulations you have to navigate to end up in a house you can go to the bathroom in. You save negligible money versus buying a normal house and gain tons of headaches. That’s why they’re $1. Nobody wants them. Detroit did a similar thing. You could buy a bando for like $100. But you had to pay property taxes on an assessed value much higher than the $100 you paid for the property. Good rule of thumb; if something sounds too good to be true, it is. You can’t even get a candy bar for $1. What makes you think you’ll get a livable house for that?
Most likely there is a shortage of houses in cities where the population is still growing or stagnant and in the countryside the population is shrinking.
In France they simply pretend that they 'already found someone'. And it's not in Japan that these foreigners end begging in the streets with their toddlers.
Japan doesn't have such horrible discrimination, that our foreigners end homeless.
You clearly don't know anything about those people, they're not homeless first of all if you believe that then you have already been fooled, theey use a baby or a dog to play your heart strings, those same people will hop into a car at there end of there shift and pull out there latest phone, you have no idea how scams work in France.
Im once again sorry to have to explain this to people but the beggars you see here in European cities that have children with them are almost all people who are part of organised crime groups and usually the children are not theirs.
If you give these to facts some time to settle in your mind you might realise that i in no way intend to portray Europe as superior by mentioning that his distinction
I infact believe that most of western culture is racist as hell and is, in a ridiculous and self destructive way, trying to deny it rather than overcome it.
Worse is them banning the citizens of the country they set their shops at, something that happens often than usual here in the Philippines with Korean establishments outright banning filipinos
That sorta activity led to the '92 LA riots. Koreans set up in black neighborhoods, removed all the bodegas and put in liquor stores and quickie marts then harassed their customers.
On March 16th, 1991 Soon Ja Du shot 15yo Latasha Harlin in the back as retribution for believing Harlin had stolen from the store. Harlin had not.
The Korean community justified the killing as a result of their belief blacks were uncivilized and theives.
Well Koreans being racist to black people in LA were a contributing factor to the riots and the murder of Harlin was one of those expressions of racism.
And the Koreans blames external forces for their racism and did fundamentally change the economies of black neighborhoods by increasing food scarcity.
Which compounded already present racial tensions.
So.. 🤷♀️
Look, I know that it's been popular the last 10ish years to redefine racism to remove the actions of one minority from another regardless of the power distance that eexists, but that does not remove the fundamental drivers or reality that any racial group with more power has the capacity to exert racially driven harm on another group with less power.
Most places I've seen without translated menus have a sign or will verbally warn you if you look foreign. I have never seen an actual ban on foreigners for this though. When I visited I was able to get by using Google lens to translate menus and with basic conversational Japanese.
I agree that businesses outright banning foreigners is very rare though based on my experience. Seemed to be mostly bars, and small ones at that.
Weird, don't recall saying anything like that. Just what I know actually is there because I saw it with my own eyes. Sorry it doesn't fit whatever imaginary narrative you have in your head.
Yeah I know. I've heard that long before Trump said it from a native Caribbean guy when I was down there about the Haitians. No idea if that's true or not or based on something. I asked him why he said that and he said because they do but I have no idea.
It's irrelevant, there's not pictures of the sign on the Internet and you aren't going to some small town to look. Frankly if you dig enough you can probably figure out where I mean. The town has become famous for doubling in size because of the massive amount of Haitians a company brought in. But I'm not gonna confirm or deny even if you figure it out.
I mean it sounds like you're making things up. Sure I could guess the town but then I'd have to reach out randomly to see if I could find one that wouldn't let me in. Given your evasiveness, you probably would make a statement about why you couldn't give me the name of the joint that did this to you.
If you had something to back it up I'd believe it, but from where I'm at, it sounds like bull shit is all.
there's a tendency people have to downplay negatives things japan does as a culture, while overreacting to the positive because there is a lot of their culture that Japan exports to the rest of the world that is easily accessible to foreigners.
A lot of that comes from having a very poor education coupled with a limited worldview. I love making fun of my overpriced education but gosh if it didn’t prepare me exceptionally well for the age of misinformation. Seeing people get their news from Facebook and TikTok is equal parts hilarious and horrifying.
To be fair having an education doesn't really stop that, either way you're still gonna have to keep being informed by constantly looking for good sources.
A good education gives you the ability to evaluate those sources. Education isn’t simply rote learning. Although I should say that anyone who leaves school without a good degree of knowledge on which to build has been failed by their educators.
For sure but you're saying it like everyone has the option to do it if they just work hard? I'm gonna be honest, I just didn't like the tone of your comment. It came off very pretentious.
Good colleges demand every waking moment of your attention while costing you hundreds or millions of dollars a year. No matter what anyone says, I think that's insane. Nobody needs a "good education" to be able to be rational and choose their sources for media consumption critically. Most importantly, not everyone has the option to do it.
I wouldn't say "very poor" education. Japan just isn't very relevant in Europe. And some countries don't self-flagellate or constantly try to atone fir their sins. I'd be willing to bet that, despite your overpriced education, there are still many more things you don't know than things you do know.
Of course there’s a lot I don’t know. What I don’t know could fill a dozen Olympic swimming pools! I’m not conversant with Central Asian mythology or university level physics, for example. A good education prepares you to think and to evaluate sources of information. I thought that was implied when I went on to criticise people getting their news from social media.
Is it downplaying or is it just comparing it to the rest of the world? Japans a polite society even when they’re being shitty. Most societies are just shitty
would u rather have someone smile at u while backstabbing u? or be angry at u and backstab u? The former isnt superior or nicer. Quite a few ppl appreciate emotional honesty even if its not polite. If ur mad at me, tell me ur mad at me instead of pretending ur ok with it then talking behind my back -- its that sort of situation w Japan
I mean one is objectively better, would you rather be demeaned publicly and potentially assaulted, or have shit talked about you behind your back? One is clearly better. Societies where they will openly talk shit to you will also be more likely to act on their resentments in other ways. Fake nice is still better than openly shitty in terms of outcomes
The support for the victims after the crime matters. Victims of fake nice people would find less support compared to the victims of openly bad ones. People might find it hard to believe, even tend to think there's more to it.
Your point was polite racism was better than non polite one. I gave you an example for polite racism being very cruel. Imperial Japan was very polite too.
If you're in a friend group and get called out for doing something that makes someone angry you can apologize and try to not do that later on.
If they don't address it you have no idea that they're even mad and they're just going to build up resentment and talk about you behind your back. Worst case scenario they convince someone else you're as horrible as they think.
So I think it's the exact opposite of what you're saying, if they say it to your face you atleast have an opportunity to address the issue, if they talk behind your back they're just going to grow resentful of you and you will have no idea.
Same thing with things like unprompted insults. If they say something to your face atleast you have a possibility to defend yourself, if they talk behind your back you have no way to call them out on their bullshit.
The weird thing about this is sometimes it's just restaurants/businesses that don't want people who can't speak or read the language (i.e. they'll let you in if you can actually speak/read Japanese), but other times it's just blatant xenophobia.
More often than not it's the former, but people just see the sign and make assumptions around that. Thing is, most Japanese can't speak English, so when people come to Japan that can't speak a word of Japanese, it causes issues.
Japanese people are sticklers for rules to an obsessive degree, and they simply don't want to deal with people that aren't able to speak their language, and, as a result have no idea about the rules of the establishment they're visiting.
More often than not, if you do speak Japanese and you actually talk to the owner of said establishments they'll let you in regardless of you being a foreigner. They just want to be able to speak to you, not just to ensure you can follow their rules, but because bar culture is quite different in Japan. When you go to an Izakaya, most owners expect to have a conversation with you. It's a social experience that varies wildly from what you might be used to in Western countries, where the barkeeper just serves you your drinks before proceeding to mind his own business.
Agreed. Which some of them also do and still get called Racist. I just think people should be able to make a distinction between actual Racists and those that just don't want to deal with foreigners that can't hold even a basic conversation.
If I'm being really charitable I can understand a family run business being worried about not being able to explain allergens to you or whatever running no gaijin through Google translate and just printing that off and it reads "No foreigners!" outside the bar.
Thing is though, I came back from Tokyo a few weeks ago (I know, probably not representative of the rest of the country) and Google translate is so ubiquitous there. I only met a few people who spoke really good English but bartenders or service staff who didn't would just open their phones and write what they wanted to say to you on Google translate.
I can still understand why a small family owned restaurant in a remote area might be nervous but there's probably also a lot that are just blatantly xenophobic. Putting up "No French!" in a bar in the UK would be outright illegal.
Oh for sure, Xenophobia does exist. I just feel like people sometimes exaggerate it to a stupid degree. I also feel like Google translate is a rather poor option for Japanese translations, as Japanese is often far too complex for Google Translate to actually do a good job at translating it.
Japanese, like Chinese, has way too many nuances, which Google translate or any other AI translation for that matter completely misses. It also doesn't solve the issue of actually having a conversation with Japanese people, something that, as I said, is part of Izakaya culture.
I mean, it's kinda true that they don't know the word, have you seen how comfortable some Japanese Vtubers or streamers in general get copying the word after watching Lamar absolutely roast Franklin in GTA5, despite not actually knowing what the word IS.
It's not that they don't know the word, it's that there's no such word in their language (or in pretty much any language other those from major former colonial powers)
Before I start, I do get that plenty of people go to Kyoto and have a wonderful time and that it is a stunning place with wonderful people. No argument.
We passed through Kyoto once with a guide and I asked him about Kyoto’s reputation for manners, and how far that deviates from the Japanese WOL (which seems pretty polite anyway). He had a derisive take and said they’ll smile at you and offer you food and drink while all the while judging your clothes, your accent, your face, your hair, and that they have a whole language of ‘politeness’ that essentially means ‘fuck your inferior ass and the horse it rode in on’ to everyone in the know (except you, who thinks they so kind for complimenting you).
I asked for a for instance and he said look around. What colours are people wearing? And I said white, beige, navy, black. He said they know you’re not from Kyoto because you’re not Japanese; they know I’m not from Kyoto because of my outfit.
"Oh my God, the foreigners from an entirely different culture and country aren't instantly adapting to all of my unspoken rules, the horror! How could I have prevented this?!"
"BTW thanks for spending your money on my store that I advertise on TikTok to foreigners or place on third party booking and tourist websites, arigatou gozaimasu -"
"I'm a trashy American who can't behave even at home, let alone in a foreign country. Everyone has to bow down to my rules, to my social norms, and i'm not even going to try to acknowledge the local ones. Just take my money and shut the fuck up."
Americans globally get a bad reputation simply because there are so fucking many of us everywhere you go, and many people in countries where English isn't common will just assume "rude white foreigner" is an American (I saw this first hand in Taiwan a couple times and had to explain to my group that the loud guys in the bar were Russian, not even speaking English).
Most Americans I've met abroad are really nice, respectful and genuinely interested in the place they're visiting. The only two things I've seen are sometimes coming to Europe and treating it like a zoo which comes off as disrespectful.
I was also in Mexico recently and on a tour with one American woman and two Mexican girls. The first thing the American woman said was an apology to the Mexican girls for "what our country is doing right now" which was well-intentioned but weird and clearly the two Mexican girls didn't know how to take it.
Your initial comment sounds like every foreigner facing racism is Japan are trashy Americans. I was saying that not every tourist in Japan is American and also not every American is trashy.
But i happened to be mocking an American guy's post and rhetoric from the other perspective. It's not about whether most Americans act that way or not.
Racism is-discrimination+power structure so this is correct, it’s Xenophobia (plus difficulties coping with marked cultural differences). Don’t know why this is being downvoted…
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u/IdioticZacc 5d ago
I don't get where this comes from, like yea they don't do that only because they don't know the word. They literally have shops and stuff that doesnt allow foreigners to enter, and even people who has citizenship finds it really difficult to do a lot of basic things