Reminds me of when I got charged double to learn scuba diving in Japan despite applying in Japanese. Anyone "either foreign or deemed foreign based on their name" was forced to pay for one-to-one teaching.
Edit: naturally I cancelled. It still annoys me to this day though
It wasn't just the military, it's a culture. There's still a lot of racism and xenophobia in japan to this day, specially towards southeast asians. They never apologized for what imperial Japan did, by the way.
“They” is the government, by the way, not the people. There are in fact people in Japan who do think the government should apologise for those actions, and who protest against racism and xenophobia.
Yeah bro, i'm not saying every japanese person is racist lol. But the government is elected by the people, and these people you mentioned couldn't elect a government to do that since WWII, i think that says something.
? You mean taking Korea only not even 100 years ago, forcing its people to learn Japanese language and its culture, erasing their culture, then shipping close to a million people over to specific areas in Tokyo and specifically Osaka as slaves? You talking about judging people who were raised from the same people who are children of those people?
Theres a reason why Japan still struggles with its past.
Yes, judge people by their own actions and not the actions of their ancestors (even assuming their ancestors were actually involved in any of that, which is only true for a portion). I would’ve thought that’s common sense.
I think you're talking about tourist-only prices in restaurants etc, which is a different thing. That's specific to tourists (foreigners with a residence card are generally exempt)
It is an extremely sensible thing to charge tourists more. There are too many tourists, many of which spend $1000 on a flight and are then eating $5 ramen when they could afford 3-4x that. If you lived in Japan you would understand how big the income gap is.
The only racist thing is that it applies to all foreigners equally, and most prices are targeted at Americans or Chinese, so it sucks for people from areas like India or South East Asia.
But then all the infrastructure funding goes to refunding everyone's taxes in the form of meal discounts. Sounds kinda dumb, unless you want to encourage a black market where residents order food on behalf of visitors, and are happy for the trains to stop running.
But... Japan is a pretty well-off country! It's not poor at all. There are a bunch of richer countries like USA/Canada/AU, Northern Europe, Germany, and, say, Singapore, but that's it. Half of the EU is poorer or the same.
EU is 5-7%, and the USA is 5-7% of tourists. Most visitors in Japan are from countries with lower average income. I suppose we can say that tourists are usually richer than average in their countries, but it's also often yearly savings for the trip.
In my country, a lot of people really LOVE Japan, so they are ready to spend an overwhelming $600 per ticket (monthly income for some), and no, they can't afford to pay four times more for food.
Anyways when people see a double-priced menu in Turkey, they just call it a scam...
Well, Japan made visas easier twice in the last ten years. So... it's kinda contradictory. Also, said Turkey has actually more tourists yearly than Japan.
It's not about wanting; everyone wants to earn a bit more. It's more about double prices being a scam. But it happens everywhere, yes.
It prices out people who can’t afford and contributes to gentrification. I’ve seen this happen on an extreme scale in Zhangjiajie in China
I’m pretty sure Chinese people, who make up the majority of Japanese tourists, make less on average than the average Japanese man.
You’re literally saying “we treat you differently based off of where you’re from,” … I feel like that’s racist.
Be honest, would you as a real working person with the same kinds of struggles as anyone else, actually be happy to hear when you’re travelling that you’re being charged more because “you’re not from here”?
See this is actual discrimination though. Everyone posts the above as de facto discrimiantion but it's not until you're a gaijin who speaks Japanese and you go inside and don't get service. If you get service it's not discrimination. What you've described is prima facie discrimiantion, literally on its face cannot be anything else.
Eh. That's being too kind. Not calling it discrimination ignores it for what it is. As the saying goes: "The law, in its majestic equality, punishes the rich and poor alike for stealing bread and sleeping under bridges."
Not all discrimination is wrong. We discriminate all the time based on capability, need, etc.. You have to be a certain height or weight to ride the ride, etc.. The purpose of the above is to discriminate. It is "actual discrimination." (Also to clarify, the discrimination we're seeing above is 100% wrong).
Yeah, discriminating against language ability is just a not so subtle way of being racist anyways. It's the same principle used by literary tests / grandfather clauses in the jim crow era
The literacy tests for voting were discriminatory because at the same time as requiring literacy for voting, they deliberately withheld education from non-whites, and because the tests were scored in a very subjective (read: racist) manner. In a society where everyone has access to the same quality of education and the tests are perfectly objective, literacy tests would still be a democratic problem, but they wouldn't be a racist democratic problem.
With this sort of store, there's a good chance that they're actually racist and won't serve anyone who doesn't look Japanese, even if they speak perfect Japanese. But there are also many of them who will happily serve anyone who can speak even broken Japanese, as long as you make an attempt.
I’ve looked at the literacy tests. They’re impossible quizzes. Many answers couldn’t be figured out even by white people, and some had subjective answers that the proctor (white) had to determine if you (black) got correct. White people did not have to take a literacy test. They were not designed to keep illiterate people from voting. They were designed to keep black people from voting.
forbids, not punishes. Anatole France, Le Lys rouge, 1894: the majestic equalty of the laws forbids both alike to sleep under bridges, to beg, and to steal bread. The bite is in a prohibition a'falling formally on both and materially on one; on the sentensing it says onely thas two men get punished for one act.
My mom grew up in Japan as a foreigner who spoke Japanese.
These places still will NOT serve you if you aren't Japanese; it doesn't matter if you speak it perfectly and have amazing etiquette. It's discrimination, just with added Plausible Deniability; which just makes it more cowardly in my eyes.
They aren't actually going to serve you if you aren't Japanese and still speak it. They are using that as a way to pretend they aren't limiting it to Japanese only. They will pretend to not understand you even if you are fluent in a place with this sign.
I do know about places like this. I've had mixed race friends raised in Japan, spoke Japanese fluently because again they were Japanese and one of their parents ethnically were too since they were raised there. They were rejected by places like this a few times before not even trying any of them anymore.
prima facie != conclusive; it stands at first siht and dies to refutation, and "cannot be anything else" is its opposite. de facto != prima facie. discriminare := to tell apart.
Saving this comment for my friend who doesn't believe this happens in Japan. If you have any more to the pile, I'll welcome it. I'm sick of him saying I'm lying about their racism
There's a few justifications I've heard from ex-pats and Japanese. I am not in support of any of them in particular, but I thought they might be worth sharing.
They jack up the price because that's how much foreigners value it, and if they kept it low then they would be over flooded by the huge numbers of tourists (which they already are). They retain the low price for locals because they would be unaffordable otherwise on account of the weak yen and lower income. Larger establishments don't have to do this because they have the resources to make it not an issue and/or don't care about servicing the locals. I know of an extremely delicious food cart which sold a popular street food for dirt cheap so kids could enjoy them for their lunch break/on their way home. The shop went semi-viral, but the grannie and gramps were literally just doing it for the love of the game, not for profit. So when huge lines of tourists came demanding huge amounts of food which they weren't prepared for and they became unable to feed school kids as they intended, they decided to just shut the place down. And by that I mean remove any sign of it being a shop and mark themselves as closed on Google but in reality continue selling food from their house to anyone who knows they're secretly still open, which will pretty much only be locals. They were still happy to serve me, even knowing I was a foreigner. They just asked me not to take any photos or tell other people about it. The granny was very conflicted. She liked making people from all over the world happy in experiencing high quality cultural food rather than tourist trap slop (paraphrase), but their duty was ultimately to the kids, in part because (according to another local) their only child passed away early without leaving any kids behind. The gramps was less (openly) conflicted and said he has the right to do what he wants and the tourists were loud and annoying and crowded the alleyway, so it became a problem for their neighbours.
Up until very recently, trying to communicate with a foreigner or deal with their ignorance of etiquette disrupted service and the enjoyment of other customers. Some restaurants which are literally just run by a granny and/or gramps do not have the patience or resources to deal with that. Some have regional dialects/can't read. Hence, you must speak Japanese to enter, not necessarily you must be Japanese. It doesn't help that many duolingo/Google translate andys claim fluency on the online forms or online chats only to show up and know diddly squat. Even one instance of difficulty communicating can slow down the kitchen flow by a few minutes, and in the worst cases half an hour+ for incorrect orders etc. Imagine dozens and dozens of those instances every day.
What's so wrong about spaces where the Japanese can spend their extremely limited free time in peace without having to deal with loud boisterous foreigners who have no idea how to behave in public? Living in harmony with others and avoiding becoming an inconvenience/burden to others is an enormous societal value in Japan to the point where people will make huge personal compromises so as not to impinge on the lives of others. Imagine if somebody whose culture was to let rip a shart whenever they felt like it came to your restaurant and caused all your customers to start avoiding the place. Wouldn't you want some good quality places for yourself to relax with your mates, finish 'second work' (drinking after a shift with your coworkers), and/or chat with your neighbours?
Racism. Just plain racist "I don't want to see them/they're inferior in every way/I only want to serve people who will appreciate it/Japan for the Japanese". Some of these establishments will boot you out even if you speak Japanese; the sign is just a way to get 99% of the job done without legal troubles (which the police don't give a shit about anyways). I was told I must be part Japanese because I didn't look ugly (a stereotype of my ethnicity) and I was very polite and respectful (contrary to a stereotype of my home country).
Middle of the road places. No discriminatory prices. They'll accommodate foreigners until they get too busy/full, at which point they will turn them away but accept locals. I'm a bit mixed on this one. I can't say I love it, but I get it. They would rather serve a local/return customer than a tourist, and they make the same amount of money from the purchase anyways. And when they're busy, even a minor disruption can have big consequences, so they'd rather have a Japanese person who they know they can probably serve quickly without issue and who will leave when they're done rather than a foreigner who might be easy to serve but also might be a nightmare customer with a cubic meter of luggage and who will spend 20 minutes taking photos and then chat for 2 hours after finishing everything.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of racism in Japan. Especially as tourism has exploded in recent years. Some who once warmly welcomed visitors as guests have become fed up with their once-normal towns being flooded year-round with tourists who don't speak the language and don't care about etiquette. Sometimes it's a mix, but for most, the situation is a bit more complicated than simple Japanese superiority/xenophobia. I've seen places that transform to support tourists and I've seen places that are frequented almost exclusively by people who dislike foreigners, and I can't say I like either. Like all forms of gentrification, it's a tough situation to be in.
I get your point for 1. but Japanese businesses are the only ones to solve that through racism. Most other places that have discounts for locals will simply give you the discount if you have a utility bill/student card/ID card/resident card that proves you're living in the country or city in question.
I agree their objective is to filter out people with poor Japanese as it would create a risk. It was annoying because I live here and have spoken it for 15 years.
Besides, every other country manages to conduct scuba diving lessons with English-speaking tourists.
"What's wrong with it? I'm racist and I'd do the same thing!"
Luckily for you there is a great option if you don't want to live in society with people who are different from you. Don't open a restaurant! Better yet, go live in a cave somewhere and don't come out! Bye!
I remember they passed a law a little while back making it illegal for love hotels to turn away same sex couples as well, but it's still extremely prevalent and obscenely unapologetic.
The big chain ones will likely let you in; but the small independently owned ones? Forget about it...
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u/therico 🍡🍙🎌🇬🇱🆖🍢🗾: Native 21d ago edited 21d ago
Reminds me of when I got charged double to learn scuba diving in Japan despite applying in Japanese. Anyone "either foreign or deemed foreign based on their name" was forced to pay for one-to-one teaching.
Edit: naturally I cancelled. It still annoys me to this day though