Visible Minorities: Departing Japan at Middle Age – SNA Japan

9 comments

1. This reeks of inadequacy from Debito. Of course, his career and personal failings all down to big bad Japan not “letting him” meet his potential.

2. So from context it looks like this guy was an English teacher but somehow makes all these sweeping generalizations about working in a corporate environment like “foreigners will be the first to laid off” and “people don’t like to have a foreign senpai”?

   If you are gonna write an opinion piece thats fine – and I even agree with some of the stuff that’s said here – but don’t try to portrait your opinions as fact.

3. What a load of pessimistic, self pitying garbage.

4. Its another garbage article from him.

   The facts get in the way of a lot of his complaints. He writes quite a bit in there about Immigration making it harder for people to get visas, while ignoring the fact that the number of working and PR visas that Immigration has been issuing has, with the exception of disruptions due to the pandemic, been consistently going up and up year after year.

   I don’t know who this Michael Penn guy he references in the article is, but I wonder if he appreciates being used as a springboard by some tired hack to regurgitate old grievances against Japan for the 1,000 time.

5. What a miserable, complaining, negative article.

6. So his answer is moving back to America? Japan has its problems, sure, but no one there goes bankrupt because they got sick or injured. No one’s getting shot at schools, shopping malls, concerts, movie theaters, grocery stores, restaurants, dance clubs, bars, the local 7-11… nor do they even have to worry about such a thing. And there are PLENTY of poor seniors in the states, too. Hell, just walk into the local Wallmart… assuming it hasn’t been shot up yet.

7. The more meaningful article would be something along the lines of “departing Japan while you are still young and not coming back if you don’t have to” but that would involve writing about other people for a change.

8. Didn’t he get Japanese citizenship? So didn’t he have to renounce his US citizenship? So how did he move back?

9. > I lived in Japan for 24 years, married and had kids, became tenured faculty at a university, bought land, built a house, and learned the language and culture well enough to write books in Japanese and take out Japanese citizenship. In terms of trying to assimilate into Japan, I don’t think there’s a lot more I could have done. I was an ideal immigrant.

   AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….. oh FFS…