My dad is japanese and i was born in Osaka but then i moved to the states with my parents, i’ve always visited during the summers to see my family from my dads side, but i don’t know what it’s like to actually live there. please tell me some bad things about japan, as i’ve heard many good things but i haven’t heard many bad things. thanks guys!
10 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
—
**What are some cons about living in japan? what are some bad things?**
My dad is japanese and i was born in Osaka but then i moved to the states with my parents, i’ve always visited during the summers to see my family from my dads side, but i don’t know what it’s like to actually live there. please tell me some bad things about japan, as i’ve heard many good things but i haven’t heard many bad things. thanks guys!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/movingtojapan) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A weak yen that looks like it’s not going up anytime soon which will make global travel more and more out of reach for average salary receivers here. Lower salary than the US. Crappy tiny apartments with no insulation. Police that will kidnap you like North Korea and make you disappear for two weeks or more if they feel like it. Xenophobic landlords that won’t rent to foreigners. Banks that won’t give credit cards to foreigners. Fewer job opportunities of course if you’re not a native speaker. Poor work life balance, general discouragement or guilt tripping for using all your PTO every year. A population decline that will lead to issues getting a decent pension in your old age. I could go on. If you want more just browse through r/japanlife, we have a complaint thread every Thursday.
If you’re a Japanese citizen though I think alot of these won’t apply to you so it may be a good move if you get a decent job. Rent and houses are super cheap compared to most of north America and you can live pretty well for less here.
One thing that really annoys me is how certain design decisions happen which exclude me as a foreign resident.
For example, my credit card does not have my full name on it, because when I applied for it the form had a maximum of 10 spaces for name characters. So my given name is missing a character on it (think Bria instead of Brian or Davi instead of David). But at least I have it and it works.
I have accounts with two banks, my regular bank where I get paid and the bank where I have my mortgage. My regular bank cannot be connected to PayPay because it’s Shinsei Bank. My mortgage bank can’t be connected to PayPay because they only had two fields for names (given name and family name) and so when I opened my account with them they decided to enter my given name as “firstname secondname” (with a space in the middle). I cannot link PayPay to this bank because the app says the space is an invalid character and if I exclude the space my name doesn’t match. So when I want to top up my PayPay balance I need to either beg my wife to send me money or walk to an ATM to withdraw cash and then put it back into the machine.
I volunteered at the Olympics (which was great) and used my drivers license for my ID. Years later when it came time to pick up my gear I was nearly turned away because after I had registered they decided that foreign residents could only use their residence card for ID, and obviously my residence card is not my driver’s license. I had to discuss the matter with a supervisor for a good hour before they agreed to change the registered ID and let me carry on with volunteering.
These are all minor gripes in the grand scheme of things, but it is always annoying when it happens.
-edit-
When I was applying for my mortgage in the first place, after convincing the loan officers to proceed with the application under my name (their whole attitude and demeaner changed once I showed them I had PR already) I was told I needed to come in for an interview with their manager because he wanted to gauge my Japanese language ability. So I come in, give him a quick rundown on my life in Japan, get nihongo jouzu’d and then sent on my way. Mortgage was approved later that day. Somehow I doubt that’s a required step for a local.
-edit 2-
Once I was trying to buy tickets for Tokyo Disneyland. The website was under heavy load because there were probably about a million other people around the world also trying to get tickets. As an international tourist attraction the Tokyo Disneyland website has several language options, one of which is English. Since I’m far more comfortable working in English, I had the site set to use English. I got through the ticket booking system and went to enter my payment details. Nope. No good. Won’t work. I had to run for some family stuff so left my wife to figure it out. She calls the customer service number, who explains the problem. Because my credit card was issued from a Japanese bank, I could only use it to make reservations if I went through the entire booking process with the language set to Japanese.
#1 negative above everything is inflexibility/too many rules. Most systems and processes in Japan are designed to be followed strictly by the book with no flexibility or special treatment whatsoever. Everything is made as complicated as possible for no reason.
As a foreigner this is especially frustrating because the sheer fact that you are a foreigner means that you are always a special case that doesn’t fit neatly in the system because these systems were not designed to accommodate non-Japanese. It’s things as simple as having a middle name, not having a kanji name, your name being too long for the form etc. which can throw the entire process into chaos.
People often say Japan has great customer service. This is true on the surface, default customer service is excellent. But once *actual* customer service has to be provided, i.e. providing an individualized solution to a specific problem, that’s where everything falls apart.
Here’s some I haven’t seen covered extensively by jvloggers and complaint posts:
– There’s hot dogs everywhere and they’re all bad
– Japanese spaghetti is typically ruined with ketchup, lemon, or spicy cod roe
– you are essentially never alone if you live in a city
– endless, useless ¥1 coins
– terrible jazz everywhere
More serious long term resident ones:
– low pay compared to many western countries, longer hours, and promotions may not be based on performance
– tougher to make friends as an adult vs other cultures
– so many unwritten (and written) rules that make navigating any bureaucracy a pain
– it’s really far away from America and Europe if that’s where you grew up, and travel is expensive
Rules, both written and unwritten (and you are expected to know both) lots and lots of forms/paperwork, people ride their bikes straight into you on the sidewalk and you are expected to jump out of the way, you need an appointment for EVERYTHING and you can be rushed out very quickly and it’s very very very hot in the summer.
Bed mattresses.
They are too firm and skinny here. The first few times I used one, I was fine. Then the problems started. Sleeping on a futon on the floor isn’t my favorite either.
I’ve only been here for 7 months, so I can’t speak to any real long-term complaints yet, but I can shed light on the stuff that’s irked me for the short amount of time I’ve been here. Since you are of Japanese descent some of this likely won’t apply to you but here’s my experience so far.
* Credit cards are fucking hard to get. I was told having been here for 6 months is usually good enough to be accepted but I’ve been rejected from every one I’ve applied to, even the ones considered easy. I make above-average salary at a full time job and have good credit back home (not that I think they check my credit score or anything from back in the states).
* A minor inconvenience I’ve come across very recently since I got my own apartment this past month and started shopping for essentials more often – stores that accept point cards seem to ask every Japanese customer if they have one, but don’t ask me if I have one. Only realized this once I was in earshot of the previous person in line, but many times this has happened on my fourth or fifth trip to a store where in the past I’ve spent a lot of cash and never got the points simply because I wasn’t asked about the point card, likely because I don’t look like I live here. But that’s mostly on me – I should do my research
* Generally has been hard to make friends. I have wonderful convos with people I do meet, but it’s usually a one-and-done deal even if we exchange contact info. I finally found a volunteering gig that I might get to join consistently where I’m holding out some hope to make some connections though!
* Name inconveniences as someone else commented. My first and last together are 19 characters total. One specific example that killed me for a while was that when I tried to sign up to pay rent via bank transfer, the online portal to do so would not accept my name even though that is how I spell it in my bank. Furthermore, my katakana name which is also registered with my bank just so happens to have katakana characters that are not allowed on, get this, the portal that is created by my fucking bank. When I went in person to ask about how to fix this I was made to wait 40 minutes even though I was the first one in the bank, and the answer was a quick < 1 min “yeah we can’t help you. You can never do online transfers with this account”. And when I said I’ve done it before, and the online portal that is through the bank’s site is not letting me, they just repeated the same line “sorry, can’t help you, you have to pay another way”. I went back home and spent about 45 minutes playing with different katakana characters while entering my name and got it to go through by doing some crazy acrobatics, but it really pissed me off that the in-person bank reps just straight up said “tough luck” without even trying to help.
* Was not trivial to find an apartment, but luckily that’s out of the way now. Starting costs for signing the contract for a new apartment is mindbogglingly expensive.
* Fruit is so fucking expensive.
* Summer is ridiculously hot and humid. I came from a beach town in southern California so it hit me *hard*
* JPY is hella weak, don’t think I’ll be able to afford visiting my friends and family until I save up, likely middle of next year (hopefully summer because fuck summer here)
* Hanging clothes after laundry. Not used to it but I’ll get there.
* Non-malicious racism? I guess. I’m born and raised American but not white or black, so people hang on my race more than my nationality and it gets a little bit annoying even though I know there’s no ill will…especially when I get introduced to people as “this is X, he’s American but his roots/family/race are Y”. Kinda feels like someone going “he’s American but *he’s not really American*”
* I love not having a car/not having to drive anywhere, but rush hour trains are hell
* Not Japan-specific but I really miss my friends back home
Cons:
1 – Rules. Too many rules, and sometimes, pretty stupid ones, even for the Japanese people. Some rules makes it pretty inflexible here, and being a foreigner won’t help. I know that rules are made to keep the order and avoid caos, but boy, guys knows how to exaggerate.
2 – they’re ultra nationalists lol. You can’t say anything bad about Japan, even if the problem is at their faces, cos you’re a foreigner. And no matter if your parents are Japanese, it won’t matter at all, you’ll keep being a foreigner. You kinda can’t express your feelings. But this happens in America too, so yeah, if you’re an American, you’re prob used to it (even being in the other side lol). And let’s be honest, no one likes to hear bad stuff about their country, and also, why we should be speaking about it?
3 – you NEED to be able to speak, at least, at N3 level to have a real life here. They don’t speak English (obviously) and, although they’ll try a lot, in the end you will NEED to speak in Japanese to be understood.
Pros:
1 – there are MANY pros but I’ll enlist only three, and the first one is: I live in Fukuoka and people here are the most gentle and easygoing people I ever saw after Brazilian people. For real, they’ll, almost always, do their best to help you, no matter your needs. I truly love it here. And they’re also always smiling. Of course you’ll find some bad people, as everywhere else, but damn, people here are AMAZING. I truly love it here.
2 – it’s mfk damn BEAUTIFUL around here. Everywhere you go, there’s a landscape. If you have a day off, just take a Shinkansen and go to enjoy some beautiful landscapes whenever you want. And the varieties of stuff to do here is truly amazing too. You can spend a relaxing day at an onsen, or just a night at a club. It’s really good around here.
3 – the food. Although I think that, sometimes, people use a lot of sugar on their food here, in general everything is DELICIOUS. I forgot how many different curry I ate around here already lol, also, they have the biggest variety of potato chips and ice cream around the world lol, for real, the potato chips game here is insane lmao, even I, that I’m always on a diet, here and there I need to break it for some delicious Yakiniku. They know how to do their food. And the meronpan… boy… lol
As always, many pros, but imo, the cons are really only those. Right now I don’t remember many others, for real, but I could spend a whole day talking about the cons.
As someone who is Bi-Racial, half Japanese and half American, you will always be a “gaijin” and will be treated differently.