I keep hearing that people in Tokyo are cold and unfriendly, whereas people in Osaka are warm and welcoming, but I can’t say I have experienced a huge difference. I’m currently living in Tokyo, have been here for about a year total. I have traveled a fair bunch in Japan and have been to Kansai multiple times and I know a fair bunch of people from Kansai. Nothing in my experience would lead me to the conclusion that people from Osaka are super friendly whereas people in Tokyo are cold and closed off. At most, there is a \*slightly\* more relaxed atmosphere in Osaka. But somehow, I seem to regularly see people come out with comments that make Tokyoites sound like cold blooded, heartless working machines who care about nothing else than themselves. (slight exaggeration)
Just yesterday there was a post about people not giving up their seat to pregnant women and someone in the thread basically asked “Is this a Tokyo thing? This almost never happens in Kansai”. (although they did in fact get called out on this.)
What I’m really asking is, as someone who has admittedly never lived in Osaka, is there actually a large difference between how people treat others in Tokyo vs Osaka or is it mostly confirmation bias?
edit: Heading to bed, but it was interesting to hear everyone’s opinions. This post was in no way meant to talk poorly about Osaka or Kansai, in fact I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I just didn’t find the people to be much different from Tokyo. Now, I’m a lot more inclined to believe that there are bigger differences between smaller cities and Tokyo, which some comments have alluded to, but that feels like a classic city vs countryside thing.
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There’s not a material difference between Tokyoites and people elsewhere. It’s just an often repeated myth usually circulated by socially awkward dudes with shit Japanese who’d have trouble fitting in anywhere here.
The vibe gets friendlier the further west/south you go and there sure is a vibe difference.
I lived in Kansai ( Kyoto to be exact) for two years back in my 留学生 days. for me kyoto and Osaka was an awful place. I hated it there, people were cold and unbearable even racist in some cases.moved out from Kansai and vowed never to return there. then I moved to niigata it was okay- ish nothing to complain people were okay but it was boring, now finally I moved to Sapporo and love it here, people are awesome. (I don’t know much about Tokyo because I’ve never lived there.)
I’ve heard the phrase ” 関西の人は冷たいね” so many times from other japanese people.
I guess in the end it’s up to yourself .
The only time I’ve been shoved out of the way when it was my turn after standing in line for a long time to go to the toilet at the train station by a nasty old woman, was in Osaka. Never seen this behavior in Tokyo. Met a lot of kind and helpful people in and around Tokyo, especially in Sanya, which is supposed to be the worst neighborhood, yet nowhere else have people approached me as I was waiting for my friend there to ask if I was lost or have strangers spontaneously bought me and my friend coffee at the convenience store. What I’m saying is that stereotypes aren’t always true and experiences vary person by person.
I think it comes from people who think high of themselves because they made it to one of the world’s biggest metropolises, feeling like they are doing god’s work.
Paying extraorbitant taxes and cost of living gives them privileges over other middle class plebs who don’t live in Tokyo for whatever reason or excuse.
It’s quite common for big cities to be known as the scary unfriendly fast moving city, no exception here. No real difference I personally experienced aside from the less chaotic vibe
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In Tokyo there are so many foreigners that they won’t treat you much differently than they treat other people, you will find kind and warm people close to your living/working/hobbies environment but not from literally strangers.
In other regions of Japan, where the only foreigners they see are either factory workers and English teachers, strangers sometimes are more cordial as a gesture of curiosity of other cultures rather than truly friendship.
As you may already know, this topic is highly anecdotical so you won’t find a correct answer. Rather just try to go to new places without prejudices, and you will enjoy life more. If you take other people testimonials by heart you will end up judging complete regions without giving them a chance.
Ive got the opposite experience. Tokyo people were always polite and friendly to me. The only time I felt people were cold and less polite was in Hokkaido
Get some Zeroes and go to Nishinari. Those people are great. Try that in Minato-ku or Setagaya and they look at you like there is a problem. “Hey, asshole, it’s already 10 AM. What is this work shit you are on about?”
(I live in Setagaya.)
I lived in Yokohama. I love the people there – polite, friendly, warm, helpful, and willing to overlook my less than perfect Japanese without even a single twitch of eye.
Moved to Kansai and so far not thrilled and also not feeling any of the mythical Kansaite warm. I found them to be rude, laugh to your face when you use a wrong word in Japanese (not in a ‘this is our joke’ way, but actually laughing at you), not really as helpful to gaijins as the Kantoites are, and very often you can see fear in their eyes as gaijins approach them, or as gaijins with less-than-perfect Japanese do.
When people say that, aha, kansaites, so warm, unlike those cold, stick-up-their asses tokyoites, huh? I’m really tempted to say that, no, they’re actually unbearably rude and not warm at all. Never in my 5 years living in Kanto had I encountered an asshole of ojisan at 10 AM riding his bicycle like crazy, almost hit me, and swore at me. Twice already during my seven times excursion to Namba.
I saw a sign on the Yamamote line telling people to give up their seat for pregnant people, so it seems to be a known problem. I think many Tokyo people operate in a bubble when commuting and don’t always notice what’s going on around them. Their face is probably looking down into their phone.
However generally speaking I have found Tokyo people to be incredibly friendly and have gone out of their way to help me.
People in Kansai love to think it is soooo different compared with Tokyo. Osaka is filled with as many depato-hotel-offices as Tokyo and kyoto is just a bigger Kamakura but with obnoxious posh inhabitants.
I’ve only ever experienced tokyoites and Fukuokans lol – there all great.
Absolutely true about Tokyo after living there for years. It’s not a vs thing, it’s simply the moment you leave Tokyo even on the train it feels like people are more relaxed and potentially friendly, different. It’s not so bad in Tokyo but it just makes you feel a bit lonely and feels tougher to make friends in the anonymous cold throngs.
Ironically, I feel that most people in Tokyo are from out of town…
My mother is from Kyoto and I have relatives in Kyoto and Osaka. I might be biased. One story I like to tell people. I forgot a kimono hanger (they are very long) on the train in Osaka (near Kyōbashi, forgot the station name). When I went to pick it up, the two guys working at the counter asked me laughingly what that thing is and that they were guessing what it is and thought it’s funny. I never had this kind of encounter in Tokyo.
One thing that Japanese say is, that Tokyo is a huge melting pot of different people within Japan. I only know very few Tokyo born and raised people. Osaka too, yes, but I think in Osaka you meet more Osaka or Kansai people. I personally like Kansai better too.
People are shit everywhere, there are more people in Tokyo so the chances to bump into shit people are greater. In Japan assume nobody will help you, ever and you’ll be ok.
Eh. Potatoes potatoes tomatoes tomatoes..
Osaka people are rude lol. Impolite. Tokyo people are pretty easy to get along with. Polite yet friendly
I’ve lived in both and in my experience there’s really not that big a difference in the two as a whole, just varies from person to person.
Have met very friendly and funny Tokyo people, just like I’ve met kinda cold kansai people. If anything, I think it’s like a rivalry between the two regions. So while kansai people are often thought to be funny and outgoing, some kantou people claim they’re rude and loud. Likewise, you often here kansai people make the claim that Tokyo people are cold
Another thing to keep in mind is that I think half of Tokyo’s population are actually not originally from Tokyo (not sure the exact number), whereas most kansai people were born and raised there
it’s a big cities thing: most people living in Tokyo or Osaka aren’t even from there, acting cold and cautious is just their self-defense reaction towards strangers. They are just lone stranger in a big city.
In Tokyo if you go to more country suburbs like Hachioji, Tama.. or east like Shibamata, Kasai.. there are more actual natives who has been there for generations, so they are more caring and interactive and relaxing. Local community got their back.
Osaka has more of this local people outside of Osaka-shi.
Kyoto people nobility is a different story.
Opening with a caveat that after all we are talking about stereotypes, and whether we perceive (or imagine) a broader pattern, albeit with exceptions. Also there are probably pretty universal patterns of urban vs. inaka that persist worldwide. So with that preface:
I noticed a marked difference with Tokyo (vs. not-Tokyo) people living overseas with families in the US rather than in Japan. It’s hard to pin down but of the Japanese expats (mostly moms married to Americans) who were genuinely open were not from Tokyo. The relatively few and rare negative experiences fell on the side of expats originally from Tokyo. Yes I might have been imagining it, but I don’t think it’s unconscious bias because I generally learned of their Tokyo-or-not origins later.
I’ve actually encountered the obvious, but it’s mostly based on train stations.
Train stations in Tokyo will generally have people moving aside if they see you’re having problems getting through, even in the morning rush.
Train stations in Osaka? My personal hell.
I think people who work in Tokyo generally seem tired. Like… all the time. People in Osaka generally seem loud.
Of course, I have more experience living in Tokyo, so I may have had bad experiences in Osaka that are not the norm.
What a surprise… wild generalizations about large swathes of the public turn out not to be quite as accurate as the laws of physics! Who could have thought this “cold and unfriendly” rule did not apply to every person in Tokyo – or even most of them?
I’m a bit shocked. I might need to rethink my world view and consider that individuals might be different from each other in ways I can’t predict ahead of time based on things like where they live.
I was in Tokyo for the first time about 20 years ago. I remember this day vividly. It was raining, I was with my girlfriend at the time and one of her friends. We went to a popular ramen shop for lunch. There was a line so we had to wait about twenty minutes. We were all starving since we skipped breakfast that morning. After what seemed like eternity we were finally seated. The thick tonkotsu broth was the perfect lunch for a weary traveler in damp clothing. The shop keeper gave us each a complimentary boiled egg for waiting in the rain. I can only assume that all of Tokyo is this kind and generous. Ahhh. You know what? This was in Yokohama. People from Yokohama are nice.
Idk about Osaka vs Tokyo but I do feel in general that people in Kyushu have been a lot warmer and more chill and not as pissy as Tokyo people.
I assume it’s generally a smaller town/city vs larger city thing.
People seem to live life more slowly in smaller towns and aren’t in such a rat race rush all the time and the fact that it’s a smaller town means you’ll see the same people again and again so you can’t be as rude in public as you can in somewhere like Tokyo, where it’s easy to feel anonymous and like it doesn’t really matter if you’re an asshole to somebody because you’ll never see them again anyway. In a smaller town if you’re an asshole to somebody there’s a good chance you’ll see them again at Starbucks, on the train, at the park, etc. or your neighbours will gossip or whatever.
Been in Tokyo for a year and a half (Shibuya), no frame of reference but I will say I actually had an elderly man offer his seat up to me on the train a few days ago just because he saw that my friend was sitting and I was standing in front of them and wanted us to sit together. And I’m a 6 foot tall man with full tattoo sleeves. Never really had a bad experience that wasn’t my fault
TL;DR: this thread is just Kanto people saying Kansai sucks, Kansai people saying Kanto sucks, and people in the North saying both suck. An absolute time wasting mud slinging based off 1 anecdote that 1 time. I just saved ya’ll 5 minutes of your time.
The difference isn’t really with foreigners. It’s between Japanese ppl.
I used to live in Fukuoka before and during the Covid pandemic, and after moving to Tokyo, I genuinely believe that people here are much colder and less friendly. I found it so easy to learn Japanese and make lots of friends in Fukuoka. It feels impossible here in Tokyo. I don’t blame anyone though, because it’s literally the biggest city in the world. Everything is go go go, and there’s people everywhere doing things. People who were born in the greater Tokyo area have already established friend groups and families, so for us who move here, it’s a bit different.
FYI if you can read this level of Japanese, there are stereotypes for 47 prefectures:
[https://president.jp/category/c00348](https://president.jp/category/c00348)
tldr: Kansai native is more conservative, Tokyo native is open for pitching but always in a hurry. Note that around half of people live in Tokyo weren’t Tokyo born, let alone the true Tokyoites who are 3 generations+ are even much less
Osaka people are generally thought of as friendly because many TV shows and comedians are from Osaka.
They speak Osaka dialect, which gives them the image of being funny people.
TV also broadcasts the Osaka vs. Tokyo confrontation in a funny way, so the image is strong.
Well, but many Osaka people see Tokyo as a rival.
I was born in South France and I have the same image about people who were born in the North but more particularly Paris.
I think it comes from the fact that people from the South use much more gesture and often have a thick accent that sounds really lively.
Also I remember having been treated like some countryside bumpkin when I went to Paris just because of my ‘unsophisticated’ accent.
I have the same image about Kanto and Kansai in Japan, and I know that the people from Kanto look down on the people from Kansai for the exact same reason as people in France.
So yeah I don’t have a good image of Kanto but I wouldn’t say that the people are bad. It’s another mentality and probably culture too.
if anyone know about those shoulder check misogynists, in my experience, i’ve only seen them in Tokyo in train stations.
as a part time Adachi resident, i didn’t even know my ward has a reputation for break-ins and high crime rate, until i’ve fully moved into my place about 4-6 months in. and it’s been some years now but other than that there are a few more umm… challenged people around whose actions may sometimes be surprising, i found it’s in general a good family-oriented area, and there’s tons of filled mamacharis about, enough to make one question if Japan really has a population issue(it does, just Adachi is a statistical anomaly compared to many other parts of Japan. there’s also a lot more other Asian immigrants about, which can feel more homey for me to hear the many languages about(Tagalog, Hindi, Hokkien, …) just walking around the neighborhood.
as for trains, for my line(Nippori Toneri Liner) yeah, the men are generally not ones to give way, but also generally not ones to occupy seats in the first place, although the school-aged boys and elderly men tend to be a bit more crass and lack manners. just my experience, it might not be the norm. i’ve also felt that people haven’t gotten used to not wearing a mask and have been sneezed on as people forgot to cover their face, normally hidden behind a mask. i’ve seen a general lack of basic manners on trains and in train stations, but also on weekends people will actively say ohayo to me around my block and are generally quite friendly so maybe it’s just overwork malaise? does Osaka not have that? hating mondays?
haven’t lived extensively in Osaka, can’t compare as a tourist and haven’t been to many suburb areas there.
I feel that Kyotoites are more unfriendly and indirect. This is after speaking to thousands of people.
Today was my first day in Tokyo. I was in Shinjuku Gyoen. While the rest of my group were in the public toilet, I was waiting outside and saw a really big wasp.
I said “ damn that’s a really big wasp!”
And this kid/teen that was standing close said “omg yes!”
And then he asked me where I’m from and we chatted for a couple of minutes (he had good English), until his girlfriend came back from the toilet. He declared proudly “this is my girlfriend!” and they proceeded to giggle for a bit, then my group came back and we parted with best wishes.
It was the sweeetest little interaction.
Kid, if you’re here, you’ve made my day and gave me an amazing first impression of Tokyo. Thank you so much!
Oh and everyone else was really nice and helpful too
Just how big one feels the difference is will depend on the person, but some people are more sensitive (notice more differences easier) than others so how they express it will differ from those who don’t notice as much or at all. There is definitely a difference though.
As someone who feels differences in people even between areas within Tokyo, and is from a place where everyone is really friendly I feel Tokyo is colder than Osaka. Not necessarily in a malicious way, but people do keep their distance, figuratively speaking.
For me it’s almost always 5x easier to become friends with someone from Osaka then Tokyo.
Watched a skit about tokyo and osaka.
Tokyo will tolerate even if you don’t drink alcohol.
Osaka will try to force you to drink.
In this sense I prefer tokyo, but YMMV
I am biased but no, in general I’d say it’s no different than any other large Japanese city in that there are tons of people who are super nice, and tons of people who are a lot more standoffish. The breakdown, the distribution, isn’t so different that you would notice in your day to day unless you keep to a very small circle.
Just my own anecdote, but people are the same everywhere once you get to know them. Different regions offer different varieties of tatemae.
There’s a saying I’ve heard from both Tokyo and Osaka friends:
>「東京の方は(見た目に)優しいけど親切ではない。
>大阪の方は(見た目に)優しくないけど親切。」
>_”Folks in Tokyo are polite but not friendly.
>Folks in Osaka are friendly but not polite.”_
Anecdotally, I’ve fallen off my bicycle both in Osaka and Tokyo, Tokyo people pretended not to notice while Osaka people did stop and ask if I was alright.
Regardless, Japanese culture still applies and it still takes equal time and effort to get to know both Osaka and Tokyo folks as friends.
It’s the same in every country I’ve lived in. The people from the capitol are ever so slightly more distant. It’s not that the people are different, there’s just a culture of keeping to yourself a little bit more. If you don’t look for it, you probably won’t notice it. When you stop and think about it it is kind of noticable. It’s not inherently bad, just a bit different.
Make your own mind up.