I have been thinking a lot about relationships in Japan these days, and was wondering how it is for other foreigners in general.
It seems like there is this thick wall between me and people born and raised in Japan. It’s not like I don’t have Japanese friends; however, I am almost certain that we only became friends because we met in my home country. Otherwise, we might have been very different.
Whenever I thought I was getting close to someone or that we had become friends, something makes me realize they were just being kind and it was tatemae all along. I can’t help but think that it’s an impossible line to cross as a foreigner, because I could never be “one of them”, Japanese myself.
And I also realized that means that the only way to make fulfilling relationships in Japan is to be with other foreigners or people who are outside of the box, like returning interracial families, as the one I met recently. I barely met them but interacting with them felt much more genuine, like they were genuinely open to connect.
Do other foreigners feel the same? Is connecting with other foreigners and the like the only way to have relationships in Japan?
What are your experiences?
EDIT: I speak almost native level Japanese (masters student researching IN JAPANESE), I know a lot about Japanese history and culture, I don’t close myself up to people, I am not creating weird expectations, I already am doing hobbies that involve groups;
so would you people please stop repeating such “opinions” and “solutions”? It’s just a waste of everyone’s time.
After all, I DID NOT ASK FOR SOLUTIONS, I only asked for other people to share their own experiences. Thank you.
34 comments
I am friends with Japanese nationals, who have lived overseas and some who haven’t, and also foreigners from various countries, both English speaking and non-English speaking.
Those people who have lived overseas were actually easier to bond with than the Japanese nationals who had not lived overseas initially. Call it hesitant to open up or more introverted than those who have been overseas.
However, over time, those Japanese nationals who have not lived overseas have become some good dependable friends, it just took time to cultivate the friendships as we had little in common besides the activity that we met at.
I’m Japanese, so I cannot answer this question really, but I want to know what made you think that people were just being nice for the sake of “tatemae”. I have heard of this kind of sentiments before, but I want to know more in detail. To share my perspective, I sometimes feel that foreigners themselves also have their own bias towards Japanese people. Like they just assume that because they are Japanese, they must be like this or whatever. People are people, so find a community where you feel comfortable. If people that you genuinely connect with are foreigners or people who are outside of the box, what is the problem?
I’ve been lucky enough to become close friends with a few Japanese people. I would go so far as to say they are some of my best friends, up there with expats and such. So much of it comes down to being accommodating and easy to understand, especially if your Japanese isn’t amazing yet. Just as we as foreigners can be intimidated when communicating in Japanese, they feel the same way. I would say that almost half of the battle is being slower, using easier words, and making an effort to be understood and to understand especially if you aren’t a native-level speaker (I’m not, I’m intermediate). They like it if you can respectfully predict and finish their thought, or give them time to express their ideas in English if the language barrier is an issue. Besides meeting people through specific hobbies, being open to trying new things with friends and having an overall relaxed, easygoing and non-judgmental attitude goes a long way (I met folks in pottery classes or airsoft events, things that I do not do seriously at all). Japanese people aren’t the best socializers in my experience, and are not used to being extroverted. All of my Japanese friends have “accommodated” me in the sense that most of their closest friends are lifelong ones from school or work. I think this makes it hard for anyone to break the barrier of being a new friend in Japan, especially for foreigners. It’s all about being easy to talk, which might be the other half of the battle. I totally understand your situation though, and I find my deeper friendships are with folks who at least speak some English (above average than most Japanese) and have at least traveled a bit outside the country, if not lived or studied abroad.
People keep bringing up the issue of Japanese friends being hard to connect with but I don’t get it.
Schedule wise, my friends are super open and are always available to hang out even suddenly when I’m free. From casual things to bike rides to drinking all night or events during the day.
Personality wise, the “wall” exists only for strangers and new friendships that haven’t deepened yet. Some of my Japanese friends are way more open than my friends at home in America. Openly discussing their views on politics, health issues, relationship issues.
I don’t know what it is from my case but I get the feeling many people can not speak Japanese to the level of where their friends feel hanging out isn’t somewhat a chore for them. Or they are just a meeting platonic work colleagues outside of work and expect them to be more friendly than they have to.
Youve already created your own reality once you start thinking this way
It’s one thing being friendly to each other, it’s the other when people are willing to invest in you.
In the r/expats subreddit you can see a lot of discussion about this.
Been in Japan for almost 8 years now and I’ve made many many Japanese friends. One of them I met on my first day of uni. He’s 5 years younger than me, but we’ve been friends this whole time through thick and thin, and even if we don’t talk all the time, when we meet, we pick up right where we left.
I also have friends from my second uni. Two of them especially stand out. The first one is a weirdo, so we clicked right away, and even if we don’t talk for months at a time, whenever I need something I know he can help me with, he’s always ready to help me out.
The second one is my kohai, but I think of him as a friend. When I was moving out of the apartment I shared with my abusive ex, he helped me move, and all that. That day was a tough one, and we had lots of problems during the move, so I will forever be grateful for this person’s kindness during one of the hardest moments of my life.
I don’t really have many female Japanese friends, but then again, I don’t have many female friends to begin with. That being said, I am really close with most of the girls from my graduate school, and I know they’ll have my back if need be.
There are also a few older ladies who have been very kind to me, and always check on me even years later.
It’s not as much about nationality, but finding people who share your interests.
I’m a Japanese national, so my perspective may differ from yours. I feel that I don’t treat my friends from abroad in the same way as I treat my Japanese friends. However, this is nothing negative.
For example, I avoid certain topics, like aspects of Japanese school life, that many people from abroad might not have experienced; “A hard memory from the day when I had an entrance exam in winter”.
My friends from abroad also don’t share any memories about the day when they had the A-Level, SAT, or the baccalauréat with me.
I also avoid some memes and references derived from current internet trends when I talk with my friends from abroad.
This is just due to the language and cultural barrier. To be honest, it’s almost impossible to converse with non-Japanese people in the same way I do with my fellow Japanese.
Conversely, I feel that I’m treated really differently by my friends from abroad. I also think I might encounter trouble or confusion when they treat me as they do their local friends.
They take into account my language level (CEFR B2) and tend to speak to me in a much simpler and more direct manner than they do with their local friends.
It’s often considered best and most ideal to integrate into a local community and do everything as the locals do, but I don’t necessarily think it’s that good.
Each country has its own manners, standards, and some of them don’t quite align with my preferences.
Edit: I added some details to clarify.
I’m a foreigner and I never had any problem to make Japanese friends (by friend I mean real friendship)
But if you don’t speak Japanese WELL or don’t do activities where you can share a passion with someone you won’t be able to make friends
When you leave school, if you don’t have something strong in common with another person you won’t be able to bound with them passing a certain level, and that’s the case in any country
To be fair, a lot of friend groups are formed in school. I noticed all the foreigners who say “yeah I have great relationships with my Japanese friends!!” met them in university. After that people get pretty set in their ways.
However, this problem is not unique to Japan. Many folks complain of difficulty making friends in their own countries. We just have the added barrier of language/culture.
I met mainlanders who moved to Okinawa suffer greatly and end up moving back home because they simply can’t make friends.
Find your people and don’t worry if they are Japanese, Returnees, or other foreigners. People get so hung up on making “Japanese friends”
Like don’t we all get pissed when someone wants to befriend us for being a foreigner? I bet those targeted by hapless but well meaning schemes feel weird or singled out just like us.
Have you mastered the art of aizuchi and tsukkomi? I would venture to say that without those elements, it’s impossible to have a fulfilling conversation in Japanese no matter how fluent you are otherwise.
Talking in general, not only about Japan: if you’re a “foreigner” in a certain country, it means you’ve had circumstances or intentions to live in the country of your current residence, in this case it’s japan.
This also means that you have a bit of a different experience to anyone who have always lived in their home country and interacted mostly with local people. This in turn means that you most likely seek connection with people who have experiences similar to yours or wish to have experiences similar to yours. Or way of thinking and viewing things similar to yours.
This is why you can find it hard to interact with some people. I’d say it’s not “Japanese people”, it’s most likely people who you have no ground to connect on.
In my few years of uni or work life here, I mainly managed to become friends or acquaintances with either foreigners, because those foreigners who live here generally go through the same sort of struggle of moving abroad, or locals who had this experience, want to have it and are interested in interacting with foreign people, or both of you have a certain particular topic of interest or activity that you connect on.
In other words, it’s not only a cultural/ethnical problem (sure it plays a certain part, but mainly in terms of communication patterns), it’s also a question of whether you can connect with people and whether those people can connect with you. It needs to be based off of something, like shared experiences/childhood/interests.
It’s not true for me.
I think the following help, although they aren’t really needed:
– Pretty good Japanese
– Good knowledge of Japanese culture (I’m not talking manners, I’m talking the kind of TV people your age were watching when they want young)
– Doing things together with people, things that are unrelated to you being a foreigner (hobbies, etc.)
– Not feeling like you are lacking in any of the above, even if you are not strong at them (these are not really required)
You need to stop putting Japanese people on a pedestal. They are just people. And if they are nice to you, it’s real easy to tell if it’s legitimate kindness
*Whenever I thought I was getting close to someone or that we had become friends, something makes me realize they were just being kind and it was tatemae all along. I can’t help but think that it’s an impossible line to cross as a foreigner, because I could never be “one of them”, Japanese myself.*
It’s good you realize this already. It will make your future life here much better.
Because of the whole tatemae nonsense, I have zero desire to be friends with Japanese people who have never left Japan once. Way too much effort and bullshit involved.
Nah.
How well do you speak Japanese, anyway?
I find this interesting because I have the opposite experience in Japan. I feel like making Japanese friends is incredibly easy, but foreigners can often times be less welcoming and inviting and tend to have a stand-offish tendency. This is a generalization of course, I know plenty of Japanese people who are stand-offish and have that very fake facade and many foreigners who are very welcoming and kind. But in general, I make Japanese friends (as in friends I can talk about difficult things, ask for help, spend time with casually, etc) way more easily than foreigner.
I think part of the problem is you really have to get use to Japanese communication styles. I think a lot of foreigners get really hung up on an image of what Japanese is and don’t learn how to do the more subtle dance with the individual between being polite and figuring out how you connect to one another which means you either get stuck being polite or come off as off putting to Japanese people. There’s a lot of subtle context cues you have to get use to navigating in Japanese spaces and even those with high Japanese proficiency struggle with it. I mean hell, even Japanese people themselves struggle with it.
Also I think specifically what region/city you live in makes a huge different. I mean just in Kansai, the style of making friends and talking to people is completely different between Kyoto and Osaka. So there’s also that factor to consider. And what type of people you’re interacting with. Like an anime enthusiastic at a college anime club will be entirely different than a fashionista in the night club or an average salaryman at an Izakaya or even your average construction worker or salon stylist and yet all are Japanese people at the end of the day. You just have to find the kind of person and community you click with I think.
Honestly not sure what you mean. It was pretty easy to make friends and meet up whenever. You, yourself have to be someone that people want to be friends with
Honestly, I think a lot of foreigners are thinking “I am having trouble making friends because I am a foreigner” when the real story is “Japanese people don’t make a lot of friends with ANYONE quickly or easily, and when they do, they are less emotive and performative in their relationships.”
Observing the relationships between my Japanese friends and family, I am often struck by how reluctant they are to discuss difficult topics, share deep emotion, or do other things westerners are likely to see as “normal friendship behavior”. Also, most of their friends are from long-standing work and school relationships – often very old ones.
A lot of what you are experiencing is very much the same sort of experience a Japanese person from Tohoku might feel when transferred to a job in Tokyo. They would have a hard time developing new, meaningful relationships with people in their new life. Not because they are a foreigner, but because they simply don’t belong to many meaningful groups in Tokyo.
Add to that, most Japanese people are pretty sure that you’re not here forever. Why? Because 99.999% of the time, that’s true. Almost nobody stays here more than a few years, and absolutely nobody but a handful stay more than 10. And they know this. They’ve experienced it. All their other foreign friends eventually left, and they assume you’ll do the same. So why invest the kind of time and energy into you that’s required to make a real friend in Japan? Not only will it be more difficult because of different language/background and you having less in common, they know that with very, very rare exception, it’s temporary.
That’s not about you being *foreign* – it’s about you being temporary and transient.
It’s never about you being foreign. It’s always about you putting up walls with your detached from reality views.
There’s so many different factors which contribute to your experience with Japanese people (or anyone, really).
The different combinations of the factors below will vary the result of socialization in Japan.
– Are you a visible minority (of Korean, Chinese, even Nikkei etc. descent) or invisible minority (European, S. Asian, African, etc. descent)?
– Your Japanese level (everything from pronunciation to internalized linguistic knowledge).
– Your cultural norms vs. Japan’s (are they more similar or different?)
– What kind of people are you dealing with? (young/old, introverts/extroverts, affiliated/unaffiliated, opinions of foreigners, etc.)
– What kind of person are you?
– The list goes on…
So that’s to say, while some commenters here sympathize with you, others are more harsh about you and your experience. That’s probably because their circumstances are far different than yours. No one has the exact same experience or set of factors.
I found 3 Japanese friends who are very hippie/liberal/artsy types like myself. I started going to yoga classes and met them there. Do activities and hobbies that appeal to you more and the right friends will follow.
I’ve been here a long time now and you see this question a lot. As in this thread there’s so many different answers based on time, language ability, and age.
So I dont think there’s a single answer to your question. One thing I can say is that a lot of Japanese people lock down “friends” and “friend groups” when they start something. School, clubs, Jobs right out of college, mid-career hires, mom/parent groups for kids, etc. 同級生 culture is an enormous part of the Japanese experience. It’s an easy defining line. It’s like western friend making for a majority who go to college. A lot of times your friend group that becomes the core come from proximity; how close you lived to them and/or luck.
If you aren’t in on some of these steps it can be difficult. I feel a lot of people over think it. I don’t think about it. My Japanese friends are my core guys/girls. Regardless of the fact they’re Japanese. I’ve just spent the most time with them at this point. And I’ve never thought “Geez, Japanese people aren’t accepting.” I simply didn’t mesh with that person. Keep it moving. You’ll find people eventually. Invest the time. It will be reciprocated sometime.
Uni student here in japan and man ive talked to many of my friends about this and many of those living in tokyo feels this way. But those in 田舎say that the Japanese people are very kind and accepting. Even my friend who is studying in osaka say that the people there are really nice. Could it be a tokyo problem?
I see this question pop up a lot and always feel like it is so misguided.
Japanese people are not some monolithic hive mind. Of course you can make Japanese friends.
Since there are a variety of Japanese people just like any other country, there is no one size fits all solution. There is one thing that can universally improve your chances though: Get better at Japanese.
If you are not able to communicate beyond a basic conversational level, you will of course have trouble to have any deep relationship. Talking about your favorite movies and anime might be fun for a first meeting, but if you can’t discuss deeper topics people are going to get tired of hanging out with you pretty fast.
Beyond that, there are some key components that can aide in making natural friendships. Meeting regularly and unscheduled, ie. work or school, having similar interests etc.
If you have to put in effort just to meet with each other on a regular basis, then that already makes having a friendship all the more difficult. But not impossible.
Impossible. You either assimilate or you don’t.
I’ve been in Japan for almost 10 years and I’ve never had trouble making Japanese friends. In fact, I rarely interact with other foreigners since there aren’t many in my town.
My advice is to find a group that enjoys the same hobbies/interests. I joined a church when I arrived here and they’ve become like family to me
Unfortunately on this sub you will mostly find a ton of spite and holier than thou, gatekeeping sons of bitches. Good luck with your question.
I think it’s one thing to have difficulty *making* friends, but I’ve noticed that my Japanese friends do *NOT* ever impulsively want to hang out like my American buds aka (hey wanna grab a drink tonight/tomorrow?) as well as fucking scheduling hangouts 2 months+ out in advance. It really feels like they’re just “ticking the boxes” of what friends do
My friends are my friends, whether they are japanese or otherwise. I think with age also comes the difficulty of not only making but maintaining friendships. It’s easy for people in Japan who grew up here to compartmentalism their various friend groups. They each fit a certain social role and know what part to play. The thing in general for non-Japanese is that we tend to assume friendships are lifelong and in japan thats not unheard of but again with some caveats. The best we can do is hope we meet people we click with and try to nurture what we can.
I completely understand where you’re coming from and appreciate the depth of your feelings on this matter. It sounds like you’ve put in a lot of effort to connect with the Japanese community, and it’s disheartening to feel like there’s still a barrier.
I’ve heard from other expats in various countries that it can sometimes feel like there’s an invisible line separating them from the locals, despite efforts to integrate. Cultural nuances, deep-rooted societal norms, and the concept of “in-group” vs. “out-group” can play significant roles. That said, Japan does have its unique cultural intricacies with concepts like “tatemae” and “honne.”
I think it’s essential to remember that everyone’s experience is subjective. Some foreigners might find deep and fulfilling connections with locals, while others might gravitate more towards fellow expats or those with international backgrounds.
It’s admirable that you’re looking for genuine connections and interactions. I hope you continue to find those individuals, regardless of their background, with whom you can form meaningful relationships. And thank you for sharing your experience; it’s essential for others to hear various perspectives on living in a foreign land.
It’s not you. There is a wall and it’s called lack of interest or prejudice
It’s simple. – if you’re cool, you’re cool. If you vibe with others, you vibe with others. You might think there’s a barrier, then you may believe there’s a barrier.
Might just be you bro, you don’t sound super fun TBH. Especially after your edited rant, must be fun at parties.
Just chill mate, friends will come naturally (if you are a good person).
I’ve been here 5 years, avid surfer and Motorsport enthusiast. So my JP mates are pretty outgoing and straight talking. If you are the book worm kind, then the demographic of people in your world will be the quiet, polite and somewhat behind a mask type.
My idiot mates will just waltz into my house uninvited and grab whatever is in the fridge, ask I’m im heading out to catch some waves or hit the mountains for a drive.
We are all very close regardless of my nationality (plus us Aussies are pretty cool anyway right?) because we don’t have to be polite or act a certain way, we can all be ourselves.
Maybe you come across as unapproachable? A bit stiff? Stick in the mud maybe?
Who knows, but best of luck with the bro search ol mate.