3 Things I Don’t Like About Japan

Believe me, I could turn this into a super detailed rant-like post that never ends, but it would only frustrate me and make me upset dwelling on the matters so much. I’m not particularly upset or frustrated about anything at the moment, so I don’t really feel like going into too much detail…which is probably for the better anyway. I plan on keeping this post kind of brief. Before I wrote a post called “12 Things I’d Miss About Japan,” and it was about various things I like about living here. Well now I’d like to add some balance and tell you some reasons I don’t like living here.

Sure, there are a lot of little things like the lack of variety and affordable cheese or the humid summer and poorly built housing, but these things aren’t that important as they are just simply annoying. I’ve narrowed my list down to three important things. These three things make me not want to live here permanently. I struggle with them often because more and more lately, I feel like I could end up living here for quite a while. Please, if you have any advice for helping me deal with these three issues, leave a comment!

Without further adieu, the three things: 1) Discrimination/Racism 2) Sexism 3) Sex Culture. For a more detailed post about Discrimination/Racism in Japan, please read my post called “Being Foreign in Japan.” I go into my feelings a lot more there. For this post, I’m going to stick to a few short paragraphs for each point.

1)      Discrimination/Racism.

I realize I have been lucky to be born in America as a white person. I never experienced racism or discrimination until I moved to Japan. I realize now how incredibly frustrating it must be to be treated unequally in the very country in which you were born. In light of recent the news about the Charleston church shooting, I just want to say I’m sorry, and I think it’s not right and unfair that African-Americans and other minorities must suffer in their own country. It must feel inescapable and incredibly frustrating. I’m sorry.

It’s really hard to explain how closed off Japan is from the rest of the world. They aren’t used to seeing people from overseas. If anything, I’d call it ignorance. If you are not ethnically Japanese (or at least look Japanese), then you will experience all sorts of racism and discrimination in this country. Some things will be as little as a kid pointing and yelling “FOREIGNER!!” at you to being denied things that I would consider to be human rights like jobs, housing, and entrance to certain places. In America, not hiring someone based on race or not letting them rent an apartment is ILLEGAL. In Japan, it isn’t. Foreigners can be denied simply on the basis that they are foreign and there is nothing they can do about it. This is not something I’m looking forward to dealing with in the future. I can deal with all the shock and excitement over my light hair, blue eyes, and pale skin, but I can’t deal with being denied cell phone contracts and credit cards just because I’m not Japanese.

Hopefully this situation starts to improve rapidly. I think with Miyamoto Ariana, the half African-American and Japanese Miss Universe Japan, causing a stir lately, the subject is at least being talked about more. I’m just hoping for the future while educating as many people as I can.

2)      Sexism

Japan is a man’s society. I feel like it’s slowly getting better but still has a long way to go. It is ingrained in their culture that a woman’s role is in the house, not in the working world. It is not uncommon for women here to even aspire to be a housewife. Men are expected to be the full provider. Women are expected to clean the home, raise the children, and cook every single meal for the man, and if they don’t they are not considered to be a successful wife or woman. Now obviously this isn’t the case for every man and woman. There are plenty of exceptions and woman who want to work. However, there is still this looming presence of “what a good woman should be.” For example, I know a married couple who both work and the man gets home at 8:00 pm and the woman gets home at 10:00 pm. The man will not lift a finger to even turn on the rice machine. He waits for his wife to get home after him so she can cook his whole dinner followed by cleaning.

It’s no secret that women are often not seen as equal in the work place and have less pay and opportunities. I don’t even know if there is a female president of a company in Japan. Women are usually expected to pour the tea and serve the men the food at work events.

One of the things that irritated me the most was when a Japanese woman named Igarashi Megumi was on the news facing charges. She is one of the few women I’ve seen stick up for Japanese women’s rights. She is an artist who makes works of art resembling female genitalia. Police showed up on her doorstep and arrested her on obscenity charges. She is still currently at battle. Her goal is to “use her art to ‘demystify’ female genitalia in Japan, where 3D images of male genitalia draw thousands of visitors to the Kanamara penis festival at a Shinto shrine in the city of Kawasaku, near Tokyo, every April.”

3)      Sex Culture

You often hear that Japan has a weird sex culture. It’s true. It’s so strange how it’s such a hush hush matter but also in your face at the same time. Did you know that owning child pornography just became illegal in Japan last year?! Seriously, WHAT?! Japanese pornography in general tends to be a little on the abnormal side; lots of videos of rape and incest with a little bit of tentacle and strange animated porn. There’s also all the weird places like maid or idol cafes where cute girls in costumes wait on your every need. Those are tame compared to hostess clubs and girls bars. Even those are tame when you compare them to soap-lands (Google it) or other strange pleasure shops like where men go to watch girls in school uniforms study with their legs spread open, sometimes under-aged. One of the things I hate the most is that female pornstars are idolized here and are as popular as singers and actresses for example. They appear on TV a lot and are seen as popular, cute and are known by name in some households.

People don’t talk about their sex lives, but everywhere you look, there are porn mags in plain view of children at every convenience store, and the streets in cities are lined with undercover prostitutes and pleasure shops. The thing that gets me the most is that I saw a study that said only 15% of Japanese men consider going to a pleasure house to be cheating! I made damn sure to tell my boyfriend that that was OFF LIMITS! I hate seeing all the weird porn stuff here…just in like one of my recent posts on how I was sitting in a snack bar with my boyfriend when the background of the karaoke screen became a naked woman in plain sight of all the customers.

I don’t know. It’s just that this particular point is really hard to describe for me. There’s just so much weird sex stuff that you hear about and see when you live here. It also seems to tie in a bit with sexism…like woman are these helpless sexual objects or something. Some men think they have a right to be sexually satisfied by woman whenever they want. Makes me sick…and angry.

As expected, writing this has made me feel upset, so I want to be done. I can’t say that I really clearly elaborated my thoughts and feelings on these matters, but hopefully I gave you an idea of what I’m getting at. I’m not saying these issues are unique to Japan, but they are definitely something I didn’t struggle with until coming here. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts and advice on these matters. I realize that some or many of you might not agree with me, and that’s ok. I also realize that this isn’t very well thought out or nice written, however, thank you for reading.