That's a bit of a shame. I get where they are coming from, but the place in Ueno my girlfriend and I rented out was cute and we didn't hold any wild parties, even if I did get the evil eye from some old guy in a convenience store.
A lot of people don't notice it, but Japanese apartments and houses have paper-thin walls with no insulation. People may think they're being quiet because they don't hear the person next door (since people generally live here knowing that they should avoid being noisy). But no, blasting music from your phone speakers, stomping around in your boots, throwing your bag on the floor, and sparking up a blunt is shit everyone hears. Yet try politely telling someone they're being a little loud and they get pissed because there's no way you heard their 2AM phone argument while they're drunk and blazed as fuck.
If the apartment next to me ended up being an airbnb spot here in Japan, I'd do whatever I could to either get the renter evicted or move out. I have too much experience with people having zero self-awareness when they come to Japan, and I couldn't possibly deal with having new people coming in twice a week and trying to explain that yes, you are indeed noisy as fuck, and yes, people actually don't party 24/7 in this country because some people do work.
Shame culture. Japanese couples are ashamed that their neighbors might notice something. Therefor they prefer to go to some anonymous place. Furthermore have you ever been to an average Tokyo, Osaka flat? They are incredibly tiny and the most unromantic surrounding imaginable.
Excuse my French, but bullshit. This is probably some game-of-telephone story of some bars near American military bases plastering "Japanese Only" signs on their doors so they don't have to deal with drunk GIs.
As a rule of thumb, the only places in Japan that do not welcome foreigners by default are in the sex industry.
Yeah the orgy places are one of the worst kept secrets here. Everyone knows they exists, but it's not really spoken of. I had a friend (Japanese) that was invited and he just explained it as being weird. The place he went to just had glass rooms full of naked folks doing things naked people tend to do together. It was a combination of an orgy and a voyeur event.
Underground life in Japan can get pretty extreme. Typically foreigners aren't privy or allowed in such environments. Not saying it doesn't happen, though.
Please stop extrapolating your anecdotal personal experience. Japanese people are eccentric (at least relatively to the rest of the world cultures); and anyone living there will have to consider that nuance when dealing with them.
That being said, your odds of getting into trouble in Japan are close to nil. It's a quiet safe and friendly environment.
My experience with Japanese people have been largely positive. But again, you have to take their eccentricity into a large context to reconcile their behavior with your expectations.
I agree. When I lived in Japan, I was invited to (local) friends' places often, including for a couple of kotatsu sleepover parties. It was probably more frequent than being invited to a friend's place in Vancouver.
Probably because most of my friends in Vancouver live in sharehouses or basement suites where they aren't allowed to have guests by their landlord, while my friends in Japan had small but respectable spaces that they had much more permissive ownership of.
15 years ago, it wasn't like this. As recently as 8 years ago you started seeing people exhibiting blatantly antisocial behavior in public, littering, not giving way in the roads, noisy devices, etc. When they open their mouths you realize they are not Japanese. The frequency of such encounters has increased steadily with time.
I was in the area last year and was shocked at how bad it's gotten. Rokko-san, trashed. Garbage bags ripped open and left to lay on the streets of Osaka. It's unbearably sad to see this happening.
Other than culture, which also plays a large part in this, many people in Japan live alone. And, as opposed to the West, that means living in a space optimized for one person. It is not convenient neither pleasant to accommodate guest(s) either for the person living there or for the visitor.
You want a party, AND privacy ? Rent a large private karaoke room with service that will bring you anything you want and nothing to clean yourself afterwards, make as much noise with as many people as you want. Quiet space to chill, study, or work in company ? A myriad fantastic cafes. Family stuff ? Famires to the rescue. Etc.
As for community, just compare the streets of Japanese cities with those of Western cities and tell me in which ones you find small children going about safely ( or adults for that matter ), and which ones are covered with litter, cigarette butts, and idle cars everywhere. Which ones suggest to you "don't disturb your neighbours, be agreeable" and which ones scream "no one gives a f*ck about you" ...
We could go on, and compare individualistic societies and collective thinking ones, but that's a long conversation.
That. If you speak with Japanese women (in Japanese) they don’t feel safe at all and they have reason for that. There is a lot of perverts here. One day my girlfriend called because someone opened the door of her appartement. Another friend had a guy pretend to be the gas guy to enter their appartement just to retract when he saw the size of his shoes in the corridor. A female friend (foreigner, well endowed)... groped at the Shibuya crossing, etc. Even male friend have bad stories about guy trying to taxi them somewhere.
The article is a bit amusing even for a native Japanese, but too lengthy for me to read it through.
I happened to work at a big-business cubicle farm (or kind of) in Tokyo, but there is no such obligatory parties. I have heard of that kind of stories but they are almost caricaturized and exaggerated. If any, he was just unlucky about it.
However I agree about smoking. That's so pervasive and annoying. But I found our situation better than some of south European countries, and smoking in public space is being illegalized.
It's totally okay for him to moan as he likes, but of course, don't take it as he writes.
That happened to me in golden dai, I went on a rainy sad and sketchy night, and the people in the tiny restuarant were just the happiest and curious, they could have been tourists from another part of Japan though, who knows
I mean Japanese can keep to themselves too
But the point is that the intimidate, accessible nature has other redeeming qualities
Almost everything? These people live in shoe boxes, and you have to be a millionaire to get a parking spot in Tokyo. The men work all day long and then have to get drunk with their coworkers in the evenings. They smoke and drink too much, and you can never get a straight answer out of a Japanese person.
If you're a foreigner there are still a lot of landlords who'll refuse to rent to you. The cops are famous for beating confessions out of suspects.
And local protestations to the contrary, you can't get a good steak in Japan, as if you could afford it anyway.
Indeed, the whole flashy/noisy outside world in Japan can become very alienating sometimes. Sometimes in weekends in Japan the only thing I want to do is to stay away from other people.
I’m glad the article mostly restrains itself from the “wacky Japan” angle, and states pretty flat out that a “rental sister” is pretty analogous to the role of a social worker.
It’s weird that people marvel over “host” and “hostess” clubs in Japan, when I know of many restaurants in the US and Canada, where the main draw is that a pretty girl/guy will be nice to you for your time there. Is it the exact same thing? No. But it’s clearly serving the same niche.
The difference seems to be that in Japan, the exchange of social services (in the broadest sense) are pretty direct and straightforward. In the west, there’s a taboo about paying for social benefits, so people have to pretend they actually want to spend $20 on a crappy burger that happens to be served by an attractive woman.
People tend to generalize Akihabara to the rest of dull, boring Japan.
There is one (or two?) underwear vendor machine... in a sex shop. Someone was comparing this myth to the idea that in the US you can have your car washed with stripper boobs, which I am sure you can... somewhere...
The loli genre is frowned upon, but there is a slightly different view of pedophilia here: instead of being seen as psychopaths like in the west, they see them more as immature men-child stuck on highschool fantasies. And let's be frank: Japan is far behind when it comes to fight the rape culture.
'They' in your last sentence is a subset of the otaku culture, what you would now call incels in the west. It is creepy as hell, but it is a fringe minority.
Things you don't see publicly in Japan are lots of homelessness, crime, and general bad behavior. It's pretty hard to hide homelessness and (violent) crime.
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