It will be interesting to see how Japan deals with it culturally. From folks I know who lived there they said that while everyone was nice, it was always clear that they were very much outsiders.
I spend a fair amount of time in Tokyo for work, and I'd say this is accurate.
My 日本語 is far from fluent, but it's frequently better than the English being spoken by random people on the street... yet it will take a good 20-30 seconds of me replying in Japanese before they'll switch away from English.
A co-worker is from Poland, and he married a Japanese woman. Their children speak Japanese and Polish at home, and only a little bit of English. Despite being very obviously half Japanese, he says the kids frequently have trouble getting strangers to speak to them in Japanese, despite it being by far their most fluent language.
This sort of thing probably doesn't sound like a huge deal to someone who hasn't experienced it, but every day to day interaction is a frequent reminder that you're not Japanese and you won't ever be - without radical change, those kids are going to spend their whole lives with their fellow Japanese citizens defaulting to the assumption that they can't even speak their mother tongue.
I still love the city and the people - they are genuinely wonderful and incredibly nice. Many of my co-workers have invited me into their homes, had me meet their families, and gone out of their ways to make sure I have a wonderful time in the city. I've had to modify my own behavior there to not accidentally make people feel like they should be going out of their way to help me, etc. And it's a wonderfully safe place, with kids expected to be able to function independently for means of getting to school, etc. There's an emphasis on personal responsibility, even at a young age, that I think is sorely missing in much of the western world these days, with helicopter parenting, etc., being so widespread.
I don't know if the whole outsider thing will change in my lifetime - but it changing is going to require more immigration, and the native Japanese becoming more exposed to foreigners who have immigrated instead of just tourists, or the breed of expats that keep to themselves in their luxury condos in Roppongi.
I've kind of rambled here, so I guess the cliff notes version is: Japanese people in my experience have been unfailingly nice, outside of some very isolated incidents of obvious racism, but yes, even people born in Japan if they look foreign will be treated as outsiders. That changing is going to require immigration opening up.
"The film follows the lives of five "hafus"-the Japanese term for people who are half-Japanese-as they explore what it means to be multiracial and multicultural in a nation that once proudly proclaimed itself as the mono-ethnic nation. For some of these hafus Japan is the only home they know, for some living in Japan is an entirely new experience, and others are caught somewhere between two worlds."
I have only ever felt welcome. And I frequently meet foreigners with a chip on their shoulder describing how we will always be "outsiders". I find it rather odd to be honest.
It unfortunately is not the only experience, and the evidence I've seen points towards it being far from the norm. It's possible those foreigners you're meeting frequently are just jerks, and that that is contributing to it, but the possibility also exists that they might have that chip on their shoulder because their concerns are genuine.
The documentary iandanforth mentions is a good example of the stuff I'm talking about. You don't need to take my word for it - you can see the genuine experiences of others living in Japan.
Personally I'd rather live in a homogeneous society having seen how multiculturalism has decreased the quality of life for everybody in my country. I can see why the Japanese would want to avoid that. I hope they revolt.
I don't know how that makes sense.
People can't offer people anything outside of some described cultural boundaries?
It's undeniable that diversity offers some advantages, but if the mixing is done in an uncontrolled way as it typically is and a certain ratio of natives to immigrants is reached there will be conflict, friction and misery. Look to Western Europe for what might await, although Western Europe has failed quite spectacularly at multiculturalism in a way that's probably unattainable by the Japanese :)
It's like "if you change A to B, B will happen instead of A... If you want A to happen, select A..."
Another job we were processing the POS system records and tracking sales / inventory. The dates were converted from JST to UTC. Oneday the client rang and was raging on the phone because all the dates were wrong. Turns out they changed their setting from JST to some other time zone, so we converted from UTC to this other time zone. Incident report about why we store in UTC and why the values displayed wrong etc. Threats to drop us as a business because we "obviously don't know what we are doing"...
Then the form would prompt them "Are you sure, please look again", and most of the time the problem will have disappeared, right?
What he described is quite unique to Japan, particularly how many completely run of the mill situations (hey how does this widget work) go on for weeks of expiation. I'm talking about even completely predictable things. Like "Hey if I turn this thing off, is it off?" will start weeks long series of questions.
I don't fully understand it, but it is a Japanese thing for sure.
Several had so many questions they asked for the actual code for a misc set of settings....
They were always meaningless rat hole type discussions and usually with enterprise customers. I'm not sure if they were impressing their bosses with big reports but oh man it was a pain.
So like US people were proud for their "Made in America" stamps?