[ramchip]

I think some of the points are really exaggerated. Take this:

> That’s not to say that some nasty malice isn’t present because it most definitely is. I lost count of the times when, say, for example, politely pointing out to someone that there was a queue and they shouldn’t push in that the immediate response was a very angry “BAKA GAIJIN” (stupid foreigner).

Really, that happened often enough that he "lost count"? In 7 years, I haven't seen anything close to this.

[spin]

Hmm, yeah, that's never happened to me, either. I've never been assaulted, either. I have been harassed by other foreigners though, but that's almost always in the "seedy" areas, like Roppongi or Kabukicho.

I rarely, if ever get harassed by the police. But I know some Asian-American friends who get harassed... eg: the cop thinks he's Vietnamese, so starts giving him trouble. When the cop finds out he's from the U.S., all of a sudden the cop starts acting totally nice. I'd call that racism.