[dustintrex]

It's complicated. For people you have an obligation to, like relatives, superiors or customers at work, you have to go out of your way to be polite and helpful. But if you don't have that obligation, you don't need to do anything.

Foreigners occupy a weird spot in this hierarchy as "guests" to all Japan in a sense, so people often feel an obligation to help them, much more so than they would to a random Japanese person in the same situation.

[LurkingPenguin]

> It's complicated. For people you have an obligation to, like relatives, superiors or customers at work, you have to go out of your way to be polite and helpful. But if you don't have that obligation, you don't need to do anything.

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

I've spent time in Japan, and have been living in Asia, and as far as East Asia is concerned, I think a lot of people mistake "polite" for "friendly".

Of course, there are friendly people in East Asia. You can find friendly people everywhere. But if generalizing the characteristics of populations, Japanese are probably among the most polite if not the most polite you'll find anywhere. Friendly? Not so much.

In fact, in my travels in Japan, I've always been amazed at how limited the "friend" social networks of most of the expats I've encountered are. Japan is a very, very tough nut for "gaijin" to crack socially.

[HanaShiratori]

I think people often times have too high expectations when moving to another country and assume that making friends / settling down is a straight path. In fact, especially at an adult age it is very, very hard to make new friends, regardless of where you live. Most people at that age already have their social circles set, build / expand their own family and are just not willing to invest emotionally into new relationships. And this is even harder when coming from a different country with different social norms. I live in Berlin, Germany and see this problem non stop, but not always from foreigners, also from fellow Germans who come from other cities like Hamburg, Leipzig or Köln. People end up moving back to their social circles because they have difficulties to adapt to the new environment.

Since Japan attracts many people for various reasons, I think this general problem gets blown out of proportion and sold as a uniquely Japanese issue, which it is not. There are just meant people moving to Japan and therefore sharing their experiences, which often times are as described above. Japan definitely has a lot of issues, but I don't think this one in particular is exclusive to Japan

[cthalupa]

>In fact, in my travels in Japan, I've always been amazed at how limited the "friend" social networks of most of the expats I've encountered are. Japan is a very, very tough nut for "gaijin" to crack socially.

I'm not an expat (nor do I talk to many in Japan), but I have traveled to Tokyo for work about once a year for nearly a decade, prior to covid. I've made friends with plenty of my co-workers there, and a much higher percentage of ones that have moved on to other companies, etc., stay in touch with me than people that I have spent significantly more time with locally that changed jobs. A couple have already asked me when I'll be back now that the travel restrictions are starting to ease up.

I've also had nights where I've met random people while out drinking and made "friends" where we spent the night bar hopping and having a generally good time. I wouldn't call them friends, but they were certainly friendly - I don't think you drunkenly grab some gaijin and drag them off to the next bar out of politeness.

I'm not exactly an extrovert that makes friends wherever I go, either. I'm definitely not doing the heavy lifting in these scenarios.

My experience is that there is culturally a significant bent towards politeness, for sure, but it's also been that there's certainly plenty of friendliness as well, and more than I see day to day in America.