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by barrbid8 1503 days ago
It says that there are 3m foreigners living in Japan tho, not insignificant?
4 comments

IIRC the majority of foreigners in Japan are from other Asian countries and experience varying degrees of discrimination despite many of them being able to at least outwardly pass as Japanese. According to the latest info in Wikipedia, the top countries are China, Vietnam, Korea, Phillippines, and Brazil.

Brazil is an interesting one, because a significant number of "Brazilians" in Japan are supposedly descendants of Japanese who had immigrated to Brazil, but then came back. But even they experience degrees of discrimination despite being ethnically Japanese.

Anecdote, but my Japanese American friend (ethnically 100% Japanese but born and raised in the US, and pretty much culturally 90%+ American) went back to Japan. He too experienced discrimination.

everyone experiences discrimination in Japan - it is a pressure society
Yup, I agree with this. Plus not just in Japan, but other culturally similar East Asian countries such as China and Korea too.

There is lot of pressure to conform to the generally accepted social norms.

The US has 47m (2015) at about double the population. US is a outlier though
https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/immigration_and_...

More than 20% of people living in Canada are immigrants.

Immigration rates have increased since the data above.

I think they are well tolerated, but still you are always going to be American/French/Russian there. I've been to Japan and everyone was for the most part very nice, invited me to their homes, etc. However, it felt almost ceremonial (for lack of a better word). I was in Tokyo and surrounding area which I hear is very different from the more rural areas.
The raw number doesn't say anything about the actual experience or why those people are there.