[KennyBlanken]

Also note that anime is not even remotely a realistic portrayal of Japan and should not be used as such like the article is proposing.

It used to be a common phenomenon for western "otaku" to think anime represents life in Japan, then travel there and come to find out that it's deeply racist and xenophobic, has an extremely repressive criminal justice system, a strong "we did nothing wrong in WW2" attitude, and so on.

[jwells89]

Having lived in Japan for multiple years in the past and knowing other foreigners who've lived there for a decade+, I'll say that while it's true it's no anime dreamland and skews insular, one's experiences there will vary a lot depending on approach.

For example if you're running with a younger crowd in Tokyo and have become reasonably adept at speaking the language you'll run into a lot less of that kind of thing — a lot of the time people there just aren't comfortable with dealing with those who don't speak Japanese well, and older individuals and more out of the way cities might be less accommodating of outsiders. Often when I see writings online about having a bad time, it's from jaded Eikawa teachers who've made no effort to learn Japanese or branch beyond their friend group of other foreigners despite having lived there for many years.

That said young people aren't running the government there due to being solidly outnumbered, so national policies are naturally going to be more reflective of its older population.