> Do you think an American faces a lot of racism in Japan?
It depends on who you are, and how you accept rules of Japanese society.
It doesn't matter where you are from nor what your nationality is.
I don't mean to say there's no racism in Japan.
And I also think that each and every group has the right to have
appropriate xenophobia to keep their peace and prosperity.
I wish you understand that racism in Japan have come from not prejudice
but real experience of being troubled by some "不良外人 Furyo Gaijin = bad
/ rude foreigners".
So, firstly, we will be very cautious about you when we will meet each other
because possibly our common protocol (communication) will not work with you.
And then, everything is going to depend on your attitude.
If you do some act that I put below, you will face so terrible racism.
-Joking to strangers
I have a experience to have gotten my eyes shot by a laser beam pointer by
foreign strangers. Maybe they supposed me to laugh at them.
But it was going to work absolutely not.
And I also saw a foreigners scribbling on the blouse of another student from behind in a driving school. She was crying.
-Being arrogant.
Some of them seem to have come to Japan with mission to enlighten native
people. I am not surprised that the nickname of Arudou Debito is
"Hokkaido Crusader" (Hokkaido is the place he lives).
Especially you have to carefully avoid to try to teach your native language
unless someone asked you to do it.
-Being lustful.
This is the biggest problem.
Like other countries might be. There are so many young female
(sometimes male) wannabes in Japan who dresses like Beyonce or
Avril Lavigne. They might think they could be someone if being with
foreigners.
So if you are male and like M.C. Hammer (JA Rule? 50cent? EMINEM? I don't
know much), you can get many girl friends at same time very easily.
And then, welcome to the notorious GAIJIN world. No one else would be close
to you except some idiot brats.
> Do you think a German is welcome in Japan?
It's quite simple. If you are welcome in Germany, you will be
welcome in Japan too.
According to my experience, 60 to 70% of foreigners in Japan are losers
who ran away from society of their own country. And they seem never to be
able to manage his(her) life in their mother nation.
Therefore, this question is not to be asked to Japanese, but yourself.
And if you are respectable enough, I guarantee that you will never face to
racism without cause in Japan.
> Also I have a personal question for you, what do you think of
> Arudou Debito? (http://www.debito.org/nihongo.html/)
It does need 10,000 or more words to explain it. Because there have been
very very very very very long and complicated stories about this phenomenon.
I'm ready to write about it. But are you okay with it? No?
Okay, I wish you just take note that:
In Japan there is long tradition of "Anti-Japanism-public-opinion-business"
by left-winged anarchists. Mr. Arudou is nothing more than a player/actor
who is trying to become a celebrity admired in this industry.
Plrease refer to
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%89%E9%81%93%E5%87%BA%E4%BA%BA
and
http://www.japanreview.net/letters.htm
"Arudou and his family should not have been excluded from the onsen in Otaru, but I suspect I am not alone in objecting to the way this unpleasant, but essentially trivial incident has been parlayed into a career opportunity"