@wolfwoof:
So it's perfectly legal to say you don't rent to X race?
Like it's not some code word that everyone knows means that but rather straight up your kind isn't accepted?
Not race, per se, but nationality, i.e. not a citizen. Although of course, more than in most places, race and nationality are quite conflated in Japan.
But yeah. Perfectly legal.
@MiyamotoMusashi:
Like i said before, it´s really a pity that you had to go through that. I still think that your experience are mostly due to the area you lived in, i doubt that in big cities like Tokyo, Kyoto or Osaka, you would have made the same experiences, at least not to this extent. I don´t really have personal experience regarding Japan myself but, i think i told you this before, i know 2 people who live in those cities and were treated much better. I, myself, spent a short yet significant amount of time in Asian countries (5 1/2 months in Shanghai as exchange student and 2 months in Seoul for vacation purposes) and i was mostly treated positively which, in a somewhat xenophobic country like South Korea, is not that self-evident. Of course i neither stayed for a couple of years nor did i work around natives (well, i did an internship but i was mostly around other foreigners), so i don´t know how comparable my experiences are with yours but i hope that, due to your negative time there, you don´t decide to never visit Japan or an Asian country again.
Right. I definitely get what you're saying, hence the disclaimer in the first paragraph. One reason I wanted to go to Waseda in the first place was to try to balance out all the negativity built up here (in the countryside) with some more progressive city livin'. But in the end I just couldn't take it. I won't say "I'll never visit Asia again," but I'd never consider living here. Xenophobia and perpetual "other" status aside, the community/hierarchy vs. individualism contrast and everything that that entails was just too alien and uncomfortable (and the benefits- safety, cleanliness, etc.- don't outweigh that discomfort. Not by a longshot).
But that's why I was sure to include the bit about foreigners who do end up staying finding some kind of happiness that I couldn't (I imagine most of the time, it's love), so I really don't mean to slight those people. I recognize that everything about this experience and my reaction to it was very personal, because I took it all very personally, and it's not necessarily some objective, universal truth.