A link to this video showed up on BoingBoing today. In the 18 years I’ve lived here, the only establishment I’ve seen that refused foreigners and wasn’t a shady pub or run-down love hotel in a neighborhood full of foreign prostitutes or massage parlor-type place was a pachinko parlor on the outskirts of my hometown. Anyone who thinks that normal places in Japan–restaurants, hotels, public baths, shops, whatever–are in the habit of prohibiting foreigners from entering is mistaken. Since I don’t try to go into sleazy bars and such I’ve never, not even once, been refused service anywhere. The fact that there are a few businesses out there run by organized crime syndicates that don’t want my money doesn’t bother me in the least.
Tag: xenophobia
Crimes by foreigners on the rise in Japan
It sounds like there’s at least one policeman in Tokyo who wants to attribute as many crimes as possible to foreigners, according to a comment that was left on my blog a few days ago:
…several years ago we spotted a ‘Peeping Tom’ on our balcony watching my wife undress (on the 13th floor!) She said she had been followed home from the train a few times and felt like she was being watched in the past. I chased the guy down the street, but he got away. In my statement I told the police it was a Japanese man, but they said that was impossible – a Japanese man would NEVER do such a thing. They said he must have been Filippino. I told them I’d spent much time in the Philippines and the perv definately was not Filippino. The police then told me I probably couldn’t tell a Japanese man from a Korean, so they altered my official statement to say “he was an Asian man, possibly Korean.”
I don’t know why else he would claim there’s no such thing as a Japanese peeping tom. All he’d have to do is check their arrest records or go to any store that sells adult DVDs and see their collection of nozokiya videos. Maybe it was his first day on the job…