I don’t think any place in the world comes close to the USA in terms of its prison(labor) camps. It has the highest per capita rate of incarceration on the planet. So I don’t think his comparison is warranted.
But I’m actually in Japan right now, and while I definitely did fetishize Japan to some extent this trip has not been pleasant.
Last night I went out for a call in front of my Airbnb so I wouldn’t wake up my baby that sleeping.
I spent 10 minutes with police because apparently I was suspicious. He asked me about my reason for being here my visa and all the other shit the much nicer border guards asked me. And because they were backwards retards he wrote it on a piece of paper instead of checking it on a computer. Giving him a Taiwan if that included my passport number was not enough I just had to go inside and wake the kid. BTW had I not been in front of my Airbnb, I wouldn't have been able to fetch my Passport and I would probably have been taken to the ward. Just for being a "suspicious person in the neighbourhood". That's like being a black person in the US except that you don't get beat up or shot.
The proof of rental wasn’t enough either and when I went inside he followed me without even asking which would be illegal in most civilized places. Yes he was polite and he didn’t yell at me but he was still a retarded racist PoS.
Mind you that police in Japan can and will put foreigners in prison in solitary for 14 days without charge for shoplifting just in case.
That said it’s a beautiful place that is very well designed(eg. high buildings next to busy roads protecting the residential areas behind from noise) compared to other places with similar demographics are complete structural unlivable monsters(Tehran for example).
But it’s not a place I would want to spend more than a two week honeymoon phase at.
I've lived here in Japan for nearly a decade now and had a couple interactions with police. None of them have been targeted, and even when I was doing something illegal (riding a bike with headphones in) or plausibly illegal (sitting in a park drinking alcoholic drinks with my bicycle parked next to me) they were polite to a fault and also didn't seem to care about my immigration status.
Anecdotes are difficult - some people get unlucky and extrapolate their experience to something that is not statistically sound.
Not sure why you're being downvoted...the context that seems to be missing from the OP comment is:
The cops in Japan are nicer to visibly identifiable Japanese people than white cops are to assumed white US citizens. Yes you're more likely to be shot or worse in America, but most often as a nonwhite person. More often to be jailed as well and once you add white citizens of middle and working classes or simply homeless, it becomes a deeply overlapped venn diagram
Somehow many hinted but none of these comments directly identified this.
More whites are shot by police each year than every other ethnicity combined. Sure as a percentage it isn't equal but it isn't close to as unequal as you seem to be implying here.
Blacks are 3x as likely to be shot as a white but when factoring in the documented higher crime rate of blacks as a percentage of the population this isn't as clearcut an issue as the media makes it seem.
If it was a residential area (houses) police generally know everyone who lives there, so yes, they will consider someone they haven't seen before talking on the street at night suspicious.
Sure, except I've been there for a week and walked my child 3 times a day and would go to the local community gym for a swim when she was asleep. So it's not really an excuse.
But I’m actually in Japan right now, and while I definitely did fetishize Japan to some extent this trip has not been pleasant.
Last night I went out for a call in front of my Airbnb so I wouldn’t wake up my baby that sleeping.
I spent 10 minutes with police because apparently I was suspicious. He asked me about my reason for being here my visa and all the other shit the much nicer border guards asked me. And because they were backwards retards he wrote it on a piece of paper instead of checking it on a computer. Giving him a Taiwan if that included my passport number was not enough I just had to go inside and wake the kid. BTW had I not been in front of my Airbnb, I wouldn't have been able to fetch my Passport and I would probably have been taken to the ward. Just for being a "suspicious person in the neighbourhood". That's like being a black person in the US except that you don't get beat up or shot.
The proof of rental wasn’t enough either and when I went inside he followed me without even asking which would be illegal in most civilized places. Yes he was polite and he didn’t yell at me but he was still a retarded racist PoS.
Mind you that police in Japan can and will put foreigners in prison in solitary for 14 days without charge for shoplifting just in case.
That said it’s a beautiful place that is very well designed(eg. high buildings next to busy roads protecting the residential areas behind from noise) compared to other places with similar demographics are complete structural unlivable monsters(Tehran for example).
But it’s not a place I would want to spend more than a two week honeymoon phase at.