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INTEREST: Tokyo Metropolitan Area to Establish "English Village"

Oh and one more thing, he gave up his US citizenship to become a Japanese citizen so he can stay and combat and bring awareness of discrimination in Japan.

mdo7 wrote:

Oh and one more thing, he gave up his US citizenship to become a Japanese citizen so he can stay and combat and bring awareness of discrimination in Japan.

Actually, according to Arudou's LinkedIn profile, he is currently based in Honolulu.

All that foreigner discrimination is probably due to yakuza involvement anyway. Same reason it's either impossible or highly unlikely to get into a soapland or pink salon as a foreigner, they'd be owned by extremely right wing reactionary gangsters.

Many companies want Japanese nationals with "English/foreign SKILLS" but they DON'T want people with foreign MINDSETS. For that reason, I can totally see schools encouraging students to spend time in an area where they can get immersive language experience without going away from more "accepted" standards of behavior and ways of life. The trick will be populating it with English speakers, but considering how kids always seems to have great dreams about the JET program, I think that wouldn't be an issue initially. And having an "English zone" might even help some JET (or similar) participants have less "culture shock" as well.

Having lived in Japan for ~8 years, yes there is discrimination. I wouldn't call it "racism" as it's born more out of ignorance and distrust than hatred.

It's also quite mild in terms of its actual effects on everyday life. Probably the most annoying thing is real estate related, where you can be rejected from your rental agreement for no good reason is the owner or landlord doesn't trust you (this actually happened to me for my first apartment).

As for the topic, the reason an "English Village" won't work is fundamentally the same reason why Japan has never taken foreign culture assimilation seriously: They just don't have enough immigrants!

Nothing will change until the immigration system is loosened up and the number of legal immigrants from around the world is increased... Japan's foreign born population is a pitiful 2.2 million or so and when you take out the ones from other asia countries you're left with maybe 300K english speaking foreigners (0.3%?). Japan should be letting in _millions_ of foreigners into the country instead of the tens of thousands a year or so they do now.

As for the topic, the reason an "English Village" won't work is fundamentally the same reason why Japan has never taken foreign culture assimilation seriously: They just don't have enough immigrants!
Nothing will change until the immigration system is loosened up and the number of legal immigrants from around the world is increased... Japan's foreign born population is a pitiful 2.2 million or so and when you take out the ones from other asia countries you're left with maybe 300K english speaking foreigners (0.3%?). Japan should be letting in _millions_ of foreigners into the country instead of the tens of thousands a year or so they do now.

I think the discrimination is cultural problem. I've been their couple times in my life, they very introverted culturally. They like taking tidbits of stuff from other cultures like US and France, but they don't want them changing core of what it means to be Japanese.

Their polite but they don't want anyone coming in to stay. English Village thing is their effort to appease Olympics since the committee does push for change. I'm not saying everyone in Japan discriminates but its built in thing. They've been doing it since Admiral Perry arrived in his Black Ships and forced Japan open up the country after centuries of isolation.

Or the project is canceled before it even finishes, either because they lose their drive, they run out of money, there's a public outcry over this, English-speaking Japanese residents don't move in, or the IOC deems it stupid.