Unless you're Japanese or half-Japanese I wouldn't really recommend that - The Japanese culture is known for being a closed sort where people from anywhere else in the world are only always considered "visitors" and never ever one of their own.
this seems to be an internet trope because it's completely wrong in reality or completely lacking in nuance? the japanese usually have some kind of decorum when interacting with people they are not familiar with but once you get through that layer you'll find they are actually individuals with preferences and they can be friendly or unfriendly just like anyone else in the world.
i wonder if those who simply spout things like this expect to be treated as an insider on first meet? is this the same sort of people who also go to places like paris or stockholm and wonder why those sort of people are unfriendly too? "why don't these people smile at strangers" and "why is restaurant service so poor?". i see this opinion a lot and i just don't get where this is coming from.
Please stop extrapolating your anecdotal personal experience. Japanese people are eccentric (at least relatively to the rest of the world cultures); and anyone living there will have to consider that nuance when dealing with them.
That being said, your odds of getting into trouble in Japan are close to nil. It's a quiet safe and friendly environment.
My experience with Japanese people have been largely positive. But again, you have to take their eccentricity into a large context to reconcile their behavior with your expectations.
I find a lot of people that say something like this, especially Americans, they totally ignore the colonial history and how poorly the Japanese were (and still are) treated by Americans and other outsiders.
They may be closed off, I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s some cultural trait.
You mean they ignore the seven or so years that the Americans were in charge of Japan after the Japanese state went on a 30 year rampage through East Asia and the Pacific where Americans have supposedly treated the Japanese poorly during that time?
Never heard of this before - regarding colonial history and treatment towards other races, please refer to the WW2 diaries of the imperial Japanese army for how they treated civilians in China, Korea and (to some extent) America.
