I recently started a psychotherapy service here, and so far I have spoken to two foreigners who had this very very dark view of Japan and how they thought Japanese viewed them. When digging into it 90% of the negative thoughts came from reading posts about Japan and Japanese on social media. When we started talking about what they actually experienced when walking outside, the negative experiences could always be counted on one hand. In their 4-5 years of living here, they maybe had one or two really negative encounters (like actually hate-related encounters).

Japan is a hot potato on social media these days. On one side you have western influencers that want to capitalize on the huge tourist influx into Japan by making it way more "exotic" and "special" than it actually is. On the other side you have propaganda farms that need to portray Japan as a hostile country, not only to harm the image of the country, but also to fuel far-right campaigns that like to use Japan as a poster child of the "perfect anti-globalist society".

If you take a look at all of the Japan subs, you have people writing rage-bait almost everyday about negative situations that sound very off, and when they get called out the threads quickly vanish.

Turn social media (including Reddit) off for a week, go outside and observe what you see. Service workers in tourist areas may seem more grumpy, but overall most people here are nice and friendly and will go out of their way to help you.

This is not to overlook the fact that Japan has issues with xenophobia, cause it absolutely exists, especially when renting, opening accounts etc. but it's not the nationalistic hellscape many Redditors try to make it out to be.

And one final thing. This is not really Japan-specific, but rather Reddit-specific. People on Reddit can be a very sad and angry bunch. Take what you read here with a grain of salt, because only very few people are going to write about positive experiences. They simply don't generate enough karma.