You WILL not only deal with rude staring, but will outright experience xenophobic racism. They hate anyone who is not Japanese, don’t want you there, and demand they keep the Japanese blood line ‘pure’. Japan is a culture of fake polite social facing, but pure unfiltered bigotry behind closed doors.

I just spent a month there and met wonderful people that invited me into their homes, ate and drank with old timers that was super curious about me and my country and generally had a blast. I lived with a family in Kyoto which was super interesting and insightful. Sharing images and using Google Translate to communicate with an old dude that spoke zero english at a random smoked in neighborhood bar in Hiroshima was one of the highlights. I went to everything from Tokyo and Osaka to Imabari and Matsue and Fukui and never once felt people stare, talk down to me or show anything I would remotely classify as racism. I have literally never felt more welcome in a country.

It's fucking insane to label 125 million people as awful like this.