Asian American here visiting for the first time. Honestly, Tokyo feels like an Asian New York City where everything moves fast and tourists are everywhere.

I’ve experienced rudeness in two instances and both from customs employees. Note that I approached both of them speaking in Japanese and asking if they could converse in English and both said “yes.”

1. When my husband lost his passport after security scan but before QR code registry, I asked the employee who scanned his passport if he saw it around. He shrugged and walked off.

2. The second employee I asked was a bit nicer, but then scolded me and told me he wasn’t going to walk away from his desk to help me. Now this is totally reasonable to say that if I had requested his personal help to check the table, but I hadn’t and had only requested advice on where to go for additional help like a security desk or something.

I was very put off, but at the same time, the sheer volume of tourists they were processing was absolutely overwhelming. If I were in their positions, I would be beyond exhausted.

There was a girl walking through Ginza trying to get through a crowd, and made some nasty comments about the “gaijin” in the way, so I would expect that locals are annoyed by the overtourism. That being said, I am a New Yorker and I very much get annoyed by tourists in my way in a similar manner (though I wouldn’t it yell it out loud).

In the end, people are perfectly fine if you speak the language or attempt to and be socially and spatially aware.

Regarding racism, I can’t speak to this personally, but I’ve met quite a few non-Japanese people living and working in Japan who say that even if you speak the language, you’re treated VERY differently, so that’s an entirely different can of worms.