Most Japanese people are really friendly and have pretty good attitudes towards westerners. The difficulty arises when there is a relationship between the two p

Most Japanese people are really friendly and have pretty good attitudes towards westerners. The difficulty arises when there is a relationship between the two parties that may at some point require settling a dispute or problem solving between the individuals and it's way outside their comfort zone. They don't necessarily have a problem with the individuals (though there are a few older people who live around military bases that do), but they clearly have a problem with how such situations make them feel. One time I wanted to go into a restaurant and there weren't any signs anywhere that said 'Japanese only' or anything like that, but I rocked up to the door and made an inquiry in Japanese to the lady on the door and some guy from in behind came through and was like 'sorry, no foreigners' and she turned to him and said 'no, it's ok he speaks Japanese' and I went in and had a meal without any problems. It definitely offends my western sensibilities to be exclusionary in that way, but I think the thing native English speakers take for granted is that it's a lot easier to have an open and inclusive society like we try to when we can make a pretty safe assumption that the people we're including will be able to communicate with us to an adequate standard. I'm fluent in Japanese. It was a really hard language that took a lot to master. I have an excellent sense of the range of English abilities of Japanese people. The language barrier is a huge factor in the discomfort felt. Then there's the cultural norms. Japanese people tend to talk about other Japanese people as if everyone has baked into them the same set of rules / behaviors / assumptions. When that goes out the window, I think a decent proportion of them don't quite know how to mentally simulate how they think such a person will behave other than it'll possibly (and maybe probably) be in violation of at least some of the norms that they kind of rely on. It always makes me pretty sad when people level comments about native English speaking countries being racist etc and then you look at how much poorer you'd fare in comparison in the general case if you were to live in their country.