Tim Anderson Yeah, Japan does a number of things right. Here are the...
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Tim Anderson Yeah, Japan does a number of things right. Here are the catches: "Japan is infamously xenophobic and racist (especially towards darker skinned individuals). While they're not outwardly aggressive, this manifests in the form of silently discarding CVs when applying for jobs, keeping you at arms length in social settings, stares or hushed discussions about you behind your back, and similar. It's notably difficult to integrate into the ethnically and culturally homogenous Japanese society: even those who were born in/grew up in Japan to foreign parents are still looked upon as "foreigners". Japanese language is a PITA to learn, perhaps one of the most difficult in the developed world, made tough with multiple writing systems. Fluency of English and other languages is low, which means you may need years of Japanese practice before you would be considered for jobs and function well in society. Japan's economy and wages are stagnating with an aging population crisis. Their wages are relatively low compared to many other developed nations. Young immigrants will soon find themselves in an uneviable position of propping up the elderly of Japan (via increasing taxes and reducing social benefits). For many immigrants, if you're going to have to do the work to immigrate somewhere, you might as well pick a country that has a strong and sustainable economy. Japan requires you to renounce prior citizenships to naturalize, and they do enforce this. This immediately makes it unappealing to many who want to maintain a connection to their country of origin."