Foreigners You Will Meet in Japan

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]What is good everyone? Welcome to the channel. My name is Paul. I make videos about Japanese society, life, and culture from the viewpoint of a long-term foreign resident. I've been in Japan for over 20 years. And today, I'm going to share with you some of the people that I have met and some of the people you will probably meet living in Japan. I'm speaking specifically of other foreign residents. There are certain types that, yeah, everyone kind of seems to run across during their time here in Japan. And I'm going to start off right with probably everyone's least favorite person.

[00:00:35]And that is the kmagin. The person who everything about Japan is a negative.

[00:00:43]Nothing here is something that they can say a good word about. Everything is just, oh, this is terrible and the society is this and the people are that and I'm a slave in my work and oh, everything's terrible. And I just think to myself, why are you in Japan then? Like, what is it about this country that makes you stay here? Now, I want to try to not get too much into stereotypes or caricatures. I'm going to try to keep these profiles to people I've met personally or, you know, I've talked to other long-term foreigners like myself, and we all agree that these people exist. And the kromagin is definitely someone we've all met. Some of them might be trapped in Japan because they came here on a English teaching job or something and maybe didn't develop any skills and feel they can't go back to their home country or really move anywhere else and they're stuck or maybe they had a shotgun wedding and ended up with a Japanese family and now they're here for that purpose when they don't really want to remain in Japan. Those are kind of stereotypes, but those people do exist.

[00:01:54]But in my own personal experience, I have to be perfectly honest that I think that for me most times that type of person is probably going to be miserable anywhere they are in the world. They could be anywhere. They could have moved to any other country. They could have remained in their home country and they'd still be miserable.

[00:02:14]Let's get to the other side of this tunnel and continue. As I was saying, in my experience, I feel like generally these people would be unhappy anywhere they are in the world, even if they'd never left their hometown where they grew up. To which you might be thinking, well, Paul, you're making a list about foreigners in Japan you'll meet, so this doesn't sound very specific to Japan.

[00:02:34]You just said I could meet these people anywhere in the world. And I think that's true. We can all meet a keragin anywhere in the world. But in Japan, it takes on a different edge simply because if you're a foreigner who lives in Japan, the vast majority of us are here because we genuinely like life here.

[00:02:51]We've chosen Japan as a place we want to live because it's special to us for some reason. And so, while I do believe anyone should be able to complain about the country they're in or the country they're from, certainly complain about America. To me, as an American, I'm fine with that. But when you're suddenly cornered by one of these people and they have nothing good to say about Japan and you yourself tend to believe that Japan is a wonderful place, you find yourself trying to figure out how do I extricate myself from this conversation, the thought starts to become, how do I get myself out of this situation? Because yeah, I mean Japan isn't perfect.

[00:03:34]Not everything I might say about Japan is glowing rainbows and unicorns, but still it's like getting stuck talking to a person for whom nothing is good and nothing is right is not a very pleasant experience. The second person I'm going to talk about is somewhat related but not always negative about Japan, but they are the Japan explainer.

[00:03:57]the person who is going to basically jump at you and be like, "Oh, you know something about Japan? Well, I've been here blah blah blah years and I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to know about this place."

[00:04:12]Long-term foreigners, we've all met this person and they exist online in the YouTube space as well. To which you're probably saying, "Well, wait a second, Paul. You're putting out YouTube videos about Japan. That makes you a Japan explainer, right? I guess that's fair.

[00:04:29]To be honest, a lot of these profiles that I'm going to be going over today, I can kind of poke fun at myself with because I am some of these things to one certain extent or another.

[00:04:40]However, when it comes to the Japan explainer, for me, the difference between what I do and what a Japan explainer does is in my mind, the definition of a Japan explainer is someone who is very prescriptivist.

[00:04:53]They know what's correct. They believe. They have the knowledge and they're going to impart that on you and dare you to disagree with them. For me, when I do this channel, I try to make it clear that everything on here is my opinion from my experience, sometimes crowdsourced from other people's experiences. like today's video.

[00:05:16]Actually, I did a lot of crowd sourcing for this because well, uh I wanted to talk about things that many foreign visitors sorry I because I wanted to talk about things that many foreign residents have experienced, the people that we've all seem to have met, right?

[00:05:33]But I won't tell anyone who's watching this video or any of my videos really that I know everything. you should believe everything I say without critical thinking and that uh you know you should believe as I believe because that's you know I do think I'm right sometimes but I know that I'm not always right and that my experience isn't always generalizable for everyone who lives in Japan and so I want to just make that clear. So for me, a Japan explainer is someone who comes at you because they know better than you and they're going to let you know exactly what and how they know better than you.

[00:06:10]That is uh overbearing. Pretty much along the lines of the kromagin, you also kind of find yourself wanting to extricate yourself from those conversations. And it's not always the people who've been here longer than you.

[00:06:22]I mean, yeah, they can be like, "Oh, I've been here 50 years and wa I'll tell you those people exist." But sometimes it's someone who's been here for 5 years and they're willing to tell you how you're wrong about Japan and how they know much more than you in their experience here over, you know, a quarter or half of the time you've been here. And you know what? Again, sometimes they're right. Like people make observations. You don't have to have been here forever to know what you're talking about in certain instances. And so, you know, sometimes you can learn something. But overall, the problem with the Japan explainer is that they are right and you are wrong, no matter what they're talking about.

[00:06:59]Now, a little bit related to the Japan Splainer, but I would say a little bit more positive bent is the Japan file.

[00:07:08]Now, I feel like there's two levels of Japanophile. The first type is not what I'm going to talk about. The first type is the people who love everything about Japan. And I'm not going to talk about them because those tend to be the people who have never lived in Japan. Like they have a rose tinted glasses view of Japan. They've been here on several trips and it's always been wonderful. I feel like while Japan is a excellent country to live in and I have generally speaking very few bad things to say about it, it's not perfect. And so I wouldn't consider myself a Japanophile. Nor would I consider pretty much everyone I know who's a long-term foreign resident a Japanophile either because well we have a more downto-earth nuanced view of life here because well we know the good and the bad and the neutral and the daily grind. So the other Japanophile that I want to talk about is sometimes called hagaiin in Japanese or an otaku if you will. The person who has drilled down gone way deep into a particular rabbit hole about something about Japanese culture and usually receive compliments from Japanese people along the lines of oh you know Japan well or oh you know Japan better than Japanese people.

[00:08:25]Yes, in that one really narrow vein of information. Yes, that's true. But I think we've all met that Japanophile, the person who could talk your ear off for a long time about some topic that they have come to love about Japan and have done deep research in or had as a longtime hobby, whatever it may be. And again, I myself am guilty of this. I am guilty of being a Japanophile when it comes to Ukio or Japanese woodblock prints. That's the rabbit hole I went down. I could be shown a woodblock print and I could tell you around about what year it is. If it's a major era print, I could tell you the year because Maji era prints tend to have dates on them. I could tell you who the artist is by the signature. I could tell you a lot of information about the condition and the subject in the print itself, whether it's an early printing or a later printing. Um, I could probably estimate the value for you. Uh, those are all things that I learned how to do because I just did a deep dive and amassed a collection and even sold prints for a while. So, if you want to check out the print videos on my channel, I do have some. You can search across my channel for Ukio videos and you can see parts of my collection and things that I've had to talk about Ukio if you're interested.

[00:09:48]But the haggai is the person who's gone down that rabbit hole. And I don't think I've told this story on the channel. Uh so I'm going to tell it now.

[00:09:57]On Japanese TV there are people called karanto and they're usually comedians or musicians or actors but generally they're kind of like a jack of all trades. They just are in variety shows and are able to have witty conversations on TV. And usually they have some kind of individual sticktick, some kind of individual um, you know, stupid human talent or something. And I had this crazy idea long ago that, hey, I could maybe get on Japanese TV and be one of those talent if I became that foreigner who only speaks ado era Japanese. Like I had this stupid idea that I'd become fluent in old Japanese and that would be the the silly s, you know, stupid human trick that I could do that would get me onto Japanese TV. And then I realized, oh, I'd have to study really hard to learn obscure, unknown Japanese that I can't use in daily life. Uh, maybe this isn't such a good idea. But I don't know. I mean, I feel it probably would have ended me up on TV to be perfectly honest because that's such a wild trick to be able to pull. If you're listening to this video and you want to steal that idea, go ahead. More power to you. Now, the next person I'm going to talk about, I feel can be kind of maligned at times in Japan. Mostly because many foreigners in Japan, depending on where you live, may not have actually met people like this.

[00:11:31]But the type of foreigner that you likely will meet at Japan at some point is the American military, either active or retired. And I think that they tend to be a little bit maligned just simply because when you don't have contact with them often, you just hear in the news from time to time that someone in the military has committed a crime in Japan and you know, it gets this negative publicity. And so that's what you kind of have in your mind uh when you think of US military here. However, for me, I don't think that's a fair characterization because well, I know several military people or I should say retired military people because they're my friends and some of them live in my neighborhood and if you're in Yokohama at all, you're going to run into Navy families who are out and about because you know, Yokoska, the Navy base is just south of Yokohama.

[00:12:26]I am walking around central Yokohama today, by the way, for those of you who are wondering where I am. This is actually an area that I've never walked before. So, this is all new to me, to be perfectly honest. But any rate, I think when you meet a military personnel, you're going to probably have some stereotypes about them. One of them is that they don't really speak any Japanese. And I think they're often maligned for this as well, because generally speaking, it's true. A lot of the ex-military are and certainly the active duty military who are only stationed here for a few years don't really know much Japanese.

[00:13:03]I give them a lot of slack though because the vast majority of them are working on base. So basically every day they go to Little America and do their job entirely in English and don't really have much need for Japanese in their daily life.

[00:13:21]And sure, some of them have married Japanese spouses and now have families in, you know, normal Japanese society. But if you didn't lock in the habit of studying, you know, for the first several years you were here because you didn't need to, just because you happen to find a woman or a man who speaks English and you married them doesn't mean you're going to suddenly start picking it up. It's not an easy thing to do.

[00:13:51]So, I I give them slack. I'm I'm not going to give any grief to them because it's not really fair to expect someone who works all day in English and does everything in their life in English for the most part, including, you know, getting paid and, you know, paying US taxes and everything like that.

[00:14:12]uh you know and and having a US bank account and you know getting everything sent through US mail system and so it's like you know can you really blame them?

[00:14:23]I do not. And honestly speaking they can be some of the most fun people to hang out with. I'm not going to lie about that. The next person you're likely to meet in Japan as a long-term foreign resident or even a short-term foreign resident is the integrator. And this person could maybe even be more likely to be annoying when you are fairly new to Japan. The integrator is the person who has made it an absolute point to be as Japanese as possible. Even if your Japanese isn't that great, they're going to speak Japanese to you and they're going to go on and on about how Japanese their life is and how, you know, they overlap a little bit with a Japan explainer, but they may not necessarily be overbearing with their knowledge.

[00:15:08]They're just subtly and not so subtly continually letting you know that they are part of Japan. They've chosen Japan.

[00:15:18]or maybe very well Japan has chosen them. So, yeah, the full-on integrator.

[00:15:24]I was just talking to someone the other day about how they met this guy who basically he took Japanese citizenship and once he'd done that, he stopped speaking anything but Japanese, even with his non-Japanese co-workers. So full on, full in, like absolutely went all in on being Japanese or as Japanese as possible. Um, I haven't met many of these people, especially because there aren't tons of foreign residents who have actually taken the step of becoming a citizen, but I definitely have met the integrator type because yeah, they have uh they've become more Japanese than Japanese. They've kind of taken a lot of those traits of the Japan Splainer and the Japanophile and and all of that and wrapped it into a identity package. Now again, I overlap into this a little bit from the sense that my daily life and how I kind of go about my daily routines and what I eat and how I move through the society is far more Japanese. I did a video a while ago where I basically just went over my life and was trying to parse how much of it is Japanese and how much of it is American. And uh I'm definitely more Japanese than American these days, I think, is how it turned out. So maybe that's not so surprising.

[00:16:48]But uh yeah, I I can say that I'm a little bit like that, but I'm not over the top and I'm not going to refuse to speak English to people. So let's leave it at that. Now, kind of the opposite of the Japan Splainer or the Kromagin is, for lack of a better term, I call him the peace nick or the backpacker. It's the person for whom everything in Japan is just cool, man. This is such a cool place. Everyone is wonderful. They've lived here for a long time. And if they have some complaints or negative views, you're never going to hear it from them.

[00:17:24]They think everything or appear to think everything is just amazing. They're kind of a see no evil or rationalize all evil type. Um, and they just exist in Japan because hey man, this is where I've chosen to live and it suits me somehow.

[00:17:43]And strangely enough, and I've met quite a few people like this actually, they don't seem to have anything in particular about Japan that interests them. They don't have a Japanese hobby.

[00:17:57]They don't have a Japanese they don't have some kind of Japanese rabbit hole they've gone down. Um, they're not otaku about anything in particular. They're basically just living or I should say they're existing in Japan and it's just they've decided it's for them even though they're not really into anything particularly Japanese.

[00:18:22]Everything's just cool. I like it here and uh yeah, it's all great. Uh I can't explain that myself. like if I didn't really love certain things about Japan and and kind of get into those Japanese things and go down those rabbit holes and study and and uh have some hobbies, uh I don't know. I'd be kind of questioning why do I live here if I didn't have those things? But for the the backpacker or the just everything's cool guy, uh yeah, I sometimes just really scratch my head and wonder like why are they in Japan in particular? And they're probably the opposite of the kromagin in that sense. Like the kromagin will be miserable anywhere they are. And this type of person will just be happy and content anywhere they are, whether they really particularly gel with the culture or not. you know, there's just naturally negative and naturally positive people. And so, I would say this is the opposite of the Kromagen. And you definitely probably this is the person I've met the most.

[00:19:23]The people um compared to everything else, all the other categories I've talked about, I've probably met more people whom I've walked away wondering, you know, it's great that they love Japan, but it's really unclear what they love about Japan. So, I don't know. I mean, that's not me. If that's you, let us know in the comments. I'd be interested to know your take. Now, surprisingly, the next category is one of the smaller categories. Honestly, it's the otaku or the hobbyist. The person who came to Japan and is living here because they had a huge interest in say anime for example before they came to Japan.

[00:20:01]And for whatever reason, I feel like these types of people are actually a little bit rare because very often if you come to Japan as the hobbyist, you already know why you want to live in Japan. It's because of XYZ.

[00:20:16]Those people tend to not stay in Japan terribly long simply because after living here a few years, they realize that just having that hobby and not connecting with Japan in any other way particularly is not really fulfilling.

[00:20:31]And then they realize that maybe Japan isn't really for them. Yes, they can pursue that one hobby here, but you know, life is more than a single hobby.

[00:20:39]And they realize that the rest of life that surrounds everything else is not exactly what they wanted and so they end up leaving Japan. I've seen this again and again and again, but there are some who stay and some who make it work. Um, I would say though that this particular type of foreigner that you will meet tends to be more on the short-term side.

[00:20:59]Next, there's the traveler. the person who is here because they just want to travel everywhere in Japan and particularly all around Asia.

[00:21:08]This is me also to a certain extent when it comes to traveling around Japan. I want to travel around Japan more. I've traveled around Japan quite a bit, but not nearly as much as I would like. I didn't fall in love with Japan because I wanted to use it as a stepping stone to get elsewhere.

[00:21:26]I've I'm actually really poorly traveled in Asia. I've been to Singapore twice.

[00:21:31]I've been to Taiwan once. I've been to mainland China once.

[00:21:35]And the only other country kind of in the area is I've been to Australia once, which is, you know, not an Asian country. So, not a whole lot of travel. I mean, I've been here 20 years. I haven't been to Vietnam. I haven't been to Thailand. I haven't been to, well, anywhere down there in Southeast Asia except for Singapore.

[00:21:56]Never been to Korea, even though it's really close. and I have a good friend living there. Yeah. Uh don't ask me why. It just hasn't been something that I've felt a huge strong urge to do. But you will meet the person for whom that's their everything. You almost never meet them in a sense because they're always off traveling somewhere. And I would put into this category the people who travel home all the time, too. I know that's a different thing, but I'm always beused by like I have a former colleague who every break within a few days of school going out for the summer or the spring vacation, he flew right back to his home country almost immediately, every single time.

[00:22:42]And for me, I was always thinking, uh, yeah, I'd like to visit my family and I like to go home, but I also really like Japan and I want to use this free time when there aren't classes to explore around here a little bit. So, like everything on this list of people, it's just a variety. Humans are humans. We all enjoy very different things. And more power to everyone. Live and let live. I say that's my main philosophy in life to be perfectly honest. Which again is why I don't consider myself to be a Japan explainer. I feel like there's one more category I should talk about except I don't think this is a foreigner you will necessarily meet in Japan. That is the influencer or the influenza if you will.

[00:23:25]There are obviously a lot of influencers who are traveling here mostly as tourists these days and that's fine. But despite the fact that you'll see them online and on Instagram and on your phone all the time, um, you don't actually see them in real life very often. The number of people who actually pass by me in my videos, not that many, especially given where I choose to film.

[00:23:50]I've never actually come across a Tik Tok being filmed like right in front of me. So, I don't know. I feel like I'm supposed to add this one because everyone's going to assume that influencer is something that you're going to meet and especially because I myself am on YouTube, I obviously must be meeting these people or running into these people. Truth is, that's not really the case. I really haven't met many I really have only met other YouTubers who have contacted me or I've contacted them and we've gotten together and filmed like Tracy over at Weekly Fascination or Alyssa at Oriental Pearl or John at Ohazu channel. Um I've been trying to get together with Tiko Sam. Um he never leaves Kabuki Cho though so that's we've never managed to actually arrange something uh in a way to hang out together. But, and if you are a Japan-based YouTuber and you'd be interested in trying to do some kind of collaboration, I actually am very open to that. I like meeting other YouTubers and and getting to know people and maybe doing a video or two together. That'd be fun. The best way to contact me is probably through my Instagram account.

[00:25:01]If you contact me on IG, it's XAP. Same name as this YouTube channel. Um, just PM me over on X Chapter and let's get together. Now, that's the people. Um, it's not an exhaustive list. Feel free to add others that you know yourself, the other people you feel like, oh, you'll definitely meet this type of person in Japan. Oh, uh, Paul, you should have talked about the so and so or this type of person. Um, let me know in the comments what I missed. Remember to like and subscribe. If you haven't hit the like button and you haven't subscribed yet and you made it this far in the video, what are you doing? But I hope you enjoyed this. I hope to see you on the next one. And thank you so much for watching. And now I need to pull out Google Maps because I have no idea where I am. Like I thought I was going to walk up here and that was going to be a stairs down to the station area, Yokohama station area. It's a parking lot. It's not stairs. I have no idea how to get back. Um, if you don't see me next week, it means I never made it home.

[00:26:04]Thanks for watching. Peace.