Japan changed a lot in 8 years

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My Japan Trip

I've been back from my Japan trip for about 2 days now and don’t get me wrong, I had a good time. I met wonderful people and even got invited to go on a helicopter ride by a complete stranger, but nontheless, I can now say with confidence that I’m done with Japan.



As promised I visited all the places I wanted to see one more time and so I visited Fushimi Inari Taisha, Dotonbori and the deer in Nara of course.

I stayed in Japan for two weeks and although I thoroughly enjoyed my first week, I noticed that during my second week I really felt done with the whole thing.

Japan changed

You see, Japan changed an awful lot in the 8 years I have been away. Three things really stood out:

1. There are an insane amount of tourists now in Japan
2. There are quite a bit of immigrants from India, Indonesia & China in Japan now
3. The Japanese have a very different, more hostile attitude towards foreigners now.

Every store and restaurant I visited had foreigners working there, I heard more Chinese in the streets of Osaka then Japanese, and because I speak Japanese I had the opportunity to hear people complain about foreigners on the train, waiting in line and just walking down the streets of Osaka, Kyoto and Nara.

If I compare my time in Japan during my university days in Osaka 8 years ago and now I can realy tell the difference. Japan is not the same anymore. To be fair, I’m not the same anymore either.