Quote Originally Posted by orochi
Racism is definitely a problem in Japan. I don't think it's too much worse than any other country, but it is an issue. The problem that I have is how much effort is taken to "cover it up." Japanese people often say, "Well Japanese people do it this way..." or "Well, we're Japanese..." very innocently, but it is really a veiled form of racism, I think.
This has been a bit surprising to me as well. But it isn't necessarily always a matter of creating justifications of consciously being shielded from reality. Some friends a while back for instance were planning to invite an African American student into their home on an exchange program and were genuinely horrified when it didn't go over so well with some of their acquaintances, ashamed and shocked not to have realized racism was such a latent problem in Japan.