Have you encountered discrimination or prejudices in Japan ?

[Maciamo]

I have encountered much of what has been mentioned here, but I fully expect it, and I have from the beginning. I mean, being a foreigner in Japan makes me a minority from the start. Being a minority ANYWHERE puts you in a disadvantage.

I didn't expect it, because I have lived in such countries as Spain or Italy where I was almost as clearly a foreigner as in Japan, and was never treated much differently from the locals (actually yes, in Madrid they tried to cheat me several times on the restaurant bill thinking I was just an unwary tourist - but they have learnt not to mess with me on that).

I can't really complain about not being taken seriously by the Japanese, as it is usually the reverse that happens. I am fed up of their lack of interest and knowledge for serious subjects, and they usually listen to me as if I was an expert (maybe because most of these discussions happen while I am in the position of teacher ). Difficult to have a level-field conversation in which there is a real exchange of opinions (not just polite nodding and "eeeh !"), except with the rare true intellectuals.

At stores, I sometimes find that the clerks won't talk directly to me even if I ask a question, like Maciamo. I hate that.

Still happened to me 10min ago. I was with my wife and paid for her stuff. The guy at the combini hesitated giving the change back to me or to my wife and was looking at her for tips, as if he had no idea that if the banknote came out of the wallet that came out of my pocket, the change had to return to me too ! It's almost always like that in combinis !

Maybe I expect discrimination too much, but I was SHOCKED (in a good way), when I first went to a capsle hotel in Hiroshima and some guy started talking to me out of the blue about his laundry he was doing. I mean, he was talking to me completely naturally. Actually, I had(have) it stuck in my mind that capsle hotels are very anti-foreigners, but I've had better experiences there in general than at regular hotels.

This mostly happened to me when the guy could speak English and addressed me in English as if I looked like an English-speaker. Sometimes I just want to talk to them back in French or any other language to make them think a bit, but I usually just reply in Japanese because I know the conversation won't go very far in English.