Have you ever been to TOkyo? Thoughts and impressions?

[Natta Lmo]

No, I expected that ahead of time, I meant more when I went to dinner with some Korean friends from school and they invited along friends they had. I ended up spending 90% of the dinner just sitting there quiet because they were too busy talking to each other. Hell, my friend's wife barely said two words to me the whole couple of hours I was at their house.

My Korean-America ex's mother would barely acknowledge me when I was around as well. I knew she was ranting to her daughter that I was probably some gangster who was gonna take her off into sex trafficking or trade her for drugs. This despite my father being in the military and then police, and despite me actually having spent time working with rehabilitating rescued sex trafficking victims. Neither of those mattered, what mattered was how I looked and my accent.

Another time my car broke down in a Korean shopping center here in Seattle. I had stopped to grab some takeout. I was there for over an hour, in a rain storm, and no one even asked if I needed help. The handful of other times over the years I've had car issues, that was the only time someone didn't stop to help. The other time I was in a rural area in CA and a couple guys stopped to help, and the other time I was in Greece. I don't really count that because I didn't expect much help in a Korean shopping center. It's like they used to say about if you're a non-Mormon and you car breaks down in Utah (a heavily Mormon state), no one will help you. In my own experience, people from some religions or cultures are just more willing to help a stranger than others are.

Maybe it's just me, who knows. Other parts of Asia I went to weren't the same on that, namely Taiwan and Thailand. I mean, Thailand had its issues, but that's for another thread.

everyone was very nice to me except a few idiots when i was in korea... maybe helps not being a foreign man... being interested in their culture and language... i tried to start with korean to speak to them... said i am learning korean... many have positive response to it... they taught me some korean and i taught them some thai...

[Stelio Kontos]

everyone was very nice to me except a few idiots when i was in korea... maybe helps not being a foreign man... being interested in their culture and language... i tried to start with korean to speak to them... said i am learning korean... many have positive response to it... they taught me some korean and i taught them some thai...

Big difference between a cute girl and a big, olive-skinned weightlifter :P

[Natta Lmo]

Big difference between a cute girl and a big, olive-skinned weightlifter :P

lol... everyone talking about how they are very racist to people like me from southeast asia countries or other foreigners but i never noticed this... not in japan... not in korea... ^^

[Cthulhu 2020]

Tokyo is nice, but Kyoto is waaaaaaaaaaay better.

[Little Sparkie]

lol... everyone talking about how they are very racist to people like me from southeast asia countries or other foreigners but i never noticed this... not in japan... not in korea... ^^

They probably were hoping to get to have sex with you if they were men.

[Rasulis]

Big difference between a cute girl and a big, olive-skinned weightlifter :P

Can't speak for Korea since I have only been there as tourist.

I have spent six months in Japan studying at Obayashi campus in Tokyo, and been there on numerous visits for pleasure with my wife. I have always found the people to be friendly and helpful. For reference, I am not a body builder, not a cute girl. Just standard 6'-2" 170 lbs Chinese guy.

[ifrah]

Can't go wrong with most of places in Japan. Tokyo is massive, and quite hard for at least me to even try to summarize. Still got better memories from other cities (e.g. Kyoto) or the rural areas.

[kamuimac]

I saw on my Facebook feed that today is exactly one year since I left Japan, specifically Tokyo, where I and a friend had been for two weeks.

Have you ever been to Japan? What were your impressions? Did it fulfill your expectations?

For me, it was my best trip ever, and I've traveled a lot. What I was surprised by was how cheap it was! Everybody talks about how Tokyo's super expensive, but everything was 20-30% cheaper than in my country (Sweden), alcohol was about 40-50% cheaper which I liked as I love to try out new beers.

I'm not really a weeb anymore, but it was still fun to run around in Akihabara and see the blend between gaming, anime and normal electronics. My favourite shocking memory is when I entered a normal electronics store, and the top two floors were assigned exclusively to hentai. It wasn't even that obvious that it suddenly became 18+, just a blue half-curtain.Both me and my friend had a big laugh there.

The food was amazing, got to try out a lot of new dishes not served in Japanese restaurants here in Sweden. I was happy that I could finally try out some proper Kobe beef without being ruined economically. Japanese curry is now one of my favourite dishes!

I was a bit surprised by how little English people knew, with it being such a well-educated and high tech country and all. I think we had proper conversations with 4 or 5 people during the entire trip. Of course, we learned some basic phrases in Japanese so we could get by, "kore onegaishimasu!" and pointing really made visits to restaurants a breeze, haha.

I loved all the neon signs and noise, really felt like I was running around in a cyberpunk city, minus the dystopian setting. We lived in Shibuya and only had a 8-minute walk to the skyrail, so walking home at night was a huge bombardment of noise and lights, which had me absolutely ecstatic. Not sure I would've liked to live there permanently, though.

People have talked about how racist the Japanese are, but I just couldn't see it. Everybody was super polite and nice to us, even if we couldn't understand each other, except for one older woman at one restaurant. She was super grumpy and just sighed when we pointed at the menu. faith in humanity was quickly restored though, as we could see her husband, who was the cook, stood inside the kitchen looking at us apologetically.

I'm already planning to return in two or three years' time, and then I hope that I can go somewhere else, other than Tokyo and Yokohama. Kyoto would be nice to see, and Osaka.

thats because your country is very expansive to live in even for western standards -_-