Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "The Biggest LIE about Japan" video.

  1. Weirdly, Australia has some commonality with Japan, in terms of politeness and aloofness, but less so, and for different reasons. For example, Japan is strongly resistant to foreign immigration, so foreigners (other than temporary tourists) are seen as a people apart, almost untouchables (helped along by recent Covid agrophobia) . The quite rare foreigners residing in Japan, after the polite formalities are over, are unspokenly inferred to quietly go away into a corner somewhere. Australians are a bit like this too, but from the other end of the argument. As many as one third of Australians are first generation migrants, many from non-English speaking backgrounds. However, due to it's inhomogenousness, Australians generally keep to themselves and don't mix with their foreign-born neighbours much. This also includes the foreign born immigrants, of whom probably find Australians to be on the surface friendly, but unable or unwilling to seriously socialize later. This was the experience of an Argentinean born woman who immigrated to Australia. She said it took her years to make genuine friendships with Australians. In short, neither the Japanese nor Australians are all that friendly. Polite, but standoffish.
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