I never said I've never come across them; I have. If you look closely at the photos on Debito's site, you'll see that one of them is mine.
That being said, though, if we included all the countless thousands of places I've seen that did not have such signs and do the math with the mere handful of places I've seen that do have them....the ratio works out as I said: how close it is to zero depends on to how many decimal places you figure it.
Not only did I not say that, I didn't even think it.
Being refused entry to bars due to my ethnicity (3 times) has been a powerful, illuminating experience for me- as have the many, many wonderful things that have happened to me in Japan. As time passes it becomes easier to keep things in proportion. But I do think that in so many areas of Japanese life, a simple stroke of a law-maker's pen would begin to change things for the better. But apathy, myopia and vested interests seem to preclude that possibility.
Fair enough!
Not only did I not say that, I didn't even think it.
Being refused entry to bars due to my ethnicity (3 times) has been a powerful, illuminating experience for me
Me too. In fact, I was just refused housing by a landlord today, even though my wife is Japanese. Go figure.
As I have written elsewhere, I have been denied service or almost been denied service due to my foreigness on several occassions, but I doubt most people here for short-term would ever experience any of that.
I did nothing but move on with my life. Life is too short to get overly upset over these things. We have been accepted at another place nearby, so it's not like we won't have a place to live out of this.
PrototypeModel, I don't think you've started an argument per se. Glenski and I have different opinions about some things like this, and we've had those different opinions for a long time. Having different opinions and expressing them is a good thing!
Moving on from the subject of discriminaton, the prefecture system has my kind of confused. Do they behave more like counties, or states as far as local laws and other such things?
Prefectures are much like U.S. states, except that prefectures have much less sovereignty than do U.S. states. Hence the laws tend to be much more uniform from prefecture to prefecture than they are from state to state.
I did nothing but move on with my life. Life is too short to get overly upset over these things. We have been accepted at another place nearby, so it's not like we won't have a place to live out of this.
In a way I always felt the same way as I soon found an apartment the same day. Besides, as I've said before, the Japanese even discriminate against their own kind by refusing to rent to certain people like college students or those with tatoos or rings in their nose and such. They also discriminate based on past experience.
It's not like it's only against foreigners although that gets the most press. It is my belief, even though others disagree, that a landlord should have the right to rent/not rent to anyone they desire. After all it is their property and they are just trying to protect their investment and keep the harmony. It doesn't make it right, but I can understand their reasoning.
Discrimination in housing is still going on here in the USA albeit in more subtle ways. If a landlord does not desire to rent out an apartment they usually say it is already taken or that the person's credit rating was not good enough. It exists everywhere!