Tokyo | On Tokyo trains and in rural streets, long-term foreign residents are keeping their elbows in and their voices low as they try to avoid disrupting everyday Japanese life. Tensions about immigration, overtourism and rising prices have sharpened over the past year in the country they have long called home.
As a result, residents say they are changing their behaviour in small but deliberate ways. Australians who have lived in Japan for decades told The Australian Financial Review they now feel a heightened need to signal that they belong. They are keen not to be branded tourists or newcomers, as the government’s tough-on-foreigner rhetoric rises and viral images of badly behaved visitors fuel local anger.
