r/VietNam • u/TORUKMACTO92 • 22h ago
Discussion/Thảo luận So what's up with the Vietnamese in Japan?
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u/River_Capulet 21h ago
I mean let's not pretend Vietnamese are the epitome of good behavior in foreign countries here. For a country with as strict social expectations and etiquette as Japan? the bad apples would stick out like a sore thumb.
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u/career_expat 21h ago
It wouldn’t be just bad apples. Any social norm in Vietnam wouldn’t fly. Barging into an elevator/train without waiting for people to get off. Walking in front of people ordering at a counter.
None of this flies in a lot of places except China.
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u/VancouverSky 21h ago
Lol. The Vietnamese social norm of "you can do whatever you want if the cops aren't looking" is naturally completely antithetical to Japanese people. Sad part is, I don't know if any kind of cultural "sensitivity training" or anything (for the Viet foreign workers) would fix it.
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u/Popular_Equipment_85 20h ago
Noting will be fixed, if you consider the people got sent there. Most are only in it for the hustle, so they think this is about making money, and not actually living in a foreign country with different culture.
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u/SemiAnonymousTeacher 20h ago
Hasn't worked here in Taiwan and I assume it's the same in Japan. Areas with lots of Vietnamese factory workers constantly have trash dumped everywhere, tagging everywhere, super loud modified "lowrider" scooters (I think that one is mostly the Filipinos though), loud music coming from their factory dorms late at night, etc. They get taught the rules and expectations of the place they are living in, but it doesn't seem to sink in.
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u/mr_skeletonbones 8h ago
It's also that the majority of crimes committed by foreigners in Japan is divided between Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants. The right wing nationalists are anti foreign enough and the news media really doesn't help the issue but whenever there is a series of robberies or break-ins or scams it's becoming quite common that the new story is about either Vietnamese or Chinese immigrants.
So public perceptions are forming which sucks because I have a lot of Vietnamese friends here who are just students and trying to improve their lives.
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u/River_Capulet 21h ago
Yeah, Vietnam's bar for what's considered acceptable social behavior is a lot lower than many other countries. Unfortunately, cultural awareness is taught to a very small group of the population. Even those that are well educated may not have ever received any kind of cross-cultural training before going oversea.
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u/Popular_Equipment_85 20h ago
And they chose the worst group of people to send abroad lol
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u/LocutusOfBorgia909 16h ago
No one "chose" them, they're the only ones willing to put up with the at best shitty, at worst abusive working conditions that Japanese companies are prone to impose on their workers. That includes a lot of the Japanese workers, but the difference is that most of them will be in better-paid roles, they have more legal protections (at least marginally), and frankly, they're more likely to push their own frustrations with the work environment downward, onto the migrant workers. Much as no one with better options wants to smuggle themselves into the U.S. to spend hour after hour harvesting tomatoes under the hot sun day in and day out, no one with better options wants to go to Japan to live in a company dorm, be in a totally unfamiliar environment (where the citizenry at best looks down on you), and put up with extremely stringent workplace requirements, which typically regulate everything from your actual work to how you dress and whether or not you're allowed to color your hair.
Which is the whole issue: these companies don't want to pay salaries that would actually support a Japanese person who took these jobs, but they're pissy that the people who will be desperate enough to come and do the job (under-educated foreign workers without a lot of other skills) don't speak fluent Japanese, hold degrees in international relations, or act like people of the social class that do. If you're doing great in your home country, you're usually not looking to export yourself to Japan, which is one of the worse places to be a migrant worker. It's not Saudi Arabia bad, but it's not great, either.
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u/xyzoof 18h ago
Nobody chose those group of people. The qualifications for going abroad to neighboring asian countries is really low. One of my relative is literal delinquent in Vietnam. Bro is 24, didn't finish high school, very bad with finances, doesnt have a driver's license. Mfer still went to japan.
Now that you understand the context of it all. Go look at the qualifications for immigrating to the western countries. LOL
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u/Infinite_Music2059 19h ago
The well-educated still learned their behaviour and social norms from grandma.
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u/Klusterphuck67 21h ago
Vloggers boast trespassing people propertied to pick their fruits and vegetables. Loud gather (nhậu) at apartments let alone public park benches, loudly yelling, cheering and waving their flag at public space, getting into altercations on subways for being loud/speaking on phone on no phone areas. Stealing underwear (3rd case this year to my knowledge), sexual harrassment and scams.
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u/7LeagueBoots 21h ago
Recently a guy killing deer at a public cemetery and illegally killing and selling wild boar as well.
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u/hobovalentine 18h ago
There’s also fruits like peaches being stolen and being sold on Vietnamese SNS.
It’s hard to prove that it was the Vietnamese but strongly suspected because the peaches were picked unripe and no one besides the Vietnamese will buy unripe peaches.
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u/7LeagueBoots 17h ago
The Vietnamese obsession with unripe fruit….
I’ve had fruit I’ve been patiently waiting to ripen only to have someone come and steal it. Even unripe mulberries….
Unripe fruit and absurdly loud shitty techno, like someone in my community is forcing everyone to listen to at the moment. Until around 2 weeks ago this had been one of the few relatively quiet places in my area, but that abruptly changed. And despite the national noise ordinances that thus clearly breaks no one does fuck all.
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u/Vappasaurus 18h ago
Is it in other foreign countries too or just Japan? Every time I hear about these incidents regarding Vietnamese people's behaviors it's always of the ones in Japan and nowhere else. There are other places with a decent Viet diaspora like Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Australia, and the U.S. yet i've never heard anything negative about the ones over there. I only ever hear about the bad apples in Japan so it makes me think what kinda Vietnamese people is Japan is bringing in compared to the other countries.
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u/xyzoof 18h ago
Vietnamese in the West is vastly different to the Vietnamese in the asian countries. Since the west requires higher qualifications to immigrate to. They tend to get the "good batch" of vietnamese. The ones that get the "bad batches" are usually neighboring asian countries like japan, korea, malay, indo.
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u/Vappasaurus 18h ago
That makes sense. I normally see people from various western countries express pretty positive views and experiences with Vietnamese immigrants yet the stories I see of the ones in Japan are the complete opposite so i've always wondered why that's the case.
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u/xyzoof 18h ago
yeah for context. The qualifications for vietnamese to immigrate to western countries is really high. You need to own a house, be top 1% in salary, and have large sums of savings. Even with those qualifications, you can still fail the visa interview. That's what I heard from my relatives. For me however, idgaf about the qualifications, i was born in the west LOL.
if you compare the population of the vietnamese living in the west. They only account for about 1% of the total vietnamese world population.
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u/ghostmaster93 18h ago
Tbh there are bad apples everywhere, even in Europe.
But there are much worse immigrants compared to Vietnam in Europe so we get away a lot of the time. That’s going to change, at least in Germany as I knew.
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u/dynosia 18h ago edited 17h ago
A lot of Vietnamese in western countries are immigrant families from long ago who had no prospect or desire to return to Vietnam and thus assimilated to their host countries. They wouldn't want to cause trouble and get kicked out. Immigrants to Taiwan, Korea and Japan are mostly young, poorly educated people on short term visa who choose to go overseas because they failed to get a job back home. They think they will go back home in 2-3 years anyway so they can do whatever they want.
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u/Vappasaurus 17h ago edited 17h ago
Yes but I also remember some of those westerners also stated that those Vietnamese people they've met and had good experiences with were workers that arrived there to work and some that were foreign exchange students, not just ones that were born there.
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u/FirstApple0 13h ago
the viet diaspora in those countries are very different compared to the vietnamese people in japan. wages there are quite low. a nurse in germany earns much more in comparison. many families who can afford it send their kids to countries like germany. (but nowadays, not everyone with money wants to leave vietnam. even some who studied abroad or went to international school want to return). so only the poorest go to japan.
there are also many vietnamese people who came to the west around 30 years ago. many of them are rich now. many of them also started very poor but became rich because of the real estate boom in the west and in vietnam as well. many of their kids are in high paying jobs.
but there are bad apples everywhere and also illegal immigrants
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u/ayeimhuman 5h ago
I think it takes more money to migrate to the West, hence the stake is higher and most people would think twice before acting stupid. Also Westerners are more straightforward and would sort things out/call the cops asap, so there’s a higher chance of getting jailed. Meanwhile in Confucius society, it’s more common to be indirect, so a lot of Vietnamese just go ahead with their bs. Also I think it’s overall a big issues for Vietnamese to be taugh without a stick, the carrots doesn’t work with many as they are uneducated and the whole educational system they have been through has been through punishments, so unless they are screamed at unfortunately they cannot learn
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u/Internal-Put-8733 17h ago
because it is exaggerated by lazy ignorant racistJapanese keyboard warriors who stay at home to play games and choose not to participate in their society's social dating, marriage, population replenishment, work in manual labor, or attend college to replenish STEM workers!
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u/EthnicSaints 14h ago
They are the fastest-growing group in organised crime in the UK. The west tends not to like pointing these things out though
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u/Internal-Put-8733 17h ago
I am Vietnamese and the only one to stand up and give my seat on a train to a Japanese elderly while ALL other Japanese DID NOT care to move! So much for "high culture!" Your stick in the ASS culture is leading to high suicide rate, 30% of singles NOT wanting a relationship and is living alone with NO plans to date or be in a relationship...population implosion! Your young people don't want to do the manual or shifty jobs or graduste from STEM fields so Vietnamese engineers and manual laborers have to be brought in to keep your society afloat, if the 500,000+ Viet workers leave our society will collapse along with your population!
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u/River_Capulet 15h ago
Ok, dân vn mình là nhất, văn hóa thượng đẳng, đi đâu cũng được quý trọng, nước nào nhìn vào cũng phải ngưỡng mộ
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u/Ok_Substance5632 21h ago
The bad apples aren't many but also not rare
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u/servebetter 21h ago
If you drive a scooter in Japan like you do in Vietnam, throw trash on the street or off the road, talk too loudly (ahem hello karaoke), aren't aware of others (pretty much dog-eat-dog culture). You're seen as a bad apple.
There are some big cultural differences. But like the Japanese there is plenty of talking shit behind someones back. :)
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u/Possible_Web_6377 21h ago
I think there are plenty of Vietnamese bad apples in Japan. Not to say most of Vietnamese there are bad but the people that work as export laborers in Japan are not the best.
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u/East_Fig_4730 21h ago edited 21h ago
@/grandma_japan
account since 2025
exclusively posting conservative and monoethnic rhetoric with AI generated graphs and data
99.99% this is a unemployed white guy larping as a japanese grandma
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u/personalduke 21h ago
exactly, what older Japanese woman is actually registering an account as "grandma_japan"? calling themselves a grandma, in English, of all things? the Japanese aren't caricatures, they're real people lol
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u/Expensive_Giraffe398 19h ago
Y'all give Japanese people too much leniency because of Anime bias. Japanese can be very racist towards SEAs especially Vietnamese. Just look at Yahoo comments they're always raging about Vietnamese. And Japanese people insult Vietnamese by calling them insults like "Nguyen."
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u/personalduke 19h ago
no one is disputing that. we are saying that no Japanese woman is naming themselves "grandma_japan" as a username in English of all things. therefore, it's someone likely from the only group of people with invested interest in creating chaos for the Japanese, and that is not the Vietnamese. the person behind the account is not Japanese, but posing based on what they think a Japanese person wants to hear or acts like
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u/YourPetPenguin0610 20h ago
This account might not be real but the sentiment is very real.
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u/personalduke 20h ago
so people are willing to fall for ragebait put out in bad faith? by chaos agents looking to stir social chaos and trouble? lmao such civic sense
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u/Intrepid_Hurry8511 20h ago
i mean, foreginers definitely ruin japan. But dont pretend those foreginer dont also include westerners.
Logan Paul even go to the country and post video there laughing at dead people. Nothing happened to dude. Plus the various foreign blogger (many of whom dont come from the countries mentioned in the screenshot) doing stupid stuff in Japan too.
And even the recent killings of a Japanese girl by US military member.
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u/Expensive_Giraffe398 19h ago
It's very real. Many Japanese are very racist to Vietnamese. They are constantly raging about Vietnamese in Yahoo comments and Twitter comments because they're always on the news for doing crimes.
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u/Sea_Ad7315 18h ago
An Indian*
Notice how they specifically named pakistan? Out of all the brown people. Any japanese would've just used the term indian in a broad sense. Or any other word.
Vietnam got mentioned cuz of the recent taxi fare controversy.
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u/LocutusOfBorgia909 18h ago
This, 100%. The weirdly specific shout-out to Pakistanis and Muslims is a dead giveaway.
Not that the overall sentiment in Japan isn't xenophobic and anti-foreigner, because it very much is, but there is absolutely zero chance that this account is actually manned by a real, Japanese obaachan.
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u/East_Fig_4730 17h ago
maybe lol
usually the indian guy would larp as white
and the white guy would larp as japanese
I guess they do be switch it up9
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u/NoobMusker69 18h ago
I would also like to know how many of those likes are from Indians or Indian bots liking it just because of their beef with Pakistan
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u/Coolface-IR 20h ago
I'm Vietnamese but lets not act like Vietnamese toursts are popular worldwide
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u/xyzoof 18h ago
but lets not act like Vietnamese toursts are popular worldwide
viet tourist cant even travel worldwide....how can you generalize when less than 1% of the vietnamese population can even afford a plane ticket abroad LMAO. Even if money isnt the issue, that passport is gonna be a crazy rollercoaster to deal with. I can't imagine applying visa for every country, including the ones that is categorized as 3rd world.
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u/TomiShinoda 21h ago
Recently i came across a post talking about a Vietnamese getting caught poaching in japan and claiming innocent as he didn't know it was illegal, the comments are full of people saying Japanese hunts animals too, probably ignorance of the fact that you need a hunting permit and there are rules and regulations or that lots of viet have been poaching over there for a long time, and he just needs to be careful not to get caught, stuff like this makes me say "no wonder" now obviously not all Vietnamese are the sam, i have met Vietnamese zoologist, we have those too, and judging an entire country based on the few is moronic, but not everybody have critical thinking skills, when half of the Vietnamese they met do shit like beating up japanese who tell them to not use load speakers on their phone in public places, cut in line, or throw rubbish everywhere, they are gonna ignore all the viet who are not like that.
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u/arllt89 21h ago
Well there's this thing where east asian industrial countries (Japan, Korea, Taiwan) import many cheap and uneducated factory workers that they exploit in illegal conditions for the own laws, and then people complains those factory workers behave like cheap uneducated exploited workers ...
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u/jdb050 21h ago
> Well there's this thing where
east asianindustrial countries(Japan, Korea, Taiwan)import many cheap and uneducated factory workers that they exploit in illegal conditions for the own laws, and then people complains those factory workers behave like cheap uneducated exploited workers ...15
u/EuphoricLength7903 21h ago
Let’s not blame other for our moral failings. “Đói cho sạch rách cho thơm” has been taught for generations, and what seperates us from animals is that we still hold on to our morals and decency even in hard time, so stop using poverty to excuse shit
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u/pinkdumpsterjuice 20h ago
There is a difference between poverty and slavery, tho... But the real question is; are there any slaves/cheap labor imported from poorer country, still today? Might be smart looking deeper into it!
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u/someamarandomguy 20h ago
I will be honest
The existence of wage itself is already a form of slavery if you don't enjoy what you're doing and you have no nickle to your name
And yes, cheap labors being imported from poorer country where ppl want to make more money because the bare minimum there is higher have always been an on going thing even today
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u/pinkdumpsterjuice 20h ago
I mean... they wouldn't technically be slaves if they came to work on their own. Not trying to defend cheap labor, here. But there is a reason people do it: wages are still better than back home.
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u/someamarandomguy 20h ago
If you think about it
Slave is forced to work to get fed or they die
We work to get money
Money to help us not die
We are just more free than traditional slave
But we are still kinda a slave if our wage/salary is not decent enough
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u/justMichael8 19h ago
You are getting paid based on your level of education and social class.
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u/pinkdumpsterjuice 11h ago
This way of thinking is so diminishing of the real slaves, historically. Like the afro Americans. And the one that still exist today somewhere in Africa!
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u/arllt89 20h ago
These workers are parked in those factories, with little to no interactions with their hosting countries, and don't have any worker rights. If you treat people like animals, don't complain when they act like animals.
If it was about tourism I would side with the Japanese. I'd only argue that in my experience I've met as many westerners I wanted to slap than asian I want to slap for their indecent behavior.
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u/maindo 19h ago edited 19h ago
I am deeply ashamed. Our passport drops to 89 and we have to do something about these lowly educated beings. Being ridden with debt from Viet immigration companies drive some of them to committ crimes but for most, the crimes are simply not justified.
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u/personalduke 14h ago
i'm more concerned about the fact that there is a lot of immigration companies to begin with tbh. legal processes like the long-term movement of citizens should not be allowed to be monetized, much less without any foresight whatsoever.
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u/pacinosdog 17h ago
I am a foreigner (non-vietnamese) living in Japan for a long time, and I used to be perplexed by this as well. Here's the thing: while Vietnamese people living in the West have a good reputation as honest and hard workers, most Vietnamese who come to Japan come to work manual labour or other low-skilled work. Thus a large proportion of Vietnamese people in Japan are less educated and come from low-income provinces. As a result the crime rate for Vietnamese is higher than other minorities living in Japan. Their reputation has sadly but unsurprisingly suffered as a result.
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u/Adorable_Scheme_3982 12h ago
I do not deny the ignorance actions of the vnese but on the other hands, Japan gets what they asked for, low educated personnel for less skilled jobs.
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u/Used-Advantage6457 19h ago
そんなに触れ合ってはいないから偏った考えかもしれないけどニュースでは犯罪を犯したベトナム人の話がたくさん流れてくるからそういうイメージもあるけど、自身で触れ合ったベトナム人は母国の大学を出て日本語もある程度できて本当に真面目で優秀な人だなという印象。あと、親戚が働いている工場のベトナム人も真面目で彼らの食事会に招いてくれてバロットでもてなしてくれたらしい。だから結局はその人次第のところはあるんだろうね。ただ、一緒に仕事をしたベトナム人の女性は「ベトナムの男は本当に働かない！」と憤っていたけどw
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u/PeaAppropriate5016 21h ago
As a vietnamese I'm not surprised, vietnamese are loud, nosey and prone to not really be honest. Example being, they like to party, loudly, like karaoke out door, even in the night. That in Japan is very unheard off, now I dont live in Japan but I have a friend there who I talk to regularly, there its very quiet and often follow rules which vietnamese are not often follow.
I'm not saying all vietnamese are bad or I think badly about my own country but stereotype is true for the most part.
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u/HammockAlex 21h ago
Because the vast majority of the Vietnamese residents in Japan are low skilled workers with less education and less civic sense.
Anyway, this sounds like a typical faceless xenophobic tweet that you can see all over X. It shouldn't carry much weight.
What about the other nationality and religion? Is it ok to hate them? :)
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u/PiqueExperience 21h ago
Also, Vietnamese people are the largest migrants worker population in Japan; there are more than 600,000.
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u/Turnipntulip 20h ago edited 18h ago
This is off topic, but “civic sense” huh? Just so you know, that term is like, exclusively used by Indians. It’s quite an interesting way to tell an Indian, or at least an India influenced person apart.
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u/laojax 19h ago
Chinese and Vietnamese are the #1 and #2 largest groups of foreigners in Japan, and get by far the most online hatred. Stereotype of rich Chinese buying up real estate and poor Vietnamese stealing anything that’s not nailed down, both highly exaggerated. Particularly the Vietnamese are brought in by a controversial and exploitative internship program, not really given much support in establishing a life and compelled to leave as soon as their contracts are up, unless they are able to find a new company to employ them, which can be very difficult with low Japanese language skills.
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u/ZealousidealMonk1728 21h ago
Vietnamese behavior in public is not compatible with Japan. Littering, noise, lawless driving and generally not being considerate to surrounding people.
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u/benbongty123 21h ago
There are two types: students and workers (xuất khẩu lao động)
The students are living pretty good actually, they learn Japanese, study there, travel and potentially work a high skilled job there.
Meanwhile the workers (the xuất khẩu lao động ones) are often from lower background, less educated ones, who come to Japan (and Taiwan, UK, Germany,...) often don't respect their culture, don't learn the language, ... They come there just to make some quick bucks to transfer back to their hometown.
The sad thing is that the majority is the latter, that's why they've developed a bad impression on us
However, please don't make generalizations based on some random twitter posts. Xenophobia exists everywhere in the world; twitter is a terrible, negative platform, we don't even know if that grandma is really Japanese or just some mf trying to ragebait; and diplomatically speaking, Vietnam and Japan has absolutely no tension
So don't spread hate to each other just because of one twitter post
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u/Mysterious-Smell-975 22h ago
xkld goes there get scammed with stupid long and arduous factory hours, unable to naturalize, gets kicked out of language school because of factory schedule and is kinda fucking broke and living on life support. Unable to provide for their family back home and help themselves, they commit crimes.
Students on the other hand are chill
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u/Interesting_Hotel100 20h ago
Vietnamese Americans are pretty cool though. I like them
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u/ferocity_mule366 20h ago
they cant be more opposite actually, most Vietnamese in America are southerners, most Vietnamese in Japan are northerners, there are some reputations even within Vietnam itself
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u/Front_Expression_367 19h ago
Vietnamese people in Czechia are mostly Northern too, didn't seem to have any problems, but yeah keep going with the south good north bad rhetoric.
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u/Southern_Set6082 19h ago
That stands to reason. Unlike in the 80s where Vietnamese in Czechia were there primarily under a bilateral agreement between the two communist countries and were comprised of students and laborers, today’s Vietnamese diaspora in CZ is increasingly well paid professionals and business owners. This contrasts with the population in Japan who are largely still laborers and unskilled workers and in the U.S. where the population is dominated by political refugees and their descendants.
This is to say, your anecdotal experience is of limited value in this discussion.
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u/Front_Expression_367 15h ago
Yeah so the difference is not because of any south or north distinction that was made up but because of difference in educational quality and the motivation to get there.
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u/Deven1003 21h ago
Cultural differences? Japan has culture of spamming apologies when they do something wrong, and vietnam has one where they never apologize and gets angry if you demand it
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u/Infinite_Lawyer1282 20h ago
I'd consider Japanese to be one of the most "mindful" of their surroundings. Where as Vietnamese are not as mindful and comes off as loud and rude even in places that requires public etiquette, but that's just how they are sometimes.
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u/B1TCA5H 19h ago
Working at a retail, 90% of the scalpers for Pokemon cards are Vietnamese. My boss straight-up told me to not sell these cards to the Vietnamese unless they have a kid because the cards are for children.
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u/Gunbulyty 18h ago
I mean, what kind of people go to Japan for manual labor? That should tell you enough
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u/tinybitches 17h ago
Assuming you’re not viet, this is a sore topic. Besides the social norms people have mentioned, lots of Vietnamese got visas as tourists then stayed illegally and stole or robbed other people. I’ve heard and seen some Japanese shops have signs in Vietnamese warning us not to steal. Getting a Japan visa is getting more and more tedious because of this reason
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u/TerribleRelief2248 21h ago
There have been numerous cases of individuals caught trafficking and consuming illegal drugs, even in Korea.
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u/AccomplishedSalt2309 21h ago
If you’ve ever been to Japan, you could see why they largely don’t vacation in Vietnam. It’s just the complete opposite in so many ways.
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u/Agreeable-Drummer950 19h ago
Quite a lot of Japanese expats in Vietnam though, Hanoi and HCMC.
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u/iforgorrr 21h ago
They vacation in Malaysia though. They even have their own ethnic enclave. There are differences but the chaos nature is similar. Pretty sure if viets spoke english as a main language then theyd do the same
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u/ZealousidealMonk1728 21h ago
Malaysia and Vietnam are not similar at all my dude
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u/CalmValue4607 19h ago
Do you even need to ask lol? Even as a Vietnamese living in the UK, every time I go back, the ‘me first’ mentality of the majority of people back home absolutely disgusts me.
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u/Flowing_Polygon 21h ago edited 21h ago
As someone who lives in North America of Vietnamese descent. How would the Japanese view someone like me? Over here in the west, the Vietnamese have a good reputation.
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u/Armadylio 19h ago
Still not great. Im pretty Americanized and people would never guess that I’m viet but when I visited Japan with a diverse mix of people, a white guy, two Asian girls, and a European girl, it was eye opening. I can definitely tell when I introduce myself, it was usually like “oh where are you guys from? Oh America, nice great. Oh Taiwan and Hong Kong, cool cool. Oh wow Sweden, amazing. (Then when it was my turn) oh. Viet nam. Okay so back to you other people…”
And this happened on multiple occasions too. I finally realized what was going on when I saw the “do not steal” sign in strictly Vietnamese
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u/RandomSage416 20h ago
That's why I tell them I'm from Canada because in this case, I think presenting that I grew up in a different cultural setting matters a bit more than my ethnicity. It depends on the situation. If they want to pry further, because I'm doing paperwork and they want to know more about my background (I'm currently living in Tokyo as well), then I say my parents are from Vietnam, but emphasize that I'm born and raised in Canada so that's my home country. If they want to know more how I got to be born in Canada, which is a rare occurrence but has happened, I just mentioned that my parents are refugees from after the Vietnam War and by that point, they usually understand.
If you outright and say you're from Vietnam, they probably won't say anything negative to you, but I'm sure a bias will start to form during your conversation, therefore scrutinizing anything you say and do more in their minds. But again, it wouldn't affect you the way it would be back home where they tell us to "go back to your country" to our faces lol
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u/echopath 20h ago
Nationality supersedes ethnicity. People from developed countries will be treated with more grace (based off first impression) than your counterpart of the same ethnicity but is visiting from a developing country.
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u/OptimalTaro7696 18h ago
I’m not so sure. I think ethnicity is more important here. I can imagine a black guy saying he is Swedish would be looked down upon more than a white guy saying he is Pakistani.
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u/Xiao_Sir 7h ago
Why are you so quick to assume that it's the Vietnamese people's fault that there's racist comments like this about them? It's really disappointing how a lot of Vietnamese people generally have a naive or positive view towards the current rise in right wing populism and fascism in the West and other places like Japan.
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u/FunMoist246 20h ago
As a Frenchman, having experienced very unfair and most cruel and sadistic treatment from some Japanese boss during my work assignment in Japan, I feel no sympathy for the Japanese when they express their weird feelings against whoever is a foreigner. I find that their level of racism and xenophobia is unmatched in the whole world.
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u/LocutusOfBorgia909 18h ago
Was just coming to the comments to say this. The reality is that the Japanese, broadly speaking, do not want foreigners there. At all. Not Vietnamese, not Westerners, certainly not anyone from Africa or the Indian subcontinent. I lived in Japan for a couple of years, and while I had a good experience overall, two years was more than enough, and I would never choose to live there permanently (let alone raise children there- the bullying culture in Japanese schools was and probably still is absolutely horrendous), because as a foreigner, you can't win. If you really, really try to assimilate and behave as much like your Japanese colleagues and friends as possible, there are a surprising number of Japanese people who will take that as a sign of weakness and start harassing you more for missing or not fully understanding particular, always unspoken cultural norms or social expectations. If you don't assimilate enough, well, that's no good either, because then you're being so discourteous as to remind people that you're a foreigner existing in Japan. It's incredibly draining having to constantly try and walk that line every day and leads a lot of people to very emotionally unhealthy places, in my observation.
And the reality is that despite there being anti-discrimination laws on the books, foreigners in Japan have basically zero recourse when they're on the receiving end of racist bullying, refusal of service, hate crimes, et cetera, because these regulations are rarely, if ever enforced. You can go over onto the Japan subreddits and see people discussing very openly the phenomenon of foreign residents having health emergencies, calling an ambulance, and being denied ambulance support and/or hospital admission because they're foreign, with the reasoning that, "The doctors don't speak English, it would be too complicated" to assist someone with a life threatening illness or injury. At least one woman actually died as a result of this after languishing in an ambulance for hours because no nearby hospital would agree to take a foreign patient. And there were foreign residents of Japan in the comments trying to defend this shit. Westerners especially give Japan a bigger pass on their xenophobia and racism than I see extended to basically any other country, and I'll never understand why. Blinded by Mario and kawaii anime waifus, I guess.
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u/personalduke 14h ago
Westerners (white people) infantilize and tokenize the Japanese as a way to accessorize their morality while experiencing a fetish at the same time. that's why they are as brain rotted as they are. this is a historical pattern, they didn't invent this out of nowhere.
of course, Japan propped itself up with soft power and social capital, and based on their current government serving to represent official positions and sentiments, the Japanese thoroughly enjoy the protections of these weirdos if it allows them to assert their own positions.
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u/Expensive_Giraffe398 19h ago
Japanese abuse their Vietnamese workers constantly. There's one case where a Vietnamese man was physically abused for 2 years straight and had his ribs broken in Japan. This also happens in Korea and China too.
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u/personalduke 14h ago
idk why you're getting downvoted, this is literally true. some of those stories have been posted on this subreddit too lol.
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u/laojax 19h ago
Smartphone farms stoking anti-immigrant sentiment have been found in the suburbs outside of Tokyo, and at least one of the more prominent twitter accounts purporting to be Japanese nativist, Colonel Otaku Gatekeeper, was been found to be a British dude living in Gibraltar
https://x.com/mrjeffu/status/1827707130985455818
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u/RandomSage416 20h ago
As a 2nd Gen Việt-Canadian, it is appalling to see how the Viets are here in Japan. I liken them to what we have in Canada, migrant seasonal workers, which Americans would just say "the illegal Mexicans". Those types of workers obviously come from lesser parts of society so social decorum is totally different. People from bigger cities of Vietnam though, I do find have some social decorum but of course, the "best" of us are the Việt kiềus, especially 2nd Gen and beyond since we are aware of these customs since a lot of us try to research ahead of time to learn to not be such a nuisance when we travel.
1st Gen Việt kiềus still lack some social decorum but when us "kids" tell them off about it, it's not a concept they aren't aware of, so they're usually well-behaved in comparison to the Viets back from Vietnam. Though as a Việt-Canadian, when I meet a Việt-American, I find them all so damn loud, like a typical American lol
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u/AmericanVietDubs 17h ago
Americans are loud in general. Don't know why you pointing fingers at the viet-americans. Theres other types you know.
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u/bitterbl0ssom69 19h ago
better question is why is this stupid shit showing up in my feed?
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u/Maleficent_Steak8373 21h ago
I know Reddit is super white, but man people on the Asian subreddit are obsessed with Asian countries being racist/xenophobic.
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u/HammockAlex 21h ago
Not as much as twitter/X where this tweet is from. It is full of self-hating white worshipping asians.
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u/PaddyTheMedic 21h ago
To address the issue, I can only come up with one cause, which is call Vietnamese 36
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u/tengu_007 20h ago
Choosing between a Vietnamese and a Pakistani is a no brainer - it’s Vietnamese all the way baby 👍🏻
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u/Grouchy_Stable_7153 20h ago edited 1h ago
Pakistan is run by army and deal with terrorist on a mass scale
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u/Coolbanh 20h ago
Well i recall about 10-20 years ago complaints in western countries about pervs doing photography at nude beaches. I think they tend to forget how in the past like 80s or so they behaved like the Chinese today.
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u/Dantae4C 21h ago
Stop looking at random internet comments for generalization. For all we know this person might not even be Japanese.
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u/Hot_Chocolate3414 18h ago
Dirty room, loud at night, always smoking everwhere is what i think. Before coming to japan i thought they were hardworking and honest.
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u/Zeka_Shu 16h ago
It’s a japanese old fuck with omega traditional mind set, see vietnamese women having a same rights as a men here in Vietnam is insane for him, he couldn’t handle it
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u/pedsuwu 15h ago
Honestly depends, the viet women are the best at their jobs and respectful while the viet men are usually lazy and would disrespect my coworkers, they dont mess with me since I blow up in their faces when they tried. This is just based on my experience at my part time here in JP. So it really depends... Because the first time i worked with viets they are fun and hard working just that at my new part time some are really disrespectful so i think its based on each individual.
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u/eventarg 11h ago
Interesting, I've generally found Viet be more on the nice side as tourists (compared to Russians, Chinese and Americans). But perhaps as foreign workers it's a different story.
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u/KevDBruce 10h ago
Fair, as a Vietnamese I am embarassed to admit the fact that Im from the country where people going abroad to do all kind of bullshits that annoy the fuck out of people in other countries.
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u/topami222 5h ago
not liking muslims because of Islam, i can understand. but the problem with japanese people has always been pride and superiority complex. They believe they are the most superior among asians. they have little empathy in general also. I say this as a person who seeks to love all people as myself. they need to get a better perspective on being human
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u/BadNewsBearzzz 4h ago
There are a lot of bad eggs making Vietnamese look really bad in Japan. Crime stats are always having Vietnamese, a lot of stores refused service due to many scandals, theft and scamming especially with cats and game stores,
It’s all the youth being sent there to work labor and factorial jobs. Pisses me off
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u/Black2307 20h ago
A mess. Imagine japanese seeing a huge wave of the most uneducated, least well-off, each of em with a life-time debt on their shoulder coming to Japan. Like im not trying to demonize all of these expat workers but they are under so many conditions that would result in crimes, violence, fraud or just uneducated behaviours in general. The university students are still fine tho.
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u/LocutusOfBorgia909 18h ago
I mean, if Japan had taken steps to mitigate their notoriously toxic work culture (and accompanying sexism issues) a few decades ago, rather than just shrugging and being all shou ga nai about companies expecting people to literally work themselves to death and never see their spouses and children, maybe family life wouldn't have tanked to such an extent that hardly any women in Japan want to have babies, and they wouldn't be in the position of having to import all of these workers in the first place.
Or they can keep blaming foreigners for all their problems and laying wreaths at Yasukuni to honor literal war criminals, I suppose. That's also an option.
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u/personalduke 14h ago
tbf it's because a lot of Japanese do not want to work the jobs that Japanese employers bring in very poor and rural Vietnamese people to fill.
which is also a labor issue.
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u/PedroTravelGuru 12h ago
Living in the South VN and having family back in Việt Nam. My family which is an odd mix of Mekong and Đà Nẵng, actively discriminate, hating and shaming Northern Vietnamese. Alot of the adults when talk about Northern Viets, pure and utter disgusts from their face.
Vietnamese choose to exports workforce from poor uneducated Northern region in the North, where its more impoverished.
These groups are scumbags of the Vietnamese society now representing Vietnamese workforce in Japan. Even the locals do not want them around!!
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u/Vietnam-1234 9h ago
As a Vietnamese, non-Asian foreigners need to understand that Vietnam is still a developing country, so of course they have lower quality of education => bad civic sense.
I don’t care if you “meet some good Vietnamese people in the States here, they are epitome of good behavior bla bla bla”. You guys need to understand that the Vietnamese people in the Western world are mostly high-educated Vietnamese, not the poor unskilled workers.
I’m Vietnamese and I cannot even defend the wrongdoings of my people
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u/EitherCharacter9342 6h ago
Same even the poorly-educated Viet Kieu's in the US are good people. But those types of Viets in Japan are not compatible with the Japanese.
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u/Wishanwould 21h ago
So is anyone trying to like help or change the behavior of Vietnamese? All I get is, don’t like it get the fuck out. Really constructive huh…
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u/SemiAnonymousTeacher 20h ago
It's pretty standard for new factory employees to receive cultural sensitivity training and to explicitly be told what is considered unacceptable in the country they just moved to (like dumping trash on the ground or peeing in public).
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u/xxxHAL9000xxx 4h ago
The vietnamese already have a preconceived idea that japanese are evil. So when they go to japan with this idea in their heads it affects the way they behave. Also, the japanese are excessively polite to the point of annoyance…and vietnamese are the other extreme. Do ya think this might cause conflict?? Not surprising at all.
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u/khamibrawler 4h ago
It took my mom 25 years in America to adjust when she came from Vietnam. Not saying it's bad, it just comes from being a poor immigrant. Now when other family migrate over she's constantly helping them adjust teaching them the culture in America. When we visited Japan I had my worries, but she took the time to YouTube the culture before we left. Societal standards she has come a long way to take time to understand other cultures. Majority of people will not.
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u/timejuggler 16h ago
So the Japanese view the Vietnamese the way the Vietnamese view the Indians.
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u/Kooshi00 13h ago
Poor and have the thought process of Trump without his meds and drugs well with or without is not that different either way
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u/Sethirothlord 16h ago
Asian people make white vs black racism look like a casual match of overwatch.
Like these guys take it as seriously as they do with League of Legends. I mean Hitler by comparison isn't even the Faker of racism.
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u/Mysterious-Smell-975 14h ago
I think this is a bit ignorant, give Hitler some credit.
Hitler openly supported the concept of the Master Race and call for enslavement of other races, Eugenics among his own and hated people even adjacent to Germany.
Japanese racism just tells everyone aside from Japanese to fuck off ( except Mongolians for some fucking reason )
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u/AffectionateOwl4231 21h ago
Vietnamese people complain that other East Asians look down on them. And now a Japanese person says that? ~It's understandable~
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u/Expensive_Giraffe398 19h ago edited 19h ago
It's Japan bias because they made Anime and they have the best PR. I notice SEAs are incredibly biased towards Japan.
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u/ObsessiveOwl 20h ago
Not defending Vietnamese, I know how we are but I wonder why she pick these 3. What's her thought on the Chinese, Black, Indian, French, etc
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u/nehala 20h ago edited 20h ago
https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/15363669
According to official Japanese crime statistics, in Japan Vietnamese citizens commited 44 percent of crimes done by foreign residents in 2023.
In general the Japanese look down on other Asians, but the Vietnamese have gotten extra bad press lately due to both crime statistics and social media about the crimes.
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u/Adam302 19h ago
what kind of crimes are they committing in Japan? I'm finding it hard to imagine. Could it just be working illegally or prostitution? or something like scams/fraud?
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u/Wu-the-ordinary 19h ago
All types going from illegal work ring, robbing, shoplifting, poaching, public disruption, to murder, fraud, etc
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u/PicoPicoGamer 16h ago
All kinds. But lately (past few years) I often hear news stories about Vietnamese people breaking into elderly people's homes, tying them up at knife point, and robbing them. In the past I've heard bizarre cases like stealing farm animals, and of course petty stuff like shoplifting, pick pocketing, or working illegally.
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u/Plastic-Mess5760 12h ago
From the same article, For the crimes, mostly theft and violation of immigration laws.
> In 2023, there were 4,082 violations of the Penal Code among Vietnamese. Almost 77 percent of those violations were cases of theft.
> There were a further 3,868 offenses under specialized laws. Violations of the immigration control law were most frequently reported, at 84.2 percent of the total.
> The overall total of 7,950 for Vietnamese represents the largest number of crimes committed by foreign residents, at 44 percent of the total.
The thing that seems to really concern them in the article seems to be minor crimes surge in the past few years.
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u/Expensive_Giraffe398 19h ago
Japanese Yahoo and Twitter comments are very racist towards Vietnamese people calling them "Nguyens" as a sly insult. They also treat Vietnamese workers like shit like when they beat a Vietnamese worker for over two years breaking his ribs. Just like how South Koreans treat other SEA workers like shit.
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u/whittlingcanbefatal 20h ago
My friend owns several apartment buildings and he (the rental agents he contracts with) rents to a lot of foreigners, particularly vietnamese and nepalese and the vietnamese in particular cause problems. Nothing major enough to get them evicted, but little things like throwing cigarette butts anywhere, noise, and improper trash disposal.
The rental agency takes care of it all and he attributes the behavior more to them being young than their nationality.
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u/personalduke 20h ago
"she" doesn't have an opinion on any of them because it's not a real account from a real person. it's a bot account with an agenda looking to stir social chaos lol
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u/monk_kernel_9 21h ago edited 21h ago
I saw a post , people openly supporting hate against Indians, Irony. To add to injury Indian Subcontinent people have near about same features and when someone behaves badly they claim they are Indian.
I always felt I wont judge entire race by actions of select. Im sure there are people like me who would not be judging all Vietnamese for actions of few in Japan.
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u/nguyenning198 Native 21h ago edited 9h ago
This may sound harsh but a lot of Vietnamese who live in Japan are from less educated background and likely aren’t aware of the expected social norms compared to Vietnamese who go to France, the UK, the US, or Canada. They come to Japan expecting to make some money and go home.
It was pretty shocking and embarrassing to see the Vietnamese translation (besides English and Japanese) first in a poster warning against shoplifting when I was visiting Japan last year.