> Many of the visitors come with a deeply romantic vision of Paris - the cobbled streets, as seen in the film Amelie, the beauty of French women or the high culture and art at the Louvre.
> The reality can come as a shock.
> An encounter with a rude taxi driver, or a Parisian waiter who shouts at customers who cannot speak fluent French, might be laughed off by those from other Western cultures.
> But for the Japanese - used to a more polite and helpful society in which voices are rarely raised in anger - the experience of their dream city turning into a nightmare can simply be too much.
Capitals tend to attrack most inmigration. As an anecdote, my son's primary class in Madrid had more than a third of inmigrant parents, including Russia, Iran, South America (most) and Morocco.
The question, at least for me, is not where you come from, but how well can you integrate. Latins have it easier because we share the language.
Japan has very little immigration when compared to other countries. In 2015 ~2% of the population was from immigrants. The USA for comparison, has a 14.5% rate (+/- a few tenths, I'm pulling that from memory.)
12% in the most foreign-populated area still seems very low by European standards. Given that a lot of the foreigners are Chinese and Korean, to the European eye it looks even more homogeneous than that.
Seine-Saint-Denis, for comparison, had 27% residents born outside Metropolitan France, and that was in 1999. Marseille is 25% muslim.
- "Capitals tend to attrack [sic] most inmigration."
- "Not all capitals - it is a question of policy."
- "Interesting. So in Japan people inmigrate [sic] more uniformly?"
... then you don't answer but proceed to compare capitals of the world to each other. I thought we were comparing countryside immigration to capitals vs to the rest of the country. Not between countries.
But narag was talking about immigration between countries: "...had more than a third of inmigrant parents, including Russia, Iran, South America (most) and Morocco". I understood narag's point as "that's a fast demographic change, but inevitable in any modern large capital city, as capitals tend to attract immigration".
My counterpoint was that there is nothing inevitable about it, and that it is a policy choice. Tokyo is a very large, very modern city with a massive economy, yet it has a very modest foreign population and is recognizably Japanese almost everywhere you go (which results in being really safe even at night, almost completely litter-free, and certainly a great experience of Japan for a visiting tourist).
A misunderstanding then. I just meant the difference between big cities and the rest, similar to Paris/rest of France.
The difference you meant was between Spain and Japan. Only 14 km of sea separate our mainland from Africa, with little boats full of desperate people crossing every day. Also we have two towns in continental Africa with land borders with Morocco where border barriers are sometimes just rammed.
But that's just the most dramatic side of it. Most immigrants simply cross the borders as tourists and stay for work. I guess Japan is a little different.
FWIW, Madrid is very safe at night. Only a few neighborhoods, far from downtown, are dangerous.
Edit: immigrant, note taken. Inmigrante in Spanish.
It specifically says towards the bottom that in Japanese magazines, they depict Paris as being filled with people so thin they look like stick figures and that only wear high class fashion.
Idk about high class fashion, but I thought everyone in Paris dressed surprisingly nice. Scarves everywhere lol. Even people wearing sweatpants seemed put together with planned outfits.
