Japan is a great place to be in as a tourist. Easily the best of the first-world countries I’ve visited.
But working and living there is another thing. If you have real talk with people scrapping there — not the type of conversations you have with families and friends wherein everyone tries to conceal the truth — it’s… not so great.
Mass media had romanticized the concept of immigration to most Filipinos for years, and despite heightened risks in the last two decades, many want to go to supposedly developed countries mainly to make money no matter how much they would be treated as dirt.
It rages me that this government is still heavily addicted to remittances.
Not just mass media. Even “enlightened” pinoys on FB, Reddit, and Twitter post inconveniences in the country and prop up Japan as not having those problems which contributes to the mythologization of immigration and the age-old “MaG-AbRoAd Ka Na” ethos.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this here already but within just an hour of being in Japan, I’ve already seen littering (by locals, not tourists) and they no longer teach escalator etiquette there (the PA announcer even warns people not to walk on the escalator). I also rarely see babies and their workforce is disturbingly old.
Also, the relatively affordable food and goods means the yen is weak, which is good for us but bad for them.
It’s no different from Eastern Bloc propaganda imo. Even more annoying in some respects because its the people themselves spreading it and not the government. You think things are in the pits there in 2025? It was way worse before 2005.
I was a doomer way before the current crop of doomers are active. Moved from the Philippines to the US. On my first visit after moving (almost two years after I left), the improvements are very noticeable. It was a reality check for me to stop dooming about the country.
The Philippines still has a lot of problems, but we must suck it up and make it better in a slow and sure way. But yes, if you want a chance to get rich quick, you’re free to work abroad and/or migrate there.
