I've lived in Japan for many years and speak Japanese alright (disclaimer, that was a long time ago though, in the 90s) and now live in Germany. I travel a lot.
I think what you're saying is directionally correct, but really more of a difference in degree.
For example, I've often seen Asian-Germans being addressed in broken English by older Germans, even though German is their strongest language. Or being complimented on their fluent German. That's got to feel pretty "othering".
And don't tell me the country that just elected mister Trump is as open to the world as is often claimed.
This may all feel completely different if you're around the right group of people, and I imagine that's similar in Japan today, though I haven't been back in a long time.
It's not necessarily going to be the situation forever.
Every demographic crisis involving low birthrates is an immigration melting pot waiting for the population to get desperate enough to change policies.
Unless people accept the reality that perpetual growth is impossible, and that the economy will shrink as the population does. The UK austerity years provides a decent example of such a "managed decline", albeit with more immigrants, but that's not assured when the next conservative government comes to power.
One also might have a preference, entering the workforce, to pay less than 80% income tax into retirement & pension schemes, to support three grandparents who are retired and one great-grandparent who is retired.
The ratios for pension schemes, which some criticize as "ponzi schemes", get extremely bleak extremely fast if every generation is half the size. There is an analogous math problem associated with the national economy, with real estate pricing, with everything.
Which preference do you think is going to prevail?
We have pinned our future hopes on population growth, and we are capable of surviving at population stasis, but rapid population decline from the bottom of the population pyramid demands either fully automated luxury communism (the end of the private sector economy as we know it), or replacing retirement and old age with icebergs to fix the top of the population pyramid.
