Japanese crime rates are underreported, and in reality most likely very similar to northern European countries in term of safety (and many other things, such as birth rate, another oft repeated misconception).

Popular culture likes to portray Japan as a weird outlier country- but that's only if you compare it to the US. If you include the aforementioned European countries in the comparison, the US is the weird country.

I dno about comparable to northern Europe. Stockholm, Sweden has recently had a huge burst in deadly shootings, and a Swedish official got caught in trying to lie to the BBC saying that rape is decreasing in Sweden. Official statistics show an increase between the last two data points, the last one being from 2015 or 2016 if I recall correctly.

I have bit heard anything of the like in Japan, but as you say it could be because they don't have the same measures/report rate we have, or that I don't check Japanese statistics as much.

And the U.S. violence rates are really skewed. If you remove about half a dozen large cities, the U.S. rate for homicides, etc., is much more in line with the rest of the first world.

Certain crimes are under-reported, but on the whole even accounting for that crime rates are significantly lower for the sorts of petty crime that impact most people.

Crime rate in the US is not an issue, but when talking about travelling in to the US advice like leaving your phone at home etc is quite common. That does influence some people, not to a big degree yet, but it's not getting better atm is it?