I didn't downvote, but your post seems to come from a place of privilege. It puts your comfortable, posh 'digital nomad' touristy lifestyle as something that is worth sacrificing others' lives for. Oh no, you might have to stay in a hotel or long-stay vacation home instead of a short-term rental. Imagine the discomfort.

To me, if you visit some place, you do as the locals wish - after all, their way of life built the place you're visiting in the first place.

It's hard to understand the nuances of a culture. I've been living in Colombia for 5 years. It took me a couple years to understand the subtleties of Paisa Spanish and another year to really start understanding the culture. Visitors need years to understand what the locals want. And no, you can't simply ask them what they want... that doesn't work in indirect communication / "que pena" cultures.

Flipping this around, I'm from New York and certainly don't want tourists to do what I want when they're in my home town. They can do whatever they want.

As a gajin, no matter if tourist or foreign resident, you will never grasp the nuances of Japanese culture in detail.

But you don't have to. You just need to understand and respect the basics. Be polite, respect customs, take your shoes of, when appropriate and you will feel welcome.

It may be a lot harder if you live there and you'll probably never be really accepted.

But not running into cultural disasters is fairly easy to avoid.

From what I've observed in Latin America, lots of foreigners commit big cultural faux pas without even realizing it. The standard American way of closing a car door is considered extremely rude in Colombia. Most foreigners leave a taxi, close the door as they usually would, and walk off without noticing the locals are offended. That'll surely vary by culture too.

That's true. From my experience for two reasons:

Either they really don't want foreigners in their place. For example: in a hostess bar that caters to Japanese salary men you are not welcome as a foreigner. The other reason is that they are afraid that they could offend you by not living up to your expectations, since they assume that you're unable to make yourself understood, and that they could lose face in the process since they won't make you happy.

You're porobably not interested in establishments that don't want to cater to you. And if option B happens then you just thank them, bid good bye and find some other place. What you don't do is raise a stink. That would embarass everybody, be unhelpful and lead nowhere.

There's a plus side to the hard communication part too. That's if you're adventurous and eat everything:

You go into any restaurant that catches your fancy (and it's hard to find a bad place just about anywhere in Japan. Frankly, it never happened to me) indicate that you want to eat and probably frighten them.

Then what you do is smile at the chef and announce: Omakase![1] (literally: I leave it up to you).

After he serves you something (which is usually incredible tasting food) you get to the most important part: You take a few bites, small at the chef and announce: Oishi! (delicious) You can repeat this a few times during your meal.

See, the chef is afraid that he could disappoint you and when you signal how much you like it you make him a very happy person. You may leave the place as a friend and he will be delighted when you return.

What you should never do is asking to exchange things on the menu. That's extremely confusing and very uncommon. If there's anything you can't eat it's a good idea to have a note in Japanese that you can show him.

All those tips are thanks to HNer Mike Charter[2], who wrote some incredible useful tips about Japan (he's a Canadian living there for a long time) and unfortunately stopped posting.

So to cut back to your statement: Yes, there are racist and xenophobic places and people in Japan. But it's not always what it seems. And if your curious and accept things which seem peculiar to us you can experience unbelievable awesomeness in Japan.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omakase [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mikekchar

The important thing is actually to be able to work remotely, which has become much more common this year.

(also, the concept of privilege is overblown imo)

Nah, mate. Nomads living like locals is an oxymoron. It doesn’t come close. I wish Airbnb-ers would stop touting this.

You haven’t seen restaurants come and go. You don’t know the intricacies of local culture and etiquette. If you do speak the language, you don’t speak the lingo. You have never fought with the local municipality over some triviality. You’ve never voted in local elections. There’s no investment from your side. You have no roots in that place. You have no part in that place’s soul and I doubt it has a place in yours. By definition it’s not your home.

If anything, nomads displace people who do want to build a life there.

__Edit__

RE immigrants. I see where that counterargument came from, it may indeed be a fine line. Though it is not what I intended to say. Do note the ”want to build a life there” part.

My line of reasoning is more akin to creating the soul as opposed to leeching off of it.

Nomads, migrants, whatever: if you treat your neighborhood and your neighborhood with respect, that’s what matters.

it may also mean that they don't want to pay the hotel prices they see, so in order to sustain their lifestyle financially, they'll find a cheaper place via Airbnb.

The problem is that policy around short term rentals is agnostic to the renter's intentions. There's no real way I can think of to enforce "conscientious renters only" without also creating a system that gives too much leverage to badly intentioned hosts (for lack of a less context-specific word). So on the balance of considerations, and alongside all of the other effects that short stays have on communities, I'm mostly on the side of throwing this particular baby out with the bathwater.

agreed. I don't think airbnb users honestly think they are living "like a local" when they stay somewhere for a few weeks. they just want to stay in a residential area as opposed to a hotel, and see the markets/restaurants that locals would walk to. or they might just want to pay less.

the reality is for many that point is never reached. in some places, if you are not born there you are not accepted as a local.

i am not talking about digital nomands, but families with children who move because of a job or because of their kids school or other personal reasons. my family was forced to move 3 times in the past two years, and not because we didn't intend to stay, but because we couldn't.

a friend of mine tried to run a business in a german city and had to give up because the local old boys club would prevent him from getting customers.

this is the attitude that xenophobia is rooted in.

sure, someone staying only for a few days is a tourist, no matter how you turn it, but if someone staying for a few months is still treated like a tourist, then i'd consider that a problem.

If you can't speak the language and use local expressions, then you'll always be an outsider.

Source: moved to Colombia 5 years ago and took me 3 years to have people say "tu si eres bien Paisa" and "usted es mas Paisa que una arepa". Have seen a small minority of other foreigners get accepted. Most never learn the language / culture enough and will always be outsiders.

When you start paying taxes and contributing/engaging to the area (working, consuming, giving)

This, quite obviously, varies a lot from place to place - but IMO, if you fill the above points, you're as good as natives. But I think the biggest divider between insiders and outsiders is engagement - if you start engaging in the community, that's the fast-track to getting accepted.

This sounds like gatekeeping to me. That's almost by definition what an immigrant's life is like until they naturalize, but I'd never tell an immigrant that this place isn't their home.

It's also true that I can't have the depth of experience that comes with living in a place for years (or your whole life).

I wasn't exactly sheltered before becoming a nomad, but there is a difference in the experience. You do come to understand in at least a small part the differences between even countries/cities that are a few hundred kilometers apart.

I have found myself revisiting places, and finding places that I like the most within a city. Being sad when I leave Sweden because MAX burgers doesn't really exist outside the Nordic countries.

I am slowly learning another language, though that is a long term project. Ich spreche jetzt ein bisschen deutsch

> It does not take AirBnB to have problems with other parties within an apartment block.

No but AirBnB exacerbates that - and adds a host of other problems too.

> But one of the things the we value as digital nomads is living as the locals live (or as close as possible).

But you're not, not really. Come on. Not in "weeks up to months", you need "months up to years" for that.

>Edit: I would love to know why people are downvoting?

(FWIW, I didn't).

Regarding living like the locals live, of course it's not exact. For example, knowing the language matter a lot, but it's a very different experience to staying in a Hotel in the middle of the old town. Many cities that get rave tourist reviews are not near as nice if you don't stay in the tourist quarter (for example).

Come to Berlin and our party airbnbs if you want a taste, bring an umbrella, condoms are literally raining from the sky around these. It's even worse now that clubs are closed due to covid.

Though its nowhere near as expensive as people seem to imagine (depending on your destination).

My intent was just to share a little.

Just to name a few you can stay in aparthotels , a common thing in almost every country, or you can just rent a regular apartment directly with the owner, instead of doing it through Airbnb.

IMO Airbnb does more bad than good and transform centric areas of big cities in amusement park for the tourist.

AirBnB actually solves a lot of this problem, though. I can't imagine the difficulty of finding 20-30 different, independent, 1-month apartment stays directly with the apartment owners, dealing with security deposits and short-term leases, etc.

They're a directory/marketplace/availability clearinghouse. They're an intermediary. They're a payment processor. They provide ratings and reviews. They provide some miniscule level of support.

It might be the case that AirBnB is more bad than good, but I think it's at least a little unreasonable to suggest "you can just rent a regular apartment directly with the owner" for the digital nomad case.

It's easy enough to filter to self-catering apartments on booking.com. My partner and I generally stay self-catering wherever we go, we prefer the comfort of an apartment over the amenities that a hotel is able to provide.

Regardless of which platform I booked on, I'm the same tourist when I show up.

In a lot of countries the rental market is broken and prevents this. I've had this issue in the UK when I needed to move to London on very short notice after getting a job offer (and didn't have enough money saved up to afford a month's worth of hotel until I sort things out).

I had enough money to pay a deposit and a couple months worth of rent, so all of that paid upfront plus the employment contract should be enough to make most landlords happy.

The problem? The rental market around here seems monopolized by agencies and they all had referencing/application fees which means that even if I agree to pay the fee and take the risk of losing the fee if I get rejected I still wouldn't be able to get the flat quickly (my objective was to pay 2 months + deposit upfront and get the keys the same day). If I wanted to mitigate the risk of being rejected it would mean I need to apply to multiple properties at once, paying them a referencing fee to each (which I guess I'd lose if I back out even if I end up accepted).

Airbnb took my money no questions asked and I had a place to sleep on the same day. I'm still in that place 3 years later (paying direct now obviously)! I hate Airbnb for other reasons, but there definitely is a need for a better short-term rental system.

As far as renting from a regular owner, I think the hard thing about that is discovery.

The trap with AirBnb and urban STR's is the idea that you can live like a native, but the truth is you're not fooling anyone but yourself.

-DFW

You're looking for an aparthotel (generally purpose-built building with special planning designed for this use-case). Common in many European cities, at least.

The problem is that airbnb is not sustainable with just these "guests" (I mean is it sustainable at all?). So you are not paying the real price for this service, but are subsidized by they guests that are not wanted.

Assuming it was still possible, without AirBnB we would likely be paying private rental rates on Craigslist/Gumtree.

Both Christmas' and NYE so far we have not stayed in AirBnBs because we get priced out of the market (we have ended up house sitting instead)

Doesn't happen too often though.

I had one experience where we walked away the next day and opened a support ticket due to misrepresentation and a landlord who was mentally unwell and scary. AirBNB dragged their feet a little but did refund us fully within 24 hours. In that case I just booked something new and it was all good.

I've never had someone cancel on me on AirBNB.

This is important to note. AirBnB is not the "cause" of the problem, but seems to make it easier to cause the problem. Shouldn't they just increase the guest liability?

I'm a strong proponent of "living like the locals" so hope that spirit of AirBnB does not fade away.

Holiday home rentals have been around way longer than AirBnB, allthough I do admit that AirBnB makes the rental experience much easier.

These days, lots of flats are still on other booking engines too such as Booking.com or HomeAway.