Their cultural collectivism wouldn't ever become a problem for you unless you tried doing something individualistic or to "bucking the trend", which you shouldn't be doing anyway because you are a foreigner, and always will be.
Biggest potential for conflict recently would be if you weren't a covidiot and didn't want to wear the mask. You basically wouldn't have been able to go anywhere. They literally stopped a train for an hour because people were yelling at an old man to "put on the mask, bigot" and he refused so the police had to come and convince him to get off.
As a foreigner you would have a little bit more leeway, especially if you live in a big city and not a rural area. It's kind of expected that foreigners act like dumb barbarians because they're stupid and can't help it, and young people think that's cool even if they couldn't get away with the same behavior. I'm just saying don't let that be the only thing stopping you from living there if you really want to because it won't affect you much and you can make those non-conformist friends.
Japan has a culture that is hard to penetrate for an outsider.
You can participate in it, but they're not changing it for you.
Of course, people are still trying.
Their cultural collectivism wouldn't ever become a problem for you unless you tried doing something individualistic or to "bucking the trend", which you shouldn't be doing anyway because you are a foreigner, and always will be.
Biggest potential for conflict recently would be if you weren't a covidiot and didn't want to wear the mask. You basically wouldn't have been able to go anywhere. They literally stopped a train for an hour because people were yelling at an old man to "put on the mask, bigot" and he refused so the police had to come and convince him to get off.
As a foreigner you would have a little bit more leeway, especially if you live in a big city and not a rural area. It's kind of expected that foreigners act like dumb barbarians because they're stupid and can't help it, and young people think that's cool even if they couldn't get away with the same behavior. I'm just saying don't let that be the only thing stopping you from living there if you really want to because it won't affect you much and you can make those non-conformist friends.