This is an interesting topic but reporting on what some random people typed or clicked on social media is such a shallow basis for news. It's a subjective narrative of a subjective trend.

This is somewhat of a pet peeve for me, I'm getting really tired of both narratives this article discusses online. The internet is flooded with posts either calling Japan a perfect place, or posts that smugly call out the previous type by calling Japan a horrible hellscape. Both of them are making the same mistake: not realizing that Japan is just a place. Even those in the backlash are still falling prey to the same exceptionalism that they're trying to satirize. Every post I see on the topic of Japan makes me lose more hope for the ability of the internet to have a nuanced opinion.