Visitors are amazed at the apparent harmony that reigns amid the bustle of city life, especially the absence of the levels of violent crime that seems endemic in much of the rest of the developed world.
Vending machines stand like naked sentinel robots in the street at night – vandalism is unheard of.
Crime rates, however, are rising, especially violent crimes involving the young. Even sexual assaults are increasing—although this might reflect a reduction of social stigma in what remains a deeply conservative society, where previously the number of reported incidents was severely constrained.
Still, Japan remains one of the safest countries in the world to live or visit. Historians and sociologists like to explain it all as a continuation of the feudal spirit of rigidly reinforced social hierarchies, with company presidents as latter-day shoguns and middle management as reincarnated samurai warriors.
I would say the prevailing social harmony clearly owes much to the homogeneity of the Japanese population. From a stock of Mongolian, Chinese, Korean, and perhaps also, Malay settlers, the country has had several thousand years to develop a solidly unified ethnicity. Japan has never experienced the kind of large-scale immigration or even –until the postwar US occupation from 1945 to 1952 – foreign invasion that has made for social conflict in other countries.
I see you are from Brazil, and there are lots of Brazilians here, and as an Immigrant you will naturally encounter some prejudice which is endemic in the native population, and you may get paid less than Japanese might expect for the same work.