Last year The Japan Times ran an article entitled "Students pay price in visa crackdown" about Americans put through the wringer on minor infractions.
At a subsequent meeting in Tokyo, a spokesperson for a foreign-interests group reacted to the news candidly: "This happened to Americans? Chinese, sure. But Americans? That's overdoing it."
Actually, it's not. One of the sadder effects of the xenophobia coloring political and media commentary over "foreign" crime in Japan is that some Westerners now view "foreign" as a code word for "Asian."