Forgot to list those - amazing diving, especially when the sperm whales are in. Just a pain to get there 20+ hour ferry from Tokyo
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but almost all diving shops never dive longer than 40 minutes. (If you ask why, they will tell you it is dangerous to do so.. "We don't do decompression diving, longer than 40 minutes is dangerous. Do you even have a licence?"). I eventually found a place that would let me do 50-60 minute dives after phoning over 15 dive shops. Most just said "muri" (impossible).
When we dove in Cozumel in Mar 2009, the dive crew and others in the boat echoed japan-diver. They said the Japanese were really careless with the marine environment. The guide said they give a special briefing to the Japanese, often with a translater, explaining they would have to report the tourists' carelessness if they were careless. I liked hearing it.
I do not know why most of diving shop said "muri"(impossible).
However if you have dive computer, you can dive computer profile, that means you can dive more than 1 hour. I always dive more than 1 hour with divers from outside Japan in Okinawa. I hope you can find nice diving shop in Japan. Please do not be disappointed.
Regarding taking camera of novice divers, NOT only Japanese, but same in everywhere. I took photo of American girl at -30ft who had camera during open water training.
NOT ONLY Japanese diver who are careless, but same in everywhere. I am a frequent traveler to Cozumel and took DM and AI training at Aqua Safari, Cozumel, and dove with so many nice U.S. divers there. At pre diving briefing on DM training, I told "This is a national marine park, please do not touch, catch, take anything in water!" However I was disappointed with a U.S. diver who sit on, break, kick soft coral at Paradise Reef.
And most of Japanese divers can not understand English, but this is same for U.S. divers coming to Japan. I translate and make briefing in English even though dive as a guest.
Well I would like to know too but it is what they said and I tried many different dive shops in the Kansai area. I even got a Japanese friend to phone for me in the end in case it was a "gaijin" thing but the answers were exactly the same.
Anyway thanks for your input. Let's hope I can get some great experiences diving here while I am still living in Japan!