You probably take it for granted that during the course of your day you’ll come into contact with people from other countries doing various jobs, like driving a taxi or working in a hotel. This is much less the case in Japan, a country which has far fewer foreign-born residents — only around 1.5% of the country, compared with 12%, 10% and 9% for the U.S., France and Britain (These numbers are as from 2005 and exclude zainichi, those born inside Japan but holding a passport from South Korea, etc., for cultural reasons). While it’s common for foreigners to work in some jobs in Japan, such as the Brazilians and Peruvians who assemble electronics at the Sanyo factory in our prefecture, or the native English speakers who work as language teachers and translators, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve gone into a business and encountered a foreigner doing a job normally performed by a Japanese. There was the young man collecting shopping carts at Costco who didn’t speak Japanese at all, and a girl at KFC who had trouble understanding my American accent because she was also from China. The other day my wife had a similar experience, making a clothing purchase from a lady who seemed to be having trouble working the cash register and communicating with the other staff. It turned out she was a Chinese woman married to a Japanese who had just started the retail job, though her language skills were still “improving.” Clearly as Japan’s population falls due to its low birthrate and lack of net immigration, Japanese will have to deal with foreigners more and more often.
At no time did any of these Chinese people say “Yatta!”
