Last time I talked about the way Japanese perceive Westerners, who kind of hold a special place in society here because we’re so obviously different from the Japanese faces all around us — we basically have a big sign that says gaijin! hanging around our necks. One question I’m sometimes asked is, do foreigners in Japan face discrimination. Now, the Japanese are human beings just like people in every other country, and not everyone is always happy to have to deal with a bumbling foreigner who doesn’t necessarily know the local language and customs yet often assumes that others are familiar with his country. I have naturally experienced some issues during my time here, from an inebriated yakuza who was clearly not happy to have an American breaking the wa in the public bath he was using to the occasional crazy individual who walks up and down the train cars in Tokyo shouting while everyone pretends he’s not there. These instances have been extremely rare, and it’s interesting to observe that even when a Japanese person is put off by you for some reason their usual response is to be more polite. I’ve observed before that most of the “discrimination” many gaijin face is positive, not negative, taking the form of people giving us gifts or letting us out of certain obligations that Japanese would have to fulfill, like the time I broke my vacuum cleaner through misuse and the electronics shop fixed it for free, just because. I think that if people coming to Japan keep an open mind about the country and try their best to respect the local customs and avoid being overly sensitive, there’ll never be a problem.
It’s not hard to spot the gaijin in this picture, which is something you just get used to here.
