[LorenPaul]

Hello All!

Haven`t been around here for a while because I was dossing around in the J-land! (Sendai to be exact)

Brief history: I was in tokyo for 2 days of the entire 3 week trip, the other 19 days were spent in Sendai, living with a good friend of mine in her appartment!

The objective of the trip was to experience Japan on a day to day "living" level instead of as a tourist!

So this post is my minor attempt to put a little bit of the "I heard from uncle bobs friends son`s friend that Japan is the most racist place in the universe!"

Or the whole "Japan hates foreigners so much that we all have to wear kevlar and riot cop gear to go grocery shopping!"

Thing to rest!

So when I arrived, my bags were unfortunately lost by Air France, so I decided to wander around Tokyo`s shinjuku district, Once I`d got my bag back I needed to get my nightbus to Sendai, so here was the beginning of the old "racism" thing...

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If I`m honest, it was a "racist" attitude, but hardly offensive.

It came in the form of a stupid bus driver who thought that by not letting me on the bus incase I was too stupid to read my own name on the seating roster, and/or didn`t understand "row 4" whilst he made gormless looks at me waving 4 fingers in my face, he had to walk me to my seat and point at it.

Yeh, at the time when I had about 3 hours sleep in 2 days it pissed me off... for a whole 5 minutes until the other end of the spectrum appeared as an awesome japanese guy called shoichiro sat next to me and offered me some salted squid, spoke decent english and we both helped each other learn our target languages respctively... he made the 6 hour coach ride alot more comfortable and had a brilliant sense of humour.

so.. one "racist" (aka. uneducated) asshole. one awesome fella! (shoichiro)

Once I arrived in Sendai I relaxed into things, but I started to notice what alot of people speak about, which is when your riding on trains.

Trust me, you will be the last person to have someone sit next to you, and people won`t want to be close to you,

but I wouldn`t say it`s because they`re racist, I found that it was more because they don`t "know" you or your kin,

It`s merely human nature to stick to what you know is safe, or something you trust.

Just so happens they`d rather trust a native, or someone of their same background than you.

I was totally fine with this, at 26 degrees and 30 - 40% humidity, the more space I got from people, the better my experience!


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The flip side to all this,

I found that the Japanese so called "racist attitude" can also have a flipside.

When I was waiting at sendai station for a train that would take atleast 40 minutes to arrive, I saw a gyaru in some killer heels!

There were no benches and the platform floor was dirty as hell and red-hot!

I had 2 towels in my bag from going to the onsen earlier that morning,

so in my best japanese i offered her a towel to sit on the floor and got on with my business until the train arrived.

But when the train arrived, she was so damn chuffed that a "gaijin" gave her a towel to sit on, and helped her out more that one of the many other japanese standing on the platform, she bought me a big bottle of coke to say thank you!

Thats one native who will now be more willing to sit next to us "smelly gaijin" on the train ;-P

Only shame was that I`m diabetic so i couldn`t enjoy that big bottle of coke =(

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I guess that this un-planned badly written post is just trying to say one thing.

Japan isn`t a racist country, there are plenty of other equally "civilised" countries out there who have a much worse racist attitude hidden under their well polished exteriors than Japan.

So in the end, don`t blame the country, blame the individual(s).