Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeB
That's very unlikely indeed, being angry in public would seem to me to be by far the more unusual response, bordering on genuinely weird. Though its something that is obviously limited on both sides to anecdotal evidence. I wouldn't wear a yukata "just because" either, but in my experience it's absolutely cool to wear it to matsuri festivals etc.
|
Ok, you edited your post, so I'll reply again.
Fair enough if they got truly angry, but the OP of that anecdote said "even got a little angry." That sounds to me like they got ticked on a 'jeez, what are you doing, you moron?' kind of level, not an all-out argument. We don't even know if they got angry to his face, or if they just showed their disgruntlement over the issue to the OP. I don't think that's unusual, if the person in question is being particularly embarrassing. Again, only anecdotal evidence, but I've seen several situations where Japanese people would be fairly polite in the face of an embarrassing person, only to bring out the 'ひどいよ！変でしょうね！’ after they'd gone.
As to your second point, there we are in agreement. But in the case of the anecdote; "The guy wasn't wearing it as a joke, he thought it was cool and spoke little japanese which made it even worse." This isn't possibly a 'matsuri' or 'getting into the spirit' situation at all. My point is, basically that yukata-wearing is an act highly bound up by social rules even for Japanese people and acceptance of it when foreigners are involved can be quite circumstantial. So it's not really worth being dismissive of conflicting anecdotes; sometimes when you break it down the reasoning becomes clearer.