[edelweiss]

I saw black people in Tokyo and Osaka and they seemed to fall into two groups. One group were the English speaking Africans who worked in and around the adult entertainment districts hoping to make money by escorting tourists around and into places like strip joints, etc. The other group were American, Canadian, UK and European tourists/students roaming about looking just as out of place as the rest of us non-Japanese.

I am pasty white with curly blonde hair and I have had kids staring at me rather intensively even in Tokyo. I also had old ladies giving me dirty looks for sitting next to them on the subway. And there were the teenage boys making "hamburger" jokes about me and my friends because you know, we're fat Americans. I think they were shamed well enough when they realized they were not at all sly and I understood them. I also had a girl in a Coca-cola T-shirt, wearing a Micky Mouse ear headband sneer "Gaijin" at me in a Starbucks! Hows that for ironic? But for every single bad/odd experience I've had a dozen good ones.