Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
We have had many posters her complain about its use. I never agreed with them, but they are still out there.
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Good morning! Looks like I missed on a bit of this thread while I was sleeping!
Yeah I call all myself gaijin to all my friends/students etc, some of them are un-phased, some laugh a little, some ask me if it's ok to call myself that (the overly cautious type).
It just means outsider, really, which is what I am. Even if I lived here for the rest of my life I'd still be an outsider to the culture, and those who can't accept that really need to reevaluate where they are living.
What I do understand is those who are born and raised in Japan and don't carry a gaijin-card still getting called gaijin, that could get on their nerves especially if they only knew Japanese and it's culture.
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I see your point MMM about not changing the title, I was worried people would use the term elsewhere because they'd seen it in the title without having read the posts, but yes racism is a pressing issue in the topic at hand.
The government files also keep track of your family blood lines and which cast you descended from, a lot of buraku (it's so messed up that it sounds like "black") people have their lives ruined because of this system, and they are just as Japanese as other Japanese people.
If you don't know about Buraku people, please start another thread and we can expand on that there
But yeah, the point is that social status, position, class, colour, creed, etc are all very prominent factors in this culture, and anyone coming into it needs to accept that or leave ><