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Japan Is XYZ+ABC Beware!! -
07-03-2009, 01:41 PM
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... -------------------------------------------- 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! -------------------------------------------- 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 =( -------------------------------------------- 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). 
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07-03-2009, 02:00 PM
1. I LOVE Sendai. I got to stay there for a summer - so great! People there were absolutely kind and welcoming. Where in Sendai did you get to stay?
2. There's no such thing as a "racist country." It's always about the racist individuals who happen to live in that country. It's always about the racist individuals who get in control, and who make their society reflect their own views towards others. The thing is, there are always going to be racist individuals, wherever you go. There are also going to be racist individuals in power - people who manipulate how others think and feel. So, are there racist individuals in Japan? Absolutely.
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07-03-2009, 02:15 PM
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Sendai? I stayed with a penfriend I ,ade when i was 13 and we`ve stayed in contact for 7 years.. I`m now 20 (infact had my 20th birthday in japan... that was a way to make my teen years go out with a bang!!) I stayed with my friend in 東照宮 (toshogu) I stayed with her in her appartment near to the local school! was a brilliant experience! and I certainly found out about the ups and downs of living in japan, as apposed to being a tourist. Loren
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07-04-2009, 01:15 AM
Assuming that "Japan is a racist country" is actually pretty racist in itself, because it falls into the exact same trap as racist people do- thinking that all people of a particular nationality/ethnicity/religion are the same.
I have lived in Japan for 11 years and just had to sit and think hard to see if I could remember any incidents of racism directed towards me. The only one I could come up with was a real estate agent who told my fiance and I that he had no apartments to show us, when it was quite obvious that they had plenty on their books. Other real estate agents and landlords were more than happy to show us around. In rural areas people can be less tolerant than where I live- I have always lived in/near Tokyo, where Japanese people tend to be pretty used to seeing non-Japanese, and another factor is that I speak pretty reasonable Japanese and already spoke at a conversational level when I arrived due to having studied at university in my home country. The main worry of many Japanese people when dealing with non-Japanese (e.g. at restaurants or hotels) is the language barrier, and this may lead some of them to turn non-Japanese away. Take away the language barrier and that problem is gone.
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07-04-2009, 07:53 AM
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I don't see how a person could brand a whole country as racist. There's good and bad in every nation. 
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