Lothor said:
It does increasingly feel that I'm in an isolated backwater of the world, even though I'm a 20 minute train ride from Shinjuku.
I'm a 15-minute train ride from Shinjuku, and honestly, I haven't noticed any difference at all with the pandemic. If anything, I feel like I get
less of this, which makes sense because any non-Japanese in Japan at the moment is likely to be a long-timer/permanent resident rather than a tourist. (Though honestly, I feel like haven't gotten much of it in the past ten years or so, which I attribute mostly to me getting comfortable in my own skin and showing more confidence in my interactions.)
Lothor said:
Maybe the people mean well but, really, the idea of praising an adult with normal cognitive function for demonstrating basic literacy is ridiculous.
thomas said:
I have never seen it as an insult to my intelligence. To me, it's mere politeness and perhaps a clumsy way of striking up a conversation with someone they fear might not have the conversational abilities of a toddler. I am more offended by those train passengers who deliberately choose not to sit next to me when given a choice (though I appreciate the extra space
).
I agree with thomas. It's annoying but rarely mean-spirited, just a conversation filler. I haven't really gotten the train thing either, lately. Compared to when I came to Japan in 1999 for study abroad and I remember people at an izakaya actually rearranging their seating positions when I came in (e.g. nervously muttering to each other that the person with the highest TOEIC score should sit next to the foreigner) I feel like there's a lot less of this in general in Japan these days, because Japanese-speaking foreigners are less of a curiosity.
That said, I don't necessarily blame people who
do react this way, because to be honest, there are a lot of foreigners in Japan (especially tourists, but including some long-timers too), who
can't speak/read Japanese particularly well.
Not to get too dismissive of it, but compared to the actual discrimination that minorities face in the United States, for example (being told to "go back to their country" despite the fact that many of them were born and raised in America, etc.), whatever "racism" white people face in Japan is both (1) extremely mild, and (2) not actually baseless, as many Japanese people (especially older types) have definitely met foreigners who can't communicate meaningfully in Japanese, refuse to eat certain types of Japanese food, etc. etc.
When I do come across more ignorant types, rather than getting all offended by it, I just do my best to demonstrate that I don't fall into whatever preconceptions they might have, and it's worked pretty well for me. The (rare) individual who is so closed-minded that they can't get around that at all probably isn't worth my time.