how will i be seen as in japan?

Mike Cash said:

"Excelled in English"???

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....and you don't see how your "belittling"???

Well whatever you wanna say will have to wait 2-3 days for a reply.

Before you confirmed your intent to be contentious and combative, I had said nothing belittling you.

Seriously, though, your posts tend to be rambling barely coherent diatribes presented in abysmal syntax. Do try to organize and present your thoughts in a more cogent fashion. Cutting the stream-of-consciousness omnipresent parenthetical sidebars would help tremendously. They are the dog turds in the tall grass of your narrative; they constantly detract one's attention from the crossing of your figurative lawn and add nothing positive to the experience.

I've spent years on my hobby of "piss off the troll/derogatory idiot" on youtube, and despite with as little effort as I put into it excelled in English

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I have to side with Mike here. Your English sucks.

You can't seem to get "your" vs. "you're" straight, or "there" vs. "their", just for starters. Don't force me to go on. Plain and simple, you do NOT excel in English.

albeit I've yet to visit japan itself i have lived and interacted with enough Japanese resident/tourist since living in Hawaii to be able to confirm it first hand.

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No, living in Hawaii is NOT first-hand experience with Japanese in Japan. Dealing with nikkei and J tourists is NOTHING like living in Japan and experiences the real situation here. I honestly think you have no clue about how much experience people like Mike and I have living in Japan.

If it didn't come out of a cartoon, he doesn't want to hear it.

...or by what some say based solely on what is online. It's strange how Japan seems to be portrayed in either black or white terms, far more than other countries apparently, to be either one big anime La-La Land or a country of frothing racists who hate foreigners.
Then there are a few self-proclaimed experts with views based solely on several vacations in Japan. You really have to live in the place for a few years and get out a lot to get a basic knowledge. As anywhere, the majority of Japanese will be pretty much indifferent to you - with a minority who are more interested in knowing foreigners and a tiny number of neanderthals who will shun you.

All,
I'll add to this post it's close enough to the one i was going to start. I too was wondering how i was going to be treated or looked at when i arrived here.I think my times here during previous trips I was much better received. I dont know what has changed in 5 years.I think it might be my luck.
I have been given the gift of being able to get along with anybody. I smile and i am Pleasant. I have two strikes against me I realize that i am not Japanese and the 2nd strike is that i am black. I have been told that being black here is a step above being Sub human(depending on who you talk to)I am also not the type of black guy who will scream "it's because i'm black" I dont believe in that for a minute.. there is good and bad everywhere..
All of us are not Bad people. I Understand that a lot of the Japanese here only see what is on TV and what they see in Roppongi at 1:30am on the corner I actually had a chat with one of those types... when we were done I thought he was going to have me killed.
Yes, i undertand that i look "typical" in my clothes. but try to look at the inner person... if i see one more woman apply a death grip to her hand bag i'm going to scream.
When a Japanese tourist or any tourist needs help in NYC.. I go out of my way to help them- in some instances getting on the train with them to make sure they get to where they have to to go.I took 3 Japanese guys once all the way from downtown to Yankee Stadium to make sure they arrived intime for first pitch.
Ladies, I wont bite. it wont hurt you to sit next to me on the train. I can tell by the bulging veins in your feet and i'll bet that your toes are not normally that color-you feet hurt.I get it . 5" heels will do that. I think it looks silly to have a free seat next to me and you wont use it. Trust me, if it were the other way round i would sit my *** down.
Guys,
I hate it when you look at me in disgust.... I'm sorry i am not japanese... I do have feelings too... the guy who got up and stood on the train when i sat down generally hurt my feelings.. then a younger guy sat down and then the older guy said something to the younger guy in Japanese. I did not want to know...
I've been here for a month.... I have 2 weeks left... please try to make me feel like i want to come back.

Wanna know something? I'm lily white and I've had the same or very similar experiences. I've been standing on the street corner waiting for the signal to change so I could cross the street when a woman sitting at the red light suddenly spots the gaijin and in a panic lashes out frantically locking all her car doors (the old-fashioned manual type). I've had the cops called out to investigate myself and another lily white foreigner committing the offense of standing on the sidewalk at 10 p.m. and conversing in quiet tones in English. I've had the won't-sit-next-to-the-gaijin thing more times than I care to remember. I've been in a station standing quietly reading a book on the platform waiting for a train, not even standing near anybody, and had a Japanese guy go all around the platform warning all the women and young people that there was a gaijin present and to stay away from him (obviously mentally disturbed...which is how all the people he talked to treated him as well). Until the big influx of foreigners who started to fill some regular jobs in Japan, and until the JET guys and gals gave practically everybody some minimal exposure to a foreigner, for years my daily routine at work was to go to places that had one of two reactions: they either totally ignored me hoping somebody else would attend to me or they would totally batsh!t freak out and loudly proclaim their consternation over having a gaijin show up, as they couldn't speak English.

Yes, I know being black is a different proposition from being white and I know that it has its own particular set of baggage that goes with it. But I just don't want you to think that whites are immune from it. We get a lot of the same stuff.

Ditto to what Mike wrote.

As for being black and treated as subhuman, a black friend of mine with a Japanese wife went on vacation in Okinawa. A restaurant owner berated him up and down until my friend told him that he could understand the language. He told the proprietor not to be so upset over the fact that he resembled the many black soldiers on base nearby that had given him trouble, because my friend was NOT a soldier but an English teacher living in Hokkaido.

The restaurant owner apologized profusely. So, you can see that sometimes circumstances mean a lot.

Then again, if you hang out with dreadlocks in shop arcades and hit up J girls with lines about being from Jamaica...you get what you deserve. Glad to hear there are friendly New Yorkers.

Gentlemen,
Thank you for the informative replies. I must first point out that i had to visit the site to find out if there were any replies.The outbound Email Notification either is not working or i have it configured wrong.I sent an email to a friend back home and she swears she replied- but i did not get it.. so it might be on my end..

I am glad(well, not really) that i am not the only one having to deal with this issue.I dont normally let things like this get to me.There are many other things in life to worry about.. These are small peanuts.I guess it was so in my face i wanted to Vent.


I hope that i did not offend anyone.I am sure that a lot of Japanese read this forum as well. I think if i did they would have chimed in already.

I am here to enjoy myself, learn the culture and hopefully take something back to NY that i will have a lifetime.I did meet a load of great people the last few times here and so far this visit is the same..

The Closest i ever came to an Arcade is trying to figure out Pachinko...The thing about being from Jamaica cracks me up.. I never thought that would be an "IN"....Tell you what though... i did want to belt one of the African Pimps or Hustlers the other night.. very persistant he was...

Actually, Not having anyone sit next to you on the train can be pretty refreshing....speaking of train getting on the fast one heading up to Osaka,Kyoto.. before i head back home..

Thanks Again

Hey all,
This just in... ME! I'm back from Kyoto and Osaka. I had a wonderful time and could not wait to tell you what went on..After me going off at the Gob about how Mean spirited some people can be.. I had just the Opposite experience at Close to Mt Fuji.To make this short and to the point. I was at a street corner and a gentleman on a bike came up next to me.We struck up a small chat I was saying that the cloud cover was covering up the mountain. My camera was useless. He said there was a temple and a shrine close that i could go visit. I said yes and he led the way.We arrived at the location wandered through and then noticed the time, there was a good chance that i would miss my train back to Kyoto.he not only took me to his home where i met his wife.I helped his son with a few words in english. I was driven back to the shin fuji station complete with a bag of sweets to eat on the train and a handful of trickets.

I actually made this longer than i wanted it to be,but i am glad that i got this out.

I spent two years in Japan and had a great experience there. No place is perfect but you can find trouble anywhere if you are looking. I spent a lot of time in the south living in Fukuoka and other places in Kyushu. I also spent about 4 months in Okinawa and found it to be very different to the mainland but also enjoyed my time there.

I think the experience you have will be the result of how you try to interact with others (Captain obvious I know).

Or, as Rickie Lee Jones (and Gautama Buddha) tell us, the world you see around you is the one that you make.