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Talking to foreigners?

Gord

先輩
16 Apr 2004
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hey guys, I've noticed that alot of the time when I see other gaijin, we usually just walk by eachother, usually it's a nod, it's really wierd. What do you guys do when you see gaijin? Once or twice I've struck up a conversation, it's both great and really odd that we talk just beacuse of our skin colour
 
Gord said:
hey guys, I've noticed that alot of the time when I see other gaijin, we usually just walk by eachother, usually it's a nod, it's really wierd. What do you guys do when you see gaijin? Once or twice I've struck up a conversation, it's both great and really odd that we talk just beacuse of our skin colour
Personally, for me -- and let me stress that I mean no offense to you or anyone else by this -- I've always found this practice to be rather offputting, and at times even downright creepy.

I remember one time when I was just walking down the street with a (Canadian) friend of mine when we were approached by a complete stranger who proceeded to talk to us like we were his best friends, or long-lost cousins or something. We politely engaged him with small-talk so as not to seem rude, but after he left us, our mutual reaction was "What the hell was that all about?"

I guess it comes from a feeling that all gaijin in Japan are kindred spirits, or share a sort of brotherhood of sorts. I don't really buy into this. I've met too many gaijin who are in Japan for completely different reasons than I am, or whose feelings about the culture, the people, the language, etc. are so completely different from mine for me to feel anything but the most superficial connection with the random gaijin who passes me on the street. That's not to say that there aren't some who I might genuinely be able to be friends with if I knew them better, but the chances of that being the case, I think, are no more or less so than with the average Japanese person.

Having the same skin color (or even being from the same country) doesn't necessarily mean that we share similar personalities, experiences, interests, or anything in any meaningful sense, so the idea of "kinship" based upon such a superficial trait isn't something that I particularly go in for -- but maybe that's just me.
 
Homesickness? I still don't understand. When I get "homesick", I miss people like my family, my close friends (not all of whom are the same race as me) and most of all my fiancee (who also is not of the same race as me).

As such, seeing a random white dude when I walk down the street in Japan doesn't do much to ease whatever degree of "homesickness" I might be feeling at the time, for the same reason that I don't feel like I'm surrounded by a group of my best friends when I walk through campus here just because the people around are predominantly of the same race as me.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm being holier-than-thou here. I try not to judge people who say they feel more "comfortable" with others of their own race (since it's usually just a side-effect of the environment they were brought up in), but I try not to perpetuate such attitudes myself, as I consider it to be in many ways a mild form of bigotry. If you feel "more comfortable" with people just because they look the same as you, what that really means is that (to some extent) you feel _uncomfortable_ with people who look different from you, and I think anyone who feels like that should give some thought to why exactly that is.
 
I would guess that different people find comfort in different ways.
 
i guess people dont feel as lonley or outcasted when they meet someone that they can talk to in their native language
 
I can understand that you feel like that when meeting someone who looks more like you. I would probably feel that to some extent too.
 
It looks like I'm in the minority here, which kind of saddens me but I suppose shouldn't be much of a surprise.

I guess it just comes from personal experience. I've met far too many genuinely good people who look nothing like me (and far too many jerks of my own race) to believe even for a second that the degree to which a person's skin color or face resembles my own should in any way determine how "comfortable" I should or shouldn't feel around them.
 
Don't worry JT.

I agree.

Passing another gaijin on the street in Tokyo is passing just another face in the crowd, why talk? Theres a time and place and its not there.
 
I agree with pooka. And to be honest I live in Australia (which is a multi-national country) and the fact is I would rather get out there meeting japanese people while I am in japan rather than meeting lots of other gaijins.
 
I hear you jt. Only people who've lived in Japan can understand this strange phenomenon. I actually felt a little uncomfortable when I'd be on the train and see another lone gaijin there because both of us felt obligated to acknowledge each other. And I, like you, always thought it was a little strange to acknowledge people simply because they too were foreigners. Although all foreigners in Japan do share the common bond of being strangers to the country, many of the other gaijin I was obligated to talk to were actually really annoying and it was awkward talking to them. Sometimes it was alright though.
 
Yeah, and let's not forget that there are plenty of people in Japan who aren't American, Australian, British, Canadian, or New Zealander, and who probably don't speak English. How do you automatically know where someone is from just because they aren't Japanese, or if they even speak English?

Actually, that makes me wonder what the ratio is of English speaking foreigners to non-English speaking foreigners. Hmm...
 
It was kind of cool that, while I was in Japan, I had that same foreigner-in-a-foreign-land connection with some non-english speaking gaijin. I'd go to bars and end up chatting with people from Pakistan or Brazil or something because we had the "foreigner bond". Sometimes the weird gaijin phenomenon works out positively.
 
I don't know, but when I was living in Japan I felt no compulsion to talk to other foreigners. I don't go around saying hello to everyone at random back in the US just because we have the same shirt on or something. Why should I say hi to strangers just because I'm in Japan? Some might think it rude, and I wouldn't blow people off it they wanted to talk, but, well, there you have it... I can understand the feeling though as most foreigners go through it at some point.
 
Can't we all just, get along? I talk to random people on the street all the time. I even listen to random people.
 
If that works for you, great :)

Not talking to people doesn't mean I don't like them - I have my own bounds to privacy and having strange people just approach me on the street because I am not Japanese is not something that strikes my fancy. Likewise, not wanting to talk out both sides of my mouth, I don't feel driven to talk to random foreigners out of respect for their privacy. I'm not saying that I won't talk to you or help you if you get lost, or tell you to piss off, just that I lack the compulsion to talk to strangers many may feel when seeing another foreigner in Japan. There is not some great ex-pat compact that says you must greet all other ex-pats you find. I don't go out of my way to greet other foreigners, and I find it a bit odd (in retrospect) that some people actually do. This is different from saying I don't understand it - there are many things going on here - read carefully :)
 
Mandylion, you've summed up perfectly what I was trying (perhaps unsuccessfully) to say above. I have nothing against these people, I just don't feel any particular desire or obligation to talk to them just on the grounds that we're both foreigners in Japan, when on a deeper level we most likely share almost nothing in common.

In fact, the mere fact that someone would come up to me and start talking (in English) just because I'm a fellow foreigner almost is proof in itself that we're in Japan for different reasons. As a student of the Japanese language and culture, when I'm in Japan, I'm there to use my Japanese and immerse myself in the culture as much as possible. If I just wanted to talk with fellow English speakers, I would have stayed home, or gone to another English-speaking country. Which isn't to say that I won't talk to foreigners under _any_ circumstances, but I certainly won't go out of my way to do so, so it surprises me when other people are so desperate to do so that they think nothing of invading my privacy.

Maybe we could call this the "Lost in Translation" syndrome. I personally had some issues with that movie because it seemed to emphasize this sense of gaijin kinship, that people share this bond simply by virtue of them all being strangers in a strange land, so to speak. Well, maybe that's true for those who go to Japan without any knowledge of or interest in the language and culture (I always want to ask: then why are you here?) but it's as if some people don't realize that some of their fellow foreigners might be just as (if not more) interested in actually connecting with (...gasp!) Japanese people.
 
If you're a motorcyclist out on a journey, you'll find it's customary to greet motorcyclists passing the other way with a wave or blinking.

I guess it's a sense of "you and me, buddy!".. a sense of still being a part of a community. We are flock animals and most of us crave the feeling of not being left out.

This said I would find it creepy to say the least if I was in Japan and another foreigner approached me just for some chit-chat with another "friendly face" (whatever that's supposed to mean).

It's pretty normal for bikers to strike up a conersation at a pit-stop along a long road aswell, but that's understandable... there's usually no-one else around and you might not have spoken to another person all day. It can be refreshing to have someone to talk to for a few minutes.

But in the middle of a city in Japan?.. yeah, I'm with the people against it...

(sidenote: I've only done those MC things as a passenger. Wasn't old enough to drive my own at the time and havent been able to afford a driver's license since I came of age... or a bike for that matter.)
 
I drive a Volkswagon Camper and everytime another VW Camper comes my way we usually wave or give a peace sign or something. It's natural. But an obligation to acknowledge other people can be a pain.

On another note, this discussion is making me realize that I spent far too much time socializing with other gaijin while I was in Japan. :( But they were interesting to me too, because, to me, they were also foreign. Few of them were other Americans. I learned a lot about Aussies, Kiwis, Brits, and Canucks that way, that I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. We all banded together and it was fun, but now I'm wishing that I'd spent more time (other than while teaching) directly with Japanese people. But, in my defense, it was a little difficult. My school didn't allow me to socialize with students and most of the other ways to socialize with Japanese people seemed really forced, like language exchanges (which were ok sometimes).

But it is possible to go too far in the other direction. My roommate (an American) refused to hang out with other gaijin and only hung out with Japanese people. But that also often seemed forced because in some cases, they were just hanging out with each other because both of them thought it was cool to be hanging out with "a foreigner" even though they probably wouldn't have hung out together otherwise. It can be another mild form of racism to only want to hang out with people who are a different race from you.

I'd like to be able to hang out with people without considering things like race, but it seems like you just end up hanging out with people who are just like you when you do that. It's a conundrum.
 
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