Not quite. It's a different degree. When I was in Japan, for example, no Japanese person would start a conversation with me in Japanese. It was always English. That mostly doesn't happen to Asian residents in the US.
Comparing the situation to America seems silly. Most people don't speak to Asians on the street in Japanese because most Americans don't speak Japanese. My Japanese wife, on the other hand, was addressed in Chinese when in china town in New York. Yes, confusion sometimes happens in all countries.
English is an International language and the majority of Japanese known at least a little bit. People of all countries can be expected know some English. If they speak to you in English, they are probably working off the statistically sound assumption that you might not speak Japanese, and are merely trying to communicate.
When did I say it was offensive?
Perhaps I am little defensive as I often encounter the point of view that if a foreigner is treated any differently than a racially Japanese person, that this is somehow a fault of Japanese or their culture, when really the worst you can say about them on this topic is that they are observant. People get all worked up that Japanese people know they are white.
It's like I'm older and get asked if I have kids all the time. My younger colleagues never get asked that. They get asked where they went to school and such. It's not discrimination, it's people trying to make conversation and making some reasonable assumptions along the way.
Anyway rant over.
Honestly, it could very well depend on the city how you get received. I live in a fairly rural area and it's adapt or go home here. If you live in this area, people seem to just assume you are decently adapted and don't need to be handled like an outsider.
I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I think you eventually hit a threshold where you are somehow signaling via body language or manner that, as you say, you don't need to be handled like an outsider.
Edit: I just noticed I have replied to you twice. We seem to be on the same page :)
Note that this is functionally equivalent to saying "the only people who started conversations with me were people who wanted to practice their English", and that's probably closer to what was going on.
Personally, my first few years in Japan people started English conversations with me all the time, but at some point it slowed and then stopped - I can't even remember when last it happened. Whether that's due to something about me changing, or a byproduct of the places I hang out, etc., I have no idea.
What is surprising is how every respondent thus far has misinterpreted what I said.
It's obvious that talking English in the US is not on a par with talking Japanese in Japan and also not on a par with talking English in Japan. Talking to someone in English in the US is compatible with considering that person a foreigner and compatible with not considering that person a foreigner, whereas talking English by default in Japan (or any other non-English speaking country) means that you take that person as a foreigner and talking Japanese with someone in Japan means that you accept that person as a non-foreigner.
So what was your point?
Exactly that. If you're white in Japan, people will speak to you in English, which indicates they see you as a foreigner...forever. "forever foreigner".
No, it just means that their statistical experience tells them that a random caucasian they meet most likely doesn't speak Japanese and is in their county short term. Which is true statistically speaking.
What you say would be the case if they considered you a foreigner still after they've known you and learned that you in fact speak Japanese and stay there for decades or so.
Which would be a statistically sound assumption.
In Japan, the cases of caucasians that were born and raised there are very rare (compared to just tourists or short term staying), so they naturally assume you are not that.
It's just that the US has all kinds of people living there since centuries even (e.g. 3-4th generations of Chinese), so you can't make the assumption that a Chinese in the US is a foreigner. Plus, the US doesn't have any ethnical cohesion anyway, so even a newly arrived asian, french, russian, or latin american etc, fits right in with the general population.
Given that, the real "forever a foreigner" problem to me would have to do with the acceptance (or lack thereof) of those that know you (e.g. how colleagues, neighbors, etc see you), not how random strangers see you. That's not what would make me feel like a foreigner...
This is a straw man. I haven't argued otherwise. You're making the same mistake that other of my respondents are making, which is to assume I'm claiming that the native Japanese are in some way doing something wrong by assuming I don't speak Japanese.
> That's not what would make me feel like a foreigner...
I'm sure you don't realize you're doing this, but I'm telling you how I and many other immigrants who have lived as ethnic minorities in a foreign country are led to feel like outsiders, and your response is to say that those feelings are invalid, and you wouldn't let it bother you, despite having (presumably) never experienced what we're talking about. You're taking a very inconsiderate side of this argument, not to mention incorrect.
Well, I'm European but I have worked in an asian country for years as a very tiny ethnic minority there (not even 0.01%).
But in general, "you haven't experienced it" is no real argument, because just having experienced something doesn't mean the experience or the interpretation of the experience is justified. And that's something that someone who hasn't experienced the thing might still be able to point out.
I don't doubt that one can feel "like a foreigner" in Japan.
People can feel all sorts of things, including that, and Japanese society might especially encourage them to feel like foreigners.
What I'm saying is that if a caucasian feels like a foreigner just because Japanese because people assume he probably doesn't speak Japanese, then he feels like a foreigner for a superficial reason -- and not about how he's treated and how he's integrated (or not) into his Japanese social circles, but about how Japanese people he doesn't know think he's a tourist or short term visitor.
A shorter way to say this is "If a person feels like X because people assume he's X every day, then he feels like a X for a superficial reason", which is almost directly self-contradictory. If people treat you like X every day, that's likely going to make you feel like X.
Perhaps you somehow wouldn't feel X despite daily messages that you are X, but most people would.
I think where we disagree is that I think that this is not an absolute, but depends on a) what people, and b) under what circumstances and for what reasons they assume you're X.
If it's only strangers that assume that, and because it's more or less statistically sound to assume it (that has nothing to do with you specifically) then
E.g. if people assume I'm a jerk for wearing some t-shirt message, but only because they don't know me and don't know I wear it ironically, then it wouldn't make me feel like perhaps I'm a jerk -- just that they don't know me and/or they don't get the joke. If on the other hand people I know imply that I'm a jerk, that would actually hurt me.
But maybe all this is over-analysing (well, not maybe, it is).
In a sense, someone living in Japan who is not Japanese, it is indeed a foreigner. Unlike the US or UK, etc, Japan is an ethnically cohesive society -- most of them are not just born there AND raised there, but also of Japanese ethnicity for millennia. So it makes sense not to consider a caucasian who lives there even 20 or 30 years as Japanese. But the key is probably whether they feel welcome.
(Helps that it’s English, specifically, too.)
In another light, I usually have a sense for whether my English will find purchase before speaking because American culture has subtle cues and tics even in the way one carries themselves. I don’t have the perspective of reversing the situation, but I’d totally buy a scenario where the same sense is difficult to ascertain inside other cultures. Then you have to think about which possibility is more polite/offensive between assuming their language or trying yours, especially in various cultures; we certainly look at this differently, given the first point.
That doesn't happen to asians in the US, you know maybe because they don't know the asian language?
Yes, which is a source of white people being "forever foreigners" in Japan, which is exactly my point.
You seem to be assuming I think they're making a mistake by doing this, or for some reason shouldn't be doing it, which I never said.
It never bothered me. Whenever I initiated a conversation people just spoke Japanese. Sometimes people would start in English, but the conversation always effortlessly slid into Japanese when I answered in Japanese. Further down from Tokyo the experience tends to be even simpler at times: either you speak Japanese, or you have no conversations at all.
Everybody assumes that she is Chinese as well...
By the way, my wife is also Japanese... it's possible that our wives know each other :)
I'm a white, blond man and went together with my white blond girlfriend.