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Comment by pelagic_sky | Hacker News Reader

I have always loved Japan. I visited once, and made plans to move there. I lived in the heart of Tokyo for three years. I made a lot of friends, but being a white American, I came to grasps that I would always be a Gaijin, and that I would never fit in, no mater how well I spoke Japanese or adopted to their customs. I left Japan to focus on my future somewhere back in America. 10 years later I booked a three week trip in Japan. Upon returning, it was bitter sweet. Most of the friends I had, had moved on. The city was now very touristy. And while I loved the food and culture, I knew that I would never live in Japan again. But I still love it more than anything.

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This is a virtual mirror of my history with Japan: three years (except I was in the rural 'burbs for 2/3 of it), have returned to visit friends a couple times, but it's always bittersweet. In fact, almost everyone I know who was there for two-plus years have told me they experience this.

The one good thing about being an outsider there is people who would be guarded towards other Japanese really seem to open up if one is warm and receptive. I've had friends confide things in my they wouldn't tell their families, and I've had more than one sit-down drink with gangsters that saw me, presumably, as a novelty. It's like, "he's an outsider who's leaving soon, so why not?"

Similar story, I had a friend who was born in Korea, came to the USA as a child, and was deported back to Korea at age forty. He felt like an outsider there, and four years later, committed suicide after a bout with depression.

That sounds horrible, normally the courts show leniency in these cases as deporting someone that old is basically a death sentence.

Was he not able to hire a lawyer?

Multiple felonies. His family here hired an immigration lawyer to get him back but they couldn’t make it happen.

I have a friend from Japan who has lived in the US for over 25 years or so. A couple years ago he went back to visit family and said that people were treating him very strangely because he is Japanese and speaks the language, but he was having to ask people how to do everyday things like buy train tickets because everything is so different from when he grew up there.

Something that helped me in Hong Kong (am French) was also to marry very local, and have a child. First, that helps for all that very difficult negociation in Cantonese on rent price, bill setup and all the crap the employees are a bit lazy to translate for you.

But it also gives you an unremovable link to the country. Yes I'll be a Gweilo forever in their eyes, and they barely understand when I say I'm more Chinese now than their children who spent less time here, and paid no taxes.

I guess it's fine not to fit in perfectly, it's not very important: when you make a choice to immigrate, your reasons for doing so must be both about the new country but also the old one. I have no qualms saying I gave away France, I left it knowing what I was abandonning and why, and now I can only move forward.

It's also true that I never fit in in France: I was anti-socialist, from a family that has owned small businesses for generations, believe in capitalism, free market, all these stuff that made me always make enemies in France.

Maybe I'm a gweilo, but I think all the same things they do, and I'd defend the country just as well as them.

I feel you. Having lived in HK for 8 years now. I hold a permanent HKID, and consider HK my home. I've been trough the protests in 2014, and the ones in 2019, it was mentally draining because it's hard to discuss these subjects with locals. To them, you're just a foreigner that can leave any time he wants. When you disagree on certain political things, you'll often hear; "you're just a foreigner, you don't understand", and there's nothing you can say to that.

I've come to terms with it tho, accepting that even though this is my home, I'll never be truly accepted or be able to fit in.

But I also think this has made me a better person. Having experienced racism multiple times here, I'm much more aware of my own actions.

Do you feel like being considered a gaijin was a form of racism towards you?

Why do you think skin color is the driving factor? People normally consider each other aliens even if they have the same skin color.

I'm asking OP if they do because of this line:

>being a white American, I came to grasps that I would always be a Gaijin,

I find that Americans give to much weight to the skin color, it has the historical reasons there but often can't be applied in the same way outside the US.

Yeah. FWIW as a white British/Irish guy, I've felt comfortable in Japan. (I've had racism here, but I got it in the UK too).

I think they meant white as in of European ancestry. It applies as making one obviously not of Japanese ancestry.

I thought they specified as they could've been Asian American, not because their race is the cause.

Not OP, but somewhat similar situation and conclusion.

Racism is too strong a word, it's more like sticking out. Like if you're the only one in large group who has black hair, or doesn't have a beard, or is a childless adult, or is religious, the assumptions of the group will from time to time remind you (and perhaps others) that you're unusual. I believe those are what are called micro-aggressions, though there need not be anything antagonistic about them.

It's fun to be different, exotic even, but it's also tiring, especially once the novelty has worn off and you just want to live like everyone else.

I felt this way visiting Pakistan last year. I’m a 6’5”, 120kg white dude. People asked to take a photo with me up to 10 times per day. I’d never felt so exotic in my life.

I've been to Japan a few times and it is nothing like that. People are very rigidly polite in public. You may feel self-conscious because you stick out like a sore thumb, having to duck under lights and doorways and stuff, but people will eerily act like it's totally common to see that.

The "little tokyo" neighborhood of a large North American city would probably be a comfortable place.

I kind of have always felt like an outsider in the culture I grew up in. So I actually prefer to be in a country where I am visibly an outsider because it feels more congruent and weird behavior from me is also easier to excuse or accept.

I feel the same as you. I grew up as a kid with parents in the Foreign Service, so we country-hopped every year or so until I was a teen, when we moved back to the US.

That was (by far) the most difficult move, because there was no longer an obvious indicator that I wasn't from wherever there was. Acculturation was difficult.

Honestly, I never felt bad about being a foreigner anywhere else. Most people didn't care, and of those who did, most were honestly curious, and it was a fun way to start a conversation and potentially make a new friend. Negative attention was present, too, but the friendly outweighed the suspicious by a large margin.

i had that experience as well, but i noticed that once i had a family i didn't care about that anymore, and i also feel that the older i get, the more i get to attribute differences to my age

Getting old works for me too! I don't give a f..k anymore. But I still find it easier to live as an obvious stranger.

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