Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

> most “non-Japanese” looking people are tourists

> therefore, you will probably be treated as one, even if aren’t

Myself and a couple friends visited Japan for a couple weeks in 2008. On a trip to Osaka, one of my friends was approached by a gaggle of school girls. It was “speak to a foreigner day” at their school, and apparently of our group, the lone female seemed the most approachable. They asked her a series of questions about where she was from and her life in very basic English and took furious notes.

I can’t imagine telling a class in even the safest parts of the United States “Go wander the streets and interview a stranger you suspect to be foreign”, for a number of reasons.

The other thing I want to note is just that you get a lot of leeway as a foreigner in Japan. We’d gotten on a train unknowingly that our JR pass didn’t cover, but figured it out on the train. Well right as we get off, the ticket inspector is there inspecting tickets. We feign ignorance and show him our JR passes, he patiently writes something like ¥500 on a piece of paper and shows us, we pay it. No anger is expressed, just more of a “silly foreigners” vibe.

> We feign ignorance and show him our JR passes, he patiently writes something like ¥500 on a piece of paper and shows us, we pay it. No anger is expressed, just more of a “silly foreigners” vibe.

That was my experience traveling around Japan.

There's an interesting caveat to it. Back when I studied Japanese, I had a Japanese teacher. But she never lived in Japan - she was born of Japanese parents living abroad.

Anyway, she used to tell me that for her, visiting Japan was a lot less welcoming, because they cut no slack to her. She looks Japanese, sounds Japanese, so everyone expected her to be very mindful of all social norms, and would be harsh to her whenever she made a faux-pas.

I had that exact same conversation with a Japanese American who was raised in the Bay Area but moved to Tokyo in his 30s. “You get the gaijin pass,” he told me, “I don’t.”

I don't get it... would they've preferred to be treated as foreigners despite looking and speaking like a local? How would that work?

It sounds like they would, as they have about the same level of familiarity with local norms as an immigrant or a tourist would be aren't treated with the same leeway.

I have a couple of Japanese friends who live in the US but goes back to Japan regularly (1-2 times a year).

They love Japan and have kept their Japanese citizenship, but all the rules and expectations were overbearing, so for them there are a lot of pros and cons to the two countries. And they call out that for foreigners, they get to see many of the pros but fewer of the cons.

>I can’t imagine telling a class in even the safest parts of the United States “Go wander the streets and interview a stranger you suspect to be foreign”

In the US of course it isn't even just the overblown "stranger danger" hysteria of school children speaking to people they don't know but identifying "foreigners" due to the greater ethnic diversity in the US. And people get (justifiably) offended when asked "where are you from?" especially if they were born here and just happen to be of non-European descent.

> And people get (justifiably) offended when asked "where are you from?"

Why is it justifiable? Is curiosity an offense?

Because it implies non-belonging. The question self means that the conclusion is already made that the asked person is not "from here".

That is pretty messed up. There can be gazillion good reasons for somebody to stick out, or somebody else to just asking. People getting easily offended and taking such benign question very personally have usually some deeper underlying untackled issues in their lives.

> usually some deeper underlying untackled issues in their lives.

Usually being fed up with asked "where are you really from?" with the implication "go back there" lots and lots of times in their lives.

It never even occurred to me people might be offended by that. I love stories of different places and foods, and I'm fascinated by all the permutations of accents that occur. I'm simultaneously mildly angered by people being offended by such a thing, and that others trained them to be that way.

I get asked where I'm from all the time even though I'm very obviously from around. I get what you mean but differentiating curiosity from xenophonia is generally pretty easy, and as such I see no reason why we should avoid the question entirely. Intention and context counts, pretending that it is always an offense is absolutist and reductionist.

Anything can be offensive if you try hard enough!

I think "offended" is a bit much in many occasions, but it's certainly a type of racial profiling. It simply doesn't happen in places where your class or group of friends or coworkers are not all white, because you know that not all people look the same. Whereas if you live in an area with a very homogenous looking population everyone who looks different probably is a tourist.

It's the assumption that they probably aren't "American" because they don't look like their ancestors came here on the Mayflower that many find offensive.

I think you’re right that people sometimes take it that way, but I’ve always thought it a rather uncharitable assumption. The answer could be a different place in the US. It doesn’t seem to imply anything about whether you’re American or not?

I’m in California and it’s somewhat unusual for someone to be native Californian.

I visited Florida once and was "mistaken" for a local because... I look South American, so the people there immediately assumed I would understand... Spanish :D and everyone seems to speak Spanish over there.

I wasn't offended at all, of course, but funny how context changes everything... I was actually worried they'd be "disappointed" at me for not speaking their native language.

> I visited Florida once and was "mistaken" for a local ... people there immediately assumed I would understand... Spanish

That used to happen to me in Germany, even though my German is limited to "noch ein Bier, bitte." Whereas in France (where I lived as a kid and used to have native fluency), people would immediately switch to English. I asked one Frenchman, "why?" The answer was, "You sound French but you look Australian or maybe South African." "No, I'm American." "That can't be; Americans don't speak French like that."

> 2008

A lot has changed. Foreigners no longer have this "superiority".

> telling a class in even the safest parts of the United States

It is just histeria, look at recent trend of "men vs bear in forest" . Many parts of US are totally safe, the worst part are dogs, car accidents and voluntary drug ingestion!

> A lot has changed. Foreigners no longer have this "superiority".

It's still a long ago (2015 in my case) but it happened the exact same thing in Nara to my wife and me.

Its not just about danger. Americans would be insulted if a kid asked them if they were a foreigner, theres not an easy way to tell.

Homicide rate of Japan is about 0.2 per 100,000 people.

According to Washington Post [1], the US police killed 1,162 people in 2023, which is about 0.3 per every 100,000 Americans.

I.e., an American is more likely to be killed by a cop than a Japanese person is likely to be killed by a murderer.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

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