It’s another thing entirely when people constantly compliment your most rudimentary skills like using chopsticks and saying “thank you” in Japanese. It feels great when people earnestly praise your language skills, your exotic looks, and your unique skill set. On the surface, this seems like something everybody would want. Foreigners must constantly endure having their “outside-ness” “discussed openly in conversation, and I’ve had more than one friendship crumble upon learning a Japanese “friend” had actually been keeping me around for the free English lessons. There is a whole category of Japanese people that foreign exchange students and long-term expats refer to as “Gaijin Hunters ” Japanese that go out of their way to befriend foreigners, typically for self-serving purposes like free English lessons, street cred, or Hollywood movie-style romance, whether that’s a fair label or not.Ĭomparatively rare, however, is the Japanese person who will treat you like just another human being. The famously confrontation-averse Japanese will go to great lengths to avoid having a lengthy or complicated conversation with people in English, which means feigning ignorance of the Japanese language or Japanese etiquette can net you all kinds of bonuses in social situations that a regular Japanese person wouldn’t get.īut the Gaijin Card is a two-way street: No matter how hard you try to assimilate into Japanese culture, you will forever be a perpetual “other.” The word gaijin, in fact, is a slightly derogatory but universally accepted label for foreigners in Japan that essentially means “outsiders”, and the Japanese will never stop calling you one no matter how close your relationship or how long you’ve been a resident. The so-called “Gaijin Card” is a much-talked about wildcard that foreigners can use to gain instant forgiveness for cultural transgressions in Japan. Why? Well, frequent source of opinion and cultural commentary Madame Riri has compiled a few of the reasons: With all the controversy surrounding a recent “racist” All Nippon Airlines ad, the Japanese and Western media have both been abuzz with the question of whether foreign people can ever truly become respected Japanese citizens – accepted by their community and deemed worthy of the right to not be the recipient of extraordinary treatment.īut this conversation has been going on a long, long time in the expat community in Japan, with a lot of otherwise Japanophile foreigners finding it hard to befriend the Japanese on a higher-than-acquaintance level.
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