How to Interact with Foreigners

First off, a disclaimer: Most of the time, Japanese are not consciously meaning to be patronizing or condescending, they are just acting the way they do because they were brought up that way.  It is not necessarily wrong, just different.

This guide was written as a joke for Japanese people to better interact with foreigners without annoying them (first hint, it's in English). As for me, I have experienced all of the following except the staring one, and many of them I get every single time I meet a new Japanese person.

1.      Chopsticks- Yes, we can use chopsticks.  Every Japanese person asks if we can use them.  Foreigners who come and live in Japan and can’t use chopsticks are the exception, not the rule. What to do instead: Nothing!  It’s normal, so treat us like you would towards Japanese people that can use chopsticks.  Is it so impressive that your 4 year old can use them too?


2.      Good Japanese- Please don’t tell us our Japanese is good after hearing 2 words come out of our mouth (this is not an exaggeration).  It’s not what we want to hear, especially if we know it’s not good.  What to do instead: Wait until the conversation progresses a little bit.  If we are actually good, then go ahead and say it.  If not, ask us if Japanese is difficult, or some similar question.

3.      Culture Differences- Just because we don’t do something in our country the way Japan does it doesn’t mean it’s uncivilized or whatnot.  Don’t talk, make gestures or make sad noises like it is. What do to instead: Use a curious/interested tone when you respond.  Appreciate that cultures are different, not better or worse.

4.      Speaking Attempts- If we speak Japanese to you in the beginning, we’re expecting a Japanese answer back.  Don’t run away yelling that you can’t speak English, and don’t try to baby or simplify every single word. What to do instead: Answer in Japanese!   Also, even if you think we won’t understand a word, try saying it anyway.  Worst case, you were right, in which case you can baby your words.  If we don’t understand your baby Japanese talk, then feel free to run away.

5.      Making Plans- For the love of cute kittens, please don’t tell us you want to hang out, and cancel the day of.  It’s really annoying to be stuck with no plans on what is likely one of our days off.  We understand this is Japanese culture, but it still pisses us off. What to do instead: If you don’t want to hang out, lie right then and there that your bed ridden mother needs her ass wiped, or something to that effect.

6.      Becoming Japanese- Most if not all foreigners have this idea that we can come over and with enough effort, become an EQUAL part of the Japanese society and your individual world.  Over time, we realize how silly of a dream this is.  The old timers that aren’t still fooling themselves realize that no matter how well we know the culture or the language, or how much we like anime, we will NEVER be fully accepted into Japan.  There are many reasons for this, but I don’t want to write a library. What to do instead: This is tough, because as a Japanese person you may not even realize you are shutting us out.  Just try to treat us as a Japanese person, and do your best to forget about the barrier that is “foreigner.”  Good luck, no one really succeeds.

7.      Japanese are Shy- If foreigners ask why Japanese people are so quiet or don’t like to talk, we get the answer that “Japanese are shy.”  If you think deeper into the meaning of the word “shy,” you find out that it really dances around a fear of being rejected or not accepted.  Sticking out is a no-no in Japanese society, so everyone is the same.  Just look around and count the number of hair dye colors you see (brown, anyone?).  Unless you are cute or hot, you will definitely be rejected if you are “being shy.” What to do instead: Foreigners are used to being rejected by “shy” Japanese.  Therefore, if you are cool and talk to us, we will love you!  Don’t think you’re cool enough?  If you talk to us, you are.  End of story.  Usually.

8.      Staring- In a zoo you stare at animals because they are different, exotic, cute, and it’s interesting that they kind of have an idea about what’s going on but they don’t fully grasp the situation that they are in.  Japanese stare at foreigners for the same reason.  I must admit that I don’t get this because I am Asian.  What to do instead: You know, foreigners do the same thing to each other because we can be just that rare in this country.  It’s fine to take a look, but unless they are asking you to stare (by wearing some outlandish accessory or piece of clothing), please avert your eyes after a second.

This deserves a guide for foreigners to interact with Japanese people while in Japan next.

動物園【どうぶつえん】 (dou/butsu/en) (n) zoo

Toothbrushes, Speed Limits, School Lunch, Girlfriend Decision

This post follows no order of any sort.  Sorry about that.  Just decided to write on random observations before I forget about them.

Apparently Japan's toothbrush companies are only looking at the size of Japanese people's private parts when they decided how big to make their tooth brushes.  Imagine what a child size toothbrush looks like, and that is the size that Japan's adult uses to brush with.  I like what I consider normal sized toothbrushes, but not sure I can draw the rest out until I go back to the US to visit.

Not sure I talked about this before, if I did, then it's just that amazing to me that I have to talk about it again.  Except for maybe 1 or 2 roads in my city, the speed limit EVERYWHERE is 25mph (40kph).  If you think that's slow, it is.  It's like driving through a school zone, except it's the whole city.  Even the freeways are only 50mph (80kph).  Nobody really follows these (except for the old people), and you can find people doing 75mph+ (120kph) on the freeways all the time.  Like usual, whenever I drive I always have this fear that I will be the one who gets caught for doing what everyone else does.  The tickets I hear aren't cheap either, in the range of a few hundred dollars for breaking the speed limit.

When I first got to Japan and started eating school lunch, it sucked.  I felt like they barely give you any food and I was still hungry after finishing.  A little over half a year has passed and now I found myself being content off the school lunches.  Not full, mind you, but content.  The teachers eat the same amount of food that the students do, that means I eat as much as a 7th grader.  Adults need more food man!  Amazingly, my elementary school likes to give me seconds which is about the only reason I like teaching there.

I have officially decided that my trip to Japan will be a failure if I don't get a girlfriend here.

制限速度【せいげんそくど】 (seigen/sokudo) (n) speed limit

Hokkaido, The Rest of the Time

We went over on a ferry around 7 PM which had a nice restaurant or two and it was pretty nice for a ferry.  We slept in bunk beds and arrived the next day around 10 AM or so.  I met that idiot woman the first day but that was mostly detailed below so I won't talk about it anymore.

The first day I got to see the ice sculptures which were really cool, along with a few snow ones.  

The second day I  went ice skating and told some kids my nickname was God.  I ate some famous Sapporo ramen (which wasn't as amazing as I'd hoped) and saw some snow light festival which would have been really romantic if I had someone to go with.

The third day I went to the Sapporo Beer Museum, drank a beer at the end of the museum and got a migraine.  The migraine effectively ended my Hokkaido trip.  I went back to the hostel we were staying at and laid down until 3, when we had to board a bus to go back to the ferry.  The ferry ride was rough.  Lots of rocking and I still had my migraine hardcore.

I didn't write much, but for some reason I don't feel like writing about Hokkaido.  Oh well, sorry.

 氷像【ひょうぞう】 (hyou/zou)  (n) ice sculpture

Hokkaido, The Stalker Story

So I went to Hokkaido over the weekend for a winter festival which I'll write some more about later, but this story warrants a post all on its own.  Fairly bizarre.

Before going to Hokkaido I was talking to this person on mixi, which is the Japanese Facebook for a little while.  She lives in Hokkaido so I said we should meet up since I was going there.  She agreed.  We met up and talked for a while and she seemed normal enough.  A little ways through the conversation she started talking about a set of stalkers that she had following her around.  I didn't think much about them but I noticed that every time I went to talk about something else, she would draw it back to the stalkers.

We went to karaoke and sang for a bit, but I noticed she kept messing around on her phone.  After a while I asked who she kept messaging, after which she told me she was replying... to her STALKER!  WTF!?  This stalker was messaging her non-stop and she was empowering him to do so by replying to his every dribble.  I finally realized that this woman was a couple marbles short of being retarded.  As the night wore on it became more and more apparent that she was the kind of person who wouldn't be satisfied in a 100 ft. pool of attention.  She complained about him mercilessly but I could tell deep down she was enjoying all of this.  Sick, sick woman she is.

Just when I was about to think of an escape plan, I got this sick idea to stick around and try to mess with her emotions and see how far I could drive her in her fake hate towards her stalkers.  I agreed with everything she said and put her stalkers down right along with her.  Maybe it's behavior I'm not proud of, but that doesn't mean I didn't have fun doing it.

We went to a fortune telling place where the fortune teller proceeded to tell her that she should cancel her planned trip to Okinawa because some numbers on a piece of paper weren't in her favor.  The fortune teller also told her she needed to involve a 3rd party into the stalker issue or else nothing would get solved.  After leaving the fortune teller, she promptly called her flight agent, cancelled the flight and remarked about what a good choice it was to go see the fortune teller that day.  Grade A Idiot.

Afterwards we went to McDonalds where she said she was going to settle things with one of her stalkers, an Indonesian guy.  I asked how she was going to do that, and she said she was going to call him, tell him to come to McDonald's and tell him face to face to not contact her anymore.  Great idea right?  She was interested in when the last train was, but couldn't figure it out on her phone, so she asked some girl next to her for help, and ended up befriending her in the process.  I introduced myself to the girl also to try and get some relief from the crazy woman, and after a while the stalker showed up.  Show time.

Woman w/stalker at McD's

I started talking to the random girl a bit, and in the background we could hear the crazy woman half yelling and hitting the table as she berated her stalker.  After we talked for about 10 minutes I looked over and couldn't believe what I saw: That crazy woman was smiling and laughing and talking happily with her stalker!  Immediately my thought that she craved attention of any kind was proven true.  I began to think she just attached the title "stalker" to this guy so she would have something to talk about. (Note: later on I would ask him why he was here, since he lived at the opposite end of the country, and he replied "it's her birthday."  Yeah, he's a stalker).

After around 2 hours or so she decided that her and the girl were going to go to a host club.  A host club is a place where girls can go and talk to a bunch of hot guys for the price of up-your-ass-expensive (Note: They have one for guys too, which is more prolific, and is called a Snack bar, or "Snakku" in Japanese).  She wanted to leave me with the stalker so I said fine.  After they left, I asked him a few questions then said I'd be heading back.  I had had enough of those people for a few lifetimes.

To top it all off, the day after I got back from Hokkaido, she announced that she had decided to go out with her Indonesian stalker, and apparently plans to dump him in July for some reason.  Her father does not approve, so she isn't talking to him anymore.  Pretty sure the English language doesn't have a word for a woman like this.

天然ぼけ【てんねんぼけ】 (tennen/boke)  (n) natural airhead; person prone to making silly mistakes

Translation, Girls and Hokkaido

If I posted already about this then sorry, I forgot.  Anyway, a few weeks ago a group of 30 Korean teachers came over as a sort of cultural exchange thing and I was invited to be a translator.  I don't speak Korean, but was set up with some English teachers so it was translation from English to Japanese and vice versa.  2 of the Korean teachers went to a Japanese couple's home to see what Japanese life was like.  It was interesting.  They bought beer and sushi and ate it at the couple's home and sang songs.  The next day there was a dinner at a hotel and I got to eat free dinner.  I got paid around $100 for the 2 days of translation, except $60 of that is in gift certificates and haven't found the places I can use them yet.  I liked the experience and will do it next year as well if asked.

I am currently enjoying being ignored by Japanese girls.  I have been trying to find some dates to go on but failure keep creeping up in my vocabulary whenever I try to talk about the experiences.  I was hoping that I could use my foreigner card to attract some girls but it hasn't been working to my advantage yet, and actually is probably working against it for the majority of girls I've talked to.  Reason being, there aren't a lot of girls who are interested in foreigners or English in my city, being so small and all.  Thus, the remaining girls can only be won over with Japanese.  I am not good at talking to girls in English... should be pretty obvious what I'm trying to say there.  I am envious of the ugly white guys who have 10s at their side, girls that, if they were in the USA, wouldn't even give them the time of day.  I am still not getting the time of day.  Not giving up though!  One day I will know what time it is!

Going to Hokkaido this week.  This Thursday actually.  It's going to be fun times... hopefully.  As long as I can avoid too much contact with the JETS (foreigner English teachers) who annoy me, I should have a good time.

失敗【しっぱい】 (shippai)  (n,adj-no,vs) failure; mistake; blunder; (P)