In homogeneous Japan, the specific details of your heritage or ethnicity or whatever are less significant than the fact that you are not Japanese. Thus, all people not from Japan, whether they be American, Philipino, Chinese, Korean, whatever, are all usually referred to using the word “gaijin” (or “gaikokujin” if the speaker is trying to be more polite), which simply means “foreigner.”
I live in Iwate prefecture, which can be thought of as kind of the Wisconsin of Japan—cold, rural, backwater-y, and not particularly exciting, the punchline to a million jokes that few people care enough to tell, but charming too, like most places can be especially when you can’t understand all the potentially hateful and base things the average John Q. Takahashi on the street is saying. Being such a backwater, Iwate prefecture—and specifically the town that I live in—does not have many English speakers, to the point where, since I am going for at least some vestige of anonymity with this thing, I am reluctant to even say exactly where it is that I live on my blog because doing so would instantly identify me as one of maybe three native English speakers in the whole place.
So I don’t have a lot of contact with other foreigners, and when I do see another person who looks like they might speak fluent English, I get kind of excited. I want to run up to them, give them a hug, and say, “Will you be my friend?” Living life without reliable avenues for communication is a lot more exhausting than people realize. And really, I don’t feel like this impulse is all that unusual. I mean, due to the homogeneous nature of Japan and the difficulties foreigners often face in adjusting to life in this country, it would make sense to assume a certain amount of camaraderie between non-Japanese living here, a badge we all wear with pride like veterans of some long-forgotten war. A secret handshake. A clubhouse in the woods. Midnight rituals. Fucking bylaws. I’d even be cool with just a wave or a thumbs-up as we walk by each other on the street, some simple gesture of acknowledgment between two human beings sharing a common bond as they pass each other all awash in a sea of Other-ness, as if to say, “Holy shit, dude, we’re in Japan!” It’s not much, but it’s a connection, something to keep the isolation at bay.
Operating under the assumption that other people in a situation similar to mine will share these sentiments, I try to smile and nod whenever I see a foreigner while I am out and about, especially in smaller towns where such a sight is a rare occurrence indeed. Back at the beginning of my stay this was to acknowledge a common bond, establish a dialog, maybe the occasional bit of small talk between comrades and arms in such. Initiating contact with strangers has never been my way, but the idea was that if I looked friendly and stuff that people would think it was okay to say “hello” to me. But I quickly discovered that most foreigners, when presented with this situation, will avert their eyes and pretend not to notice my doing this, as if I were their crazy ex-girlfriend or that irritating guy from work with with fifteen cats and a kee-razy story about each and every one of them. Since coming to this realization, I still make eye contact and nod “hello” to every foreigner I meet simply to make the statement that there has not been some sort of mutual decision on both of our parts to ignore the other’s existence. I passed one hipster-looking white dude in Sendai on a staircase, me coming up and him going down, and since casting his gaze down towards the ground as is normal would in this case have caused him to meet my eyes, he opted instead to turn his head so that he was looking at the blank wall next to him rather than, you know, the stairs.
I like to think that I would not have chuckled had he tripped because of this, nor would I have been doubled over with laughter had he broken his neck due to said tripping. But I can’t be sure. I’m working under the assumption that, since these encounters are so fleeting, these people do not yet have substantial reason to avoid me specifically, and so that their refusal to acknowledge my existence is illustrative of some larger reluctance to interact with other foreigners outside of controlled circumstances.
It still is not clear to me why exactly strangers in a strange land, when faced with the rare-ish opportunity to converse in their mother tongue, would choose to pretend like that opportunity does not exist. It probably has something to do with maintaining one’s sense of adventure or something. You make it to Japan, you go through the rigors of homesickness and culture shock and come out the other side reborn a semi-functional (if illiterate) member of Japanese society. You feel like a stupendous badass, a world-traveler, a self-reliant and dynamic personality. Even little things like being able to order at a restaurant or ask for things at the post office seem like feats of epic win. It feels good, like you’re capable of anything, and I guess some people either feel like it’s presumptuous to try to horn in on a random stranger’s nomad Bohemian fantasy or are living out said fantasy and are thus reluctant to have contact with foreigners for fear of upsetting the illusion.
Regardless of the reason, my existence was not acknowledged by a non-Japanese stranger in public until I visited Tokyo, a trip which took place after I had been in this country for almost four months. On Christmas Eve my friends and I took the train over to Akihabara, Tokyo’s legendary electronics district. There I was able to finally fulfill my long-time fantasy of playing a round of Dance Dance Revolution in an Akihabara arcade, and in that arcade we ran into a white dude with glasses and an “Arizona State University” sweatshirt who was waiting in line for some esoteric cube-based rhythm game. He turned to look at us.
“Do you guys speak English?” he asked.
“Yes we do,” I said.
“You can always tell here,” he said, motioning to the Japanese people all around us. “It’s convenient.”
“You have no idea how nice it is to hear you say that,” I said.
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