We all love the land of Hello Kitty, but some of us take it too far. Some of the white guys teaching English in Japan want to really become Japanese. Their efforts to morph their race go unacknowledged by local authorities and up goes the old cry: “Racism!” It’s true, no matter how fluent Billy Bob gets at Japanese language and culture, he’s always going to be an outsider in the land of the rising sun. Japan is a different type of melting pot, they melt technologies and inventions, not peoples. If the locals still want to practice their English with Johnny JET-Program when he’s lived there five years, that’s not racism. It’s guestism.
Imagine you have a friend of a different race. You invite him over for dinner (or he invites himself over), and a good time is had all around. After this, he announces that your bedroom is now his, and can you please move all your stuff into your guest room. He starts rummaging through your utility bills asking how much does he owe. Planning to paint the walls a new color and put up new posters. Eventually your amusement runs out and you politely ask him to GTFO (and no, that doesn’t stand for “Great Teacher F**king Onizuka”). Is that racism? Of course not. But the gaijin who cries “racism” is typically guilty of a little bit of exactly this “uninvited move-in”.
Being an honored guest in Japan is awesome. The bumbling foreigner is like a minor rock star. I literally had people cold-approach me and want to hang out the whole day with me just because I was “California-jin” (protip: if you’ve even spent one day in California, you’re entitled to call yourself California-jin, which is even more impressive than “mere” America-jin). The fact I knew a little bit of cute-foreign-accent Japanese was an added bonus, certainly not a requirement. To a Japanese salaryman, talking to somebody in Japanese is totally boring, but talking to someone in English, that’ll make their whole day. The JET Gaijin who coldly refuses to speak English on the street, turning every conversation into an attempt to “show off” his Japanese skills (skills which are utterly commonplace in Japan), comes across like the dinner guest trying to move in.
The biggest dream for some of these guys, is to get a real Japanese career and real Japanese citizenship. I can’t fathom why this is so. Japan is awesome to visit, but it sucks hard to actually live and work there. The salaryman’s workday isn’t spent watching DragonballZ or running through Takeshi’s Castle, it’s spent working his butt off. The Nihon-na working conditions make America look like a socialist utopian paradise. You don’t want your dinner guests to pay a share of your electric bill. You don’t want your party guests to join your neighborhood watch program. Japanese people don’t want their beloved guestjin to share the waking hell that is their every working day.
If I had a job in Japan, I’d spend my off-duty time being a permanent tourist. Even if I were fluent at Japanese, I’d affect the cute foreign accent and mix in lots of English words, because they love it. There’s nothing to prove: it’s a world where everyone knows Japanese and where English (or any other western language) is exotic and rare, so speaking Japanese is a lot less impressive than speaking your own native tongue.
If a Japanese cop stops you and asks to see your passport, it’s more likely he just wants to see the cool pictures and have an excuse to talk to the crazy gaijin. Don’t become indignant about ZOMG racism. Tell the cop about your crazy homeland, where everybody rides Harley-Davidson and wears cowboy hats, trust me, it’ll be the highlight of his entire day.
FURTHER READING
Pictures from Japan
My Trip to the Fujitaisekiji Buddhist Cult
Hashigo