This isn't as broadly true as people seem to think. And so many people seem to think it's true. I actually had someone from an exchange program in high school tell me that I didn't want to go to Japan, because it was "Hard enough for white people. Here, have a nice South American country instead."
Yet I can't be the only darker-complected person who has had a perfectly wonderful stay in Japan. In my case, for what is now a little over three years, not counting my time in college, where I did a semester here and one in Korea.
People don't do the changing-seats-on-the-train thing or the avoiding-you-in-the-street thing that often at all, and has been pointed out before it happens to white people too. Sure, people tend to think sterotypically, assuming I'm from India and sometimes Africa instead of "The West," and sometimes they'll assume I like hip hop, but that stuff isn't horrible, and I hasten to point out that I was dealing with the exact same stuff in America.
Sure, I'm not exactly having a ton of dating success here, but I've got major social awkwardness issues and I wasn't raking in the dates back in America either. It is really not any worse for me over here than it is for the other Gaijin.
And in a lot of ways, I'm just accepted. Random Japanese people have come up to me and asked for help with the trains, or for driving directions. I have Japanese friends in the community who like to hang out with me and treat me like a real member of the various groups I'm in. It's very easy to talk to to people, and while I haven't had ultimate success with the dating thing, it's actually going pretty well for the effort I put into it. But then I guess I'm just too dumb to know I'm not being trolled by, like, everyone around me. Any day now, someone's going to come up to me and say it was all a social expiriment.
no subject
Yet I can't be the only darker-complected person who has had a perfectly wonderful stay in Japan. In my case, for what is now a little over three years, not counting my time in college, where I did a semester here and one in Korea.
People don't do the changing-seats-on-the-train thing or the avoiding-you-in-the-street thing that often at all, and has been pointed out before it happens to white people too. Sure, people tend to think sterotypically, assuming I'm from India and sometimes Africa instead of "The West," and sometimes they'll assume I like hip hop, but that stuff isn't horrible, and I hasten to point out that I was dealing with the exact same stuff in America.
Sure, I'm not exactly having a ton of dating success here, but I've got major social awkwardness issues and I wasn't raking in the dates back in America either. It is really not any worse for me over here than it is for the other Gaijin.
And in a lot of ways, I'm just accepted. Random Japanese people have come up to me and asked for help with the trains, or for driving directions. I have Japanese friends in the community who like to hang out with me and treat me like a real member of the various groups I'm in. It's very easy to talk to to people, and while I haven't had ultimate success with the dating thing, it's actually going pretty well for the effort I put into it. But then I guess I'm just too dumb to know I'm not being trolled by, like, everyone around me. Any day now, someone's going to come up to me and say it was all a social expiriment.