Member-only story
The Weird Things People Say to Foreigners in Japan
We all know that foreigners get treated differently depending on what “kind” of foreigner they are. For example, foreigners come in varying degrees of foreign-ness, ranging from your garden variety white Canadian living in Minnesota, to the only Zimbabwean family in rural Finland.
The way locals talk to the super-foreign foreigner is quite different from how they talk to the not-so-foreign foreigner.
As a very white European living in Japan, I fall toward the super-foreign side of the spectrum. Luckily, I would say that Japanese society is quite accepting of foreigners like myself (perhaps less of foreigners from other parts of the world, but I can’t write to someone else’s experience). Most of the awkward conversations are not the byproduct of racist hostility, but rather of discomfort, or a lack of cross-cultural experience.
I’d like to give you a taste of some of the bizarre conversations I’m party to on a regular basis. Here is my compilation of the weird things Japanese people say to foreigners.
White men can’t speak
Let’s start with a pretty common conversation pattern, especially in parts of Japan with fewer foreigners:
[At a restaurant]
Me: We would like a table for three.
