The Weird Things People Say to Foreigners in Japan

The path leading to the Ise Grand Shrine in Mie Prefecture, 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…