The Other Side of Lost in Translation

2008年5月17日土曜日

Racism against Gaijins in Tokyo vs Racism against Asians in NY



This is the video that tokyocooney made about Racism in Tokyo.
He is a writer & comedian who lives in Tokyo,
originally from New York, and makes fun videos
about his experiences of living there as a Gaijin.
I really enjoy his videos, actually love, love his videos.
However, this latest one got my nerve a little
even though I do understand this is supposed to be a humore.
Gaijins in Japan often complain about
being treated as a novelty in Japan,
and how annoying Japanese always make comments on
how well Gaijins use chopsticks.
Also how annoying it is
whenever they get stared by Japanese in public spaces.
In case you do not know, Japanese stare Gaijins
because Japan is, even not completely so,
a very homogenized society.
Therefore people are very curious about
someone lookig different from them.
Also as Japanese media keeps feeding them very one-sided
glamorous images about American (and European) cultures,
whenever Japanese see Gaijins,
they see those images behind Gaijins
and tend to be gravitated to them.
But gererally speaking Japanese treat Gaijins nicely
because of those kind of longings for Western cultures.
However, that is not always the case
if you are non-White foreigner,
especially the ones who came to Japan as a cheap Labor.
Well, I have to add Blacks are included to the Gaijin status
as long as they are from U.S. or Europe and educated enough.
The younger generation of Japanese loves new Black cultures.
Hispanics are included too
if their facial features are close enough to Whites
as most of Japanese cannot tell the differences.

I guess Gaijins in Tokyo have no clue
about what it is like to live in New York
as an Asian who speaks crappy English.

Sorry, this might sound like Gaijin bashing.
I do not bash them but I guess I envy them sometimes.

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