The Difference Between "Gaikokujin" and "(Go Home You F'ing) Foreigner"

One of the first things any ALT hears during orientation back in their home country is "don't try to change things." The system is what it is, the culture is what it is, and trying to change everything will probably alienate you further and cause you much frustration and gnashing of teeth. 99% of the time, this is true.

But back last winter, I was given a stack of essays to mark by students who made a trip to Asia Pacific University, a major international school in Beppu, Oita Prefecture. They met some of the foreign students there, of which there are many, and came back and wrote about their experiences. Most of them were okay, but maybe 20-25% of them kept referring to the full-time Japanese speaking students as "foreigners".

[Editor's note: In Japanese, gaikokujin (外国人) means "non-Japanese", though literally means "foreigner". It's applied very liberally, and has no particular negative nuance despite exclusion and generalization. Japanese people generally don't refer to people by race or nationality, for better or for worse. Most people here just think of people as being Japanese-- or not. So if you're a Canadian tourist, for example, you think of yourself as being a foreigner in another country. However, if you're a Japanese tourist, you might think, 'Ooooh look at all the foreigners here.' And just a side note, last time I went on vacation to Canada I said in shock and horror "God damn there're a lot of white people here!"]

So they kept calling these Chinese and Indonesian and Sri Lankan students "foreigners", and it kind of dawned on me how the students clearly don't know the difference in nuance between the benign word "gaikokujin" and the much more negative word "foreigner", so I showed them the distinctly negative definition in the Oxford English dictionary:

1. a person who comes from a different country
EXAMPLE: The fact that I was a foreigner was a big disadvantage.

2. a person who does not belong in a particular place
EXAMPLE: I have always been regarded as a foreigner by the local folk.

and left it at that.

Next essay, a couple of students talked about "the foreigners" [actually "foreign" fish from tropical "countries" invading Japanese waters], so I figured, yeah, I guess I really can't change anything. If Japan wants to be weird and xenophobic, they can do it without me.

But then when I got to school today the teacher from this particular class asked me to correct a draft of a speech one of these students wrote, and the whole thing was about the word "foreigner" -- about realizing through the experience at the university and my little lecture about it that the word "foreigner", or even "gaikokujin", can hurt or offend people. He went on to give his own opinion that this is left over from Japan's period of national isolation and said we should try to look at each other as being simply human beings before than anything else. Dude! I was absolutely floored, because, to be honest, I've been really sick of the whole "gaijin" issue lately. Sick of it being an issue. Both for recent depressing personal reasons, and broader reasons [for the latter, read the last two posts].

This is the first time where I know-- not hope, but know that I've made a difference here. So despite whatever you hear at orientation, if there's something that's really important to you, don't just do the whole "ALT gaijin clown" thing even though it's easier and it's what they want you to do, but do your duty as a teacher and as someone representing your country and at least try to tell people about your point of view. If you do it respectfully, it won't hurt the wa, and someone out there might just be listening.

Smile!

The BBC published an interesting article about how facial expressions -- the most basic and meaningful form of communication -- are not universal and can change quite dramatically from culture to culture. The study, carried out by Glasgow University, dealt specifically with Westerners and East Asians. This is great for me since I'm a Westerner living in East Asia.

According to the article, "East Asian participants tended to focus on the eyes of the other person, while Western subjects took in the whole face, including the eyes and the mouth." The study concluded that because of the relative importance of the eyes in conveying emotion, it can make things a bit ambiguous (and, really, a bit socially disastrous) cross-culture.

For example:


One of these faces expresses fear, and the other, surprise.

The article didn't mention smiles at all, which is interesting, because I think that's the biggest difference between Eastern and Western facial expressions. Here's a page from Canadian comic book artist Guy Delisle's book "Shenzhen":


Of course, this is not to say Westerners don't do this. To quote my old Japanese Studies professor, "is a matter of degree". I think we all do this -- dry laughs and sad smiles to smooth over anger or sadness or anxiety. I do this pretty much every day at work. I even know people who heartily chuckle when they're scared. The difference, I suppose, is people in East Asian people tend to do this at a higher frequency and maybe in different situations than Westerners.

In Will Ferguson's book, "Hitching Rides with Buddha" in Canada, or "Hokkaido Highway Blues" elsewhere, he talks about being given a ride by a Tokyo University professor and his less-than-enthused wife, who was "nodding with that painfully polite smile that many uninitiated Westerners mistake for being a sign of friendship. It is actually a sign of extreme disease." Later in the book, he describes someone smiling to express inexpressible sadness.

In other species such as chimps, I should add, baring ones teeth in what looks very much like a human "smile" is actually a sign of hatred.

Aside from the obvious anthropological reasons, the reason why this is all so important is -- like I said at the beginning -- facial expressions and body language are the cornerstone of human communication. In inter-cultural communication, being able to read things like expressions can be essential for assessing a situation. And so I'll end this with an open question-- has anyone ever had serious social faux pas with people from different cultures stemming in nonverbal communication?

Misdo: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Japan

About six weeks ago we had a near-Biblical flood after several days and nights of rain. And the day of the flood was the day I had to commute an hour.

I rode to the station in knee-deep water and it was still raining, so I wasn't sure what I'd be going to-- work, or to a terrifying nightmare of floods, mudslides, emergency helicopters and mostly likely Jihadists, based on alarmist terrorism posters that the train stations have been suddenly plastered with:


I hesitated. The train that arrives just before mine was, for the record, three hours late. Mine was on time, but I still couldn't get in contact for any sort of authority figure to find out of schools are cancelled when there's a threat of a natural disaster like today (--they aren't). I wasn't going to get on that train until I knew for sure I could, so I ended up having a breakfast of waxy doughnuts and sugary, milky café au lait at the American-founded but so so Japanese chain, Mister Donut, affectionately called Misdo. In Canada we have doughnuts with exciting names like "Maple Dip", or "Sour Cream Plain" -- and in Japan, they have names like "Maron Whip" and "Old Fashion Maccha Choko". It's bizarre and wonderful, because it was originally an American chain, and in the same way you wouldn't want to go to a sushi restaurant in your home town and see a menu of English translations, in Japan, restaurants with Western-style food will have a lot of English on the menu, but shamelessly mixed in with untranslated Japanese nouns. It has a similar kitsch appeal to bilingual packaging in Canada with brands like Cap'n Crunch being famously rendered in French as Capitaine Crounche -- not quite a literal translation, but this strange middle ground.


I was exhausted by the time I made to the station through the floodwater, so I was sitting there drinking my coffee in a haze. I hadn't put my change away, so it was lazily sitting there on the tray. I got a refill of coffee, which was somewhere just below boiling, and burning my mouth when I took a big gulp, I left in disgust, having forgotten about my change. A pretty sizable 600 yen.

Having made an ass of myself, I decided never to go back there again. There is NO tipping in Japan so it wouldn't have been misinterpreted as a friendly gesture. Just pure gaijin stupidity.


Finally, one day last week I bit the bullet because I was jonesing for that coffee. As far as coffee goes, it's just as bad as Timmy's back home, if not worse, and the heavy cigarette smoke somehow adds to the appeal. How often do you come out of a coffee shop stinking of nicotine in Canada? I rest my case.

So, I got to the counter and there was a bit of a rumbling. One of the ladies was taking a long hard look at me and said something inaudible to her coworker and I thought, "Awee shit. They're thinking, 'That's that guy! Thanks for the change, you idiot foreigner!'" Instead, she comes up to me with a baggie with my change in it! At least a month later. Every last yen was kept behind the counter, waiting for my return. In kind of a Grinch-like moment, my general feeling of alienation that's slowly been building as a foreigner in Japan disappeared and I gave probably the most sincere thank you I've have since coming here. I was absolutely amazed, and something this simple really shows just how civil this society can be. Thoughtfulness (omoriyari) is a sign of adulthood in Japan and is promoted constantly. But human nature, no matter what country, can be pretty selfish -- I really wouldn't have been surprised or even angry for minimum wage workers at a doughnut shop to pocket the change. But, this really opened my eyes to a cultural difference that I can't quite put my finger on. Something prompted the woman to see my money, not take it, inform the other staff members and have it kept for me. This is sort of thing that really only exists in Canada in small towns amongst particularly well-raised people, but having this at a train station with thousands of people passing through a day-- really impressive.


No longer will I make fun of your silly Engrish, Misdo! No longer will I mock your wax-covered doughnuts and burnt milky coffee. From now on, you have a special place in my heart, and will remain an shining example of everything that's good about Japan.