Always Trying to "Gaijin" Me
It requires an extra effort to not be treated as a foreign tourist no matter how long you live here.
It’s lunch time and I’m about to dig into some school lunch. Fish, rice, soup, and ohitashi I think. Mixed veggies with soy sauce.
But as I reached for the tray, several teachers started “gaijin-ing” me.
Teacher 1 (tray in hand): Excuse me, Mr. McNeil, Japanese food you eat can?
Me:...
Teacher 2: (assuming I couldn’t understand teacher 1’s broken English, chimed in with her own slightly less broken English) she want to know you can Japanese food eat.
Me: (in Japanese) If it’s edible and as long as these teeth still work, and if it isn’t natto (fermented beans), then I can eat it! Look at this gut. (I point at my stomach, paunchy to say the least) I have the space!
All the teachers shared a friendly “Gaijin say the damnedest things don’t they” laugh. Not sure they caught that they only understood my joke because I’d told it in Japanese, though. Many Japanese don’t even trust their own ears when they hear their language from non-Japanese lips. Or that information, for some reason, doesn’t make the synaptic journey from their ears to their brains.
Teacher 1: (Still unconsciously trying to gaijin me in rudimentary English) Because we know foreigners many cannot eat our Japanese food.
This was it.
She’d put her passive-aggressive foot down, in no uncertain terms. I gave her a look but she disarmed it with a generous smile and genuine warmth. Her words, though, made it clear where she stood: “This is our thing!” (by invoking the ubiquitous “we”) and that “It’s clear to us that you are not one of us,” (with that “foreigner” business).
And I get it, to a certain extent. Shit, I grew up in a “This is a black thing, you wouldn’t understand!” environment. I’ve even been on the business end of it’s a Jewish thing, a Jamaican thing, even a women thing…people have their things and they can get pretty proprietary about them. So, I learned to roll with it back in the states. But it was rare to come upon these things intent on excluding you.
In Japan, though, this type of exclusionary tactic is the national pastime and everybody of post-indoctrination age plays the game.
Honestly, I roll with it more often than not. Like I said, people have their things, and that’s a fact. So, I have no hard-fixed rules, especially in the workplace. You need flexibility if you don’t want to cause any ill-favor.
For example, if a fellow English teacher wants to speak English with me, or a native English speaker, student or staff, wants to kick it, that’s fine. But, other teachers acting on the presumption they must invoke English even after I’ve told them AND demonstrated that they need not? I’m not as tolerant with them. At a minimum, I’d like to know why they feel determined to “gaijin me.” Is it that they can’t see beyond their indoctrination, or are they determined to keep me fixed in a circumstance they feel some measure of power over? A space where I’m essentially a blind, deaf and communicatively-challenged perpetual tourist in their midst and not a 20-year tenured, tax paying, homeowning, matrimonially-bound resident of this country?
If that’s the case, whether it’s unconscious, subconscious or intentional, something inside me never lets it slide. And when I push back I generally leave no doubt that that’s exactly what I intended to do, and why.
Me: (in my best broken Japanese) And some foreigners can’t speak Japanese at all. But some can. 20 years I’ve lived here and very few dishes have I passed on or regret having eaten.
Teacher 1: Ah, sou desu ka (Is that right?)
Me: Yep. So, yeah, I think I can handle a little fish, rice and soup, thank you very much.
Teacher 1: (Handing me the tray) Iie (It’s nothing.)
She’d ceased and desisted with the handicapping and spoke Japanese. That’s progress. And that was it. That’s all it took to establish myself as someone who will not be otherized with ease. Distasteful having to do that though. Almost enough to ruin an appetite.
Almost. But not quite.
Itadakimasu! (Thank the lord and pass the peas!)