
The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train - brandonlc
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2018/10/17/our-lives/empty-seat-crowded-japanese-train-10-years-gaijin-seat-still-grates/#.XavCSEZKg2w
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legohead
I experience this empty seat phenomenon in America, as a regular white man. I
noticed it in college. Nobody would sit by me unless they had to, but they
were never obvious about it either as far as I could tell. It just seemed like
I had some social forcefield around me that pushed people away.

I told me wife about it, and we had a laugh. But over the years it continues
to manifest itself. I send me wife pictures of me at a full conference with
empty seats only around me. I set up experiments to test my theory. At the
airport, or even at work, I will deliberately sit in a middle section that
would force people to sit next to me. Yet time after time, the seats next to
me are the very last to be taken, if at all. I've tried being extra
approachable (smile a lot), dull, aloof, be on or off my phone, etc.

I am a good looking skinny guy who has excellent hygiene. But I have some
negative social forcefield I can't explain.

~~~
bytefactory
I've read that in body-language terms, sitting in the middle seat of a small
row of seats communicates "I would like to be alone here", whereas sitting in
the edges communicates "feel free to sit here". This might have confounded
your experiment :)

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tjpnz
I've lived here for 5 years and it's something that doesn't really bother me a
lot. At the very least I'm not getting racial epithets shouted at me which I
saw happen to a lot of foreigners (riding public transport) growing up in New
Zealand.

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executesorder66
This just seems like pure racism to me. I spent 2 weeks in Japan recently, and
I took all kinds of trains, from the Shinkansen, to Tokyo metro to random
local trains. In various cities and towns. I am, and I look white af. Not even
remotely Japanese or even Asian. Not once on my trip did Japanese people
"avoid" me or leave an empty seat between us. In fact some of them even slept
on my shoulder! The only time there were empty seats was when only a few
people were on the train and everyone naturally spreads out.

The only difference I can tell between myself and this guy, is that he's black
and I'm white. But we are both distinctly non-Japanese. So again, it just
seems like racism to me. I'd be glad to hear why that is not the case though.
Let me know what you think.

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Grue3
Nah, it's racism, there's no other explanation. I'm also white and people were
not only sitting next to me, but even offering me snacks on intercity trains.
Interestingly in my own country people rarely sit next to me unless there's no
other seats.

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zamfi
This was truly lovely to read. A peek into how cultures change.

~~~
BlackLotus89
He explicity said that nothing changed and that the episode on the train was
the rarest of exceptions...

~~~
zamfi
Yeah, that's kind of the point -- cultures change one kid's unsavory attitudes
altered at a time.

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laurieg
As a visible minority in Japan, experiences like this are extremely
commonplace. In fact, I think the frequency is the most troublesome part.

Every time you step out of the house there is someone there to remind you you
are foreign. Just moments ago I bought some donuts and the woman in the shop
awkwardly gestured at me instead of speaking to me.

Obviously, this is not the end of the world and it's nothing to lose sleep
over but I would advise people thinking of coming to live in Japan that
attitudes and norms around race are quite different.

~~~
reustle
> Every time you step out of the house there is someone there to remind you
> you are foreign.

In my 2+ years here, I think I can count these cases on one hand. I think you
may be picking out things that aren't actually unique to you being a
foreigner, or your body language is just making it look like you're completely
oblivious to what is going on in the interaction so they feel the need to make
the communication extra clear.

~~~
laurieg
I'm not doubting you, but I find it genuinely puzzling how our experiences can
be so different.

For me, being treated differently to Japanese looking people is just the norm.
At first I assumed it was my Japanese level or some other feature, but I think
you can't ignore the obvious difference. The other thing that sealed the deal
in my mind is how I get spoken to very differently on the telephone compared
to face-to-face.

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NalNezumi
This was a heartwarming story. I might add my own experience as a half
Japanese/north European that recently moved to Japa. I've experienced the
empty seat thing too, but it's not as bothersome as the people that stand up
and move to other seats seconds after you sit next to them in a crowded train,
now that makes me nervous. Being a foreigner does come with some perks I
sometime envy though. Because I speak the language fluently, and one of my
parent being Japanese, I'm sometime just labeled as "a rude person" when I act
like a foreigner (where I'm born and raised), while a foreigner would just get
a pass as people think "he just don't know how things work around here".

I do feel that too many foreigners (including me) jumps to the "racism"
explanation too quickly though. It's not unreasonable because some things,
such as finding a apartment as a foreigner are a experience filled with
racism. Japan sure don't mind writing racism down on their list of preference.
But most Japanese people simply runs on auto-pilot most of the day, and if
they see something out of the ordinary (foreigner in the train) they just get
really confused and stay away. Giving them a smile and a friendly nod usually
lower their alertness pretty well.

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ananosy
I've been living in Tokyo for quite a bit, I'm married to a Japanese woman.
I'm Caucasian, born in Estern Europe.

I just asked my wife about this and she told me that even though it's a
stereotype, some westerners have either strong perfume smells or due to their
size are very hard to sit next to. So instead of trying to play the lottery
when sitting next to a foreigner, they'd rather sit next to a Japanese.

This, obviously, doesn't apply to what they consider attractive foreigners.

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paggle
Sure, Japan is a ~monoracial country and there isn't the level of racial
awareness there that you have in the US. I feel like you have to accept some
of this if you choose to live in Japan as a person of color.

I experienced this myself when I wanted to do the "teach English abroad for a
year" thing in Japan after college. I have Top 1% English skills and have won
literary prizes for my writing in college, and speak in a normal American
accent that you might find in a news anchor. But everyone wanted a white
person.

~~~
eirini1
Japan is also definitely not a monoracial country - people are ignoring for
example the Ainu people.

~~~
paggle
Added a character to clarify.

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rdl
I'd never sit in the last or even last 10% or so of seats on a subway train,
as a healthy middle-aged man who isn't escorting a child or something. I'd
also be highly suspect of a man who did that, and would be reluctant to sit
next to him if I were disabled/woman/with-child/etc. Much more so in Japan.
The illustration also shows him seated in a 'priority seat' where I'd never
sit even if the train were empty. (This might just have been the illustrator,
however.)

~~~
hervature
No/low priority doesn’t mean forbidden. Also, how is a healthy man different
than a healthy woman? Both genders have the same ability to stand?

~~~
rdl
I don't want to sit in a priority seat because some disabled/etc. people
(including someone who appears healthy but has some hidden health problem,
etc.) has to actually ask you to get up, etc.

Male vs. female is a societal thing. I don't really think younger women should
have particular priority in seating, but I'd probably say a middle-aged woman
would have reasonable priority over a middle-aged man, all things being equal.
There are enough cultures where women > men for this particular issue that I
tend to go with it, though.

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barry-cotter
My god, it must be so unpleasant to be the kind of person who thinks about
that for the hours necessary to write an essay like the one he wrote ten years
ago, and to continue stewing on it for ten years.

I’ve lived in China for more than seven years and I definitely have an empty
seat beside me on the metro more often than Chinese people and children and
tourists say 老外(foreigner) regularly enough. So what? Life is good. I’m never
going to be Chineses, same as he’s never going to be Japanese. If that bugs
him why not go home? No one’s making him stay in Japan.

Change the things you can, accept the ones you can’t and if you can’t deal
with that get out.

~~~
RHSeeger
Out of curiosity, would you be ok with someone telling a non-us citizen black
man in the US "If you don't like people acting racist toward you, go back
where you came from"? That is fairly widely considered inappropriate in the US
(though not universally).

~~~
solidasparagus
It's rude to say that to someone, but as a foreigner if you can't come to
terms with the face that you ARE an outsider, leaving's your only alternative
(America's pretty diverse so eventually anyone can become a local, but in many
places the visual difference will always set you apart).

I've been the foreigner before and there's a big gap between not being treated
like a local and being actively encouraged to leave.

~~~
RaiseProfits
It’s still racism even if it’s culturally acceptable.

~~~
ng12
Is that form of racism still bad if it's culturally accepted? There are places
in the world where it is not only culturally but legally encoded that non-
natives are second class citizens. Should those places be denied the
opportunity to self-determine that policy?

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RaiseProfits
This is only one facet of a common problem that virtually every people on
earth deals with. Is it so hard to acknowledge?

> There are places in the world where it is not only culturally but legally
> encoded that non-natives are second class citizens.

Hell, in Israel you can even be a native and be a second class citizen. I
wouldn’t look to these countries as role models for human rights, though.

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shatobi
I think there is a lot of over-interpretation of his. It never seems to happen
to me. When you want to be the victim, you might seem to notice it happening.
And certainly, there might be some people who don't like foreigners. But as
far as I can tell I don't notice it. Perhaps the author has some other
features that might make one want to sit beside someone else. The
discriminative feature might not him being a foreigner. Furthermore, as a kid
I did not like to sit beside foreigners (anyone I did not know) either. I was
scared of anyone.

~~~
xelxebar
Perhaps, but the discrimination one feels living in Japan is more about the
sum total of a bunch of separately innocent actions that, taken together, feel
kind of crappy.

I've lived in Japan for about ten years now and certainly sympathize with the
author. It's a great place to live, but there are still things that just plain
suck about it, too.

It's kind of like this. Imagine, if every time you started a conversation with
someone they, just once, wrinkled their nose. If it happened a single time,
you might not even notice it, and even if you did it's not really a big deal.

However, after it happens day in and day out with pretty much every person you
interact with, it's easy to start doubting yourself, "Am I making a weird
face, too? Do I stink? Am I the one causing this for some reason? What's going
on?"

The same sort of thing happens with the empty seat. It's relatively harmless
as an individual instance. However, after it happens a thousand times, after
having anything you share get interpreted, for the thousandth time, as a This
Country vs Your Country Compare and Contrast session, after getting ignored in
favor of people trying out their English on you for the thousandth time, then
it just gets a litte exhausting.

Any of those things is fine in isolation, but the straw that broke the camel's
back is the same as the million that didn't.

~~~
flippinburgers
I just do not understand this mentality. We live in a primarily homogeneous
society. There will be friction there. It comes across as overly sensitive.

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flippinburgers
I've been living in Japan longer than this guy and I can say that these sorts
of things happen, but I find it totally ridiculous to get upset about them. If
you are angered about the way your are treated, you really should return to
your home country.

I say this because the level of self-absorption in this mentality is
astounding. People are naturally going tend to feel a range of emotions around
a foreigner that they wouldn't feel around someone who looks like them. Rather
than being upset or lambasting the Japanese culture for "racism" it is much
more productive, I feel, to treat people kindly and let them discover that
there really is nothing to fear.

While he did do that with the little girl in the article, he also went ahead
and wrote an entire newspaper article that effectively condemns Japan.

The overt cultural aggressiveness that I see dominating the airwaves thanks to
websites like twitter more often than not leaves me feeling sick to my
stomach: I have no respect for people who feel they have to right to
forcefully make someone else do or act a particular way regardless of how
"correct" they feel their way is. It is a seat on a train for gods sake.

~~~
episteme
If you don't like racism, go back to where you came from..?

Are the Japanese also against freedom of speech? Writing an article about
racism is not "forcefully" doing anything.

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jxramos
This guy should cash in on the empty seat by having a staged Japanese friend
break the ice and sit very conspicuously during his approach and settling in
to claim that empty seat. Maybe even with verbal announcements along the way,
walking through a crowd from an adjacent car to meander next to the expected
to be empty seat. If they could stage cameras about to capture reactions from
the crowd that could be slightly entertaining, possibly more.

~~~
A2017U1
> verbal announcements

At this point the foreigner is more Japanese than the local friend.

