You’re Not From Here
You are a foreigner. You were a foreigner before you arrived, you are a foreigner while
you are in Japan, and when Japanese go abroad they will still refer to you as a
foreigner, ironies be damned. This cannot be understated and will be a recurring theme
in the stories to come. Never forget, you’re a foreigner. They won’t ever forget.
Well, I experience exactly the same situation and I'm a Greek living and working in the UK, so it's not something that's particular to the Japanese. It seems a sizeable chunk of most people you'll meet when you live abroad will be constitutionally unable to let go of the fact that you didn't grow up within the same national borders as each other.
I'm a mixed-race (African-American and Korean) American citizen and I found Wainzinger's (author of OP) discussion about Japanese people being careful or indifferent to the use of the term "gaijin" reminiscent of the way some of my colleagues sometimes speak about minorities or about me when I'm around.
The signals are subtle and people seem intent to not cause offense when broaching topics concerning race and class.
But it's also a reminder that I am not perceived quite the same. At best, it can be an acknowledgement and affirmation of my experience and feelings. At worst, well, in the spirit of Wainzinger's wonderful article, I'll not talk about what sometimes happens at worst. :)
I am an American born and raised in Puerto Rico living in Georgia. I am treated as an immigrant every day. You will be treated differently everywhere if you are even a bit different. Such is humanity.
I'm an American with mediocre German living in Berlin, I've been here for a decade. I don't feel like a foreigner whatsoever. My social circle is 70% German and the rest is a mix of nationalities.
I would absolutely feel like a foreigner in any other city in Germany, but not here. If being a "foreigner" disturbs you significantly, like it did me when I lived in Vienna, I would say moving is worth it. There aren't many cities where there is no such thing as a "foreigner", but they do exist and are not exactly mysteries.
New York City is like this too, or, at least, I think it is. I'm American so not the best person to judge.
Can you expand on what living in Vienna felt like? I loved visiting there and didn't feel unwelcome at all, but of course being a long stay resident exposes you to different experiences than just being a tourist.
It took a while to feel unwelcome in Vienna, and it was really a pileup of small things that didn't sit right with me, many of which on their own would be easily dismissable. It may also be my particular heritage that made it more difficult.
The primary annoyance was my Jewish heritage. I'm completely secular, it's not a big part of my identity and something I rarely mention, but it's also not something I conceal. It would only take a drink or two at some social event for people to decide to unburden themselves in one way or another. I would have to listen to people apologizing for their racist/backwards countrymen, I would have to let people try to set the record straight about how Austria is misunderstood and actually Hitler's first victim, and I would have to watch people's expressions grow pained and conversations go dead when I honestly answered questions about my heritage. Eventually I learned that it's easier for everyone if I stopped mentioning it, and eventually I grew resentful that I had to hide it.
Generally, Austrian-ness played an uncomfortable role in social interactions. Older people, upon hearing my standard (Hochdeutsch) inflected German would react with hostility and tell me that their language is different (I had no intention of learning the Austrian dialect), and that Americans need to learn to distinguish Austrians from Germans. I found the constant "in Austria we say 'x' instead of 'y'" and "in Austria we always do this in 'x' way" corrections to be tiresome. Generally, I was reminded that I was a foreigner much more than I felt was justified, and gradually I came to understand why many expats in Vienna cluster together as opposed to integrating.
I concur, as an immigrant who lived in NYC for a couple of months, not once I felt like a foreigner. Some other cities in the US where I've absolutely never felt like a foreigner - Bay area, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC.
Surprisingly, I felt like a foreigner in London, which is the most culturally diverse city and also in Singapore.
It really depends on the setting though. Where I'm from, I'm one of the four people in my office with my ethnicity and the only one in my graduate program. I've got about 500 colleagues and in my city and 100 students in my graduate program, my ethnicity represents about 9% of the population, and on the whole the aggregate diversity is extremely high here.
In short, I represent 9% of the population but 0.8% of my office and 1% of my graduate program. At the same time I'm associated with all the other things my ethnicity is stereotypically known for, in which there is overrepresentation. (the usual issues linked with socioeconomic shittyness, like crime).
As such I frequently feel like the other, despite living in a very diverse city. It's like we put water and oil in a pot and say look there's multiple things in the pot. But is it a melting pot? To me, not nearly enough. It's still shocking to me how much segregation there actually is, we've kind of left the discussion of segregation behind us since there's no more segregation by law (inputs), but the outcomes are still very much there.
Berlin's culture is proudly post-national, cosmopolitan, and bohemian - a place that doesn't care where you come from, and doesn't ask, you're accepted simply for partaking in the low-rent offbeat way of life that's on offer here.
Of course that's all theory and reality is much less rosy with many more shades of gray. But even having that self image is already half the battle. And no other city in Germany has such a self-image, except maybe Hamburg to some degree.
The coolest thing is, your a Texan in Japan or New Zealand too :) Texas is a state everybody is familiar with and seems to hold some special status overseas. Go Cowboys, go Spurs haha :)
Texas is not necessarily seen as a positive thing, though. At least in Europe it's seen as the exponent of the 'worst' things that the US has to offer (guns, cars with terrible gas mileage, AC in giant McMansions running 24/7, etc).
> It seems a sizeable chunk of most people you'll meet when you live abroad will be constitutionally unable to let go of the fact that you didn't grow up within the same national borders as each other.
So what’s the problem with that? I’m an European, currently living in Singapore. I am a foreigner (Angmoh). People know that. I know that. Cultures clash here and there but there is no problem with it.
It's not a problem, in the sense that I realise there is no malice; on the other hand, it's a problem in the sense that after many years living in a country, having acquired citizenship and having built a family here, I would like to think you are part of the community.
Constantly being reminded that I am never really going to progress past the status of outsider can be really bothersome.
How long have you been living in Singapore? Things start to change after a few years in my opinion.
EDIT: I just wanted to point out that the positive aspects of migrating to a new country, in my case, still greatly outweigh the negative aspects such as the one described above. Also, I am lucky because the cultural differences between my native country (Italy) and my adoptive one (Australia) are relatively minor.
To clarify, my comment above was primarily meant to point out that the behaviour we're discussing is not something unique to the Japanese. I felt it was a bit unfair to single them out for having a culture that continuously reminds people of being foreign, when everybody else does it also (well- as far as I can tell). I didn't say whether I thought it's a problem or not.
So- is it? I guess that will depend a lot on the situation, won't it? For myself I've been in both kinds of situations, where it was a problem and where it wasn't. Say, when I first moved here I worked menial jobs and the people I worked with tended to not care much about social niceties (although there may have been other reasons I attracted the wrong kind of attention, by some). Nowadays, I'm a PhD researcher, so it would be a really big surprise if someone brought up the fact I'm not from around here as a disadvantage; most people I work with are not, anyway.
It's just that, there are situations were anything that singles you out can spell trouble- and being foreign singles you out. In such situations, you have to tread carefully in a way that locals don't.
To be perfectly clear, I personally take things in my stride and I generally fare very well. But not everyone is the same as me, neither have I always been as confident and self-assured as I am now. The target is, I think, to have an environment (a society, if you will) that accommodates all kinds of people, those who aren't bothered as well as those who might be.
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Edit: "neither have I always been as confident and self-assured as I am now". Actually, now that I think of it, I always have. I'm a tough cookie :)
> I'm happy to follow the social protocols while never feeling like needing to belong
I used to be a "digital nomad" before coming to Australia, I lived in many cities across S. E. Asia and South America and, like you, for a while I really enjoyed being able to "taste the soup while not diving into it"[1].
However things change when you decide that the place where you are living is where you want to settle down and build a family (see my other comment in this sub-thread).
[1] This is a (probably not accurate) quote by writer and journalist Tiziano Terzani, unfortunately I'm unable to find a link to a source at the moment.
Sure, I wasn't implying that, just pointing out that it may be a possibility. Also, being single doesn't preclude you from deciding that you want to live somewhere indefinitely (the point that I wanted to make in my comment was more related to nomadic vs resident lifestyle, than single vs. married).
I'm actually not nomadic. Born in India, but moved to Canada a decade ago.
Things are pretty good here. Because of cultural differences people don't necessarily have to 'accept' me as one of theirs (it is just human nature to be so). And that's fine by me. If being emotionally accepted was a factor, I would have chosen to live among my extended family back in India.
It's not about national borders, it's about culture. Culture is something you learn young, and it's very hard to acclimate to a new culture. You can move to a new country and be successful, have friends, etc..., but it's unlikely you'll ever truly understand that culture. Just like they can't move to Greece for a few years and understand your culture.
It's merely a statement of fact. I know this well, I speak French, have some French relatives, have a French name, travel to France all the time, and while I can get on, can have a great time and have made friends in France, I'm not French (I'm Canadian) and never will be. People there still treat me great, I know a lot about their culture, but I don't know their culture, just like they don't know Canadian culture.
Japan is a very rigid, closed and unique culture. Their country is extremely developed (could even say over-developed), and I have no doubt that growing up there, living from birth to death in that society marks you in a way that living there for 10 years won't.
There's a reason Canadians emphasize diversity over assimilation, because complete assimilation is impossible. You can't simply ignore one's upbringing and life experience and pretend we all had the same experiences.
I will add my anecdote. I am an American living in Thailand (many of them on HN from what I can tell). I have lived here for more than 10 years, speak Thai, have a family, etc. But I am definitely a foreigner and always will be. In fact, it is institutionalized by the Thai government that foreigners will be treated as such. For example, I pay 10 times the Thai price to enter a national park. And many, many private businesses take their cue from that policy and charge higher prices for anyone who does not look Thai. A constant reminder that you are a foreigner and always will be.
You are a foreigner. Even your children may be foreigners. But their children and generations after them, if they all have children with non-foreigners, won’t be.
Do you have some examples? I'm in the UK and work for a small company that hires a lot of people from all over, and I'd like to think I'm not unintentionally doing the same thing.
