Gaijin Encounters

I think I explained it before, but "gaijin" is basically "foreigner". Japan is up in the 90s for pure Japanese population, so gaijin tend to stand out. For better or worse.

There are different types of gaijin though. Or, I'd say you have two different categories. You have visitors. I even include students on a one semester study abroad under here. Then you have the expat. This country is very different if you are a gaijin and visiting verse a gaijin and working/living here. (Then you get other differences based on ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation but let's just stick with the two.)

There have been a handful of times now when I've run into another expat and we knew we were both expats. It's a bizarre experience that I can't exactly explain. But, I'll try.

In Japan, people don't look at each other. They walk around staring off, or staring down. That's another way gaijin, especially Westerners, stand out. (This is why I get all warm and fuzzy when I see parents with their kids and they're actually interacting with them instead of the more normal silence.)

I was waiting around at Ikebukuro Station one afternoon, using the free station internet to catch some Pokémon. I looked up, and coming into the station was a gaijin. Nothing unusual. Ikebukuro is a popular, urban area so it is full of gaijin. But this was different. We made full eye contact, starting grinning like two kids that knew the same secret, nodded recognition, and that was it.

The encounter lasted no more than half a second, but in that half second it was clear that this gaijin was a fellow expat.

I would've written this off as an isolated incident except that it happened again. This time not in a busy place like Ikebukuro, but in my own town. At the station mall slash grocery store.

It was a weekend, so I was off work before the stores closed. I've started cutting through the mall and going out through the grocery store on those nights, because it's very hot and sometimes I trick myself into thinking I'll buy some groceries so that I won't need to on my day off. But, since I'm always too tired and with just a half hour before everything closes, it has become nothing more than a shortcut.

I was coming down the escalator, exhausted from working all day. When I'm halfway down, a gaijin passes the bottom. He paused, stepped back, and looked at me. We both grinned, nodded, and went our separate ways without a word. I'm fully convinced he was another expat, and that he recognized my exhaustion.

The final encounter for this post will be an example that happened a couple of weeks ago. This also occurred outside my station. It actually happened outside the door I exited after the second encounter.

I was on the tail end of a cold, so I was wandering around with a surgical mask. It was also bright, so I was wearing sunglasses. With my face 95% obscure, maybe I should have been so surprised to have two young guys holding a "Let's Speak English" sign yell out: "What's up? Do you speak English?" But that is what happened.

Keep in mind, I wasn't near them. I was about twenty feet away. Also keep in mind that this is Japan, where talking to your friend in an audible voice on the train is considered rude. I tell them I'm American, and they got super excited because they were also American. Me knowing they can't move from their spot under the tree (because they were advertising for the English language church in the area) I go over to struggle to talk, because my voice wasn't yet 100% from losing it.

I find out they've been their two weeks, and were having a difficult time getting Japanese people to talk to them. Let me, again, remind you that they shout at me as I was walking by. But, I wish them good luck and say I'll attend one of their English parties sometime.

And that is an example of non-expats. They'll live here for a couple of months tops, and then go home to speak a few phrases in Japanese and talk about the great--and slightly odd--time they had. Because, as I started with, Japan is different if you are a gaijin and you live and work here. If you work here, really work here, you recognize that exhaustion. And if you are a gaijin that works and lives here, you know that no matter how nice and great people are, there is an unspoken barrier. You are a gaijin. You are not Japanese. That is an unchangeable fact.