Foreigners in Japan and a few ideas

Wow, it's been a few weeks since I've made a post. That's not good!

Well, this is the busy season for my job, and I think I'll be taking on a job to translate a book that will hit the shelves in the US, so while very cool, I'm going to be very busy too. In the meanwhile, I'll try to post smaller things as I think of them.

Coming back to the idea of the "other" - Here's a social science definition taken from wikipedia (you can refer to previous blog posts to read a bit more. It's going to be a recurring theme on this blog:

Lawrence Cahoone (1996) explains it thus:

"What appear to be cultural units—human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations—are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process of exclusion, opposition, and hierarchization. Other phenomena or units must be represented as foreign or 'other' through representing a hierarchical dualism in which the unit is 'privileged' or favored, and the other is devalued in some way."

When I saw English speaking Americans in the US, and they had to be within close proximity of some foreign-language-speaking person(s).. for example, mexicans, I saw many of the people comment that the mexicans were probably saying bad things about them.

This is a weird psychological condition I've seen over and over again, where a person's lack of self-confidence or paranoia or whatever it is clouds judgment, and the other stands in as this 'exterior thing' that is mocking them.

What would give you the idea that everyone around you is mocking you? That's a sad way to live. And then, to look at that sort of experience - Ah yes, everyone that speaks a language I can't understand is using that language to put me down, to ridicule me, etc. It's very strange, and I've seen it everywhere.

I met a guy here in Japan that said, "Yeah, I can't speak Japanese. GOD KNOWS what they're saying about me when I see them look at me!"

I told him that I could understand it and that usually when a Japanese person looks at me and talks about me, it's like I'm a reminder that they should study English - almost every time I am near Japanese people and they notice me, suddenly their conversation turns to English study and how it's important to become more international and so on. Not exactly "haha stupid foreigner" or whatever.

The next thing is, I've noticed so much, when people see a lot of bits of the 'other' that they don't understand, they reduce it to something sexual. The other is not only this exterior thing that mocks them, but also some exterior thing of heightened sexuality that you cannot reach or join - almost a sort of sexual jealousy.

For example, I've read numerous accounts about "hot prostitute girls in Japan hand out tissues on the street to try to get you to come with them, and the tissues are for [ahem, peewee herman purposes]" and so many similar things. Or some foreigners see a Japanese sign they can't understand on a small dark alley street "ah, that must be a whorehouse!" Again, this isn't limited to Japan, but the ideas of exoticism of the country by people from other countries do lend to these ideas.

In truth, the tissues are used by every business in Japan - from pachinko (pinball) parlors to cosmetic companies to NEC, Sony, what-have-you. The tissues are something you can use, and they come with a little slip advertising the company. So they get the advertising, you get tissues, of course they'll have a young girl out on the street handing them out as a part time job, and of course you'll take them because it's a good deal. And that sign in the dark alley? It was a basic noodle restaurant.