afterglowefx Wrote:

drdunlap Wrote:I don't know anything about Kirkland "handcrafted" beers but they probably don't compare to craft beer in Japan these days. Recently, Japanese craft beer is pretty amazing.

シークヮーサー is what I go for when I'm already smashed and wandering the streets at 4am. It's that point where one really ought to stop, but through your blurred vision you somehow recognize 9% alcohol for 100 yen and wow that's a pretty picture of a lemon. It never ends well.

Is there like some magical place where this Japanese craft beer can be bought? I went to Beer Fes in Ebisu Gardens last year and tried some really amazing beer (and some really strange beer), so I know that they're around. It's just that here in the sticks the only thing I ever see on the shelves is the usual plus maybe Corona or something. Oh and sometimes a funny little beer called 水曜日のネコ, a Belgian, which I really like but can't reliably find. Anyway yeah, tips appreciated. I spent my uni days in the PNW and I'm used to grocery stores stocking dozens and dozens of craft beers.

The high alcohol (and low alcohol) chuhai are pretty reliable alcoholic juiceboxes.

水曜日のネコ is made by the biggest craft brewer in Japan, YO-HO Brewing (ヤッホー・ブルーイング). They make reliably tasty things and are one of the only craft beers regularly sold in convenience stores. They also have a fairly attractive female brewer. This may or may not have any significance. There a ton of craft brewers, though. To avoid derailing the thread further I'll point here ---> http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=11448 where I said a lot of things about beer in Japan and craft beer pubs (in Osaka).

vileru Wrote:In order of least to most expensive: Yamaya, bars, and beer events.

I dunno, they generally try to make events a little less pricey in an attempt to steal customers away from yellow fizzwater.. but you probably won't be getting pints very often at events. D: The next BIG event here in Japan is Snow Monkey Beer Live- which is amazing on a number of levels. I will be invading again this year with a group of .. a lot, from Kansai.

beer derail. blame beer.

Yona Yona Ale! You can find it in lots of big liquor stores.

Aikynaro Wrote:There's obviously no malice in the Japanese tendency to speak English with 'foreign-looking' people. 'Racism' seems like the wrong word - the connotation is too negative and is caught up in the race relationship issues of other cultures.
But nonetheless, it's racial profiling and that makes people uncomfortable for good reason.

"Racial profiling" is simply considering someone's race as a factor when making an assumption about them. That can be a correct or incorrect line of reasoning.

For instance, as an example of correct reasoning, doctors must racially profile patients when diagnosing or testing for certain diseases, because certain disorders and diseases affect some races more than others.

What is this good reason you talk of, that makes people lump correct and incorrect racial profiling together, as something to be uncomfortable about?

Quote:And the point JapaneseRuleOf7 was making is that Half-Japanese people who are .. legally? (and half-ethnically) Japanese, and know nothing other than Japan (but still look rather foreign) are treated just as we foreigners are. That may not be racism but it sure is discrimination. 8)

And when you put all the pieces together, especially in a slowly globalizing Japan, you realize that it's weird to assume that "non-Japanese face = non-Japanese." There's no malice in it, but sooner or later the Japanese populace is going to have to realize that their good intentions are actually harmful to a lot of people. :[ It's a weird, transitional period but.. Japan's changing. Little by little.

Yeah, I agree.
It actually annoys the shit out of me that people talk to me in English by default. It's discrimination. But 'racism' isn't the right word. It's not the same thing as all the other stuff we worry about as being racist.
My 'ハーフ' (terrible word) students speak less English than the others, so yeah, I know. It's a ridiculous situation that they're going to grow up in.

Quote:Racism is rooted in ignorance, and the term absolutely fits the situation. The reason they're using English with foreigners is because Japanese are operating from the baseline perception that only real Japanese can be Japanese, which entails that non-Japanese are incapable of understanding Japanese

You're going way too far in your assumptions.
I understand where you're coming from - I know the attitude that you're referring to. But I really doubt it has anything to do with the vast majority of cases where Japanese people go with English with foreign looking people.
Even when it's blatantly obvious that my Japanese is better than their English, I've had people try and use English. It's not that they think I'm incapable of understanding it. I think they're either just trying to be all おもてなし, or they want to try out what they know.
Assuming they're doing it because they think gaijin can't possibly learn Japanese is just being uncharitable. There are plenty of other reasons why someone might use English when talking to someone who stereotypically looks like they would speak it.

drdunlap Wrote:

vileru Wrote:In order of least to most expensive: Yamaya, bars, and beer events.

I dunno, they generally try to make events a little less pricey in an attempt to steal customers away from yellow fizzwater.. but you probably won't be getting pints very often at events. D:

I should've mentioned that I've only attended big festivals (big summer events, Oktoberfest, and so on) in Sendai (admittedly, I know next to nothing about the craft beer industry in Tohoku). These kind of events are highly marketed, and almost anything 500ml or above costs over ¥1000.

I shall now take a moment to appreciate living in the Boston area, where the ambrosia flows abundantly and the walls are adorned with sacred script.

Stansfield123 Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:There's obviously no malice in the Japanese tendency to speak English with 'foreign-looking' people. 'Racism' seems like the wrong word - the connotation is too negative and is caught up in the race relationship issues of other cultures.
But nonetheless, it's racial profiling and that makes people uncomfortable for good reason.

"Racial profiling" is simply considering someone's race as a factor when making an assumption about them. That can be a correct or incorrect line of reasoning.

For instance, as an example of correct reasoning, doctors must racially profile patients when diagnosing or testing for certain diseases, because certain disorders and diseases affect some races more than others.

What is this good reason you talk of, that makes people lump correct and incorrect racial profiling together, as something to be uncomfortable about?

It annoying and offensive when your bold assumption based on shallow information such as race is wrong. I think there's plenty of evidence that this is true in this thread.
It makes people uncomfortable to be branded as an outsider based on appearance, and it makes more serious racism acceptable by legitimising stereotyping as a tool.

Aikynaro Wrote:It annoying and offensive when your bold assumption based on shallow information such as race is wrong.

I don't understand the logic here. So if I make an educated guess about something that helps me get the language right 70% of the time, then the other 30% of the time I'm being annoying and offensive. Simply because I made an educated guess based on limited (but pertinent) information.

On the other hand, if I ignore the limited information I have, refuse to think for myself, and instead automatically go with the politically correct but likely wrong option of assuming that a Black or Caucasian person is Japanese, and therefor get it wrong 70% of the time, then that's neither annoying nor offensive?

Sorry, but if this is how some people determine what they get offended or annoyed by, then I'm perfectly comfortable offending and annoying them. Id rather come across as intelligent to the people who think rationally, than "enlightened" to the people who think like this.

Aikynaro Wrote:I think there's plenty of evidence that this is true in this thread.

Before, you said that there is "good reason" to avoid racial profiling. When you say "good reason", people are going to assume that you are referring to an objective, logical reason. "it makes people uncomfortable" is subjective.

There are a lot of things that make people uncomfortable, that are right. Science makes religious fanatics uncomfortable, freedom makes dictators uncomfortable, racial tolerance makes racists uncomfortable, etc.

"it makes people uncomfortable" is not a "good reason" to not do something.

Aikynaro Wrote:it makes more serious racism acceptable by legitimising stereotyping as a tool.

Begging the question fallacy. The subject of our disagreement is whether relying on race to draw certain conclusions about someone is racist or not. You're constructing your argument on the assumption that it is "a little racist" (and therefor it legitimizes "more racist things").

Aikynaro Wrote:It annoying and offensive when your bold assumption based on shallow information such as race is wrong. I think there's plenty of evidence that this is true in this thread.
It makes people uncomfortable to be branded as an outsider based on appearance, and it makes more serious racism acceptable by legitimising stereotyping as a tool.

If I see not Finnish-looking person and talk to him in English by default, does that make me a racist? I don't think so. Language choice doesn't equal racism in any way. I switch to Finnish if he knows it, but the fact is most not Finnish-looking people actually don't speak Finnish because they aren't Finns! Why should I expect they knew Finnish? If its a non-ethnic Finn who knows the language, I of course feel bad for not realizing that. But I'm not a psychic am I?

The fact still remains that most Finns are white-as-sheet. It is the default for a Finn, just as ethnic Japanese is the default for a Japanese over there. Its not fair, and hopefully will change with time, but at the moment it still is a fact of life.

Ethnic Japanese. Heh, what's that?

You mean like "ethnic British" or "ethnic French"?

I thought it was 日本人, Japan-person, not

Japan-person-born-Japan-looks-Asian-speaks-Japanese-attended-public-school-never-left-except-for-vacation-ps-excludes-Okinawa.

Sure, it's predominantly Asian, just like Australia's predominantly white. But it's not like everyone's the same. I guess we should consider some racial purity standard. That usually improves matters.

I never have problems with people using English with me. If they do I can just say I'm German and can't speak English. I can follow that up with a line of quick German to convince even the diehard skeptics. ^^

Stansfield123 Wrote:On the other hand, if I ignore the limited information I have, refuse to think for myself, and instead automatically go with the politically correct but likely wrong option of assuming that a Black or Caucasian person is Japanese, and therefor get it wrong 70% of the time, then that's neither annoying nor offensive?

Sorry, but if this is how some people determine what they get offended or annoyed by, then I'm perfectly comfortable offending and annoying them. Id rather come across as intelligent to the people who think rationally, than "enlightened" to the people who think like this.

Your math is off. If you assume a Caucasian or Black person is "Japanese", you will be wrong literally more than 99% of the time. Assuming a random sample of the population.

andikaze Wrote:I never have problems with people using English with me. If they do I can just say I'm German and can't speak English. I can follow that up with a line of quick German to convince even the diehard skeptics. ^^

And then you insult the Japanese person for correctly assuming that a German would know English...

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:Ethnic Japanese. Heh, what's that?

You mean like "ethnic British" or "ethnic French"?

I thought it was 日本人, Japan-person, not

Japan-person-born-Japan-looks-Asian-speaks-Japanese-attended-public-school-never-left-except-for-vacation-ps-excludes-Okinawa.

Sure, it's predominantly Asian, just like Australia's predominantly white. But it's not like everyone's the same. I guess we should consider some racial purity standard. That usually improves matters.

Yamato People? :x That'd be the specific ethnicity since "Japanese" causes too much confusion. And that's already caused a problem or twelve but,
of course these days with a lot (2%!) of foreigners hanging about and more than a bit of mixed blood going around it's just the subjective "hey you look Japanese so you must be Japanese but he doesn't so he must not be." Not taking into account that people can be born and raised in Japan and be, aside from looks, the same as everyone else. That's the problem. :x
Globalization's tuff. Ethnicity's cool and all but it won't be long before it gets hard to use that as weight in an argument. Not that it's caused much of anything but problems in the past.

andikaze Wrote:I never have problems with people using English with me. If they do I can just say I'm German and can't speak English. I can follow that up with a line of quick German to convince even the diehard skeptics. ^^

People generally speak Japanese to me but, if they ask, I tell them I'm from Senbayashi (super oldschool middle-of-nowhere Osaka). :x I's so silly.

Stansfield123 Wrote:I don't understand the logic here. So if I make an educated guess about something that helps me get the language right 70% of the time, then the other 30% of the time I'm being annoying and offensive. Simply because I made an educated guess based on limited (but pertinent) information.

On the other hand, if I ignore the limited information I have, refuse to think for myself, and instead automatically go with the politically correct but likely wrong option of assuming that a Black or Caucasian person is Japanese, and therefor get it wrong 70% of the time, then that's neither annoying nor offensive?

Sorry, but if this is how some people determine what they get offended or annoyed by, then I'm perfectly comfortable offending and annoying them. Id rather come across as intelligent to the people who think rationally, than "enlightened" to the people who think like this.

The problem is that you're making people aliens in their own country. Or in the case of a lot of people in this thread, the country that they've spent a great deal of effort in integrating into.
In exchange for alienating the people who live here, you manage to make the lives tourists a bit easier. Sure, statistically you might encounter more tourists, but at the end of the day I think the first group are much more important to society and making them feel excluded from it is dumb.

"It makes people uncomfortable" is a perfectly valid reason not to do something.

Quote:If I see not Finnish-looking person and talk to him in English by default, does that make me a racist?

I was arguing before that 'racist' is the wrong word, but sure - if you're in Finland and talk to non-Finnish-looking people in English, it's a form of racial discrimination.
(plus if they responded to you in Finnish you would probably continue in Finnish, right? In Japan if you respond in Japanese, half the time they'll just keep talking to you in their terrible broken English. Even if you started the conversation in Japanese they might just decide to do their half in English anyway. It's weird.)

This is weird, hardly anyone speaks English to me. I think this has occurred just a handful of times in my five years in Japan, and two of them were from 右翼 guys trying to convince me Koreans and Chinese people were cockroaches.

One thing that does bother me though is going to restaurants with my wife, who is Japanese. Wait staff frequently ignore me completely and talk only to her. Even when I speak up, they look over at my wife as if looking for a permission from her to engage me in Japanese.

kitakitsune Wrote:

andikaze Wrote:I never have problems with people using English with me. If they do I can just say I'm German and can't speak English. I can follow that up with a line of quick German to convince even the diehard skeptics. ^^

And then you insult the Japanese person for correctly assuming that a German would know English...

How's that insulting? They see a white guy and speak English, assuming that "white guys have to be able to speak English". There are other white people in the world, ya know, not only Brits and Americans.
But how can Japanese people know, when even certain Caucasian groups don't seem to have noticed yet ^^

Aikynaro Wrote:The problem is that you're making people aliens in their own country. Or in the case of a lot of people in this thread, the country that they've spent a great deal of effort in integrating into.
In exchange for alienating the people who live here, you manage to make the lives tourists a bit easier. Sure, statistically you might encounter more tourists, but at the end of the day I think the first group are much more important to society and making them feel excluded from it is dumb.

I think if a stranger beginning a conversation in English makes you feel alienated and offended, you're bending over backwards to look for a reason to be offended. In which case, it's on you and not them. If you reply to them in Japanese instead of English, doesn't the problem go away?

ehhhh Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:The problem is that you're making people aliens in their own country. Or in the case of a lot of people in this thread, the country that they've spent a great deal of effort in integrating into.
In exchange for alienating the people who live here, you manage to make the lives tourists a bit easier. Sure, statistically you might encounter more tourists, but at the end of the day I think the first group are much more important to society and making them feel excluded from it is dumb.

I think if a stranger beginning a conversation in English makes you feel alienated and offended, you're bending over backwards to look for a reason to be offended. In which case, it's on you and not them. If you reply to them in Japanese instead of English, doesn't the problem go away?

I think a few of the posters in this thread have mentioned that sometimes the Japanese people they have met will still try and respond in English even after they keep trying to speak Japanese

mc962 Wrote:I think a few of the posters in this thread have mentioned that sometimes the Japanese people they have met will still try and respond in English even after they keep trying to speak Japanese

Maybe their Japanese is so bad the Japanese person can't understand what they are saying.

I doubt that. Some Japanese people are like that. Leads to hilarious situations, where the Japanese keeps speaking English, while the foreigner sticks to Japanese. And it works, so obviously there's "communication compatibility".

kitakitsune Wrote:

mc962 Wrote:I think a few of the posters in this thread have mentioned that sometimes the Japanese people they have met will still try and respond in English even after they keep trying to speak Japanese

Maybe their Japanese is so bad the Japanese person can't understand what they are saying.

Short of a terrible accent that they somehow might have managed to miss after years of learning, it sounds like some of these people are fluent/near fluent/proficient enough to converse and/or fairly settled into life in Japan


Personally I don't think I would have a problem with it as I can understand where the automatic reaction to try English first is likely coming from, but at the same time I haven't been to Japan yet so I can't say from experience how I would feel.

andikaze Wrote:How's that insulting? They see a white guy and speak English, assuming that "white guys have to be able to speak English". There are other white people in the world, ya know, not only Brits and Americans.
But how can Japanese people know, when even certain Caucasian groups don't seem to have noticed yet ^^

We're back to simple probability. Japanese people in Japan are far more likely to run into Caucasians who speak better English than Japanese. In fact, it's very rare for Japanese people to interact with foreigners who can speak good Japanese. And really, really rare to find a foreigner who speaks at a native level.

Japan is changing but I'm about 25 years away from getting worked up on this issue.

Why would anyone think I'm worked up about this? I'm actually cool with that. I just don't wanna switch from Japanese (a foreign language) to English (another foreign language).

Aikynaro Wrote:I was arguing before that 'racist' is the wrong word, but sure - if you're in Finland and talk to non-Finnish-looking people in English, it's a form of racial discrimination.

no, it's not discrimination. it's called having some common sense and not being irrational.

the problem here is that obviously some people cannot get used to their new role of being a minority in a foreign country. the other problem is that they think it's everyone else's problem, but not their own. therefore, frustration ensues.