kitakitsune wrote:

To be honest, I don't think you were following the conversation before you posted. We were talking about 呼び捨て. "Kyle" instead of "Kyle-sensei", "Kyle-san", "Kyle-kun" or any other possible form of honorific.

You came in talking about how 15 teachers asked you to call them by their first name and we only find out a few posts later that you only address two of them without honorifics and they specifically asked you to do it.

amirite?

I was a little short in my responses, and maybe didn't explain where I was coming from so fully, but it was because I was a little peeved at you because I thought you were being uncooperative in your responses to thisiskyle to the extent that it seemed rude to me.

I was pointing out that the special case with foreigners often goes both ways, that although people break courtesy rules with you, they often allow you to break similar rules when talking to them.  (Also, I didn't say only two.  I gave two examples.)

Also, you asked, "Do you call your co-workers by their first name only?"  And my answer was, yeah, with some of them I do.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 May 23, 1:41 am)

The key point is that they asked you to do it.

No one asked JimmySeal and I assume Kyle also if they can do it. They made a conscious choice to 呼び捨て, either being intentionally insulting or most likely thinking it was the thing to do because we are foreigners. Bringing us back to the implications brought up by the microagression study.

Yeah, there are definitely problems for foreigners in Japan. The Popura in the town next to me was robbed and the police came to my house looking for me! I'm just advocating for not sweating the small stuff when it's well intentioned.

@Kyle: That`s madness. Did they just ask you questions or did they take you into the station without an ounce of proof? Either way, that`s the height of racism, unless you`re know for comitting the regular burglary? :p

@Nukemarine: I work and live with a guy from South Korea who was hired with the other Irish guys through Ireland, after living there for 5 years. He has perfect Japanese so he`s treated like a Japanese employee, until the benefits of being such apply, then he is treated like an Irish employee. They made him take an English test, and will be making him take the JPLT. They decided that he wasn`t entitled to the monthly bonus associated with knowing English because he was hired from Ireland. Which is nonsense.

I think that if you want to notice prejudices, you will.

For example: During my three-week trip to Japan I did not notice any pattern of the seats on the train right next to me staying empty more often than other seats. But I'm sure that statistically it will happen once in a while that one of the last empty seats will be the one next to you. But that does not mean anything. And if there really is a pattern, who says that there aren't other reasons for it than not being Japanese?

On the other hand, during that same trip I've never been addressed in English at a konbini cashier. Something which did happen to me twice yesterday when I visited the city centre of my home town (Amsterdam).

kitakitsune wrote:

There was a book and documentary made in the 80s about a western guy born and raised in Japan and his interactions with Japanese people. He would go up to Japanese people and start speaking to them and they would complain that they couldn't understand him. Even though his native language was Japanese. He just had a white face. Then he would put on one of those surgical masks that masked his obviously non-Japanese face and all of a sudden everyone would perfectly understand him.

I think I've mentioned it here before, but I was out walking the dog one day and heard some loud "Kawaii" calls, so I walked over to where a high school girl, her mom, and her mom's friend were sitting. They were all focused on the dog, but asking me questions in Japanese about her, such as what breed she is, how old she is, etc. After a minute or so of this, the mom looked up at me and exclaimed "Oh! Gaijin da!" in surprise. From that moment on, she couldn't understand a word I said, and her daughter "translated" by repeating nearly word for word whatever I said to the basic questions of "Where are you from, how long have you been in Japan" and such. Granted, most people aren't that extreme, but it is possible to come across some who don't understand Japanese if it's spoken by a foreigner. I've gotten "eigo wakkanai" at stores and restaurants as well. Sometimes I was butchering whatever I was trying to say, other times it was the deer-in-headlights Gaijin panic on their part. It doesn't happen as much as it used to, but that may be the difference between Hokkaido and Tokyo (where I currently live),  it may be that my Japanese is better, or a combination of both.

Nothing to do with Japanese, but all the "sensei" talk earlier in the thread reminds me of my High School track coaches. Between the High school, Jr High, boys, and girls coaches there were 6 or so coaches, who only ever referred to each other as "Coach", yet they somehow always knew which one of each other they were referring to.

And somewhat more to do with Japanese, back when I was a teacher, some of the kid students started calling one of the staff "Mr." followed by his first name. Since "Robert" comes out as "Robato", they were saying "Mr. Robato". Yes, at one point one of them said "Domo arigato, Mr. Robato".

The 呼び捨て gets on my nerves, too, but it is really a minor thing. I have started to get around the first-name thing by not putting my first name on my 名刺, just my initials. So at least people I meet on a formal basis don't know my first name, just like I most likely don't know theirs. In a university environment, most people are worldly enough to know the difference, and I get called 先生. In fact I had a long chat over dinner with Japanese colleagues a few months ago and everybody called each other 先生 and that seemed a little strange to me, but they started it.

But someone should really write an article for a major Japanese-language newspaper  explaining that a) you don't call Americans by their first name unless they introduce themselves verbally with that name, b) you do not call Europeans by their first names at all, unless they ask you to do so after you've got to know each other quite well, and c) calling someone by his/her first name while you are referred to by your last name is roughly the equivalent of attaching 〜くん to the other person's name when you're the superior, and perceived as quite condescending by young Westerners.

And yes, I used to get it, too, that people couldn't fathom that I spoke Japanese. And I have been randomly stopped by the police even though if they're after visa overstayers, they should probably look for Chinese people, not obviously Western guys. After all, Chinese and Japanese look totally different, right? Rubbish. It's really all the effect of the 日本人論　that they're still spoonfed.

On a side note, I have a Chinese-Canadian friend who, after saying he was Canadian, was asked in Japan if he could use chopsticks. Now he really had a reason to feel offended.

Last edited by Irixmark (2012 May 23, 6:11 am)

kitakitsune wrote:

There was a book and documentary made in the 80s about a western guy born and raised in Japan and his interactions with Japanese people. He would go up to Japanese people and start speaking to them and they would complain that they couldn't understand him.

Incidentally, this is happening to me in the US! English isn't my first language and I do have an accent, but I usually get by, and most people understand me just fine. But some (including my boss) still claim they can't understand me or tell me that a word I use "doesn't exist" (even when I definitely know it does).

It was really interesting to come across the concept of "microagressions" discussed here, because that's exactly what it is. It's not bad-intentioned, it is not deliberately racist, it's not a big deal, but it accumulates and it does wear you down. (Someone here in the US, on hearing where I was from, told me we were "a funny little people". Wtf?)

I know this does happen occasionally seriously, even to me. But for the majority of the time, I never have these problems. I actually find that the people, like Debito, who complain about this, often speak very heavily accented Japanese with poor grammar and  make odd  vocabulary choices... basically, they speak Japanese, but they speak it badly. I've never really heard someone who speaks the language really well complain about this kind of stuff.

i remember the one time i got this. i almost burst out laughing.

one of my cousins was an ALT and he had a friend that spoke practically fluent english and even did a year of study at a university in san francisco.

on my final day in tokyo i was hanging out with his friend and i got the "wow! you're good with chopsticks!" i almost spit out my tsukemen, i wanted to laugh so much. usually i don't get that because i'm asian. (although i'm filipino and we use forks/spoons, or our hands if we're hardcore.) i think later he complimented me on my japanese because we were driving and i saw a hokkaido license plate and was like "whoa that dude came from really far."

for the most part it doesn't happen to me though. the only one time was when we went to this super cheap unadon place in ueno and my cousin asks for water by pointing to his glass and saying お水ください。 the waitress looked at him, then gave him a thumbs up and said "OKAY." that was really weird, lol.

callmedodge wrote:

@Kyle: That`s madness. Did they just ask you questions or did they take you into the station without an ounce of proof? Either way, that`s the height of racism, unless you`re know for comitting the regular burglary? :p

No, I wasn't home at the time (busy robbing the 7-11) so they talked to my neighbor who vouched for me. She told me about it later and said she asked the police if it was a white person who had robbed the place (in which case it would have been entirely okay since I'm the only white person within a half hour drive in any direction) and they said no. They said they were making sure I was safe, which I guess is possible if they don't want to deal with the hassle of some international incident if I were injured, but it still seems a little....

Tzadeck wrote:

I'm pretty sure that 95% of the time, if people don't understand your Japanese it's because you have a strong accent.

I tend to agree (not that my accent isn't like molasses). And it works in reverse too. I had a student who was preparing for an English speech contest and I thought she sounded pretty good so I recorded her and sent it to my mother back in the states for a second opinion. She said she could barely understand it at all. If you usually talk to people that spend a lot of time with westerners, you might underestimate the thickness of your accent since they are used to it.

bertoni wrote:

So, just as a thought experiment and out of curiousity, what would you say about an American person who always calls Japanese people name + さん or maybe name + 先生, when the conversation is in English?

Talking to a Japanese person (in English) I would leave on the suffixes. Otherwise it would depend on my relationship to the person being talked about.