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Gaijin has been PC'd to mean foreigner when it really means Barbarian. And if you didn't see some seriously disturbing racism while you were over there, then you really weren't being very observant of their culture, TV, etc. Or talk with any of the Korean descendants of the WWII sex slaves they captured.
I seriously beg the differ. Gaijin doesn’t mean barbarian, it originally means “outsiderâ€. Get your facts straight. And yes, I did see racism or more like nationalism in Japan, I also see plenty of racism in the USA or other “first world†countries. Maybe you are numb to them or choose to ignore such occurrences. Don’t even go there on slaves… Geez.
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I even learned a lot of the language before and while I was there and you could sit there and say a perfect sentence in Japanese and a lot of the older folks would look at you like they might at their dog, if it suddenly started talking.
I thought you could barely communicate to a woman you met in Aomori. Which one is it? You spoke the language or didn’t you? Also, do you realize that Aomori (especially elders) use different dialect from central dialect? Maybe they really didn’t understand what you were saying. Or if you did speak “perfect sentenceâ€, it is quite possible that they really were surprised that a foreigner spoke such perfect Japanese since many elders in northern Japan are isolated from direct contact with us foreigners. In my experience, I would say I could get away with a lot of things because I was a foreigner. Things that may not be acceptable to Japanese was forgiven to me because I am a foreigner. I learned that from my ex-gf after we got home. She also told me she didn’t say it in front of everyone because in their culture, it is a huge embarrassment if a woman corrects a man in front of other people.
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I stand by my weird little freaks comment, since I was referring to the rather large segment of their male population that keeps alive one of the largest, legalized industries of fetish porn that is illegal in almost any other first world country. L*li cartoon porn, the whole anime and hentai industry, l*lita fantasy porn, incest, scat... it's illegal in most modern countries and yet you can buy it in stores all over Japan and on the web. They even still allow minors in videos nude as long as there's no sex and the privates are pixillated but they are still highly sexualized.
Cartoon porn is available throughout the world. It is not unique to Japan only. And “Anime†means “cartoon†in Japan. “hentai†means “pervertâ€. We all know that is all over the place too. Again, I’m not arguing Japan has some weird porn and adult industry. I am pointing out name calling and over generalization of a country is disturbing and I saw it as racism. Hell, I wasn’t even arguing that older generation in Japan have racism or not.
As I said before, sorry for hijacking the thread, but I felt that I needed to say something on his comment.