Well i already mentioned I don't watch anime or manga... the closest thing i have EVER watched to anime was DBZ and Pokemon when I was in middle school.

Besides, I don't really care for the chinese. Their food is good though!

OHHHHHHHHH YOU RIKE TO REARN JAPANESE THAT IS SO SPECIAR

Trying to think like nipponese won't make them like you any better.

another thing to point out is that people generally don't hold onto languages like a material possession. If you have to reason to seriously learn it, you probably won't, and every moment you no longer use the language, your skills with it start to deteriorate. It's only in movies where the intrepid Great White Adventurer is able to bust out some obscure oriental tongue with perfect fluency shocking his Great White Companions.

What you're saying is very true and I was/am pretty aware of it. In fact, when I was in Japan, it was right during some heightened tension regarding some UN stuff or another. I'm also very very aware of the animosity between Asian countries, as (you probably know, but) it's not one-directional -- China hates Japan and (to a lesser degree) Korea, Korea hates Japan and China, and Japan hates Korea as well.

The reason I said "Maybe it was because I'm Asian and they can't tell the difference before I open my mouth" is because really, despite many American Asians' abilities to tell each other apart, I found that for the most part in Japan people could not notice that I (and some of the friends I was with) were Chinese/Korean. When I remained mute or spoke crappy Japanese, they just treated me like I was stupid or uneducated (which wasn't that bad -- which is where some of my previous comments about that came from).

I made a point when I was there to not tell people I'm Chinese, but in the cases when I did, some people were surprised and had thought I was an American-born Japanese person (some also thought I was Korean and other random ethnicities, but that's besides the point).

I guess I didn't get the feeling of stupid foreigner syndrome because I was with Japanese kids as well as my friends all the time -- the only times when we were alone was when we were touring shrines and temples in Kyoto and Nara and there were enough obviously foreign tourists there to keep the attention away from us.

I'll also make the note that we did have a white guy and a black guy in our group, and they were more like celebrities than anything else. When we were at this huge expo (I forgot what it was called), a number of girls came up to us to take pictures with them. Moreover when we decided to buy beer, the store clerk didn't ask questions or for an ID when faced with our friends haha.

Score! Another reason to go I guess haha.

Stat, I really have no 'reason' to do it, other than I want to. I would at least like to have basic understanding of it so if I were ever to go visit, I could manage to make communication with people I need to in case they do not speak English.

This thread is great. I would like to visit Kyoto, perhaps Tokyo as well. Learning the language would just enable me to venture out of the tourism areas though.

I had a friend who enlisted in the US Marine Corps. right out of highschool in 2006. Not sure how, but he managed to slip off the list of Iraq bound soldiers and spent 2 years at Okinawa. Oh how I envied that.

Please be advised that my anecdotal experiences may not apply to everybody and they are definitely not what you should go into Japan expecting, or bad things will probably happen hahah. Remember that the xenophobia and stuff that Jon and Yecti and others mentioned is very real and will COME OUT if you make it come out by way of expecting different treatment because you're a foreigner.

When I think about it now, whoever made that point about homogeneous behavior made a very good one, because I feel like much of the reason why I felt less out of place in Japan was because of my efforts to sort of blend in.

I am terrified by the korean/japanese feud. We had a pure blood Japanese and a pure blood Korean living on the same floor at opposite ends of the hall in Chicago. They really really hated eachother, yet couldn't give anyone a good enough reason. Both were allowed to keep swords and bokkens as "ceremonial objects." The Korean, specifically, wasn't afraid to show agression towards people. He knocked some loud drunk kid out with his bo one morning.

I feel left out, not having another nationality to senselessly feud with.

Hey, Canadians! Wanna mix it up? *rolls up sleeves*

no you're not popular enough to be our rival hth

Japan sucks, go to Europe.

Unless they are from Korea and Japan, most American-born Japanese and Korea youth don't really give a sh*t. Atleast that from what I've seen.

I knew a Korean kid once. He was a bit of a silly person with a very aggressive personality. He once found my phone number (no idea how) and called me to say "I am going to assassinator you tomorrow. Be afraid! *hangs up*"

It was quite memorable. Also, I am still alive.

No, they were both born in their respective countries and came to America for Education. They had both lived in China before this to get education, but they hadn't met until Chicago. And yeah Axis, that sounds just like the Korean kid. The Japanese kid was creepier because he didn't talk to anyone.

Haha, that was a joke. As much as I wouldn't mind some japanese side action if I ever go, that wouldn't even be in the top 10 reasons for me to go.

Also, Vincent, Europe sucks, what's so great about it? Europe has been done to death by the Americans anyways. The only place I would want to go in Europe is Italy because that's where my family is from.

who is Education

well look at it this way:

Europe is full of white people who share historical ties with you and will understand your predisposition towards wanting to understand or be a part of another culture because your own culture is nothing special.

and

It's full of people who hate Americans, so you'll be getting at least 80-90% of it that you'd be getting out of Japanese.

Europe has a greater variety of culture and much more interesting history. Japan is just weird.

The Blitzkrieg aired things out in Europe.

Hey Jon'C, I'm curious as to something (and it has been stated before):

doesn't change the point that people don't have a bunch of languages they carry around for the hell of it. Either you become fluent by using it every day intensively or you'll know just enough to have nips awkwardly tell you how good your japanese is when you ask where the toilet is.

To be totally honest here, Japan has such a miserable track record that I find it difficult to imagine how anybody wouldn't already be aware of these issues. They have the worst history of racial discrimination in the first world and they are the only first world country with no functioning* anti-discrimination laws. Even back in 2002 the UN was investigating them for these issues - since they did sign and ratify all human rights treaties, but have never ever enforced them.

Talk to Japanese people, read 2ch and try to find a single thread that has no racism in it, read blogs posted by foreigners living in Japan or teaching in Japan. Learn about Japanese history, especially military history. Learn about your own history. Fly over to Okinawa for a week, walk around inside camera stores and see how many DVD racks have a "Japanese Only" sign. Anybody whose brain is not merely a hypothetical concept should be able to guess that maybe something is amiss in glorious nippon.


(* Technically the Japanese Constitution does include anti-discrimination provisions, but it's the official policy of the Japanese federal government that ratification and enforcement are the responsibilities of the individual prefectures which means they realistically offer no protection against discrimination at all)

Hm, I can see all of that being completely true. However, you should know well enough that it can be very true here, or anywhere for that matter.