I’ve (kind of) got used to being stared at when I’m out and about. But there’s staring, and then there is staring.
Last weekend whilst on the Yamanote Line (which circles central Tokyo), I could feel someone’s eyes practically boring into me. Turning around, I saw a salary man stood just to the side of my seat, unashamedly staring at my friend and I. He made no attempt to avert his gaze either when I looked him in the eye. So I asked him if there was a problem.
Now I’ve heard all kinds of dumb questions, but his ranks up there with the best of them. In all earnestness he asked.
“Is this your first time on a train?â€
How on earth do you respond to such nonsense? I immediately decided you can’t, and after a brief shake of the head went back to talking to my friend. Yet the idiotic question asking salary man continued staring, and just for good measure he glared at us through the carriage window when he got off the train a few stops later.
Sometimes it would be so nice to blend in.
bakka gaijin says
The best is when they whip out their keitai to photograph you at bars or even supermarkets ne? It’s the same here in Kyoto.
Today when a kid screamed “gaijin de!” pointing at me on my bike I replied eyes wide in supposed shock “hoto ni? Doko de?”
At least no one’s called me an alien yet, an older friend who came twenty years ago said that people would actually encircle him asking each other “Is it a spaceman?”
Lee says
Sometimes it doesn’t bother me, but when I’m tired or just not at my best, it can get to me.
Yeah, I’ve also heard that things were very different a long time ago. Even in my 6 years here, there seems to have been a noticeable increase in the foreign population.
I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like 20 years ago. But there again, they weren’t armed with camera equiped keitai’s then!
billy says
…ya bleedin’ foreigner :^)…
em says
he sounds like he was actually mad at you for something…like maybe he thought you should immediately yield your seat to his salaried-man superiority. ages ago, i was on a subway in NYC and this Japanese guy standing next to me kept rubbing his ear on the back of my hand that gripped the strap-rider’s handle. so odd…
Lee says
I guess I got off lightly, as if he had started rubbing his ear on me that would have freaked me out!
David St Lawrence says
What would have happened if you had asked him, “How could you tell?”
You are definitely a stranger in a strange land.
Keep on posting. I am getting a ground-level view of Japan and I find it fascinating.
Lee says
That would have been a good question David. And thanks for the kind words.
My friend and I were chatting and laughing together as we hadn’t seen each other for a while, but I don’t know how he linked high spirits to first time on a train!
Still, if nothing else he gave me something to write about.
Grumpy says
I was in Japan 20 years ago (on vacation) and I don’t recall any incidents like yours. As gaijin go, I’m about as alien as they get, being 6’7″ in height. Wherever I went, I had Japanese wanting to have their picture taken with me. Wait a minute … maybe they did think I was an alien!
pam says
What is a “salary man”?
Lee says
it’s just a generic term the Japanese have have for a company worker. It’s very vague, and covers a whole host of jobs. But the Japanee use it all the time.
Danila says
I was in Japan in 2001 on some sort of student exchange program (International Week) and not once in 3 weeks of staying there (mostly in Tokyo) had I noticed any strange reactions from Japanese.