Here's a not-so-rare account of the sort of experience a person of my complexion and outline can expect from even some of the more metropolitan areas of 'internationalizing' Japan. Although I'm sure one finds this sort of thing no matter what country they may choose to live in, it's one of those things that white people in particular (even having stayed for years) may have the most difficult time adjusting to, despite its overall harmlessness (compared to cases of discrimination that result in more overt forms of violence). Thus it is particularly worth experiencing, I think, as a white person, the experience of being unspokenly minoritarian.
It was my idea to go to the little Chinese restaurant near my apartment. I'd been craving it for a week, and it seemed like a nice way to end the day J-------, my friend from San Francisco, and I spent with a couple of our Japanese friends at an old traditional house of theirs -- an endless series of low-ceiling tatami mat rooms whose floors seemed to give very slightly in some places, in contrast to the mostly refurnished and modern look of the kitchen where we had tea and spoke in Japanese and English about miscellaneous things. That evening, J------- and I met at the end of the covered shotengai, to keep neither of us waiting in the dark dreary rain that had conquered the night, and took off on the two-minute ride through the light drizzle. I pointed out the broken restaurant sign on wheels that still stood lit out front despite the act of violence it had encountered.
A teenage couple, the boy in a hoodie and gold chains, the girl in extensive makeup and with her hair done up in an unnatural dark brunette bush, sat toward the back of the flourescent lit single-room parlor, which echoed with the sounds of the large black TV box that sat on the half wall blocking the view of the cashier or the kitchen from the entrance. We were motioned by a chubby man playing the part of both chef and waiter to sit on the other side of the automatic glass door across from a man sitting cross-legged in his chair straining to watch the television from his inconvenient location. Blocking us even further from most of the rest of the room was a small potted tree that I couldn't classify but nonetheless appreciated for its cover.
The chubby man walked over now carrying an order ticket, wearing a starch white chef's apron and an unappealing two-corner hat that made him look like a butcher. He stopped for just a moment to look me over, then turned to J-------, thumbing at me while asking,
"どっからきました？" Where is he from?
My friend looked lost for only a second then replied, America. Without hesitation, as though this wasn't the first time I was saying it (although I never had with the amount of conviction I feigned this night), I stated in a clear voice that traveled farther than I'd intended it that we were both Americans. The chef took a step back, as though to literally try to get a look at some bigger picture, and restated in perplexity what I'd said. He didn't take his eyes off J-------, asking her if she was nisseijin, a Westernized Japanese, to which (with what seemed to me like slight indignation), not even bothering to go into the significant detail that she hadn't even a trace of Japanese blood from her Chinese parents, she answered,
"いいえ、アジア系..." No, I'm Asian(-American).
The chef repeated the word she used as if it had never come out of his mouth before (perhaps it hadn't), taking a few steps back and disappearing quickly from view behind the unidentified tree without taking our order. He came back every now and then to check on us and answer a question we had about a dish of shrimp in chili sauce, seeming unsure which of us to speak to but keeping his eyes steadfast on J-------. I apologized at length to her for putting her in spotlight without her permission. Unnerved at first, we allowed ourselves to drop it and move forward in conversation. A woman who made a point to look at neither of us, and who I assumed to be the chef's wife, took our order and occasionally stopped at our table to pour us water.
I read a line the next morning from Lahiri's The Nameless that seemed to well characterize the way I felt at that moment: "...In this misrendering they are joined." I don't know what I'd do without the friends I've made in this place, both native and foreign to it. I'm far too oversensitive to these things to handle them alone.
