Today I stood and chatted a bit by the coffee machine in the kithcen space with "Grandpa", one of the older semi-retired guys in the office. He's basically the nicest man I know, wouldn't hurt a fly and always has something nice to say about anyone, and we're very friendly as I have known him for many years now. So as we stood there chatting, I mentioned that we had a burglary incident in one of the houses in our little area and the conversation went something like this:
Salaryman: (concerned) so they rummaged through everything, apparently, looking for money but didn't steal anything but smashed some stuff in their house
Grandpa: (looks sad) Yes, there's too many foreigners here now in Japan, this would never happened 20 years ago...
Salaryman: (jokingly defensive) Well, this time it wasn't me! (laughing)
Grandpa: (realizing who he's talking to) Oh, of course not, no, you would never do something... (interrupted)
Salaryman: (dead serious looking straight at him)...OR WAS IT?!
Grandpa: (looking confused for a few seconds) Oh, heh, you're always joking, I know it wasn't you.
Salaryman: (starting to head off with my cup of coffee) well, you can never be too careful nowadays, can you?
Nothing like a dose of old school ignorant racism, but Grandpa is such a sweet old man that I couldn't really bother to work myself up over it. If anything, it's a bit of fresh air after all the positive racism that the Japanese has been exposed to lately!
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8 comments:
Oh shit I was laughin' :)
That's why Ishihara's racism barely nudges me.
I.O.C
"Where would you build the new stadium?"
Ishihara (pointing at a mountain)
"We can just cut all the trees off of that one..."
(The image concious IOC feeling slightly horrified at chopping down a mountain worth of trees for an Olympic bid maybe that would be too much much?)
Ishihara
"That mountain eats children...it should be cut down"
The End.....of Tokyo's Olympic bid.
Oh racism..I was thinking ignorance for a minute...
Hmmmm so many to choose from (just google Ishihara's racist comments)
The Tsunami was vengence for Japan's greed ya know? You knew that right?
He's too crazy to bother me. Pure in your face racism...I actually prefer it to the new fangled subliminal type :)
Maybe it was Baby Sunshine?!?!?
Did any new DVDs appear in your house?
"Watch your shadow...a gaijin can be there waiting to strike"...hahaha
those red-haired, big-nosed barbarians. It's about time this beautiful and pure country gets rid of the villains.
Well I wouldn't be surprised. My teacher thinks that the cause for all those mass killing and child murder cases were due to the country being westernized. -_-
Chris - Yeah, Ishihara is kinda beyond racism and at least halfway out into insanity. I think it's just because he's an old geezer that he gets away with saying some of the stuff that he does. It really gives the old school '70s and '80s government sanctioned racism vibes! I bet he's buddies with former PM Mori!
RMilner - Unfortunately not, but maybe I can train her for the future
Fernando and BiJ - Another great case are those instances where they try to get you on their side by switching towards the Chinese or Koreans as the bad foreigners
Eva - There you go, he probably voted for Ishihara then
All of 1% or so of the people in Japan were born overseas, ZOMG, they're being overrun!
Here it's about 25% or so.
When Japanese say foreigners they are talking about Chinese and Koreans mostly because the organized crime groups from China and Korea has come To be quite a problem. They are even rivaling Japanese organized crime.
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