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Not true in Yokohama. My younger brother-in-law uses it to refer to me sometimes (when he's talking with other Japanese). Our Tokyo Gas lady, first time she came to check the meter at work, said, "Ah! Gaijin-san!" when I opened the door.AssKissinger wrote:Recently, I''ve noticed that nobody besides foreigners themselves hardly uses the word 'gaijin' any more.
Alcazar wrote:What will come after 'gaikokujin'? Any guesses?
The sky is blanketed by swollen, gray clouds. Under this leaden bell jar, an hour outside Oslo in the Norwegian Countryside, lie the remains of Holen Church — just the pink granite foundation and several piles of charred pine. Among the fire's ruin, burnt pages from hymnals fly around, chaotic as brown moths. Blacksmith-forged nails lie mingled with the femurs and tiabiae of ministers buried a hundred years ago beneath the church's floorboards. Burned to the ground last May, Holen is the most recent catastrophe in Norway's ongoing national disaster: twenty-two churches, some dating to medieval times, destroyed by arson over the last four years.
Just return the favor by calling them "Future Subjects of Shogun-sama Kim Jung Il"kenchan wrote:well I've been back in the US now, and my Japanese Exchange student friends still refer to white people as gaijin. I'm Nikkei Nisei and speak fluently, if it wasn't for my fasion, people wouldn't know what I was. I've also been called gaijin in the US from my Japanese friends....wow, I thought, I'm called an outsider in my own country from ..well, ...outsiders.
I am well aware that the term "gaijin" has pejorative overtones...The best reason for not blowing your gasket when you hear yourself called a gaijin, however, is to remember that it's your word now -- if you have the guts to claim it...The longer we stay offended by this tag, the longer it will be used by some as a tool to keep us in our place, as it were. Yet the sooner we embrace it as a badge of honor, the sooner it will lose its power to denigrate and oppress....
Many of you might think the word "gaijin" is a relatively harmless little term...Yet, thinking people realize the term's wider implications and refuse to use it...Branding words, like gaijin, reinforce negative stereotypes and support unequal power distribution within society. They undermine people's right to equal treatment, respect, responsibility and accountability.
Alcazar wrote:
What will come after 'gaikokujin'? Any guesses? (PS the way to find out is to start acting pissed at the use of the term 'gaikokujin', then see what the Japanese come up with to appease ).
kenchan wrote:well I've been back in the US now, and my Japanese Exchange student friends still refer to white people as gaijin.
gkanai wrote:kenchan wrote:well I've been back in the US now, and my Japanese Exchange student friends still refer to white people as gaijin.
This is the kind of attitude that I think is hardwired into many Japanese, and will always end up creating an uchi/soto, us/them, kind of mentality. It's sad. Japan is a first-world nation but mentally separates itself from other first-world nations in a subtle but important fashion.
So I guess while I am in Japan, I should call all Japanese people foreigners? That is using the expression, when in Rome...
But in the respective countries where a Japanese is the "gaijin", that term shouldn't apply. In America, a Japanese is a gaijin...
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