I have a spectrum of life plans, if others go south. Currently I’m doing plan A, being an ALT in Japan. I’m working on plan B, which is publish a book, and I wrote a blog post about plan D before. However, I didn’t realize that I’d be fulfilling plan C, become a Carnie, while I was in Japan.
For those of you who don’t know what a Carnie is, a Carnie is a carnival worker. They do the crazy, weird acrobatics, sword eating, growing beards on women sort of stuff.
They seem to exist for a singular purpose – to stand out. They do all the things you shouldn’t or can’t do and somehow, we’ve deleted their humanity and put them into the position of a show pony.
I am a show pony.
I’ve never felt as much encroachment on my space as I have in Japan. I’ve never had someone try to pretend like they aren’t staring at me in the US. I haven’t had people actively avoid me just because I existed. I never even felt like I needed to pull the blinds at home. There was no one who cared enough about me to look in my windows.
In Japan however, I’m a human spectacle. I look “different” I have a special “skill.” Because I’m white and speak English I’m more like a statue than a person. People talk about me like I can’t hear them and sneak obvious looks at me on busses, on the street or while they drive their car straight at me.
This goes double for my African-American co-worker. She’s been in Japan for over a year and gets stared at far more than I do. It’s actually nice to go out with her, because she gets the looks – not me.
Racism
I don’t want to go so far as to say Japanese people are Racist. I’m sure some are, but by large the problem is different. Xenophobia doesn’t quite fit either. To me, it seems like they’re cloistered. My town is pretty out of the way and there aren’t many foreigners. Seeing one is like seeing a movie star.
Just like many Westerners think Asians all look alike, Japanese people think that all white people look alike and that all black people look alike. Just look at their illustrations of black people. Midnight black skin and giant red lips.
So to them foreigners are all the same. They’re just non-Japanese. The Japanese even conceptualize the outside world as one thing. They have a word for it, Gaikoku. It’s everything that’s non-Japan, and its reduced to just one thing. But they do that, even to foreigners in Japan.
From the Sink 