Met some friends last night at an izakaya, mix of foreigners and Japanese.
I had been talking to my Japanese freinds in Japanese all night. There was a new girl from the US hanging out with us who was visiting and friends with one of our regular foreigner friends.
Partway through the night she started asking me why I could speak so much Japanese and asked if I had an asian fetish. She said because I was a white dude it made her uncomfortable to see me speaking Japanese because it was cultural appropriation. We were all pretty drunk at that point so I just laughed it off and ignored it her the rest of the night.
But this got me thinking, has anyone else here had to deal with people or accusations like this? As an American I can say it felt like a very “American mindset” to have.
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Just blame it on alcohol. She probably was frustrated she can’t understand. Maybe not.
Laughing was the right response
Wish I could know her reply to something like, “It somehow seems preferable to the alternative of forcing everyone in Japan to speak English to me because I am a foreign. Is that your planned approach during your time here?”
Cultural Appropriation? What?
As a Japanese, I am very happy that people from overseas go out of their way to study Japanese and come to Japan to talk to us. I don’t think it is cultural theft. Cross-cultural communication is not possible unless you can speak in a language that the other person knows.
Some people are just stupid. You did the right thing, right up to the point this morning when you started reading too much into it. 👍
There’s a segment of American society that has very particular ideas about which people can engage with which cultures and in which ways, and it changes all the time and is really not worth worrying yourself about.
Learning the language of the society you live in is a desirable and admirable thing for almost everyone in every culture. “Cultural appropriation”? I wonder what she would say about an immigrant to the US who learned English and used it every day. I *can’t imagine* her criticizing that person. Yet she does it to an immigrant to Japan. Hypocritical and probably born from envy.
So trying to integrate yourself into society and learn the customs, as you should as a foreigner, is now considered “Cultural Appropriation” ? I’m done 😂
Nobody has ever gotten mad at me for that. What she said was out of line but she was drunk and hopefully if she spends more time outside her comfort zone she will see that speaking languages other than English does not make you an appropriator and is actually just normal. Hope this helps
Talking of America mindsets, I’ll be visiting soon on a business trip. Can anyone suggest a book I can read about how to communicate with Americans in social situations? For example, if I’m out at a saloon and want to spit my chewing tobaccy into a pontoon – what is an acceptable distance? Should I do it from the side of my mouth, or the front? Do I need to cock my Stetson before the expulsion or afterwards? I’m terrified of making a cultural faux pas and being shot by one of them rappers.
It sounds like culture shock from someone who hasn’t adapted to being outside of their own culture or country yet. Throw in a little immaturity for feeling left out.
She’s woke. It would be best to keep your distance.
>We were all pretty drunk
There you go. That and she was probably upset you weren’t speaking enough Japanese, so she felt left out. That only seems natural. Need to find that balance. It’s a learning experience for everyone.
She was probably just a little uncomfortable / jealous, I wouldn’t overthink it.
I have had a few experiences like this before, particularly annoying was someone who used to tell me “your Japanese is so weird, it’s weird to hear you speak Japanese” and other things like that. I’d get a little mad about them shitting on me for it, particularly because it takes so much for me to feel confident in using Japanese publicly.
Is this some white person joke that ethnic people don’t get?
Are you new to drinking?
She’s racist.
At the least, she made a racist comment. Languages don’t belong to skin tones or genetic ancestries. Being drunk is not an excuse: drunkenness does not change one’s ideas. It simply lowers inhibitions and sometimes allows ideas that are usually suppressed to escape.
She’s just American
Does she suggest all language classes & foreign language in schools be stopped? Ban learning a foreign language as she doesn’t think it’s right to actually apply them?
Cultural appropriation is just the dumbest shit 90% of the time.
Playing the blues would have been “cultural appropriation” but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing. White and Asian people do it because it’s goddamn good shit.
I consider myself to be a very progressive person but this shit is just stupid most of the time
Some people are just miserable. I don’t know if I would have even tried to respond. Who knows.
Gonna guess she’s also the first person to complain about not being able to read a restaurant menu either
I hate this generation
You should mention her presence there is also triggering to survivors of a war and she should promptly leave.
“because speaking English would be imperialistic behavior”
I’ve had something kind of like that happen once before. I was invited out to drink by a Japanese friend. One of the people in the group was a kikoku who brought their Australian girlfriend. Girlfriend spoke no Japanese. She was frustrated most of the night (understandably) because no one in the group except me and her bf could speak English and we were all mostly speaking in Japanese together. I sat by her and tried to make conversation/translate to include her but she was SUPER cold to me and mentioned at one point it was “freaky” to see a white person “act Japanese”. She made comments on my clothes and makeup being “Japanese” too.
I think she was frustrated because of the language barrier and her bf not making the effort to translate. And so she took it out on me. I didn’t really take it to heart and felt bad for her.
One time we were on a shinkansen when some bozo in the seats in front of us started mocking me to his wife because I was speaking Japanese. He seemed to think that I was doing it just to show off. We were on a train in Japan and I was speaking Japanese to a Japanese person but he somehow thought it was all about him. Talk about egocentric.
Another time we were on a domestic flight in the US having a conversation in Japanese in one of those middle seat sections that are five across. The guy sitting next to my husband suddenly asked us why were speaking in Japanese instead of English. He said he heard him speaking English earlier so he thought it was rude for us to have a conversation in Japanese in front of him when he knew we could just as easily be conversing in English.
At first i thought this was going to be from a Japanese person, but when you said “white american girl”, it all made sense.
There’s a bunch of folks who are using “liberal”(post modern) ideas as bludgeons for anything that makes them uncomfortable. Usually they don’t really understand the words they’re using. Try asking what cultural appropriation is and how it fits here for example and she probably can’t give a coherent definition, or if she does it’s wrong.
That said, white folks in jp do seem to get treated differently whether you like it/use it to your advantage or not. I bet you’re sick of “wow, You can use chopsticks?? “Your Japanese is so good!”
As a white dude ? Yea she’s racist and jealous
She just sounds like an idiot.
Yes following customs and speaking the language of the country you reside in sure is cultural appropriation. Dumb bitch
It sucks cause cultural appropriation is a thing that happens, but the term is so thrown around so liberally that most people don’t know what it means anymore, including this person who just sounds jealous.
As for the original question, I’ve been made fun of for speaking Japanese by a tableful of drunk oyaji one time, but that’s been all.
Wow that sounds insane lmao. From the title and first few sentences I thought maybe she was upset and felt left out because she couldn’t understand the vast majority of everybody’s conversations and got upset about that. Maybe that IS what she was upset about deep down but lashed out in a stupid way instead.
That made my eye twitch. I would laugh at her, too.
This doesn’t even sound real. This sounds like some pys-ops shit to make people on right hate people on the left more. If this is true then I definitely wouldn’t even make a topic about it because it’s so ridiculous it’s not even worth acknowledging it.
I’d say, the world works differently outside of the west coast. Speaking Japanese is the way to communicate here in Japan.
If she says anything else stupid I’d probably ignore her & avoid all interaction with her.
These kinds of folks are idiots devoid of logic. There’s a high chance they’ll do something stupid & get deported. You don’t want to be around them when that happens.
I knew a guy who landed a nice 150k job here from Chicago. He was here a week & got deported & fired for putting a sticker on a pole.
These are the same kinds of people who get pissy when you date out of your race. She just feels inferior and is taking it out on you. Don’t let her.
Ah yes. I call this ‘authoritarian ass-hattery’. My brother gets mad when I speak Spanish around the house (no reason, I learned it when I was quite young and he didn’t exercise the privilege). Says ‘we speak English in this country’ and all that. Just ignore them.
Speaking Japanese in Japan is “cultural appropriation” – That was so stupid I’m squinting.
Wait til she goes to an onsen and has to “culturally appropriate” a yukata.
Egads! As a colonial herself, she should know better!
I had an old man yell at me on the train once for reading a novel in Japanese (???).
Also had a guy from Tinder who apparently didn’t read anything on my profile (which started with NO ENGLISH) claim that Japanese people should be speaking English to foreigners who live here because that’s totally the same thing as foreigners who live here speaking the local language to local people.
/r/thathappened
Imagine someone who thinks that speaking another language is “cultural appropriation.”
As a person who can speak four languages, I guess I’m a criminal in her mind since only one of them is one I was raised in.
I in no way condone her idiocy, and honestly the “cultural appropriation” line sounds made up.
That said, in situations like this, it’s a little rude for everyone to spend a whole evening speaking a language someone at the table doesn’t understand.
> Learning another language is weird and also cultural appropriation
Okey-dokey, thats enough of what ever the fuck is going on with americans for today.
Not mad I guess but I’ve had an acquaintance who spoke almost zero Japanese butt into a conversation on a few occasions to recommend me and the Japanese person speak English because their English must be better than my Japanese.
I just ignored him. I don’t have a preference for what language I speak I find most conversations drift towards the language that each person finds is best to understand each other in.
This sounds so American.
I never understood this « cultural appropriation » bullshit Americans (a part of them, not all) are desperately trying to implement.
For the rest of the world trying to copy someone else culture means trying to understand them better, show some interest in that culture. But no, for Americans it means cultural appropriation…
Honestly sounds like she’s terminally online but weirdly also going out.
Homophobia about liking Japan and studying Japanese
I believe that foreigners from all countries