So I am posting this in the teaching sub for a couple reasons, but mainly because it happened at school and it surprised me because it was teachers I have known for years
This post is not a complaint, nor am I angry, more just like, huh, so that’s still goin on I guess
In the past 3-4 years, I have more or less never heard any of the standard ‘all gaijin do this right?’ or ‘this is exclusive to Japan (4 seasons blah blah) then today, out of nowhere, it was just rapid fire
My vice principal just walked up to me and said ‘hey, all gaijin are left handed right?’ and I was like ‘um, no, idk the exact number, but I think more than 90% are right-handed’ and he was like that’s so weird, someone told me the reason gaijin write left to right is because you are all left handed
Then like 30 minutes later, I yawned, and my coworker asked if I was alright, and I just said I had a late night last night because my daughter woke up a few times and I had to take care of her….and she went ‘oh you are like a Japanese person’ so I was confused, asked what she meant and she said ‘well only Japanese people work so hard and sleep so little’
And then a coworker of mine went to see a musical live at a local theater, which was a performance of an American musical, and I was like oh I’ve never heard of that, but I’m not super into musicals, was it good? and her response was ‘Yeah, I think only Japanese people really like going to musicals’
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Again, I am not angry, I am just so confused…..like, I get all the people who like making fun of Japanese people for saying ‘we have four seasons’ and all that bullshit, but these are teachers saying these WILDLY inaccurate things to me…………..like, I’m pretty sure America is one of the top places on earth to watch musical theater, if not the best….I woke up to take care of my daughter, and Americans actually work more hours than Japanese people on average in a year……..and idk what the fuck was up with the left-handed comment, but at least there was some logic behind it
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So I wanted to ask you all…………what is the craziest thing a teacher has ever said to you? because today, I think I got 3 of my top 10 or so all in 1 shot
30 comments
I’m deep in a Japanese company.
Japanese do not work hard haha. They work LONG.
Are these people actually teachers, or is this an eikaiwa situation? Depressing to think someone could make it through 20-30 years of life, a full degree, licensure to get the responsibility to educate kids, and presumably some English ability, and still manage to be so sheltered/thick.
To be fair, I sincerely doubt most American teachers are at work as much as Japanese teachers. They probably work harder, though. Japanese teachers are just at work more because that automagically translates into being a harder worker in the Japanese mindset. It’s complete BS, but hey I’m here on Saturday guys wait don’t look at my monitor yeah it’s Facebook.
American school kids only can choose hamburgers or pizza for lunch at school. Only Japan has such healthy lunches!
Americans eat hamburgers every day almost. Unlike the healthy Japanese.
Americans don’t care about family they way we Japanese do.
Strange day I guess.
I happen to be left-handed. The most common comment I get is that I must be smart or must be artistic. And by the way, writing from left to write gets ink and graphite all over the side of your hand. Plus, the spiral ring gets in your way.
Regarding the work hard, sleep little comment – yeah – that is a narrative I hear.
Musicals – kind of surprised. If you watch Japanese music shows, a lot of times they will have a duet from a famous musical that is playing. Popular stuff like from Beauty and the Beast or Phantom of the Opera. And they invite people like Idina Menzel over to do a single famous song. So…maybe just a dumb comment she made without thinking??
Are there grapes in gaikoku?
Just to add, I grew in the UK, and regarding musical entertainment, I have one word: Bollywood, and form of dramatic climax is met with a song and dance, but I highly doubt there’s much exposure to it here.
Anyhoo…the worst I’ve heard has actually come from my girlfriend, who although has done an internship in the US couldn’t believe the very tall thin American woman in the same apartment block was female.
It bothers me a little she felt that was the case because to me she is very clearly a biological woman, it’s just her height that is androgyne.
Everyone should look up the 72 micro-seasons, which takes the Japanese “everything here is special” mentality to the next level.
Last Time on here when I said I’d heard ‘Nihongo jouzu’ loads times, I got mobbed by people who insisted that because they had never heard that, then that means I couldn’t possibly have.
(They’re wrong of course, but people will argue you down over anything)
So these days approach the comment section here with trepidation . Can I also add that the more fluent you become the less you tend to hear it but you DO have to go through the ‘nihongo jouzu’ phase at some point in the process .
I’m pretty numb to those things now but they always make me chuckle. It’s always funny when I flip it back and they quickly change their mind. This one happened years ago but makes me chuckle:
Japanese woman: Yes at Japanese restaurants, cutlery is already at the table and they bring the bill to you FACE DOWN after they bring the food. Only in Japan because it’s high quality.
Me: oh that’s interesting! In the UK it’s considered rude to do that or low class. At high class restaurants, we have to request the bill. It’s good manners.
Japanese woman: ….. ….. ….oh……..OH! We have that system in Japan too. It depends on the restaurant!
Me: Ah i see!
My go to, however is:
Japanese person: (says some cultural thing or custom and how it means japan is superior).
Me: “oh! That’s really interesting! It’s just like China. I lived in China for a year. WE Europeans are different from China and Chinese people so we don’t do that”
A private student in her 50’s drove me crazy with shit like this and would not believe me when I refuted her “truths” even when I showed Google evidence.
“New Zealand (my country) only has white flowers”.
“Japan is the only country with toothpicks”.
“French people don’t flush the toilet”.
I guess they assumed ‘Broadway Musicals’ originated in Nakano all this time?
Humorous, but I don’t doubt that people in every country hold similar views of outsiders. Not always, but most of the time in Japan there is a sort of earnest naivety. In the UK, these opinions are usually expressed in a vengeful, hateful way. And we’re you to express something in a similar naive way you’d likely be the subject of social scorn. So I think of it as different, not better or worse, just different.
“I’m not angry I just want some sweet karma this kind of post gets”
Quality teaching post.
I have been known to get sarcastic on the more ridiculous things. I have been known to stare long and hard at people, and sometimes to say sweetly, “Do you eat sushi for breakfast every day?”
One of the women I used to work with thought that Japan had invented bowling and it didn’t exist outside of Japan.
Too much time on their hands after a public holiday, they had a deep thoughts about gaijin during this short time off (if you got any)
All left handers are geniuses though
The left-handed one is weird to me. Writing left to right is actually a problem for left-handed people – their hands get smeared with graphite/ink. I would imagine it’d be the same for right-handed people writing right to left? Or do they hold their pencils some special way to avoid touching the page? Or does the fact that they usually also write top-to-bottom when writing right-to-left help with that somehow?
Adding these to my future bingo cards foooooo shhhhhhhurrrrrrreeeeeeeeeee.
Craziest thing ever said directly to me: “ You can’t be 40 because you are not fat!”
Haha I get it. I’m so heavily caffeinated during work. The concept of taking a nap at work, even if it’s my off time, is so incredibly foreign to me. And I’m supposed to what? Be groggy and cranky all day until my nap time? No fucking thank you.
Left handed thing I never heard before, but KINDA makes sense since we were quicker to stop beating kids until they wrote with their left hand? I was always right-dominant but my b*tch grandmother trained me not to not even use my left when I was coloring at Grandma’s house and doomed me to a life of monodexterity.
The musical theater thing sounds like basic bitch nationalism. Okay, we’re going to pretend America wasn’t the most musically relevant country of the 20th century?
No… I think the left-handed comment is the one with the least logic behind it. I always feel bad for left handed people being stuck in a system where they have to push instead of pull to write, then they have to avoid getting their hands dirty while doing so. I still wonder why Japan wrote from right to left for so long when most people are right handed…
Gaijin eat bread for breakfast right? Japanese people all eat rice.
I think the key point in these stories, is that you are working with a lot of ignorant people. And sadly, that is a trait that is surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly) common amongst public school teachers in Japan.
The stereotype originates from somewhere dude.
Some math teacher said to me: You like war because you are an American.
I always reply to these types of people with:
固定観念はとても時間の節約になりますね。
Kotei kan’nen wa totemo jikan no setsuyaku ni narimasu ne.
(Stereotypes are such time savers, aren’t they?)
Teachers teach the subject and they’re pretty okay at it. But once you ask them about anything else, especially outside their subject, you get some horrendous shit said.
Had one teacher claim the Titanic was sunk by a bomb. One could’ve sworn he read somewhere that Saddam Hussein did the holocaust. Whacky.
First time?
“Is there back pain in America?”
I’m not kidding. They thought it was a Japanese-exclusive issue.