For context, I am a white American living in Tokyo with my girlfriend who is half white half brazilian, but looks white.
I have a Chinese friend from college who also lives in Tokyo. He’s a really great guy, but he looks super Chinese (like many chinese look Japanese or could pass as Japanese, but definitely not my friend). He speaks Japanese very well, dresses well, and has lived here for 9 years already. He would sometimes complain to me that people are racist to him but I always thought he was being overly paranoid and self-conscious. Of course many Japanese are perceived as “rude” to forigners or whatever but it’s just due to the culture or them not being able to speak English and feeling uncomfortable.
There’s this little, semi-unknown but popular-with-the-locals restaurant and the three of us decided to go there for dinner. If you read reviews of the restaurant, a lot of people write that the staff is “unfriendly”. I’ve been there a couple of times and NEVER had an issue. I found them to be quite nice actually.
We go there and my friend walks in first to see if they have availability. It’s important to note that my Chinese friend not only looks very chinese, but also has a Chinese accent on his Japanese, despite it being very good (he works for a large company here). He’s dressed in a suit, not wearing gaudy new money annoying luxury brands, etc. The guy who works there doesn’t see me or my girlfriend at first and just stares at my friend without responding. My friend is SUPER polite and kind of nervously goes, “uhh” and says something again. Reluctantly, the guy seats him and we follow him in.
Now this next part was super weird. This guy, who I believe is also the owner, was INCREDIBLY nice to my girlfriend and I. But he would straight up ignore my friend, or respond in a very mean tone and be curt with him. Like he asked for a beer, and the guy just didn’t respond. He was standing right in front of my friend so he definitely heard him. We all looked at each other, confused, and my friend asked again, and after a 5 second pause, the guy gets him a beer without saying anything.
Meanwhile, the guy was smiling at us and teaching us how to eat the food (even know we already knew) and was being very friendly. It was astonishing to watch because he KNEW we were in a group together yet he still acted like this towards my Chinese friend.
After this experience, I understand why my friend is so nervous and anxious in certain social situations. Like look, I get why a lot of Japanese are upset because Chinese tourists can truly be awful, but my friend is not one of those people, not even close. I cannot believe what I saw, it was one of the rudest things I have ever seen (food is great though).
by ZoomerPerm
