Stage 3 - Minority Auditions

So I’m in a foreign country. I am, for the first time in my exiguous little lifetime, the minority. Coming from a European-based, money-driven country such as the United States of America, I am blindsided by the conviction of the community. Now don’t get me wrong. The Japanese sure do love their money. They just know how to spend it better. They also have the commonsense to clean up after themselves. Now that’s a concept us fair-skinned purebreds have yet to grasp! Tokyo is, in the eyes of the world, one of the cleanest urban developments on this planet and it was a daily - perhaps one could tamper with arguing it to be hourly - occurrence to strut by a native sweeping the gutter of the street with a broom no longer than half their leg. And then we wonder why more of the elderly generation has spinal issues...

But I digress. I was perhaps the most well-treated as a white-skinned, green-eyed, auburn-haired Gaijin in Japan. I could have butchered the easiest of sentences in Japanese and been loved. That is to say that I have not experienced being the minority before. I was born in Silicon valley (where one might mistake it for a smaller version of China) and raised in Sunny Southern California, where more of the population speaks Spanish instead of English, but sadly, the Hispanic community doesn’t take as kindly to the butchering of their language by whites (even if they are in your country and can’t speak your language). Now there’s a touchy subject! My host father once said to me “What would your mother say if you married a Mexican?”, to which I responded with a shrug of “it’s not a big deal”. This then procured me a relatively hostile response. I was henceforth informed that if their real daughter married someone from Mexico, she would promptly be disowned and never thought of again. Woah now let’s back up a bit. The Japanese don’t like Mexicans? Why on earth is that? I mean, one of the most popular (and longest running) anime shows right now is “Bleach”, which has a distinctively Hispanic flavor to it. No. It would carry no weight in trial. Apparently Mexicans are ‘dirty’. “They started that pig flu, you know,” my host father would say. Yeah, I was saddened by this state of international affairs, but being the partially-college-educated American I was at the time, I kept my silence.

I mean why must they dislike anyone who isn’t white? Not that I was complaining about being completely adored by everyone who passed by, but it was certainly a strange feeling. Being raised in the ‘melting pot’ of all things multicolored, I was shocked by this closed-minded way of thinking. What was I to do? Nothing, of course, except follow my host family’s orders. Always stand in the women-only car during rush hour, never show your shoulders even if it’s hotter than hell, and when in doubt - pretend to know nothing of the language. Yes, it was a simple list of do’s and don’t’s, so it was easily managed. Perhaps the hardest task of it all was dressing to the code. You know why they all put their kids into private schools? Well, yes, they do think those school uniforms are terribly kawaii (or rather hideously cute), but that was not the reason I was getting at. Certainly if they did not impose a dress code at all times, the children would end up showing their shoulders in public, dying their hair blond and their skin brown, or everyone would look like the homeless. Lord help us if we show some skin on a hot summer day, or try to oppose the view of white people by tanning ourselves! Take a quick stroll through Harajuku and you’ll see why everyone would be dressed like the homeless. You’ll have to trust me on that one, and as for the doubtful situations, well my host mother was well-versed in this one.

The Forth of July came and us Americans were homesick. It had never bothered to grace our thoughts that since we were not in America, there would be no fireworks. Wait, no fireworks on Independence day? What kind of treachery is this?! That’s like no presents on Christmas! Something had to be done to remedy our souls, so we gathered a group and marched down to the black-sand beach at Enoshima. Of course, before heading out, I turned to my host mother for guidance and asked if it was legal to shoot off fireworks at the beach. To this, I kid you not, she answered, “I think so... but if the police stop you, just pretend to be stupid Gaijin. That’s what we do! We tell them we are Korean.” Really? First the Mexicans and now the Koreans? You’d think they’d hate the Americans for bombing the living daylights out of their cities in the second world war, but no, they choose to go after the Mexicans and Koreans. Nevertheless, we partied like stupid Americans, shot off fireworks like stupid Americans and didn’t get scolded like the typical white Gaijins we were.