Foreign Tourism #2 Joshua Schultz

Blog Post 2: Electric Boogaloo 

Alright, so first week in Japan is done. Research on foreign tourism has proven pretty fruitful here and a lot of fun stuff has happened. I’ve already made a trip to Akihabara to examine the Moe culture movement there and the Gaijin influence in the region. As I had expected, there were many gaijin in the area and some interesting interactions occurred there: surprisingly to me, most of the Gaijin otaku kept to themselves and didn’t cause any problems. However, I realize as I write this that those were the experienced Gaijin otaku who had already learned from their mistakes. The newer, ill adapted and henceforth titled “fresh off the boat” Gaijin otaku were the ones to cause issues. For example, one attempting to bargain at an anime shop to buy more “waifu worship statues” (anime figurines) for his collection. The shopkeeper, as you can imagine, was not thrilled to have to deal with this obnoxious Gaijin and tried to remove him from the establishment when his obstinance became insufferable. 

Another example was a large group of fresh off the boat Gaijin tourists in Shinjuku: they blocked off the entrance to the station as a large swarm while attempted to gather their bearings. One of the station attendants took notice of this and attempted to send them on their way, but due to the language barrier they simply sat there dumbstruck. He attempted further to scatter them and, in his frustration began to yell, to which the largest of the men in the group began to yell back and the exchange nearly came to blows. The result of this was thankfully anticlimactic as the girls pulled him back and they moved on to harass other unsuspecting locals. The culture of systemic passivity in Nihonjin does not, as I’ve learned, mix well with the typical quick temper and high aggression of many Western men and women.  

I’ve also done some more preliminary research into issues involving gaijin in Japan and discovered that the crime rates involving gaijin, as opposed to local Nihonjin, were typically much higher per capita. Gaijin have been found to both cause and be victims of crimes on a much higher average than Nihonjin, likely due to the lack of cultural understanding. In particular, theft related crimes rank as one of the most frequent due to the cliché gullibility and lack of caution on the part of the tourists visiting the country. Purse snatching is a big issue as women tend not to watch their bags as carefully as they should in such a seemingly benign country. It’s very important that Gaijin remember to exercise caution here too, as despite the structure of Japanese society people are still human and some will choose to operate maliciously. 

To briefly wrap up the findings so far: things don’t look good for the newly introduced Gaijin in Japan. They tend to try to operate by their own cultures and social devices and ultimately cause harm, frustration and criminal activity to occur. There are many experienced Gaijin that do not contribute to this problem, however. That said, if people do their research and homework Japan could rest easy knowing that Gaijin won’t destroy the country.