I used a bus in Japan to go to Mount Fuji. Seats were assigned like on a plane and I was sitting next to some Japanese guy. I did my best to respect their customs and remained silent and kept to myself for the two hour ride. The inside of the bus was as silent as a church for the entire drive even though it was full.
On the way back at the end of the day, the bus had dropped a few passengers somewhere and stopped at a station for a toilet break. When we boarded again the driver went to see the passenger beside me and moved him to another seat on the bus to sit in a seat that had been freed up next to another Japanese person. It looks like the passenger went to see the driver to request the seat change during the break.
I’ve spent the rest of the ride wondering what I had done wrong. It’s really a fucked up feeling and it must be horrible to be experiencing this sort of passive aggressive racism on a daily basis in your own home.
It probably wasn’t anything wrong you had done wrong. From what I’ve been hearing from some family who do business in asia. As they explain it, Japan has had an economic whiplash from the 80s and a lot of those cultural and economic policies that gave them initial success were not sustainable long term.
And since Japan is a VERY proud culture, they’ve found it easier to blame outsiders than their own miscalculations.
Yep, xenophobia went up globally following the financial crisis of '08.
Sure America was the big trigger, but no country did anything to guard themselves from the risk ongoing at the time - And in Europe mena immigrants was the bogeyman written about in the media…
I used a bus in Japan to go to Mount Fuji. Seats were assigned like on a plane and I was sitting next to some Japanese guy. I did my best to respect their customs and remained silent and kept to myself for the two hour ride. The inside of the bus was as silent as a church for the entire drive even though it was full.
On the way back at the end of the day, the bus had dropped a few passengers somewhere and stopped at a station for a toilet break. When we boarded again the driver went to see the passenger beside me and moved him to another seat on the bus to sit in a seat that had been freed up next to another Japanese person. It looks like the passenger went to see the driver to request the seat change during the break.
I’ve spent the rest of the ride wondering what I had done wrong. It’s really a fucked up feeling and it must be horrible to be experiencing this sort of passive aggressive racism on a daily basis in your own home.
It probably wasn’t anything wrong you had done wrong. From what I’ve been hearing from some family who do business in asia. As they explain it, Japan has had an economic whiplash from the 80s and a lot of those cultural and economic policies that gave them initial success were not sustainable long term. And since Japan is a VERY proud culture, they’ve found it easier to blame outsiders than their own miscalculations.
Enough said, round the world
Yep, xenophobia went up globally following the financial crisis of '08.
Sure America was the big trigger, but no country did anything to guard themselves from the risk ongoing at the time - And in Europe mena immigrants was the bogeyman written about in the media…