Foreigner.

I am a foreigner here. I have been identified as one, and, by law, I am forced to register as one. There's a window at the city office for "Alien Registration." They're not talking about E.T. They are referring to me.

The word 'foreigner' is used much more freely here than in America, where (in America) I think its connotation is not only fairly negative but bordering on insulting. It's used here really without regret or flinching, and the term, however impolitely blunt it may seem, is a fairly accurate description of my status here.

American culture, speaking very broadly, is a kind of open-source culture in that anyone can come on over and attempt to "make it," and in many cases their way of "making it" is by creating their own version of the qualified "it." I feel I may have more in common with a Canadian or a Brit than I do with someone from Ohio or Alaska or Houston. It's very easy to feel like a foreigner in America while simultaneously being...American. In my own country I have seen a community cut up a recently caught whale to distribute, I've seen overly caffeinated businessmen in New York pushing people out of the way to make it onto a train, and I've seen surfers sitting on their boards a few hundred feet out into the Pacific, their silhouettes bobbing up and down in the kaleidoscopic light of the setting sun.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that it's very difficult to identify "foreigners" in America because so much of it is foreign to us anyway. It is most definitely a country of distinct regions and populations whose main ties to each other often are mislabeled as "patriotism" and in reality is more like economic and political coexistence. In a broad way.

This all came to mind as I sat, mentally reviewing some various grammar and vocab before the Japanese placement exam, where we would show the program directors which level of Japanese we should be placed in. (I tested into Japanese 4, in case you were wondering. Not sure if this means I did really well or not.) The scene:
Three Japanese professors standing at the front of the room, explaining in basic Japanese the process of the test to a room full of...foreigners. I'm sorry, there's no other way to put it. Looking around me I saw all kinds of faces, none of which were Japanese.

Most of these people had come to Japan to experience the country, the culture. They came to be "closer" to the Japanese, to make "Japanese" friends. (I really hate this. Many people have said that such-and-such is a great way 'to make Japanese friends.' That one of the reasons someone came here is to 'make Japanese friends.' I think it sounds ridiculous. Why would you want to be friends with someone just because they were Japanese? I know it's a harmless thing but I don't understand why they can't be friends you like for normal friend-liking reasons, but happen to be Japanese. Anyway.)

But none of these people will ever be...Japanese. Speaking at our orientation was an American Professor at ICU who has lived in Japan for 30 years. He said that even after that length of time, he still did not feel like he was truly "a part" of Japanese culture, although he also didn't feel as if he were still on the outside. 30 years! Didn't feel "a part" of the culture!

This may well be so for a number of reasons, but I think the elephant in the sociological room is simply that he is not Japanese. Someone from Mexico, Nigeria, Israel, or China can become at least an accepted member of American society fairly easily, for reasons noted above. But can anyone who is not genetically Japanese be an accepted Japanese? It would certainly seem not to be the case.

Then what in the world were so many "foreign" faces doing in that room taking a test on Japanese language in Japan? Maybe they were just doing something they enjoyed doing, in the place of its birth and prominence - Anime, sushi, nerd culture, electronics, literature (in the case of myself). But why wear a suit to a party whose dress code has nothing to do with clothing?

More pictures, more humor next time.