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July 12, 2008

How to be a foreigner in Japan

Filed under: Uncategorized — espeed @ 12:55 am — Tags:

I was going to write this awhile ago, but I broke my chair again.  They haven’t replaced it yet, but there’s a second hand shop below my apartment, so I bought a real chair there for about $10.  It’s so amazing.  One of the best decisions I’ve made in my short life.

The title of this post is pretty vague; this isn’t going to be some kind of guide.  Really, I’m just going to describe some of the hoops I had to jump through as a foreigner in the land of the rising sun.  Foreigners are called gaijin in Japan, so I’ll use that term from now on.  Unlike in the US, the term is not considered offensive, and it’s not uncommon for people and signs to address outsiders as simply ‘gaijin.’ (more…)