Posts Tagged ‘Discrimination’

Japanese Soccer Fans Taunt Iranian-American Coach

Fans clashed at a J-League soccer match after somebody unveiled a banner meant to insult an Iranian-born head coach:

The incident took place during Saturday’s match between Shimizu S-Pulse & Júbilo Iwata. Supporters of Iwata made a banner that said “To Ghotbi: Stop Making Nuclear Weapons!” It was meant to mock Shimizu head coach Afshin Ghotbi, an Iranian-American who coached the Iran national team from 2009 to 2011.

The banner offended and angered Shimizu fans. Here’s a video that show some of them rushing towards the Itawa supporter section of the stadium:

Although there was a physical brawl between some fans, no injuries were reported.

After the match, both teams held an emergency press conference. The president of the Júbilo Iwata club apologized and said that fan-made banners would be checked in the future to prevent such an incident from occurring again.

The banner was created and unveiled by two teenaged Iwata fans. According to Jiji Press, they said didn’t really think much about it before creating the banner (“何の考えもなくやった”).

The incident has been formally reported to J-League authorities and an investigation is underway. The Júbilo Iwata club could face some form of formal punishment.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Foreigner feigns ignorance of Japanese to avoid speeding ticket

A clip from yesterday’s “Real Time News” in which a police officer in Kanagawa prefecture stops a Mercedes Benz that was traveling at 128 km/h (80mph), 58 km/h over the speed limit:

The driver of the car is a foreigner, and when the Japanese police officer starts speaking to her in Japanese, she pretends she can’t understand and speaks English. The officer cannot speak English and isn’t quite sure what to do. If he were to give up and wave off the foreigner without a ticket, his action would be caught on film and he would no doubt end up like the Tokyo police officer who resigned in shame recently for failing to enforce the law in a similar circumstance.

The officer continues to speak in Japanese to the woman. Eventually he notices that she seems to understand what he is saying, so he suggests that she can actually understand Japanese. She finally caves and and admits she can speak “a little” Japanese. He then informs her of that driving 128 km/h in a 70 km/h zone is a grave speeding offense that will result in a suspension of her license. The woman is shocked, so shocked that she suddenly develops the ability to speak enough Japanese to make the accusation that, “this country doesn’t treat gaijin like humans.” The officer says he is not treating her in such a way.

She starts to cry and say (in Japanese) that she will kill herself. The officer calms her down, tells her to drive carefully, and sends the woman away with a ticket. The woman will have a chance to dispute the ticket in court. Hopefully the judge will have a chance to see the video footage of the incident and get a look at how she tried to weasel her way out of taking responsibility for her violation of the law.

I don’t believe this woman’s action to be an isolated incident. I’ve met quite a few foreigners who swear by the “I don’t speak Japanese” method of avoiding traffic tickets, and anecdotal evidence across the internet seems to support the claim that this kind of thing is very common. When police officers are not on camera, many prefer to let foreigners off without a ticket instead of going through the hassle of dealing with the language barrier.

Note: This is just a short clip from a segment that included several other lawbreakers, all of whom were Japanese. Its primary focus was not on foreign criminals.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Bobby Ologun profits by betting against Japanese tolerance for international marriages

Last night on NTV, Nigerian-born Japanese talento Bobby Ologun took his children onto a quiz show in which they had to guess how Japanese viewers voting by phone would answer certain questions. Here’s a clip that shows how Bobby correctly guessed the outcome of two particular questions (one asking viewers how they would feel if born into his family, another asking their views on marriage with non-Japanese):

In both cases, Bobby bet that the audience would vote negatively and he was correct. Only 39% of viewers responded by saying they would be happy to be born into the Ologun family and 63% expressed insecurity/fear over the idea of marrying a foreigner. The results may have been skewed by the fact that Bobby was using the 2 minute voting period to tell stories that made his family life sound strange or bad. It was a pretty sad display of pandering for money and it worked: Bobby won a whopping 300,000 yen (about 3,000 USD).

Other questions not shown in this clip revealed that 90% of viewers thought Bobby intentionally made mistakes while speaking Japanese and a plurality (35%) of viewers liked Bobby more than Dave Spector, Konishiki, or Girolamo Panzetta.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Mr. James : McDonald’s Japan has a gaijin clown

The white guy in the photo above is Mr. James, the mascot for 4 new burgers of McDonald’s “Nippon All-Stars” series. Residents of Japan who have been riding JR trains or passing by McDonald’s restaurants have probably already seen his face on advertisements. In his TV commercials, Mr. James speaks annoying foreigner Japanese (not unlike the wacky foreigner who spoke NIPPONGO in a recent Sony Commercial). Print advertisements convey his goofy gaijin Japanese by rendering everything he says in katakana.

Mr. James has an official blog chronicling his love for Japan and McDonalds. Its blog posts, no doubt written by a Japanese employee of McDonald’s Japan’s marketing department, put everything in a mix of katakana and hiragana. One blog post contains a special video of Mr. James acting like a moron while reading aloud from a fake Japanese phrasebook [actually an altered version of the book Dirty Japanese].

Judging from this page on his blog, McDonald’s Japan plans to send Mr. James to franchises across the country, allowing him to make lots of blog posts about the places he goes and the people he meets. As of today, he’s only visited Shibuya, but that map should fill up as the campaign gets underway. We can only guess what passing foreigners thought about Mr. James as he stood around handing out fans and speaking wacky broken Japanese.

Not surprisingly, Arudou Debito and the readers of his blog are outraged by the existence of Mr. James. Debito believes that the character reinforces negative stereotypes about foreigners and has compared the actor who plays Mr. James to Stepin Fetchit, a black American who made a became a millionaire in the early 20th century by playing dumb negro characters in Hollywood films. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the dude certainly is acting like the “jackass” Debito believes him to be.

Complaints can be sent to McDonald’s Japan through this contact information. Or you can go over their heads and complain directly to the U.S. head office of McDonald’s.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Helping small Japanese hotels welcome foreign tourists

To follow up on last week’s post about Japanese hotels that don’t want foreign guests, here’s an N-H-K news report about an organization that is educating the owners of small Japanese hotels and ryokans about how to welcome foreign tourists:

The man in the video is Shuichiro Ono, the CEO of Jissen! Inbound, an organization that helps market small hotels to foreign tourists and educate the hotel staff on how to best serve international visitors. Ono is helping to teach hotel owners and staff that they need not fear their lack of English ability – speaking Japanese, using gestures, and being friendly is enough to please foreign guests. In fact, some foreign tourists actually prefer the experience of staying at a hotel with staff that only speaks Japanese, since it gives them an opportunity to really feel like they are experiencing Japanese culture and learning some Japanese words and phrases.

One example of the success of Ono’s organization is an ryokan shown in the second half of the clip. The elderly couple that own and operate the ryokan enrolled in Ono’s advice and marketing program, and they have been receiving foreign tourists as guests since last year. Although they speak no English and only use Japanese and gestures to serve their foreign guests, a French/Colombian couple interviewed are enjoying their stay. Ono helps the owners check online reviews of their ryokan, and foreign guests have given it very high marks in all review categories.

Ono and his organization are doing wonderful work to make Japan a friendlier and more accessible place for foreign tourists.

[hat tip to Ponta]

Foreign nurses turned down because of gender

A deal to allow Indonesian nurses to work in Japan has fallen short of its target because many male nurses who applied were turned down, reports the Yomiuri:

Under an EPA signed in August 2007, Japan is scheduled to accept 1,000 Indonesian nurses and care workers over a two-year period. In the first year, Japan was supposed to accept 500 Indonesian nurses. However, only about 40 percent of the scheduled number will arrive on Aug. 7.

One reason the number fell short of 500 was that the number of applicants itself was lower than expected because the Indonesian government had little time to publicize the opportunity to work in Japan. This has been compounded by the fact that many Japanese medical and welfare facilities refused to accept male nurses, who accounted for more than half of the candidates.

Many Indonesian male nurses who were refused work in Japan have expressed disappointment at being turned down as a result, and this issue is sure to become an item on the agenda of future talks between the nations looking at how to deal with the mismatch between the Indonesian nurses and the Japanese facilities.