My husband lived in Japan for six years before I met him, and I joined him there for the first few months of our marriage. I never saw any such signs, but again, we were in Sasebo, a town with a big US Navy presence, and we also didn’t go to bars. In fact, there was one ice cream parlor in town there Papa Tiger was always treated like an absolute king, far and above the normal courtesy – once when the sumo tour was in town, Musashimaru, a wrestler originally from Hawaii, saw him and asked him to sneak off with him to speak some English (forbidden to sumitori – they’re required to speak all Japanese in their stables), so Papa Tiger took him to this ice cream parlor where he inhaled large quantities of ice cream to the stunned admiration of the folks who ran the place, the Bird Monami. Musashimaru reached the highest sumo rank a couple years later, so this was the equivalent of taking your most idolized sports hero out for ice cream. Any gaijin who brings in a sumo champion? Is pretty much given carte blanche!
We traveled all over the island of Kyushu and never ran into any problems of being forbidden to enter anyplace. Of course, we copied the locals and did our best to follow the rules, and perhaps that helped. For example, we went to the public baths at a Japanese national park and were treated well, although I did get some funny looks, being the only Western woman in the place. I’d been taught how to behave at a public bath by a Japanese friend, however, so since it was obvious I was doing my very best not to offend anyone (other than by my innately disharmonious presence, of course), I was politely ignored when I wasn’t treated with active courtesy.
Those were the only two options I saw – either being completely ignored or having people go out of their way to be helpful. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I’m grateful it didn’t happen to me.
Oh, my favorite Japanese memory? We were walking down an alley to go to a club (run by a Dutch guy, that was a favorite spot for a group of American musicians to play jazz every Saturday), and were stopped by a group of exceedingly drunk Japanese men, who were all ready to steal Papa Tiger away and take him off drinking with them. First, however, they had to resolve the dilemma of my presence: Was I his girlfriend or was I a whore? (Judging by the neighborhood whores, I was certainly not too old for the job, even being in my mid-40s at that point). The looks of horror when they learned I was his wife were truly priceless; they bowed so deeply they nearly fell on their faces apologizing to me. It apparently had never occurred to them that a man might go out with his wife. Personally, I was quite enchanted with being taken for a whore!
“Sorry, no foreigners. That’s our policy” (the yaks and chimps outside the underground clubs, although I’ve been admitted to more places than I’ve been turned away)
Just like any other customer (95% of the places I go to)
Positive attention (4% of the places I go to. Generally any time my business there involves an extended conversation with the staff)
Uncomfortably fawning (back in my drinking days out in the sticks, I found that one of the bars had unofficially billed me (their only foreign customer) as one of the attractions)
I just had (listened to, actually) an odd experience last night. Every couple of years or so, the police go around to all the houses to make a record of who’s living where, and last night they were at our building. Since there are legal limits to the questions that an officer can ask a Japanese citizen that don’t exist for foreigners, and since I was in no mood to play “yes sir, no sir, yes sir, no sir” for twenty minutes, I stayed in the next room while my wife filled out the form he was handing out. I then heard him say “Oh wow, your husband’s foreign? Neat! Please write his nationality here… He’s American? Whoa. That is like, So. Totally. Cool!” I was too tired to feel like going out front to meet him, but now that I think about it, I probably should have. It can’t hurt to have a cop in the area who likes me.
As much as I dislike realtors, the really negative treatment was in a minority of cases, and only when I was renting. When my wife and I were looking for a place to buy, they were falling all over themselves to get our business.
There is a little more the story, as always. Several of the signs are in Russian. There is an on-going issue of problems between Russian sailors and various establishments, mostly in Hokkaido, the Northern island. These are often bars, clubs and public baths.
Drunk sailors are a handful anywhere, and rather than establishing and enforcing rules against bad behavior, a number of places have reacted by posting the “Japanese Only” signs.
The very few signs I’ve seen myself in the 18 years here are at establishments proving sex, although I hear about these rules at “hostess clubs” where do not provide sex. I suspect that the signs stating that foreigners can only come with Japanese are at one of these places, since there are rules to what behavior is allowed. Hostess clubs will permit flirting level of touching but not more, for example, and many of the sex establishments provide blow jobs but not intercourse (which is illegal).
As I said, I’ve only seen a few such signs, I would suspect that people who frequent these establishments would see these more often.
My experiences echo Sublight where 95% of the time, I’m treated the same as a Japanese. Attempting to rent is the one area where you do run into real discrimination. Ironically, one previous girlfriend owned rental property which she refused to rent to foreigners, while going out with me. I guess it’s ok to fuck a foreigner, just don’t rent to one. :rolleyes:
I was taking a cab home last night after working late and thought of something else.
I often hear taxis mentioned whenever the discussions at some of the gaijin boards turns to refusal of service. In my first year or so, I got turned away by cabs on occasion, but now I never do. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, the transition came around the same time as when I learned the meaning of the little sign in the cab window that says whether or not the taxi is actually available for hire.
Incidentally, the drivers seem split 50/50 between those who just drive and those who start up friendly conversations.