And they aren’t? 
(kidding, kidding)
Well I for one am there to ogle the fellers…and start shit, etc. (oddball user name notwithstanding, I’m female.) 
Heh, well, this one gaijin did his fair share of one of those two things until he got zapped with the Relationship Beam
I know he’s your son and all but… he really, really wasn’t thinking, uh?
for the tats, or for being a foreigner?
Lately, you see many more young people of both sexes with tattoos.
And even some who aren’t both sexes
This is really going into a whole another thread’s worth of material, but, to put it simply, the tats.
In my experience, the only time I felt I was being looked down upon simply for being a foreigner was when I was in Yokosuka, a town with an American naval base. I only stayed there for a month though. Where I live currently I feel that I’m appreciated, or at the very least viewed as a strange, benign presence.
Yeah, I really don’t like it, or even remotely understand it. His wife also has a fair amount of tattooing. I heard the number $10,000 batted around at one time. At least he had the sense to make sure it can be covered up for job interviews, etc. When I see extensive tattoos, I think “ex-con”, and I’m sure most other people in the over-50 age group have the same mental reaction. He also has a buzz cut and a goatee, which sort of completes the image, even though he’s not a neo-Nazi or even a brawler. I wonder how he’ll feel about all that when he’s 65. . .
Yah, I hear those things are brutal - especially the 1920s models. I hear the Soviets dumped a whole load of confiscated units in the Marianas Trench in the 1960s - but some assholes went on a 20-minute speed run down there and picked up a bunch, so they’re floating around again.
Yup. That’s what a relationship beam does is confiscate your unit.
Well, they do sort of. Jake Adelstein, a western reporter, wrote a pretty interesting book, “Tokyo Vice,” about his experiences covering the crime beat for a Japanese newspaper. Anyway, in it he talks quite a bit about the Yakuza and mentions that a lot of them carry business cards and operate fairly openly. Some even have offices akin to local Elks or Masonic lodges here in the U.S.
Here’s a link to an NPR story about the book.
http://www.npr.org/2009/11/09/120237244/an-american-in-japan-investigating-the-tokyo-vice?ps=rs
Is it that hard to believe? I’ve heard of the Japanese mafia, but didn’t know the term Yakusa until it was explained here.
shrugs Depends on where you hang out. I’ve known what Yakuza means for a long time, but I am also interested in Japanese culture. You’d probably be shocked to know that I knew what the SS was but was a teenager before I knew what Stasi meant.
Thinking about it, TLC used to air a documentary on tattoos and Yakuza back around 2000.
I shall have to check that out when I get home from work. I had heard of Adelstein before as he is known in gaming cricles as the guy who got the yakuza to review a video game about yakuza. The man is made of balls.
Fortunately, some of us are immune to the Relationship Beam.
If life is anything like a romantic comedy, the beam is locked onto you and you just sealed your fate. A close relative is the 1920’s Style Death Beam, which hits you if you show a fellow solider pictures of your family, or mention that you’re three days from retirement.
Thank you very much for this link. I really enjoyed that.
In Japan, isn’t the term “Yakuza” the rough equivalent of the American term “gangster?” Whether or not you are officially in a Yakuza gang, the term generally implies someone who lives a criminal lifestyle. Or am I wrong about that?
I would assume that Japanese people who are prejudiced against the tattooed assume that foreigners who have tattoos are or were criminals in their home country. Hell, they’re are plenty of Americans who still associate tattoos with criminals. And to be fair, lots of American criminals are heavily tattooed.
Given how tattoos have become more common he’ll probably think it fairly normal. And he’ll complain about the “silly implanted video displays kids these days have, by God in my day we stuck to tattoos and liked it!”
The implication is a yazuka type of gangster and not just a petty theft or an independent operator. The caricature of a yakuzais the punch perm scars and missing fingers.
In a society with an extensive organized crime syndicate, such as Italy or Japan, there is the crime syndicate itself, and then the surrounding people around who help interface with the rest of society. These people are also called yakuza
At my first job, we had a client who seemed to be a normal businessman, but during a meeting he had to take a call and suddenly turned into fowl-mouthed, fire-breathing monster from hell, spewing out wild threats in the stereotypical yazuza guttural voice and language. My boss and I looked at each other, and with a nod decided we were out of there. Sure, he may be just pretending, but why take a chance.
I don’t think so. Japanese style tattoos, favored by the Yakuza are different than Western tattoos, and there’s a different word for them, irezumi. Western tattoos are called by the English word “tattoo.” I don’t think you can assume a Japanese would look at a foreigner with a tattoo as a criminal.
As more young people start getting Western style tattoos, any association with tattoos and criminals will become weaker, much as the previous association in the 70s and 80s with Mercedes with yakuza has now completely gone away. Yakuza still continue to drive Mercedes, but so many other people have them, it’s no longer a defining characteristic.