Having failed to have a blossoming career as an actor, in 2005 I decided for reasons I can't possibly remember to study Japanese. I enrolled at SOAS and surprisingly, as I had no background in languages, got a place. The course had a year abroad in the third year, so I worked my little socks off in the first two years to make sure I got to go. Bringing myself to near breaking point I managed to pass the second year and was guaranteed a place at Kobe University for one entire year. I was very excited. 

I had never been to Japan before. All of my preconceptions about the country were built upon the novels I had read and the stories I had heard from my friends who had been fortunate enough to have been before me. My expectations, therefore, were mostly wrong. Everyone is not either a geisha or a samurai and not everyone can do karate. Japan is a country full of real people, living real lives and this is something that a lot of manga obsessed Japanophiles seem to forget.

There was though, one aspect of living in Japan that I had not expected. In all honesty it had not even crossed my mind once in the two years I had been studying Japanese. And that was the fact that when my feet hit Japanese soil I would become a real life, bona fide minority for the first time in my life.

There are about 51,000 Caucasian people living in Japan that make up 2.4% of the entire population of 127 million. Therefore my face was no longer just another one blending into the crowd as it was in England. It was a big fat white emblem of my obvious difference. Being a white male, brought up in middle class suburbia, I had never been different from the norm before.

In the beginning it didn't really cotton on to me that I did not look like everyone else. People would stare at me on the train and physically stop to follow me with their eyes around shops. Being the self-conscious mess I was at the time I assumed it was because I was slightly fat and had a terrible haircut. But it turns out they weren’t staring out of disgust but out of curiosity. As my Japanese improved I began to listen in to the old couple or the high school girls chatting about me, quite openly, on the train; "look it's a foreigner!", "he's so tall!", "I want his hair!" To start with it was a little unnerving but the more you get used to it you begin to feel a bit like a minor celebrity. There were times when I might get a free coffee or an extra bowl of something tasty. One time I was fortunate enough to get a discount on a very expensive t-shirt, but this was probably because I spent 3 hours talking to a t-shirt vendor and most Japanese people have an exceptionally warm and welcoming attitude to people. These were the highlights of my stay, but at the back of my mind I couldn’t help wondering if I would have received these little gifts if I hadn’t been white. Whatever the case may have been, I really couldn’t complain. Life was great.

And then it got old. It got old very quickly. Trying to live a relatively normal life became increasingly difficult. For every person that showed kindness to this bumbling alien in a foreign land there were ten incidents were the opposite happened.

After 6 months of your appearance being commented on every time you got on a train it started to grate, a lot. What grated more than anything else was that those who did comment on me also assumed I couldn't understand what they were saying. This attitude stems from the baka gaijin mentality. ‘Baka’ means ‘stupid’ and ‘gaijin’ means ‘foreigner’ - hence the stupid foreigner.  It is the preposition that as I am a non-Japanese I therefore cannot possibly speak the language and so it is perfectly acceptable to talk about me as if I wasn’t there. It also comes in the form of shop-keepers replying to you in broken English when you’ve spoken to them in Japanese. Maybe they just want to practice their English, I don’t know. Sometimes I had to pretend I couldn’t speak English just so I was allowed to use Japanese.

My three worst moments came in various stages of severity. Shopping in the industrial town of Osaka, I asked a shop assistant if I could try on a jumper I wanted to buy. I was met with a very stern, no. I asked why I wasn’t allowed to try the jumper on when there were changing rooms and I really wanted to buy it. I spoke in Japanese and with no reason given at all an English ‘no’ came flying back at me. I left the store without the jumper.

I used to walk back to my dormitory from University through a tightly packed suburb. These streets were always so quiet for a country of 127 million, however when I did pass someone the inevitable usually happened. Many people, walking along seemingly without a care in the world would see my face, be ever so startled and cross to the other side of the street. On more than one occasion older Japanese women would purposefully take a different street to avoid passing me. Or on the most oddest of occasions, stop dead completely and almost cower until I was far enough away to not be dangerous any more. I am a big softy. I have only been in one fight, which I definitely lost and to be considered a threat to someone made me feel more saddened and ultimately alienated than I had ever felt before.

My worst moment came in the sprawling mess of concrete and steel that is Tokyo. Standing on that platform of Shibuya underground station in the middle of a throng of people I heard a man shouting from behind. I turned around to see a small Japanese man, in his mid thirties with a wild look in his eyes and a face contorted with anger. He was screaming at me, telling me to get out of his country and that I was stupid for not being able to speak Japanese. Having never experienced anything like this before it took me a moment to realise it was actually happening. What depressed me more than the angry little man before me were the blank faces of those around me. Everyone just stood by and pretended it wasn’t happening.

It didn't really dawn on me until this point that I had become a victim of racism. I was being judged purely on the colour of my skin and the bone structure of my enormous white face.

Obviously this wasn't everyone and my experience in Japan was the greatest of my life so far. So good in fact I'll be heading back there for another year in 2011. I wouldn’t have said I was racist before going to Japan, I have no problem with anyone as long as they are not harming someone. But being in Japan taught me what racism truly is and how devastatingly depressing and alienating it can be for the victim. Racism, even in its slightest form, can effect people in ways I hadn’t been able to imagine until I had experienced it. Judging people on what they look like is just plain stupid, so let’s not yeah.

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