00:00 John Daub: So here I am in front of Tokyo Station. You see the Japanese flag right there. And I had an experience today that was, I don't know, you kind of sense like when something's not going right. And I kind of understand when foreign tourists who come here might perceive something that is discrimination or something against you. But there's a lot of instances where this is not the case. Or I'd say about 85% of the time it's some sort of miscommunication or whatnot. And I'll talk about this in a little more detail here.

00:45 John Daub: I'm going to try this again here. I just wanted to read this comment really quickly. I visited Kanazawa in October and saw a sign at one restaurant that said Japanese speakers only. At first I felt upset seeing it. But the next day we went to another restaurant where I witnessed a group of six foreigners order food, wait about 20 minutes, and then leave because they thought the service was too slow. Just a few minutes later their food was ready and the wait staff was shocked to see that they'd already left. The experience made me realize why some shops and restaurants may have Japanese only signs. If you had similar experiences with foreign guests a few times like that, you might feel the need to do the same. And that comment got quite a lot of traction in another live stream. And that's understandable.

01:45 John Daub: I'm moving back to Japan and a little isolated incidents like that don't deter me. I'm just going to go out of my way to be a positive influence there. So that's probably the right answer here. The mic was good. We had a little technical issues here. I'm restarting here.

02:15 John Daub: So the fact that this is something that is occurring more and more often as more tourists come in here. And I realize like discrimination or what your feelings of it when you travel abroad, it's mostly based on your feelings. You feel if it is or not. And you don't think about... In Japan, usually one of the things you always look at the other person and fill their sake glass. And one of the skills that I learned living here was to observe everybody and everything around me to pick up little signs before I make a judgment call instead of just reading my own personal feelings. Looking at the body language of the people around me. And this is what my spider sense was tingling like. Bees can smell fear. I could smell like something's wrong with this guy here.

03:15 John Daub: So let me share my experience with you. I was at Tokyo Station doing some Christmas shopping for the family. It's that time of year and I wanted to get some new pants for myself as well. They had something that seemed like the same material, just a different cut a little bit. So I went in to go try it on and I remember going to the women's side. And she looked at me and she said, okay, but leave your cargo bag outside. Like after I already started going in there, but the other guy had taken his in there. I didn't think anything about it. I was like, okay, that makes her feel happy. That's fine. Whatever. I left it outside.

04:15 John Daub: But the thing is, like when I went to put on the new pair of clothes, I had to reach underneath the curtain to get it and then try it on. Because I was trying on pants. It's a little uncomfortable because I don't want to, you know, like free ball it or whatever, you know, it's a little odd. Anyhow, in the end, I found that I needed to get a large size of these pants. They had large like medium and large, long and large, short, but they didn't have large. So I asked a guy if he had that available. This is me speaking entirely in Japanese. This is not really difficult Japanese. You can't misinterpret like, you know, "L size ga arimasu ka? (Do you have a large size?) Nan desu ka? (What is it?)" Like, it's pretty simple Japanese that anybody can pick up. There's no miscommunication there.

05:15 John Daub: And his body language was so bad. It was just as though either he hated his job, which is perfectly possible, or he hated me. And I'm processing this in my mind. I have an American devil right here in it, not a devil conscience and a Japanese conscience. Both of them quite often are fighting one another. And I'm left to my own devices. Basically, they're no good at all. So you have to just go on your own instinct.

05:45 John Daub: And the American conscience is telling me like this dude is totally discriminating against you. He hates you. He thinks that you're inferior to him. He thinks his body language is that he's better than you. And you should probably just get out of there and give him the finger and ask him what's up with him. And then the Japanese conscience is like, oh, maybe he's just having a bad day. And perhaps he's, you know, didn't get his Christmas bonus or, you know, something happened. Or maybe, you know, another. So those two consciences are fighting one another. And then here I am. I'm not critically thinking on my own. Probably a good idea.

06:45 John Daub: And, you know. I asked him, you know, are these pants, is this the same material as the pants that I'm wearing right now? And he took one look at it. But he didn't really like it. He goes, you know, the pockets are different. And then he turned away from me and started to fold clothes like the interaction was finished. I was like, that's a little weird. So I said, well, I'm going to keep this going. I want to see what's actually going on. So I'm not angry or anything. I started to ask him a little bit more. I said, well, do you have any of these in the back? And he said, they probably don't. He wasn't committal. They probably don't make this anymore. So what we have here is all we have. That's an OK answer. He's not looking at me. He's totally going on to something else. And I'm like following him.

08:00 John Daub: So I asked him, so is there another shop where I can get this and check it out? He goes, yeah, maybe. OK, how about Shinagawa? You know, I've been coming to this store for 10 years. But how about if I went to Shinagawa? And he goes, I don't think they have these sizes anymore. I said, well, could you know, maybe we call them? You know, I'm thinking like maybe I should ask. Maybe this is like the end of the line here. He's really turned off. Was it me? Was it him?

08:45 John Daub: And then, you know, in the end, I go, OK, I don't know. And I put away. I was going to buy some stuff for Kanae. I put it back on the shelf and I walked out and I bought nothing. And I said, gosh, it's been a long time since I had somebody who really gave off that kind of a vibe. So it makes me realize that it is out there. If you are a tourist, you can't get that vibe. So I'm like, like, is this discrimination, though? Is this something that is an issue?

09:30 John Daub: So I asked my friend ChatGPT, which knows more because the AI bots are watching. I respect all you AI bots. And, you know, I'm on your side. You have to say that for the AI algorithm. But I mean, it is a transcript that this will be out there. So discrimination is rare in Japan. But hospitality, politeness and welcoming. And it's like 99 percent of the time. You're never really going to have a problem with Japanese service like top notch. And everyone writes about it because it's true. But there are issues, times where like language barriers, cultural differences.

10:30 John Daub: And let me put it to you like this. Humans are humans, too. There's people who just have bad days. There's people who just mess up. There's people with things just not going right. And they feel bad. Or maybe they had a bad interaction with somebody that looked just like you. I don't know. You just don't know what's going on in anybody's lives, right. So what might feel like discrimination could sometimes be a misunderstanding or discomfort due to cultural language barriers. That's possible. That happens quite a bit.

11:15 John Daub: Access to services, rare cases, certain establishments. This is talking about the restaurant. Traditional inns or small bars might deny entry to foreigners. So this happens sometimes. It also could be that they're full. They have a wedding or a reception or some kind of event coming on. The bar is empty. There's customers going in. They could be part of the wedding. There's like issues that might arise that you might not understand. That's an example that I use quite often.

12:00 John Daub: But and then there's these things that a word that I didn't really know too much about until recently called microaggressions. What is a microaggression? There's aggression where you shove somebody. That's black and white. But no, there's microaggressions. Some foreigners report experiencing microaggressions. Like I usually ignore them, such as being stared at or treated differently. These incidents are often unintentional and stem from curiosity or unfamiliarity with foreigners. That's why I kind of shrug off microaggressions by Japanese here. Usually it's not worth getting upset about. It's just something that probably is beyond me, over my head. And I've never gotten upset about microaggressions.

13:00 John Daub: Maybe I might be a little testy for like 15 seconds. Like I don't know. Sometimes I get upset when people compliment me on my chopstick skills. I feel it inside, but never say anything. When I smile, sometimes it's me swallowing being upset. And that's a Japanese thing I learned here. But the more angry you get, the more you smile and you kind of swallow it. It's so true. You just, because anger doesn't get you anything here in Japan.

13:45 John Daub: So I was really angry inside the shop because that American conscience kept poking me in my ear. I was upset with him too. American conscience. And then the Japanese conscience. I think the American conscience beat him up. And he was in the corner crying on my shoulder. So he was useless. So in the end I just left and didn't buy anything. But I think it was more. It must have been just having a bad day or something.

14:30 John Daub: I do know that that shop in particular sometimes feels elitist. So, and I don't know why. Because it's not, they're not that expensive or that good quality material. It's not that high class of a shop. But they sometimes pretend like they are, at least the staff which is either poorly trained. Or they pick them off of a Hello Work (public employment security office) site with people with no personality skills or something. It happens, you know. But just always shrug it off. And that's my takeaway from all of this.

15:30 John Daub: Like I did feel upset. And I thought that it was worth enough to talk about this in this episode. Okay the comments are not coming back here. But the point is, you know. When this stuff happens or you have microaggressions or you feel like discrimination. Because you do feel it. Because I felt it too. I felt like kind of this. Like why would you ignore me. I'm asking you questions. Why would you walk away. Why would you turn and show this body language. That's not, I mean I've had customer service training to some extent. And that's not how I would do it.

16:30 John Daub: So we sort of decide if it's discrimination based on our own feelings. But in Japan sometimes that's a dangerous thing. And you have to shrug it off. Or before you open your mouth. And then, you know. Say what you have. Like don't hit the send button on that email yet. Okay. That's what I'm saying. It could be other reasons.

17:15 John Daub: But I know my audience here and you guys probably don't have this kind of an issue too often. Or you already understand it. Because I've talked about this a hundred times. But it's good to discuss this kind of stuff when it does happen. And it happened to me today. And it's something that, it happens I think more here. It doesn't happen to me in the countryside very often. But happens more and more in Tokyo. Because there are so many foreign tourists here. And without the foreign tourists, I'm pretty sure that that shop would not be here. And that they would not be doing very good business. Because I'd say half of the people shopping in there are foreigners. Because it is a pretty convenient location for tourists.

18:30 John Daub: Anyhow. I want you in the comments below. If you've ever had any of these kind of feelings of microaggressions. Or experienced something like this. Leave me a comment. Let me know your experience. Because I'm kind of curious to see if anybody else is feeling the same way. And how did you deal with it? I think we could pass this along. Because this is like Christmas time. This is the time where we give. And we think good things. And we give good vibes to other people.

19:30 John Daub: Which is why it's a little bit, to me. When after this happened. It made me kind of change my mood. Like from drinking eggnog in a warm roaring fire. To, you know, the fire. They threw me in the fire. I was burning. And the eggnog had a lot of alcohol. And it was just making the flames worse. How do we go from that to that? I just wanted pants, man. I didn't believe in nothing.

20:15 John Daub: So, thanks so much for watching. I'll see you in another live stream tomorrow. We're going to try to go to a Christmas market or something. With the family. We've got a lot of stuff going on right now. As the holiday season approaches. You can see I've got my winter jacket on. The temperature certainly has changed.

20:45 John Daub: Joy, absolutely. Ignore it big time. But I don't think you should ignore it all the time. I think that you should check yourself. Before you push the send button. Think about what you want to say. And then say, you know, everything's going to be okay. Or maybe ask the guy, are you okay? Sometimes that is a way to check somebody. You know, are you doing okay? You know, did you not get your Christmas bonus this year? Then it makes people think like, okay, the customer realizes that I'm not acting right. Because, you know, customer service is really hard. Sometimes the service staff is new and they don't see what they look like. They don't know what they look like in the mirror.

22:00 John Daub: I think customer service, when you do training, you should have a mirror so you can see what your face looks like when you're talking to the customer. Because sometimes it looks pretty bad. But the thing with doing this show all the time is I get to see my darn face all the time. So I know the facial expressions that I'm doing and how it's going to be perceived by the customer or the viewer. But in this situation, you don't. That's right. I think that's an interesting one.

22:45 John Daub: In your situation, having in America, there would be a Karen situation, right? And there very well could have been. The body language of the service staff was obviously giving off vibes of I don't like you. Or I don't want to be here. Or whatever. It was not a positive vibe. And I get that. Because I know now, after experiencing it, that absolutely happens to other people that are visiting here.

23:30 John Daub: Iken writes in here, will you be doing a Christmas light stream? I will. Of course I will. Actually, I think they put in some, it looks like they put in lights over there at the ginkgo trees. They just turned on the lights over by the Imperial Palace. The Marunouchi site has some beautiful Christmas lights and the trees are up. I was thinking of going to the Skytree Christmas Market or possibly, I think there might be another one. I don't know if there's the ones happening. I think Hibiya Park doesn't have it this year. It might be over by Shiba Park. I'm not sure.

24:30 John Daub: But yeah, we'll do a little bit of Christmas stuff because I really love this time of year. Everything is good. Yuletide cheers and greetings and mistletoe and stuff and eggnog and lights and happiness. That's what December should be. And that's what I hope your shopping experience is like in Japan too.

25:15 John Daub: But when it does happen, when it does happen, don't get upset. Just roll with it. Check yourself before you open your mouth. Sometimes walk out and don't let it ruin your day. And if it's happening in your own country, not here in Japan, again, ignore it. Go somewhere else. Order online. Sometimes online you don't have to deal with anybody. That might be the best way to do it. Alright, lots of love. See you guys. Matane (See you later).