Question- Why do we not often hear of similar rantings from Japanese men towards foreign English teachers in Japan? Are the foreigners in Japan abstaining or are Japanese men more confident?

Talk about hitting the nail on the head. There is just as much, if not more fraternizing between foreigners and Japanese women. However, unlike Koreans, Japanese men do not go apeshit crazy of foreigners stealing their women. They posess a characteristic which seems very foreign and incomprehensible to the Korean mind… something called “security and self confidence.”

Ironic thing is that Koreans love to point out this fact of smooth relations between the local Japanese girls and gaijin men as some sort of negative or degenerate aspect of Japanese culture. In other words, the message that Koreans portray is, “Look at how superior Korean culture is compared to Japanese culture. Japanese totally feel comfortable with letting their women date foreigners whereas we Koreans show our superiority by beating, crying, screaming at foreigners and flooding internet boards with racist messages when we see inter-racial relationships. You see, we Koreans are proud that we are racist and insecure!” ”

wow- has the person who wrote this been to the clubbing/dating scene in Japan lately? I came back from japan about threee days ago, and as a foreign woman who was interested in dating a Japanese man, i can tell you that the answer is NOT necessarily in that Japanese men have more confidence. First of all, I’ve discussed the issue of Japanese/non-Japanese relations with a lot of my friends (noth foreigner and Japanese) and it basically boiled down to this:

Japanese women/foreign man: foreign men have something called ‘the foreigner advantage’. the japanese guys seem to think that if a japanese girl had to choose between a foreigner and a japanese man, she would choose the foreigner, for a variety of reasons - foreign men treat their women better, different from everyday life, maybe get to go to an exotic country. as one pair of japanese friends woefully conveyed, ‘日本の男性はもてない’ - japanese men are not romantically popular. no one here seems particualarly surprised, or bothered (at least in tokyo) by seeing this combination, not even if in a part of town that is almost completely japanese and very very drunk.

Japanese man/foreign women: almost non-existent, for a number of reasons, most of them confidence related. are japanese men interested in foreign women? sure! except sometimes the women are either too big, don’t speak japanese well enough( the japanese guys worried a lot about communication issues), or else they assume they’re not interested in japanese men. and whereas its relatively ok for a guy in japan to hit on a girl, the opposite is mostly not true. thus, with the extreme lack of confidence of the japanese guys concerning foreign girls, they won’t hit on them the way foreign guys hit on the japanese ones, and if a foreign girl tries to hit on a japanese guy, its a turn off (a bit too forward/strong/scary). and this is even in Roppongi, Tokyo’s clubbing district that caters extensivley to a crowd of foreigners and Japanese who are interested in the other.

so, yes, the japanese don’t react in the same way as the korean men but it doesn’t mean that it is for reasons of confidence! it seems to be more in line of the Japanese culture bit about not really so much talking about embarrassing or shaming things. what was the most common thing i heard when i asked japanese guys why they think some japanese girls like foreign men? ‘because we are smaller in body’. there is definitely a complex here too. the difference is, it seems the japanese men have too much dignity to scream about it online and too free a society to worry overly much about the japanese girls who do end up with foreign men. and please take note- everything i wrote here, has come either from first-hand experience with being a foreign girl in the japanese dating scene or from male japanese friends, who of course don’t represent every male in japan but do represent a decent cross-section of ages, occupations, views on life in the tokyo area.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

Are you implying that we have solid historical reasons for hating to see a black man with a white woman? Now I’m really curious!

montclaire, what is this, race-baiting? Dogbert gave you the reason, but I will elaborate because you are being obtuse. Blacks and whites in America have history between them that includes slavery, segregation, miscegenation laws and a whole other host of issues that Koreans and whites do not have. There is very little history between whites and Koreans, especially when it comes to inter-racial dating. There is none of the baggage between Koreans and whites as there is between blacks and whites. As dogbert said, the “comparison is inaccurate and irrelevant”.

It is obvious that you are fishing for racist sentiment. Quit it, already.

Are you implying that we have solid historical reasons for hating to see a black man with a white woman? Now I’m really curious!

I’m not implying anything. I merely said that bluejives’s comparison is inaccurate and irrelevant.

I can’t believe that’s kept you and wjk exercised for the better part of a week.

Thanks for the link, BTW.

I used to work with a guy who had a colourful swearing vocabulary, without ever actually used swear words! “Jiminy jumping crickets!” is my favourite, followed by “Colder than a welldigger’s foot” and other ones I can’t even recall. Hearing him swear was highly entertaining.