I’ve never been refused service anywhere in my years here since 1988. However in Sydney my German friend and I were refused service at 3:30pm in Manly Sydney at a coffee shop. Could not believe that they close at 3:30pm lol We walked in at 3:25 and told no time for coffee lol.
Never knew that, that sucks.
All this stuff is relative at the end of the day.
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according to the law every foreigner in China must report himself to the Public Security Bureau of the area where he is staying within 24-48 hrs. If at private residence, you literally need to go to the police station and report yourself with some paper from your host, in the case of hotel, they must be authorised by the local PSB to register foreigners’ stays thanks to a direct online link, if a hotel doesn’t have that, they can’t take foreigners.
How to get credit cards in Japan. My cousin who worked in Japan also had Japanese credit cards.
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I have been refused entry to a hotel during covid. And many foreigners were blocked from entering bars during covid.
And banks have refused me access to many of their products. Which isn’t a small deal. Some govt funded courses and institutes refused to let me apply when they found out I wasnt a citizen (yet ironicallyI have worked at two different govt institutes).
But I am happy to say I can’t think of other times that I have been refused service especially from private businesses e.g. hot springs.
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I’ve lived part-time in the hinterlands of Japan since 2009. Heading back there on Friday to spend the summer. Most Japanese are very nice to us but a sizable minority have a subtle but discernible aversion to foreigners that I only occasionally encounter in Taiwan. It’s a hybrid of nationalism and racial superiority. If you show sensitivity towards Japanese customs and courtesies it blunts a lot of the passive hostility but doesn’t eliminate it. I own the biggest, nicest house in the neighborhood though and a lot of toys which the local xenophobes seem to grudgingly respect so it buys me a pass with them. Being a local bigshot also helped me get a bank account, ATM card, and Docomo cellphone, none of which I was supposed to be able to get on a tourist visa.
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“Gaijin” is 外人 (outside person) which is short for 外國人 (outside country person).
How does that mean “strange person”?
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It depends who one meets
Usage of Gaijin 外人 predates 外國人. The original meaning is outsider, stranger, or not one of us in both Chinese and Japanese, but it never developed into a term almost exclusively used to refer to foreigner or Caucasians in Chinese. So in reality, the usage of 外人 is different from 外國人, which is the official term used by the Japanese government to refer to all foreigners.
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I’ve never been discriminated so politely before 
Japanese people are racist (?) towards their own people, the Burakumin, and towards Japanese Koreans. Taiwanese don’t appear to hate on their own.
In my experience…
Japanese people will be polite to you while they are being racist to you.
Taiwanese people won’t be polite to you while they are being racist to you.
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Wait you own a house there AND you do visa runs?
Guy
Except for the settler racism to Indigenous folks, and the various resentments among the different groups of Han settlers . . .
One of the big projects of democratization in Taiwan has been to try to tone down (or make illegal) the inter-group hate.
Guy
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Bloody foreigners!
Thanks for your reply, Guy. Food for thought.
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I eventually got a business manager visa because my house is large enough to allow me to register a business there. I still only spend three months at a time there though because my main business is in Taiwan and after three months out in the middle of nowhere in Japan I’m ready to get back to the city.
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What does it mean in Chinese then?
My Japanese friends tell me gaijin is a derogatory term.
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It’s derogatory in the sense that calling someone a foreigner or Lao Wai/outsider is derogatory. Most people probably wouldn’t mind though.
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And Hongkongers won’t be polite to you while they are being nice to you.
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Laowai has similar usage as Gaijin, in that both terms are almost exclusively reserved for Caucasians, however, Gaijin has a much more troubled past than Laowai.
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