Loco in Yokohama

click here for pt.1 httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROn_9302UHg A couple of years earlier Los Angeles, a hotbed of events related to race, was the scene of the above event. An event as divisive as the whole OJ thing. An event which eventually lead to this: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc_SgpyJWRY httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVB9qARy06E httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-LB94Kwlws African-Americans were still reeling from that disgraceful blow to our collective humanity when this OJ thing got underway. There had [...]

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click here for pt 1 Yep, I was a hater. But, the environment I worked in wasn’t very conducive to hatin’. While Nova was a kind of incubator for the “us” versus “WE” mentality, it didn’t nurture envy much. At times it seemed to even be structured in such a way as to kill envy on spot. I [...]

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Over the course of my seven years here I have modified again and again the extent to which I’ll allow myself to be affected by what’s going on around me. By that I mean the behavior of  Japanese people. I’m reminded of a scene from a very funny movie by one of my favorite film writers- Cameron [...]

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I was reading through my post from a year ago and came across a comment I wrote in response to a reader’s comment.  I had written the post in response to a Japanese reader’s advice as to how I should respond to Japanese people who avoid me out of fear of me. My response was [...]

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There’s an ongoing furor over a Japanese McDonald’s ad campaign featuring a white flunky japanophile who can’t manage to get nihongo (spoken or written) through his thick foreign skull…reinforcing this and other negative stereotypes about white foreigners, as if they needed reinforcing… Mr. Debito even compared Mr. James to Stepin Fechit. I don’t know about that. I thought it was ironic, [...]

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Reason2Write,the founder and creative genius behind one of my favorite blogs has gone ahead and given me a reason to write. (-; She has tasked me to think of alternative explanations for why SOME Japanese people behave the way they do towards me. Racism, and its virtually identical twin sister, xenophobia, as well as other forms of negativity, are not allowed. I must [...]

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           I woke up to my chirping cell phone alarm at 6:30 feeling well rested. The crows were cawing, the bluebirds were whistling and Aiko was typing in the next room.              “Ohayou,” I groaned, feeling a slight twinge in my back. I’d played basketball the day before at the gym, and though I don’t look [...]

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