Text Post Fri, Apr. 20, 2012 114 notes

Anon: “I hate being Japanese”

So this didn’t happen to me per se, but I was there most of the time when it did happen. My friend is a half-Japanese (on mom’s side) and half-Caucasian (on dad’s) and is very pretty. Although she has an English surname, her first name is closely related to Miku from Vocaloid (change one letter and it’s her name).

She likes anime to some extent and teaches her friends little Japanese words like “kawaii” or “baka,” but since she is Japanese she speaks sometimes. And although she is not 100% fluent, she can manage her way in Japan if she went there.

So anyway, Miku (we’ll call her Miku because her name is so similar) and I are walking down the school hallway and anime club is going on. You can hear them watching Black Butler on the screen and squeeing “OMG, CIEL IS SO CUTE!!!!11!” or “SEBASTIAN IS HAWT” while spewing out the occasional “kawaii desu” as “kawaii day+soo.” We look inside the door and they’re wearing cat ears and cat bell necklaces and holding each other while squealing at the characters. They then stop watching anime, turn on anime OSTs, tell each other how good they are and dance to them, and speak in broken Japanese.

Now Miku is kind of pissed, because they act like they know Japanese and shit but they don’t. She looks at me and she says, “You know, Japan isn’t like that at all. Not many people are crazy over anime in Japan (since she’s lived there for a year and visited). They’re making it really overrated.”

Miku and I leave while still hearing some weird anime OST playing. She seems pretty angry, though I don’t know why she’d stay angry, but I just kind of kept quiet.

The next day, one of the girls with the cat ears from the anime club come up to us and say, “ARE YOU JAPANESE?” because we don’t have that many Asians in our school. I tell her no, I’m Chinese, and Miku says, “I’m half, why?”

The girl proceeds to shriek and glomp Miku and says, “OMG, I’ve never talked to a real Japanese before! Kawaii desu ne? Sugoi! Arigatou gozaimasu!” and all this random Japanese crap while Miku is looking at her like, “…the hell are you saying?”

The weeaboo writes something down in Japanese on her arm and says, “Can you read this? What does this say?!” and Miku looks at it and says “It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just scribbles.” The girl gets really angry and said, “You must not be Japanese, this obviously is my Japanese name! I would know because I'm fluentin Japanese!”

I can tell she’s really frustrated, so I say to the weeaboo that we have to go to class, and drag Miku along. She finally tells me that she “hates being Japanese, because people like them treat her differently as if being Japanese is like a superior race."

I decide to let her cool off for a bit, but the anime club kept bothering us because the one girl told the other members Miku was Japanese but "not a real one” because she couldn’t “read” the writing.

All these people kept coming up to Miku because she was Asian with a white surname so they didn’t know she was Japanese, and wanted to talk to her and ask her questions about anime and manga and Japan like she was some kind of celebrity.

Eventually Miku got pissed and told everyone off, saying that “It doesn’t matter if I’m Japanese or not, so shut the f–k up!” and she stormed out of the room, leaving everyone in silence. I followed her out of the room and found her. She looks like she’s about to cry and I hug her and say it’s okay, they’re idiots, et cetera. Then she tells me, “I hate being Japanese.”

I didn’t really know what to say so I kept hugging her. The good part was that the weeaboos kind of left her alone, so that was that.