Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・Playing the Gaijin Card is referred to as a situation when a foreigner is intentionally behaving or acting against Japanese custom or rules with the expectation that the behavior will be tolerated or forgiven by the Japanese, because as foreigner the person does not know about the mostly unwritten rules.

・Most foreigners living in Japan understand that they have this “Gaijin Card” and have used it on various occasions.

・Because you are foreigners, Japanese are more forgiving when you don’t follow the Japanese practices. Often you can use this card in order to get what you want or avoid what you don’t want.

・Such matters include going home early, taking a long vacation, not following hierarchy and seniority etc.

・But by using Gaijin card, foreigners can also add value as well. Speaking up directly to say the right things to the customers and bosses, pointing out the important issues which the Japanese hesitate to talk about etc.

・There are foreigners, often the long-time residents, who choose not to use the Ganjin card because they would rather make effort to assimilate in the Japanese society.

・The danger of using the Gaijin card often is that you may emphasize yourself as a foreigner and make your assimilation to the Japanese society more difficult.

・More accurately speaking, the Gaijin card may be actually “the expat card”. While expats can use the Gaijin card and get special treatment and understanding from the Japanese, it is highly questionable if the locally hired foreigners get the same. Also, Caucasian Westerners may be able to get more benefits of the Gaijin card than Asian foreigners. When the Japanese people see Asian people, probably the Japanese tend to expect them more to behave like the Japanese. There is definitely some sort of unconscious bias of the Japanese that stereotype foreigners differently based on race/nationality.

・The biggest Gaijin card which foreigners could use is probably the language, i.e. choosing to speak English instead of Japanese even if you speak fluent Japanese. Some foreigners have experienced that the more Japanese they speak, the more Japanese they are expected to become. Quite often, even if foreigners try so hard, they realize that their Japanese will never be good enough for the Japanese and they feel inferior to the Japanese. So they would rather choose to speak English with the Japanese all the time. In this way, now it is the Japanese who feel embarrassed and inferior.

・How the Japanese people feel when foreigners use the Gaijin card? If it is for a selfish purpose, the Japanese will be upset. But if it is used to contribute to do something which the Japanese are not good at doing, the Japanese welcome foreigners who use the Gaijin card.