Japanese American with conversational level Japanese

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yungll181

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I am an American born Japanese with conversational level Japanese. When I am in Japan, they often assume I am Japanese but my speaking level could be a bit improper. There have been a few times when I have been told I have a slight accent. Will most places be receptive?
 
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yungll181 said:
I am an American born Japanese with conversational level Japanese. When I am in Japan, they often assume I am Japanese but my speaking level could be a bit improper. There have been a few times when I have been told I have a slight accent. Will most places be receptive?
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No, most places will not be receptive. ALL places will be receptive. Now stop thinking about it.

FWIW, American, 100% ethnically Japanese here, lived in Japan for years, back in town a few times a year and not even that conversational, anymore (especially when sober). I have never been turned away from a single venue in my life. So again, stop thinking about it. Assuming you aren't lying about anything in your post, you will not be turned away, anywhere, ever.
 
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Most places should accept you but may still charge you a gaijin tax if they sense you're not native Japanese. Some places (very few, I think) have a high level Japanese threshold which might turn you down. Out of the dozen or so places I've been to, only one has turned me down due to Japanese level (and I'm pretty bad, I wouldn't consider myself conversational, only good enough to have very basic conversation... I'd grade myself as a 2.5/10 on speaking).
 
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Keihan said:
No, most places will not be receptive. ALL places will be receptive. Now stop thinking about it.

FWIW, American, 100% ethnically Japanese here, lived in Japan for years, back in town a few times a year and not even that conversational, anymore (especially when sober). I have never been turned away from a single venue in my life. So again, stop thinking about it. Assuming you aren't lying about anything in your post, you will not be turned away, anywhere, ever.
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Thanks for the encouragement. All my friends in Japan tell me that my Japanese is good considering that I am technically a foreigner, but still tend to feel like an idiot when I don't have the vocabulary to express certain things. I guess it'll be a good practice to see how far I can get by with my level of Japanese.

Do you have any recommendations for places I should check out?
 
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yungll181 said:
Thanks for the encouragement. All my friends in Japan tell me that my Japanese is good considering that I am technically a foreigner, but still tend to feel like an idiot when I don't have the vocabulary to express certain things.
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Most local Japanese punters communicate in grunts and nods. Do the same and everyone thinks you are a native. It's only us white boys who need to talk ourselves in.
 
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I’m in a similar situation and in my earlier days when I had no idea what I was doing I did get turned away once or twice. Now I usually don’t have many issues with walk ins. With phone reservations they do sometimes catch my accent, but if I explain they usually just say come in. As long as you’re clean and respectful you shouldn’t have a problem with most places.
 
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yungll181 said:
Do you have any recommendations for places I should check out?
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ANYWHERE YOU WANT. Dude, you're not getting it. If you're 100% ethnically Japanese, look 100% ethnically Japanese and are comfortably conversational (and maybe even if you're not) you're not in the same category as any single white guy or visible foreigner in the world, even ones fluent in Japanese. Japan is a fundamentally racist place and guys like us don't need to worry about racist gaijin rules and standards because they don't apply to us. Pick your place and walk through the door like you belong there. The only thing that might fuck you up is if you're acting nervous or strange or babbling on incoherently because then you might just weird them out and they'll use your foreign passport as an excuse to avoid you.

I'll give you an example. As a courtesy, I've always informed the tencho/staff that I'm Japanese-American. I've done this at countless venues all across Japan, including many businesses or in areas that are notoriously gaijin-unfriendly, many of which are mentioned here as being specifically gaijin-unfriendly. I have received two types of reactions. One, the staff think it's cool/strange/surreal as shit, chat with me for a few minutes about where I'm from and what I'm doing there (and specifically where in Japan my family hails from) or, two, and far more commonly, I get the "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT" blank stare and get waved through and into the waiting room where I'm treated like any other nobody coming in.

Guys like us miss out on a whole lot in big Japanese cities. We don't automatically get gaijin-hunter pussy thrown at us from every angle at every cheap nightclub. We don't get propositioned ten times a night by 35yo female life-failures at HUB, looking for a green card. We don't get stopped on the street and offered all manner of abominations that involve pulling down your pants. What we do get are two things--to date normal, traditional, STD-free girls from normal families and access to basically any P4P in the country. Stop worrying about it and enjoy the perks.
 
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If they say you have an accent, say you’re from some obscure Tohoku or Okinawa places and pray the staff is not from the same area, lol.
Bring Japanese passport just in case.

We don’t do recommendations and we can’t because we don’t know what you are looking for , and also most people here wouldn’t be having first hand experience with those Japanese only places.

Some people who can pass as Japanese use it to get into cheap raw sx places, i would however not recommend that. Pink salons that are not assessable to foreigners could be fun and good value too, also a bit risky because of high customer turnover though.
Basically any place you are interested in could work as said previously.
 
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When they see your Japanese face most places will be fine I guess. Maybe some DH places could be stricter when they only hear your voice and have no other reference point....but there are so many options, it really shouldn't matter.
 
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Alice said:
If they say you have an accent, say you’re from some obscure Tohoku or Okinawa places and pray the staff is not from the same area, lol.
Bring Japanese passport just in case.

We don’t do recommendations and we can’t because we don’t know what you are looking for , and also most people here wouldn’t be having first hand experience with those Japanese only places.

Some people who can pass as Japanese use it to get into cheap raw sx places, i would however not recommend that. Pink salons that are not assessable to foreigners could be fun and good value too, also a bit risky because of high customer turnover though.
Basically any place you are interested in could work as said previously.
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Gotcha, thanks for the suggestion!
Yeah i was just wondering if there were any areas or places that are highly recommended by locals (non foreigners).
 
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yungll181 said:
Gotcha, thanks for the suggestion!
Yeah i was just wondering if there were any areas or places that are highly recommended by locals (non foreigners).
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Thanks. well, not a lot of locals that can pass as Japanese on this English language forum, haha.
You could try some Japanese forums to see what’s highly rated.
If budget is an issue, there seem to be quite some good value places that are popular with Japanese but don’t let in foreigners, so that’s a good opportunity. If you can go all out, there are also exclusive fancy places.
 
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Keihan said:
The only thing that might fuck you up is if you're acting nervous or strange or babbling on incoherently because then you might just weird them out
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Nah the number of virgin socially inept Japanese dudes who do that the first time they walk into a hakoheru or whatever. You’ll be FINE.
 
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