The Gaijin Club

(Being a foreigner in Japan) is like being a black guy back home. Only there are less of us. - Dennis Haysbert as "Hammer" Dubois in the movie Mr. Baseball

The sideways glance. The slight nod. The brief eye contact. These are the subtle "secret handshakes" that fellow non-Asians pass while in Japan, or pretty much any Asian country.

Japan's population is over 99% ethnic Japanese. South Korea is over 99% ethnic Korean. Taiwan is 98% Chinese or Taiwanese. And so on throughout Asia, so non-Asians stick out like sore thumbs. And not only do the natives notice it, but these countries are so homogeneous that even we visitors notice it when a non-native is around.

So when two Westerners see each other, there is the immediate bond, but also the questions: Is he also here on business? Is she a tourist? Does he live here? Does she speak the lingo? But the bond is immediate, and if in a restaurant, bar or lounge, conversation is easy to strike up since there is the bond of we're outsiders here. (This little fact is what made the link-up in Lost in Translation so believable).

And people from the same country have an even closer bond, and you can tell with a pretty high accuracy what country someone is from just by looking at them. How? Believe it or not, the stereotypes of looks and dress are incredibly accurate (which is why they are stereotypes):

Europeans never match. Something about "fashion" out of Milan or Paris dictates that ties don't match suits. And their shoes are a dead give away they're from the Continent since European men seem as fussy about shoes as American women. Europeans also have the strangest tastes in eye glasses. Their casual wear, however, is of better quality than anyone else's, so some white guy walking down the streets of Japan with a $600 cashmere cardigan tied around his shoulders is almost certainly not an American.

British are wrinkled and dishelveled. Always. Whether in a suit or casual, they look like they just slept in their clothes, even if they just put them on. This is a curious stereotype considering Seville Row, James Bond and Prince Charles, so those nicely dressed chaps must stay in Hong Kong and off the "tech circuit" (I don't run into a lot of finance types).

Americans are heavier set, carrying a few extra pounds than everyone else (I like to think it is a sign of our prosperity). While American professional dress is better than the Europeans (we match, after all), Americans seem to think "casual dress" means beach attire, and we have really become the slobs of the world when out of a suit and tie (myself excluded). Americans (and Canadians) also are the only ones where goatees are still in style.

Canadians look like thinner Americans. Our sloppiness seems to have snuck north of the border.

So fellow citizens have no problems finding each other out over here, but even then, the shared status of being a Gaijin (or Gwilo in China) puts all non-Asians into a single club when over here.

The Art of Waiting in Japan

If I had a dime for every minute I have waited on a Japanese train platform, I'd be a rich man.

When you're selected to go on your first business trip in Japan, there is the excitement of going to a foreign country, seeing a different culture, and honing your skills in international business. This is all true, but there is one thing that veterans of Japanese travel forget to mention: it takes a long time to get anywhere over here and you end up doing a lot of waiting.

Let's take yesterday. I met my local sales guy/guide/interpreter at our Tokyo sales office at 8am and we returned to the same area for dinner around 7pm. In those 11 hours I had one meeting with one customer that lasted 2 hours. The other 9 hours were spent in every form of ground transportation available in Japan: subways, Shinkansen (bullet train), taxis, and of course, walking. And there was a lot of waiting in one spot for each of those. There may be exceptions to this rule, but since I started doing business in Japan in 1998, this has been pretty standard, and other people who have done sales and meetings here tell me the same thing.

Just arriving here takes waiting. You get off a 12 hour flight and are through customs and just want to get to your Tokyo hotel and get some sleep. Guess what? Taking a "limousine bassu" or Narita Express (fast train) to downtown Tokyo will add at least 1.5-2 hours to your trip.

So, what do you do? You do the same things the locals do while they're waiting, and here is what I observe, by order of frequency:

Sleep - By far the number one thing Japanese do while they are traveling and waiting. They sleep on subways, trains, in waiting areas, in coffee shops, sitting down, standing up, I have seen it all.

Read - You see a few novels, but you see a lot of comic books. Not the kid action hero ones you remember from your youth, but 3-4 thick tomes that usually have a lot of violence and sometimes sexually explicit material (called manga). Actually, seeing men reading "real" pornographic material in public isn't uncommon, and at those times you just have to remember that cultures are different.

Wireless Internet - It is frowned upon to talk on a cellphone in a train or subway, but you will see a large number of people clicking away on their cellphones, using the internet. When cellphone internet usage exploded in Japan, U.S. vendors got excited about this service. What they forgot is that a majority of Americans aren't stuck on trains and platforms for hours at a time with nothing to do, so the penetration rates in the U.S. never even remotely approached usage in Japan.

Work - In the world's second largest economy that has a reputation of breeding workaholics, you would expect to see a lot of working, but it is actually rare. If you do see it, it is usually pen and paper, and rarely to you see someone on the Shinkansen whip out a notebook computer and go to work.

Strike up a Conversation - Extremely rare. An Eastern European friend told me about being on a plane that was grounded for a few hours in Poland and within 30 minutes everyone on the plane was talking, arguing politics, and telling stories to the total strangers next to them. This is definitely a cultural thing and not common in Japan

As for myself, I always have a novel handy when I leave my hotel for meetings in Tokyo and always bring several with me so I don't run out of material.

There's No Venti In Japan

Ah, back in the country that gave my blog its name. I've been here around 20 times, although this is my first time back in over two years. I'm actually staying in an area I know very well - Shinjuku - so that I know where a Starbucks is close to my hotel (as well as some fine restaurants).

I love the Japanese culture and people, but they can't make a cup of coffee to save their life. It took an American chain to come here and show them how it's done. (yes, their culture has been based on tea, and our tea technology is vastly inferior, as is our toilet technology).

The Starbucks in Japan, and all over Asia (I actually went to two in Korea and have been to one in Taiwan before) are pretty much the same as the ones in the U.S. - the layout, interior, the aprons, everything (Editor: that's why they call it a chain).

The one thing that the Japanese Starbucks didn't bring over with them is the American beverage portions. You find out over here that Asians either don't drink a lot of fluid, or Americans are a lot more thirsty. If you get a drink on a plane, it is served in a 4 oz. dixie cup. If you get a drink of water at a restaurant, you might get a "huge" 6 oz. glass that takes two swallows to deplete. And there is definitely, absolutely, no Venti sized coffee portions in this part of the world.

There is one exception to the beverage portion rule in Asia: alcohol. If you ask for a Kirin "Ichiban", you get a 20 oz. bottle instead of the typical 12 oz. bottle. In fact, pretty much all the booze over here can be supersized if you ask for it.

Selling Internet by the Slice

Here I am in Seoul's Incheon airport patiently waiting for the THREE HOUR LAYOVER my idiot travel agent scheduled. The good part is that there is a coffee shop here that sells internet time by the hour.

I have never tried the Starbuck's wireless services, but from what I can tell, you have to go through a process to sign up, and maybe even do a monthly billing thing (can anyone verify this?). Here, you walk up to the counter and buy a "card" that has a password. You hook up via wireless and enter the password on the card and you are on-line! A little clock pops up telling you how much time you have left. No sign up. No hassles. And at $3 an hour, a darn good deal.

I thought I would be doing limited blogging on my trip, but with S. Korea being one of the most connected, wired countries in the world, I should have known that getting on-line here would be pretty easy. Curious to see how I do in Japan and Taiwan.

For those of you transiting through Incheon, the internet cafe is hard to find and not advertised - I actually stumbled on it by mistake. It is on a "mezzanine" level right above International Arrival Gate "E". Not something you are going to casually see from the check-in level on the third floor.

This IS One Way to Provide Internet Access in a Hotel Room

I am out of the fancy business hotel in Seoul and down in one of the "smaller" cities in the south of the country: Gwangju. (It has 1.5 million people compared to Seoul's 10 million).

I am now in a Holiday Inn level room, but it DOES have internet access: there is a complete desktop computer in the middle of the room with internet. It is housed in a special locked security desk, so I can't yank out the internet cable and plug it into my own laptop, and the wall connection isn't standard.

I suppose I could figure out a way to get into the desk it but am too jetlagged to bother. After all, it does serve my basic internet needs, although all the menus in Explorer and Windows are in Korean, as is the keyboard when I toggle a switch: ㅡㅑㅅ초 디ㅣ ㄲ댤디 .

At one point a "chat" window opened up on my screen in Korean. Just think, I might have had a date for the evening if I had known how to respond...