2002-06-09 - 10:37 p.m.
The World Cup is here, and so are a lot of foreign supporters. The World Cup fans are distinguishable from normal tourists by the silly hats, face paint and loud shirts they wear while wandering dazed through Tokyo train stations. Before the start of the World Cup, the media here was obsessing about “hooligans,” running tapes of past hooligan activity and police training drills on the nightly news. At major intersections throughout Tokyo, dozens of police officers stand guard -- despite the fact that the nearest stadium is in Yokohama, over thirty minutes away. The Japan Times advertised a bilingual t-shirt which reads, “I Am Not A Hooligan!” The collective anxiety about gaijin gone wild seems to have subsided a bit since the England vs. Argentina game in Sapporo went off without incident. Personally, I’m rooting for Cameroon, who won my heart by arriving to their host town five days late because of visa problems. A little grandmother interviewed on the news told the reporter that she had planted flowers in the colors of the Cameroon flag to welcome the team to their host town, but now that the team was arriving at nighttime, they wouldn’t be able to see them. She said sweetly that she was getting a little tired of waiting, and that she suspected the flowers were tired of waiting too.
When I was being driven home from an elementary school visit on Thursday, I saw a tall white man I didn’t know walking out of an electronics store near my house. I reacted the same way that many people in cars react to me when I walk down the street in my town -- turning my head to get a better look and saying to the driver, “Ehh? Gaijin da yo!” “What... There’s a foreigner!” The teacher laughed at my reaction and told me that there are 600 foreigners here in Kimitsu, a city of 90,000. Most are from the Philippines, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, and I would guess that the number of non-Asian foreigners is under 25. I know of 10, including myself, other English teachers, the electronics store guy, and an older guy I used to see regularly at the station on my way home from work. Six hundred sounded like a lot to me, thinking of us all in one room, but then when I did the math on my calculator, it told me that 600 people is 6.667 E-3 percent of Kimitsu’s population and I know that’s small because I haven’t dealt with negative exponents since high school. Since I can’t see myself walking around all day through various situations, I forget how conspicuous I am because I don’t look Japanese. Two high school girls came into my junior high’s staff room on Friday afternoon and when they noticed me, they shrieked that recognized me. “I saw you before, at the train station!” insisted one girl. “No, stupid,” countered her friend, “it was at the department store!” When I think about how many of the kids I come in contact with will probably stay in this area for most of their lives, I start to understand why the JET program wants me here, why I’ve been sent off to nearly two dozen schools in the last ten months, and why people stare at me from their cars. And also the deep fear of hooligans.
