Lessons on tolerance from Japan

Spring break for me wasn’t spent blacked out on a beach in south Florida, but rather reporting in Hiroshima, Japan. I wouldn’t trade that time for anything.

Although I learned about the culture, the food and the people while I was there, I was most impressed by the respect Japanese people had for others and the patience they had for my inability to speak Japanese.

For some reason, at IU, people can’t deal with international students being unable to understand American customs.

It’s gotten so bad that if you were to tell a non-Asian IU student they were “acting Asian” they would be insulted.

Why? It’s a race, not a disease or a behavioral disorder.

We say things like “my floor would be cool except for the Asians” or “I was running around like an Asian.”

They get frustrated when international students can’t decide what they want in a fast food line and yell in their faces when they don’t understand English the first time, as if their words have simpler meaning by being louder and slower.

I don’t speak Japanese, and the entire time I was in Japan, cashiers waited patiently for me to try to figure out which yen coins were in my purse. Japanese speakers tried very hard to mime out what they were trying to say to me and never once did somebody roll their eyes at me, point and laugh at me or yell in my face.

IU students could take a lesson from the Japanese people. I mean I’m sure my inability to act like a Japanese person was annoying or funny at times. Heck, I got locked inside an ATM while I was there because I couldn’t read the Japanese on the door that told me to press the button in order to slide the door.

So, yes, I recognize that it is aggravating when people commit cultural faux pas, or when they stare blankly at you when you just spent a long time trying to explain something.

I get frustrated, too. It’s a part of our culture to expect efficiency. I’m not trying to say that it isn’t frustrating, but I don’t understand why we let ourselves treat the international students — who probably have a lot more in common with us than we want to admit — like they’re a species below native English speakers.

They’re still people. They still get offended when people use the word “Asian” as a derogatory term. And just because they don’t understand when you speak in your native tongue doesn’t mean they can’t read your body language when you snicker at them or get frustrated with them.

Now that I think about it, I was afraid to go to Japan because I was worried they would treat me the way IU students treat the Asians on our campus, and that’s pretty sad.

Now that I’ve experienced such kindness, I can understand why Americans have such a bad reputation throughout the world.

Maybe we should think about that the next time we’re about to scream in the face of somebody who doesn’t understand.

­— jkaneshi@indiana.edu