In fact I even learned some interesting stuff on how they also suffer from their own social frivolity. So that was kansai for me quickly, but Tokyo sheesh
I feel sorry for you kevin (if it weren’t because it has fueled this blog, err and your life its a whole different trip; people over there are all so stressed, I never got a straight answer when asking for directions, even with a station clerk!
I saw people run away from me, I think mostly to avoid being questioned also. But that was a good experience because it allowed me to actually understand how to read Tokyo’s rail system map. If there ever was I place I felt I didn’t want to be too long, it was Tokyo. That at least the first couple of times I was there, now I know of course that it can be quite more welcoming if you know where to thread. x3

A thing that comes to my mind ofcourse is that the current economic crisis is making things worse, as did the previous economic bubble.

Anyway, now I know that i also let my ego go in hand with my ingnorance, and my lack of real hardwork to vent my frustation and stress in a wrong way.
So kevin, a word from advice, don’t come back to the U.S. you’ll regret it, and who knows if you may even end up start from 0 again just like me.

(and this is brief)

loco light and sweet

I have a physical disability, mainly affecting my legs, but also my coordination. I’ve been stared at every day in some form or another since I was a child. I’ve gone through puberty (one of the most awkward times in anyone’s life) in a wheelchair and I’ve been spoken to like I was a retard or had people speak about me to whoever was pushing me as if I wasn’t there.

It drove me insane from the age of 13 to the age of 17 by which time I’d learned to GET THE FUCK OVER IT.

I switched from a wheelchair to crutches and started dragging my crippled ass around. I went to Japan in 2005 and 2007 and spent a year there on exchange in 2008. I was stared at 10 times more than I was in my home country, by children, teenagers, salarymen, old ladies, everyone.

With surveillance that good, there is no way I could have committed a crime and gotten away with it.

I had the experience of being 知らない顔’d by salarymen on trains who were too lazy to stand up and give me the reserved seats that they’d sprawled all over, even though my legs were almost giving up and I was sweating like I’d run a marathon.

All of this and I can count on one hand the number of times I honestly found myself annoyed, but at no time did I ever verbally attack someone because of it.

Do I think it’s right? No. Did I enjoy it? No. But I just chose not to give a fuck.

But I’m sorry that people stare at you and won’t sit next to you, must be hard having such intolerant conditions in a country you’re living in by choice that you could get rid of just by going back to America.

Get over it, harden the fuck up, or leave if you don’t like it.

Loco (well, you know…but they don’t) (-;

The physicality thing I mention because it’s a physical fear/threat thing. You got in her face, but yeah I can see from your then point of view, she’d already started the fight by singling you out to avoid. I haven’t had that experience, so I suppose I don’t really know how it felt.

Bigger man stuff, well. I suppose there I’m talking about accepting the futility of this kind of non-constructive retaliation. But- it looks like you know that, so…

By ‘act the opposite of what they fear in you’ I didn’t mean act the opposite of yourself, unless you ARE a gang-banging nutcase, I just meant act like a cool, calm gentleman, unhustled by this kind of slight- which is the opposite of what they fear. Sure that may not win anybody over- but neither will it make things worse.

Loco