Comments on: A tale of two foreigners in Japan

By: Lachlan Jackson

Lachlan Jackson — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:00:14 +0000

Thank you Peter for your kind words of encouragement. I will keep you posted…
Lockie.

By: Peter Ives

Peter Ives — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:20:06 +0000

Thanks for this Lachlan and I look forward to the future installments. Interestingly about 20 years ago, I had a similar experience in Iceland speaking Icelandic with my Austrian friend (although his English was near fluent and it is my first language — so for us our reasons for using Icelandic were different). Like you and Raza, we attracted significant attention, although usually negative with a humorous tone. My favourite was you sound like ducks on Tjornin (the pond in downtown Reykjavik) and quit bastardizing my language. I look forward to your future posts especially for what it tells us about ethnicity and language as well as parenting, children and language. Thanks,

By: Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江

Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江 — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:39:53 +0000

A fascinating research project, Lockie, and I look forward to the next post! The way Iranians (and many other nationalities from other parts of Asia) have been treated in Japan is quite disturbing and Japanese mass media continues to represent them negatively. The Wiki entry on ‘在日イラン人 (Iranian residents in Japan)’ has this statment (my translation): “As an increasing number of them (Iranian residents in Japan) are getting married to a Japanese national or becoming naturalised, the Iranian community is being dichotomised with one group of residents who break the law and the other group of residents who don’t.”
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%A8%E6%97%A5%E3%82%A4%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E4%BA%BA

I hope your research will shed light on the negative stereotypes of Iranians in Japan and reveal their impact on their everyday life.