Archive: 2007-02-03
Oi, bigots!
The level of discourse around foreign immigrants can be bad in the UK, but it’s worse in Japan. There’s a lot of casual racism: one example that always used to annoy me was the poster in one station on the Osaka subway warning passengers to beware of pickpockets—illustrated with a blond-haired, big-nosed caricature of a stereotypical gaijin (foreigner). To be fair, though, most of it is driven by ignorance.