Cletus' First Collegiate Dictionary of Japanese Chin Music
gaijin
A controversial term that literally means “outside person.” The word is used to describe foreigners, but especially those from Western nations. The foreign community in Japan alternately abhors and embraces the term (Foreigners often call themselves henna gaijin, for example, which loosely translates to “weird foreigner”).
Japanese with foreign friends often try to play it safe by saying “gaijin-san” (Mr. or Ms. Foreigner) or “gaikokujin” (person from a foreign country). A member of the Chin Music Press team was greeted by chants of “baka gaijin” (foolish foreigner) every morning in the mid-1980s by a particularly obnoxious four-year-old boy. The boy would stand in a big patch of dirt next to the baka gaijin’s apartment and yell “baka gaijin, baka gaijin, baka gaijin” as the twenty-two-year-old man made his way to the Funabashi City Hall where he worked. The man is not particularly proud of how he handled this situation, especially now that he has three children of his own and can see how fragile a four-year-old psyche can be. After days of being called a fool on his way to work, the twenty-two-year-old ripped a toy train out of the four-year-old’s hand and locked it inside his apartment. The boy ran home to his parents in tears. For several days, the twenty-two-year-old taunted the four-year-old by calling him “omiyage-chan,” which doesn’t really translate but for our purposes we’ll use “little souvenir kid.” The boy slowly became fascinated with the twenty-two-year-old, staring at him from a distance whenever the man would leave his apartment. And after a few days, the man left the toy train on the stoop for the boy to retrieve. There was no more taunting by either side.