A favorite: They don't selling to foreigners...

[gaijinpunch]

Did anyone else ever get this when asking about shops in Akihabara and the like, back before the tech caught up with the times? I got it a few times, and after living here for ages, can say it's one of the most laughable things I've heard. Not sure what reminded me of that.

[greg]

No, but at a few game stores, back in 2000 or so, I did get a different treatment. I remember one game store in Himeji where the owner would have to confirm with me that each game was, in fact, NOT a Playstation game. It's like he expected every foreigner to only be interested in PS1 games. When I bought Cotton for the NGPC, he made sure I knew it wasn't a PS1 game. The same for Segata Sanshiro on the Saturn. The old goof never seemed to recognize me, either. Then again, I guess there were quite a few foreigners in Himeji. It was a tourist town, after all. I think I encountered that at maybe one other store or so, but I can't remember quite where.

[davemerrill]

I have gotten the "How do you know what this is?" question from Japanese retailers before, when purchasing some dusty artifact. Though it's not limited to Japan, buying things at antique malls and shows will sometimes result in this.

I was checking out a table full of RCA Selectavision CED discs in Ohio and the dealer came over and said to me "Do you know what these are? They're LASER DISCS." It's best just to nod and smile.

We were shopping in Kanda Jimboucho and one store had actual laserdiscs out front for sale, and the proprietor came out, noticed I was checking out his Criterion AKIRA LD, and asked "Do you know what this is?" Go around the world, people are the same everywhere.

On the last trip to Japan I did not get the "Why are you buying THIS?" , but got something similar when buying a DVD set of the show "Sue Cat", which is this totally forgotten cartoon about an idol-singer cat from 1980. The clerk gave me THE LOOK, the "what the hell" look, but what he said was "You know this doesn't have English subtitles, right?"

[Daniel]

How about "white pig go home"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzmgyFQNvvU

[gaijinpunch]

I used to always get the store people confirming I knew the system and that it was for Japan -- I think it's just to cover their asses since returns are generally not accepted in Japansas.

I'm more talking about other foreigners that had spent time in Japan. I remember asking a few specifically for used LD shops and got a lot of resistance. Always thought it was weird.

My strangest correspondence that was close to that was from a shop in Japan I used to buy from directly when I lived in Hawaii. I bought quite a few games from them, but specifically picked up Okami for the PS2 new, when it came out. One of the guys played it and sent me an email saying sorry, as it must have been brutal for me to play a game with such uncommon Japanese. He was right, but I still enjoyed the game.

[greg]

How about "white pig go home"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzmgyFQNvvU

I don't even need to click the link to know what it is. I've seen it before. That sort of thing is extremely rare, but I'm not surprised that it happened in Tokyo. Tokyo gets the brunt of the foreigners, and all the crappy jerkwads who come to wipe their butt all over the country and walk all over people. I'm not surprised that there's some anti-foreigner sentiment in Tokyo, especially given Governor Ishihara's past statements.

[Heibi]

I actually got the reverse. I was treated real good - even got extras. A friend of mine from Hawaii(of Japanese Decent) would get no special treatment and was always thought to understand Japanese by the people behind the counter.

[robodaz]

Yeah... I used to get that, especially when I was hopping round the country at the end of the 90s. If one of the local Gaijin-Otaku caught me round their local haunt, chatting up the sales staff, I'd often get some very frosty treatment - and once, an outright threat in Kobe about not ruining the lad's favourite secondhand haunt in Motomachi.

These days, I think we call it "Gaijin Glare".

I suppose as a multi-lingual person on the ground it was a Big fish/small pond type of thing, and anyone else showing too much interest in your own patch muddied things up. I dunno though... I'm no psychologist. Mind you, I must have been a troll of epic proportions, as I loved getting the backs of such chaps as far up as I could.

Childish, I know, but so satisfying.