gaijin

I was actively studying Japanese at my last job (for a Japanese telecom company), and so, I would try to practice with the owner and Japanese-speaking customers at my local sushi restaurant. One day, I was asking the owner if some guest who had come in and were sitting in one of the tatami dining rooms were Japanese (nihonjin) or not. That led to my in a sentence referring to myself as a gaijin. My host corrected me. He said technically, since we were in the States, he was the gaijin (foreigner) and I was an amerikajin (American). It sounded too formal to me, so we settled on henna hakujin (weird white guy). The five days I spent in Japan I heard the word gaijin more than any other word.

Ceci n'est pas un seing.