expo 2005 photo essays
- weekly report from the World Exposition in Aichi, Japan

Week sixteen (July 10, 2005)

· The hassle of dealing with foreigners at a world exposition

This week's entry is a continuation of the previous week's ranting about the way the Expo is organized and perceived. This time I'm lunging out on the Japanese visitors and the intolerable behaviour some of them are sporting. As always, parts of the following are exaggerated and not quite politically correct, but I hope you are as sensible enough as to understand the message behind it.

· The clashing of expectations between Japanese visitors and foreign staff

I sometimes got the feeling that many of the Japanese visitors would prefer an all-Japanese exposition without the "hassle" and "anxiety" when dealing with people from a foreign country. Me and the rest of the German Japanese-speaking staff sometimes witness displays of dissatisfaction on part of the Japanese visitors towards the way the German pavilion and restaurant is run. You hear people talking like "Well, don't you find that there is lots of German staff at the German pavilion?" This includes of course, surprise about the fact that "there is no Japanese staff around" - as you know by now, for these people, it is out of the question that some of the foreign staff could possibly speak Japanese.

Another example is what the waiters in our restaurant often experience when they arrive at the table to take the order. Customers look at them in utter astonisment, making a look like "What is this foreigner doing at our table?" I also overheard some comments like "What, no Japanese, we're in Japan here!" or "Oh my god, I can't believe it, only foreigners?"

Some people's behavior is just way off the chart. We have had the situation a couple of times that impatient customers start waving or snapping their fingers to gain attention or poke a waiter from behind. In most of these cases, you can imagine that this leads to strong reactions from the staff. In one case, when one customer stood up and started clapping his hands, this lead to the following situation: the whole restaurant became quite for a moment, all the staff's attention was suddenly on the respective customer, and two waiters marched over laughing and pointing at the customer, going like "Yeah sure, you know what? Now you will be the last one to be served, first I'm doing THIS table and THIS and THIS table, and then maybe you!" Of course, the whole restaurant noticed the incident, and one minute later the two customers paid up and left totally ashamed.

· The sorrows of being a Japanese-speaking foreigners

There are more examples of customers which behave (in our view) so impolite that you actually start questioning your senses, whether you heard and saw correctly what just happened. Many customers who wish to buy something don't even manage to talk to us in some kind of way, they just gesture in ape's language.

In the same vein, I was told a funny/sad anecdote about other countries' pavilions where the main show is presented by a 100% fluent gaijin (foreigner) host, and then, after ten minutes, when the lights go on again, the visitors stood around wondering and asking their spouses "Hey wait a second, that's it? What about the presentation in Japanese?"

· Next week: "Ten Thousand Countries Fair"