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 know, 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?" Surprise surprise, you're in the DEUTSCH LAGER!!

Anyway, very often Japanese customers seem to feel as if they are treated impolitely or rudely - however, if that is the case, it is more often than not their own fault, meaning that they are treated this way because they display incredibly rude behaviour themselves. In my country, the basic premise is that the business has the right to chose whom it serves and whom not and that the customers have to maintain certain basic manners. Customers who are regarded impolite can be denied service and thrown out. This is not the case in Japan. If you run a business, you are at the mercy of the whimsical behaviour of customers that must be served no matter what. Japanese customers are used to be treated this way and therefore, naturally, expect to be treated in the same way when they come to the Expo.

It doesn't surprise that these different points of view collide in the German pavilion and restaurant. 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, this leads to strong reactions from the German staff since this behaviour on part of the customer would not be tolerated in Germany and therefore isn't tolerated here.

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. In spite of this, they probably still felt treated incorrectly, because a reaction like this would be unthinkable in Japan. What happened to them probably didn't lead to them thinking over their own behaviour, but to more "How impolite those Germans were!"

Other customers who are used to be treated like a king (as you usually are in Japan) sport less offending but nonetheless irritating behaviour. One example were two ladies at a table which I passed by when one of them dropped her knife on the floor. Instead of reaching for it and asking for a replacement she raised her hand while purposely looking the other way, then poisedly pointed one finger to the floor, signalizing me to get her a new one - this derogatory way of pointing that out would be regarded very impolite in Germany: "Alas, methinks me droppeth something on the floor - picketh he up yonder knife, manservant!"

· The never-ending sorrows of 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. Since that happens so frequently you start feeling treated like an animal, even though it's not the intention of the Japanese customers, they just can't deal with foreigners.

As I pointed out in my previous entry "How to become an invisible man", all things foreign are roundly ignored and "faded out" of their perception by some of the (especially older) Japanese. This is also true of foreigners speaking Japanese - even when you talk to Japanese in Japanese, they will still try to communicate in ape's sign language or Japlish ("sank yuu"). 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 stand around wondering and asking their spouses "Hey wait a second, that's it? What about the presentation in Japanese?"

I read an interesting interview with film editor Peter Zinner (The Godfather, The Deer Hunter) on the "art of editing" a while ago. He said that when cutting a scene, putting scenes with only a small difference (say a slightly different zoom or angle which is neither subtle enough nor evident enough) after each other is very disturbing for the viewer - you need to cut either with totally unnoticable or clearly evident change. In the same vein, meeting a Japanese-speaking foreigner maybe is a more disturbing experience for Japanese since he doesn't fit any known image - the face clearly is that of a foreigner who can speak English but not Japanese, but the mouth is putting out perfect Japanese - a clear contradiction which cannot be computed by some Japanese. They could maybe deal with a foreigner ignorant of the Japanese language (because he fits the expectations), but not with this.

· Next week: "Ten Thousand Countries Fair"