| Nyororin |
04-29-2011 07:55 AM |
You know, I think that you`re assigning a lot more meaning to the word than is really there.
99.99% of people in Japan who would see it would read it as "foreigner" and nothing else. No "outsider", no cool stigma, etc. It would mean nothing other than "Not Japanese" when written on your shirt.
Quote:
it is widely used about rebel artists etc. inside of japan. perhaps even for their equivalent of scene kids.
i've seen a whole documentary about gaijin, who are japanese.
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Oh really? Because no one in Japan would ever understand it as meaning anything other than "foreigner". I have yet to see it used to mean anything other than that even once in 12 years of living in Japan.
The whole weird obsession with stuff like this among those outside Japan always strikes me as having handfuls of mysticism tossed in. It happens a lot with kanji as if they have some sort of magical power attached to them, as if certain words carry all sorts of powerful meanings, etc. It`s just a word. |
