Mistaken For a Foreigner
I’ve been living in Japan for a little over two years with my husband. He was born here and we decided to move to his hometown. It’s a small city, but there’s enough to do without getting bored. I’d describe us as an AMWF couple (Asian man, white female for those who don’t know). It’s not so common in Western countries, and it can feel like we are some rare shiny Pokémon as AMWF in rural Japan.
Lots of staring, an occasional secret picture, or even small chats if an old lady is brave enough to approach us. It can feel uncomfortable eating at a restaurant because kids will turn around in their seats and stare at us the whole time with an open fish mouth. Coincidentally, there’s a small US base located in this city. The closer you are downtown, the more American families you see.
I’m constantly mistaken for being in the armed forces by Americans and Japanese, which is understandable. Besides myself, I only know five other mixed marriages here. It’s always locals who ask about my “American husband” when I’m out alone, which I respond in Japanese “Watashi no otto wa nihonjin desu. Koko ni sunde imasu” (My husband is Japanese and I live here) or something along those lines.
Americans never ask about my marriage as they assume my spouse is American. When we are together in public, we do abnormal couples behavior such as holding hands—honestly, this is abnormal, I’m not being sarcastic. Couples here rarely hold hands in public, let alone say “I love you”. We don’t go downtown too often since it’s all pay to park and it’s a nightmare to find a place.
Anyway, it was a beautiful warm day for the first time in months, and we decided to battle for a spot and walk around the shops. The crowd was heavy since the weather was great and winter was ending. The season for new American families to move here just finished, so I’m sure this was many people’s first time leisurely walking and shopping outside.
We find a parking spot and made our way to the outside shops. Of course, we are holding hands and casually talking and laughing. Then it begins. “WOW”. I hear this from an American woman about 10 feet behind us. You should know that a Japanese stereotype against Americans is that we are rude and obnoxiously loud.
And this “wow” was loud enough for me to turn my head around at the noise. She was with two other moms who had like, three kids each. They were staring at me, but perhaps we just accidentally had eye contact at the right time. “Seriously, another little homewrecker is doing this in PUBLIC?” Chill woman, you’re so loud even I can hear you.
We find a table nearby at the Starbucks outside. We are enjoying our drinks when the same group of women approached us with their strollers in tow. They definitely had some sort of purpose with something to say to us. But the words out of her mouth shocked me. Let’s call her Onna (woman in Japanese).
Onna: “Excuse me, but you need to keep whatever you’re doing in your messed-up home. Doing that in public in front of families to see is disgusting and immoral. My kids don’t need to see such a bad display of marriage”. I’m SO confused, as was my husband who can speak English. Who knew drinking coffee outside was against humanity and marriage? Then it became all too clear.
Me: “I’m sorry? What…did we do?” Onna: “You know exactly what you’re doing”. *She points to my wedding ring* Me: “No, I don’t…”. Onna: “Good lord, does your husband know about this? Is he on a ship right now? That’s soooo like a dependapotamus!” Her friends laugh. In case you don’t know the lingo, a dependapotamus is slang for a base wife who stays at home all day, doesn’t clean, uses their spouse as an ATM, and looks like Jabba the Hut. At that moment, it dawns on me.
She thinks I’m a base spouse and I’m cheating on my American husband! I started laughing because she’s suggesting I’m cheating on my husband…with my husband! Me: “This IS my spouse. I’m actually not part of the Armed Forces and have a Japanese visa”. Onna looks at my significant other up and down. The two women behind her apologize, but the Onna didn’t believe it.
Onna: “No one would voluntarily WANT to live in this little town. Nice lie, but you’re not representing our community. You make all of us wives look bad! Who is your husband and what’s his rank? Also, I need to know your dependent ID. MY husband is a high rank so he’ll make sure your husband is aware of your infidelity”. She pulls out her phone to probably type my response.
I’m offended since this is actually a nice place to live and very open to foreigners. Me: “Look, my husband’s name is Rei (not his real name; I don’t want to reveal personal info) and he’s sitting right here. I’m not going to show you my ID since I don’t have one, and you’re not the authorities. As proof, you can obviously see our wedding bands match, and here’s a picture”.
I show her my phone screen, which is of us in traditional Japanese clothes on our wedding day. Her eyes became huge at the picture. Her two friends and their spawn have already started walking away. Then it ratcheted up. Onna: “Why are you in a relationship with HIM? You should be in a normal relationship and start having a family with American kids”.
She says some other statements which I’d consider against the Asian race. It’s so ironic because we are in JAPAN, and she’s fussing about me being married to a Japanese man. My husband has been quiet throughout the whole exchange and says to me we should go. I agree and stood up.
Me: “STOP. The things you are saying are extremely offensive. I was part of the base community myself some years ago and what you’re doing is against spousal conduct”. She smirked. “Go ahead and tell people what I did, then. My high-ranking husband is an E-7, and everything will be swept under the rug no matter what happens. You can’t touch me”. So that’s what I did.
Note, this is a small community. Someone does something minor and it’s talked about between wives like chickens. So later that day, I run into my friend who works on the base and she’s well known in the community for being one of the main event coordinators. I don’t miss this chance to comply with Onna’s demand and explain to my friend about the exchange and how it made my husband extremely uncomfortable with her remarks.
She asked me if this person looked like so and so, to which I said yes. My friend rolls her eyes. Friend: “She just arrived a couple of months ago and is already causing problems with rumors and drama. I’ll make sure what she said is passed on”. It’s been half a year later and I didn’t hear anything about Onna again since I distanced myself from making base friends here.
I’ve only been in my new city for a little over two years and experienced more drama from those families than I have my whole high school career. That is, until now. Last week, I ran into my friend, who’s getting ready to leave back to the United States.
We had a little discussion about her moving and my family planning, and then she dropped a bombshell. Friend: “Do you remember Onna, who accused you of cheating on your non-existent base spouse and called your husband an awful name?” Me: “Of course! I haven’t heard anything from her since”.
Friend: “Well, I mentioned we were already having problems with her not long after she got here. I told my boss that there’s a person who was bothering and threatening civilians and asking for IDs, which isn’t allowed for someone with her status”.
“My boss was extremely interested after I mentioned her name because Onna was scheduled for an interview in my department! I suggested we look at her social media accounts from her past behavior, because we don’t tolerate that stuff. It was easy to find her Twitter and Facebook, particularly Facebook since we have many mutual friends. It was SHOCKING”.
“While she set her Facebook to private, her Twitter was littered with malicious tweets and retweets. She made it very clear that she ‘wants to see her current city burn to the ground’ and ‘why would anyone want to learn Japanese since it sounds terrible’. We printed some of the more extreme things she posted and we still invited her to the interview”.
“Oh, and did I mention my boss is JAPANESE?!! So she comes into the interview, which I was part of. I asked three good things about her, to which she says ‘dependent, gets things done, and friendly’. My boss just looked at her for a second before he pulled out her Tweets and asked her to explain how she can actually serve the local community if she hates it so much”.
“Onna was FLOORED and said someone hacked into her account, despite there being at least three years of slanderous tweets. We thanked her for coming and said we can’t accept an employee with this conduct. As far as I know, she’s still not working because some spouses found her Twitter not long after the interview and it was shared in all departments. No one will touch her application now”.
Me: “So all of this was discovered because I told you about her accusations?” Friend: “Yes! Oh, and she’s kind of an outcast socially right now because she cheated on her husband a couple of months ago”. There you have it folks. Because one person couldn’t mind their own business, they lost a potential job and had their social media exposed. Super ironic since she became the dependapotamus and adulterer—the same thing she was accusing ME of.