and people thought australia was racist

"i'm sorry, we dont let foreigners stay at this hotel"

i dont know who they thought i was though. and that even if it was me who i was trying to make the bookings for that i wouldnt be offended either. i know my japanese isnt good enough over the phone for them to be thinking that i was japanese myself..

after hearing 3 hotel refuse to let 2 foreigner stay in their establishments, i dont know if my job as a "Coordinator of international relations" is actually doing anything.

okay, i will go back to the start.

a while back tom and i sat down to try and book all of his accomodation for work on the golf tour to no avail. the golf courses are in the boonies and its really hard to find info on the internet about accomodation in the country.

so yesterday, when i decided i was bored at work and i would try again, i was extreemly happy when i found the phone numbers for 3 places within a reasonable distance from a particularly troublesome course (last time tom stayed there he had to take a 1 hour taxi ride each way from his hotel so i was determined to do better than that)

i took the numbers home and got myself settled in with a gin and tonic to make the calls.

all was going fine until i told the lady the name of who i was booking for. maybe i should make up a japanese name for tom. maybe something like "tomu watanabe" could work. most of the letters are the same...

"i dont know if we can take gaijin, they wont know how to use the bath"

"they might offend other guests"

"we cant speak english"

"blah blah blah... gaijin are scary and all criminals"

okay maybe they didnt say the last one. but that was the feeling i was getting.

no matter how hard i explained that tom and his otehr caddy friend stay in these kinds of hotels every week. and that they can speak enough japanese. and that they know about japanese baths. and that they can eat food with chopsticks...

i got exactly the same response from 2 other places. but i knew at least the first place had rooms so i called back again.

"oh, we just had someone from the golf call up and book out all of our rooms. sorry we have none left now. "

sure sure. what a strange cooincidence. i was considering getting a japanese friend to call up and book for them. but then i reaslised why would you want to stay in a place with people like that anyway. even if it was a last resort.

i felt like saying to them, "how would you feel if you went on a holiday to australia and you had to sleep on the street cause all the hotels had a policy of NO JAPANESE because they dont know how to speak english."

Its exactly the same thing. but i bit my tounge cause i knew it wouldnt get me anywhere. these people are far too gone for that.

the thing i couldnt believe is that she was willing to say these things directly to me, knowing that i too was a gaijin. would she have let me stay there if i wanted to? was the language the main problem? i dont think so. i think if i turned up there with my blonde hair she would have had a heart attack or something.

but what can you do. being a CIR only gets you so far. changing the attitidues of people who dont want to change is not an easy task. but it has given me a new idea for what i can do for work to make the lives of gaijin in Ibaraki better.

finally after pleading with the xenophpbic lady for 10 mins, she gave me the phone number (grudgingly) of a place nearby that might be ok.

i call this place, and they dont even flinch. gaijin, no problem. and in the end ot is closer to the course and cheaper!

so if you ever need to stay in Hyogo near the Yamanohara Golf Club, stay at a hotel called "Iwayakan" and not Ichinisan Ryokan or Futaba Ryokan.

maybe there are some good japanese out there afterall. just not in a town called Kawanishi.