I was on a train on the San’in Line the other day, and the train was quite full. Surprisingly full, in fact, for the San’in Line.

Anyway, a group of five people- parents and three children, two boys and one girl— came past looking for seats. One of the boys nudged the other, pointed at me, and said, ‘Hey, look.’ Of course, I could hear and I could understand. So I said to the boy, ‘Is there some problem?’ He said, ‘No, no problem.’ I told him it was rude to point, and that was it.

But thinking about it, that moment was quite unusual. As a foreigner in Japan, you generally don’t tend to get pointed at so frequently these days. When I first came to Japan, it was still very common to be pointed at and to be commented on, either with the ‘gaijin’ comment, or quite often, ‘Eigo no hito’ (an English-language person). I know my old teacher from university always used to say that when somebody referred to her as ‘Eigo no hito’, she would reply, ‘Where in the world is Eigo?’ ‘Eigo’, of course, being the word for the English language, and therefore not a country.

But both ‘gaijin’ and ‘Eigo no hito’, and the very act of pointing, seem to have become much less frequent of late. I say that like I’m sorry about it, but of course I’m not. It’s a good thing. I’m sure it shows that Japanese children are getting more and more used to non-Japanese people.

So it was, in a way, quite shocking to experience that pointing after such a long time. What makes it all the more shocking is the fact that, generally, I’ve always found that people in rural areas are more welcoming and more accepting than people in large cities. I think I saw this especially in Etajima, where I used to live. In Etajima, where there’s the JMSDF Naval School, people from the town are used to people from outside coming to and living on the island. They have people from all over Japan coming every year, after all. So somebody else from outside (but in my case, from outside Japan, as opposed to just outside the area) was fundamentally no different. That’s how I always saw it, at least.

I always felt that in rural areas, maybe just because people had more time, there was a more relaxed way of life, and people were always more willing to talk, and from that, more willing to be friendly, and therefore more willing to welcome and accept.

So it was actually quite a shock to be pointed at like that the other day. I just hope that those boys are the exception in the Tottori area, rather than the rule.