Originally Posted by
joejones
When I hear stories like this I honestly wonder whether I live in the same country as these other people do. Perhaps this sort of thing was more common 20 or 30 years ago, but I can't imagine that anyone of room-temperature intelligence is still stuck in the mindset that foreigners don't speak Japanese, especially given all the Japanese-speaking foreigners who appear on TV these days.
Honestly, it might have been 20 years ago. He told my class the story in 2001. He also has a Korean wife, and speaks better Japanese than she does and in social settings in Japan they would ignore him and speak to her. That one is more understandable to me.