so cabbage is "ball vegetable" and tomato is "red eggplant"...
My question: people from historically closer linked cultures, such as Chinese, Taiwanese, and Koreans, are generally not called gaijins. Starting from where do the foreigners stop being gaijins? Are Vietnamese, Filipinos, Mongolians gaijins? What about Indians?
People are gaijin as soon as they are identified as such. With some ethnicities, this is ascertained in a single glance. Others require more data to reach that conclusion.
Anyone that is not Japanese is "gaijin". But clarity starts to break down once you start talking about things like "nikeijin" and "haafu"...