Here I was thinking that waking up early was going to mean I would be more awake when my classes started but just the opposite happened. I’ve been struggling to stay awake, pinching my own leg to avoid dozing off as my student looks right into my eyes to tell their story.
It’s not that he’s boring. It’s that I am not a morning person, not even close.
Usually I try to share my feelings here in order to understand them better but today I wanna look at some thoughts and do the same. I don’t like to get into debates about things but I like to want answers ready to explain why I belirve the things I believe and there are a few ideas I feel I need to talk about a little bit more in order to express those ideas well.
About labels and identity. I see identity as a trap.
When I meet someone, I don’t pay all thet much attention to their gender or age or what subculture they seem like they’d fit into. I pay attention to their aura, the feeligns they express on their face, what makes them smile, what they focus on.
These are much more telling indicators whrn it comes to trying to understand someone.
How do they treat their friends?
What do they eorry about?
These are questions that help me undestand someone, not what they look, their sexuality or whatever other boxes they check off on a survey.
Sometimes these boxes we check off can be indicators of what kind of story we might have, and sometimes they are anything but. Yes, there are trends due to cultural, buological, socioeconomic and historical reasons, but every single one of us is an individual.
It’s easy to say “Don’t stereotype” but I think we will do it anyway because our brains naturally want to simplify things in order to save energy, but we can and probsbly should try to override this tendancy unless someone gives us clear signs that they fit a stereotpye.
In Japan, tattoos are taboo, and a lot of people (though fewer and fewer) will think you are shady if you have them. It’s still very common to associate tattoos with yakuza, ehich to me is funny because in 2025, Yakuza couldn’t possible make up any more than 2% of all people with tattoos, probably less than 1%.
Over the past 30 years foreigners have become exempt from this stereotype, but if you are Japanese, many people, especially older people (but some young people), will still look at you and assume you are dangerous.
If you actually pay attention to people with tattoos and make friends with freelancers and business owners, you realize they aren’t all that uncommon in Tokyo. In fact MANY shop owners have tattoos. I haven’t heard it said but I think dome people may use them as a symbol of freedom, a declaration that they work for themselves or can’t be controlled. In Japan things like that are stated symbolically instead of overtly where it leads to confrontation.
A few days ago I saw a woman at a concert with a tattoo on her back, right where work clothes would cover it up but some casual clothes would expose it.
Naturaly I will use my stereotypes to try and figure out something about her. To assume that these guesses are true and judge her accordingly would be unfair, it’s just a guess and I can see if I am right if I talk to her.
If I am in the habit of always using stereotypes to understand everything, I won’t actually see people as individuals and I will have much less information to make these kinds of guesses from. When we start to look at people as individuals, we don’t stop stereotyping completey but we can develop much more sophisticated stereotypes that serve only as tools to make better guesses, nothing absolute or damning or limiting.
She’s at a concert with underground bands so she obviously likes music and art, and many artists have tattoos too. So I can yaluguess that she was inspired to get a tattoo because of some artist.
Maybe she is an artist herself.
Maybe she works with artists.
Maybe she’s married to an artist and wanted to impress him.
Maybe she grew up overseas.
Maybe she had very strict parents.
Maybe her parents were musicians and she was exposed tatoos from a young age.
Maybe it’s fake and she’s just trying to fit in because she thinks people will like her more in this environment.
Maybe she’s just trying to make a statement that Japan should be more open about tattoos.
From the location of the tattoo, I want to assume she has something resembling a regular job or she is worried that she may have to be “presentable” in some situation.
Maybe she doesn’t want her family to find out.
Maybe she is a freelancer but doesn’t have confidence that she always will be.
Maybe she is a business owner but she’s afraid of scaring off certain customers.
Maybe she is worried about scaring off a potential partner and wants her tattoo to be somewhere she can show him once she feels he can accept her for who she is and won’t make a big deal of it.
Maybe she just likes being modest and doesn’t want to be showy.
Maybe she just liked that particular location for her tattoo.
Can you see just how many possibilities there are here? For me to fixate too much on one possibility would probably paint an inaccurate picture. It’s ok to guess, but I should be trying to prove myself wrong, not trying to prove myself right.
From the location of her tattoo, it’s design, her clothes, her demeanor, and the fact that she’s at this concert, I guess that she is probably a graphics designer, working in fashion, or doing some other kind of creative work in a company. I think she probably gets along with her family and isn’t extremely rebelious but has a strong will and likes what she likes. She probably lets most people see her tattoo if they are paying attention but doesn’t want to call too much attention to herself. Maybe she applied for a job at a relatively open minded workplace but wasn’t sure if the tattoo would bar her from getting the job so she hid it until she got a feeling for the office. Maybe she hides it from her boss but lets everyone else see it.
These are just my guesses! None of them are necessarily accurate. They could be, and they might not be. Making these kinds of assumptions based on stereotypes isn’t a problem. But if I oversimplify, if I treat my assumption as fact, that will be unfair to her. If i force her to listen to the same assumption a million other people make, it’s probably not going to be the most pleasant interaction for her before.
I can attest to this. I am an American in East Asia, and it’s assumed that I am “open”, which means I will sleep with anything that moves, and that I like steak. Neither are true, and it’s annoying when everyone assumes so.
So I keep these guesses to myself and if I end up talking to her, I observe to learn more and I will probably find that some of my guesses were accurate and some were not.
The important thing is to be able to let her show me her own individuality (or potential lack thereof), before I assume that I know more about her than she does.
Who knows, maybe she was yakuza, wouldn’t that be a funny twist after all the work I did to challenge that stereotype? The point is that we can only make our best guess and try to take a more and more sophisticated approach, and that there is no reason to impose my assumptions on her unless she gives me fair reason to.
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