ABC News reporter Akiko Fujita tweets about new word: "Fly-Jin," foreigners who fled japan

[Hannah Bell]

ABC News reporter Akiko Fujita tweets about new word in Japanese lexicon: "Fly-Jin," meaning foreigners who fled Japan

http://www.reuters.com/

In the news feed at 3:05 pm.

"Furai-jin" = pun on "gaijin" the word for "foreigner"

[itsrobert]

1. What about all the Japanese that are getting out?

?

[Lucinda]

4. Reports have said very few Japanese people were leaving the country

Lot's of commentary about people going to the southern part of the country though

[KurtNYC]

2. oh those crazy mono-ethnic societies

what WILL they think of next.

Isn't 'gaijin' (pronounced like "guy gin") derogatory?

[Hannah Bell]

3. no. formal form = gaikokujin. gaijin = more colloquial/informal, can be used negatively

but isn't inherently negative.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Kind of like the difference between 'yankee' and 'gringo'? nt

[Hannah Bell]

6. i don't think so. More like the difference between "Caucasian-American" &

"white" imo.

but that's not really a good analogy either.

Japanese has several levels of formality & the distinctions are encoded in verb forms, affixes & choice of nominals.

The difference is between the way you'd talk to your peers & the way you'd talk to your "superiors" or in some more formal context.

[speltwon]

13. or the difference between "Haole" and "Fucking Haole" lol nt

[AsahinaKimi]

7. "Jin" means person for those who don't know...

Amerikajin = American

Nihonjin =Japanese

Kankoujin = Korean

Furansujin =French

Chugokujin= Chinese

Doitsujin =German

Betonamujin =Vietnamese

Roshiajin= Russian

Nyujirandojin= New Zealander

Thaijin = Thai

Supeinjin = Spanish

Igirisujin = English

Ejiputojin= Egyptian

etc...

[Hannah Bell]

8. and gai = outside & koku = country

practically the first word you learn when you enter japan.

[Prometheus Bound]

9. Here's a blog explaining these feelings.

Other foreigners in Japan feel the same

Don't think that I am the only one - the only foreigner - in Japan who thinks this way. There are lots of us. You can also bet that very many Japanese are unhappy about this too. There are also several of us long time residents of Japan who, while they won't use the term 'disgusted', are quite dissatisfied with how this situation was handled and reacted to by the foreign news and community in Japan.

....

What's going to happen to the relationship between the Japanese and the foreign community in Japan? I think the actions of many of the foreigners (not just in the media) have created much distrust and disrespect of those foreigners (especially in management) by their Japanese counter-parts. I already posted about one foreign company, Coca Cola, whose foreign upper-management committed the sin of running away while taking paid leave (isn't stealing from your own company considered theft?) while expecting the Japanese to continue working as if nothing at all happened?


If the situation were so bad and they bothered to make rational decisions - while showing a tiny bit of leadership qualities - then they'd have had the guts to say that they were running away and told the Japanese staff to go home; or they would have sent their families away and stayed with the ship. I know for first hand fact that the Japanese staff left over by their panicking foreign bosses have very little respect for those people. They probably should have zero; which were just about the odds of a nuclear disaster hitting Tokyo.


Let me give you an example of a leader who deserves massive respect and knows how to make a company culture whereby his staff and workers will follow him to the end of the earth. I heard from an extremely reliable source that, during the crisis, the foreign president of Godiva chocolates, Jerome Chouchan, decided to send his family away but he stayed on because he said that he felt like, "If I leave now and leave my Japanese staff to fend for themselves it would be like the captain leaving the sinking ship first." He said this and this gentleman is a French citizen! (This means you other westerners who diss the French must bow their heads.) Bravo!

http://modernmarketingjapan.blogspot.com/2011/03/japan-nuclear-disaster-scorecard-so-far.html

[Hannah Bell]

10. op isn't about anyone's feelings, not sure what you mean.

[Prometheus Bound]

11. The feelings of some Japanese about foreign colleagues who fled Japan.

[Hannah Bell]

12. ok, i get it. a little slow.

"If the situation in Japan were so serious and so dangerous to you and your family safety and our lives were coming to an end, do you actually believe that the mass media would be switching your attention so easily to bombing some lunatic in North Africa?"

i agree. i think there's been more than a bit of hysteria & bad faith in the reporting on the nuke accident.


thanks for the link.

[Downtown Hound]

14. Oh, I get it

So now it was all just a big overreaction on the part of Western media and those people that fled are cowards? LOL.

Sorry, but if there's ever even a slight danger of a nuclear meltdown where I live, I'm gone. And anybody that has a problem with that can kiss my butt.

[Hannah Bell]

15. reading too much into trivial bits of information is a bad habit.

[Prometheus Bound]

16. I believe I would be gone too.

But if I were a senior person who left while my juniors were expected to stay, I wouldn't have the guts to ever return.

[Prometheus Bound]

17. They're coming back!

Expatriates Tiptoe Back to the Office
March 23, 2011
TOKYO—Life in Japan is showing tentative signs of returning to normal, but a fresh challenge may be facing the expatriates and Japanese who left and are now trickling back to their offices: how to cope with ostracism and anger from their colleagues who have worked through the crisis.

One foreigner, a fluent Japanese speaker at a large Japanese company, said that his Japanese manager and colleagues were "furious" with him for moving to Osaka for three days last week and that he felt he was going to have to be very careful to avoid being ostracized upon returning to work in Tokyo.

The flight of the foreigners—known as gaijin in Japanese—has polarized some offices in Tokyo. Last week, departures from Japan reached a fever pitch after the U.S. Embassy unveiled a voluntary evacuation notice and sent in planes to ferry Americans to safe havens. In the exodus, a new term was coined for foreigners fleeing Japan: flyjin.

The expat employees' decision to leave is a sensitive cultural issue in a country known for its legions of "salarymen": loyal Japanese employees whose lives revolve around the office, who regularly work overtime and who have strong, emotional ties to their corporations and their colleagues.
More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216301249128570.html?mod=WSJ_hp_us_mostpop_read