okay... i'm going to talk for a minute about how in japan they hand out little packets of tissues on the street, outside train stations, etc.
i really like these little packages, they're good things to keep for after you get home and you wanna use some little things from your trip, or whatever. and plus, you never run out of tissues. sometimes they have very nice pictures on the front, too.
but, sometimes (maybe 30% of the time) funny things happened. if i'm walking down the street and i see a tissue-giver, i get ready to receive the tissues, but then at the very last minute, the tissue-giver avoids eye contact, and more than a few times actually faced their back towards me (after seeing me). once, the tissue-giver pretended like they had seen their friend or something, where there was in fact no friend there. they were trying to avoid giving me tissues because i am foreigner. it's a business sense, cause if you're the one buying the tissues you could instruct them to give them only to *Japanese* so that the ads and stuff on them are read.
but what i'm wondering is, is this racism? do they think foreigners shouldn't have tissues?? we got to have runny noses?? or is it something else??
i asked a Japanese guy about it once and he said it could be a "fear", more than a dislike of foreigners?
anyone got any thoughts?
