japanese gets angry if I say they are...

[sodapple]

Mina san:

What happen if by mistake I confuse a Japanese with a Chinese or Korean, they get angry?

while forum still is free... Arigatou...

[QuackingShoe]

Do you get really angry if people mistake you for... well, whatever Mexicans stereotypically get angry about?

It varies from person to person, of course. It is generally more polite to ask someone about themselves than to guess, however.

[Hiroko]

I used to make a joke in college.
I lived in Arkansas and people used to mistake me to Chinese, and I always replied, "No, Japanese smell like seaweed", and if you see Japanese on campus, you have to bow 37 degrees.
I guess it's always best to ask "where are you from" question before you verbalize your guess. Even after I said I was Japanese, people there said "Oh, Hiroko, I went to this Chinese restaurant and order this and that, it was pretty good" and I always thought, "you american, I went to Mexican restaurant the other day, and that Nacho was really fresh" So what! I wasn't offended but I was joking about it

[tenton]

I mean we could probably write a library full of books on the histories of China, Japan and Korea with regards to relations to each other; suffice it to say that there is some animosity historically speaking. So that probably doesn't help.

Of course it really does depend on the person and the context. Though I agree with Hiroko, it might be best to ask where the person's from, rather than guessing.

(then again, if someone's named "Hiroko", I'm going to assume Japanese ).

[hermes3g]

This is a little bit of different story. I am Korean, but you know, in some region, for example in France, they really don't know about Korea so I was always took as Chinese or Japanese. The interesting part was, if my hair was black, they would take me as Chinese, and on the contrary, when my hair was blonde (bleached), I was took as Japanese.
So, yes sometimes I thought it was enough, and a little bit angry that they don't completely have any knowledge about Korea, but I never be angry of the fact that they took me Chinese or Japanese.
So I guess Japanese people would not be angry of the thing, and especially if they have any Chinese or Korean friends, I think they never be.

[Javizy]

If you're a gambling man and consider the populations of each country, then your always getting the odds to go with Chinese I'd just ask. It's not hard, and it removes any chance of offending the person or making yourself look stupid: you can't lose.

You have to be understanding to an extent, because we're given little news, TV shows, or general exposure to Southeast Asia, and in a lot of areas, there's slim to no representation in the population. This means most Westerners don't really have a profile for individual countries, and everything is defaulted to Chinese Some people are a bit "culturally unenlightened" though; there have been a couple who assumed I could understand Chinese and like Thai curry because I'm learning Japanese Thai curry is nice though

Regardless, it's rarely easy to say for sure, I find. You do get "typical" Japanese/Chinese/Korean/etc faces, just like you get typical Polish/Czech/Croatian/Russian/etc faces as well, but outside of those, I'm sure even people from a given region would have trouble distinguishing their neighbours on looks alone.

That's my little bit of sociological insight anyway

[untmdsprt]

The same could be true about other races. I was vacationing in Germany for two weeks, and everyone kept speaking German to me. Too bad I wasn't actually learning the language, I could have become fluent quickly!

I'd say Koreans are easier to pick out than Chinese/Japanese, and I've been in Japan for about 8 months now. For one thing, the students here are all different in their facial features so I can't tell if one is fullblooded Japanese, as to one who's not.

[KikoSoujirou]

while some might find this offesive...sorry but, koreans have wider noses and flater faces,chinese have flat faces. You can also tell who is who from pronounciation. Koreans have hard times with Z's and J's chinese have a more lispy sound. (when listening to their japanese)
Thats how I can usually tell. My girlfriend is korean, and I have tons of Japanese korean and chinese friends... ^-^ very international

[Taurus]

There's a website here where you can put any preconceived notions to the test...

[untmdsprt]

There's a website here where you can put any preconceived notions to the test...

Hmm, I got 7 right. That's pretty bad, and the good looking men were Chinese.

[wccrawford]

For some reason, when I say that I can tell Korean, Thai, Chinese and Japanese apart by looks, it's the white people that get angry about it. (In person... Who knows what people are on the internet.)

No, I'm not perfect at it... I wouldn't even say I hit 50% accuracy, really... But considering most people claim not to be able to tell at all, I think my accuracy is pretty good.

I read an interesting article the other day talking about cats. (It's not off topic!) Most people can't tell cats apart from their faces because their minds have been trained out of looking for the differences that exist. We do it for human faces, but not animals. The same concept applies to foreign cultures as well. We have trained ourselves to only look at the differences in the people around us. If you grow up in a monocultural area, you lose the ability to tell the difference in other cultures. The article was very clear that it wasn't that you never developed the ability... You actually lose it.

[johnpa]

There's a website here where you can put any preconceived notions to the test...

Yup, I failed the face test. But I only missed one food question.

やっぱり、顔のテストを失敗しました。でも、食べ物のテストはだけ一つ質問を間違えました。

[wccrawford]

There's a website here where you can put any preconceived notions to the test...

Yup, I failed the face test. But I only missed one food question.

やっぱり、顔のテストを失敗しました。でも、食べ物のテストはだけ一つ質問を間違えました。

It's pretty easy to fail a test where they did everything they could to fake you out. Funny facial expressions, people that look like another culture, etc.

[nyappyrebecca]

A lot of people don't like it when you make assumptions about them. It's safer to ask them then to make a judgement. Why not ask "what is your nationality" instead of saying "oh, so you are Chinese?"

It's easy to tell the languages apart but not the faces. It's kind of bothersome when you say, "I can't tell them apart" and the person replies with "it's easy." It is not.

[jclemons]

Hrmm. There must be different types of people out there.

Here in Japan many people ask where I'm from and say that I "look European/English". I say they're correct but I'm a US citizen. They get confused...

Some people will just be easily offended :p