Unfortunately, being Asian and wearing this shirt leads people to believe that I speak Japanese or at least that if they say "Konichiwa" to me, I will answer in kind. Thus far, the assumption has only been made by older (over 50-looking) white males. WTF?
The first time this happened was as I was going through airport security at Love Field in Dallas. I had just bought the shirt a couple days before, and I had decided to wear it home. As I was putting my laptop into a bin, I could hear someone saying "Konichiwa" to me. I looked up and an older man is saying it, while grinning at me like I should be impressed. Forgetting I had put that particular shirt on that morning, I just gave him a look like he was an idiot and moved on. It wasn't until after I arrived at my gate that I realized that he was responding to my shirt. This is not the only time this has happened. However, I'm thinking next time, I will respond with a resounding "Howdy!" (For once, releasing my inner Texan.) Or even better, maybe I will start a conversation with the speaker in Spanish. Either way, I will not say Konichiwa back. Maybe I am being stubborn, and maybe it is not such a big deal. I know that I do tend to be little touchy about these types of assumptions. Just because I am Asian and I wear something that is "specific" to one Asian culture, does NOT mean that I belong to or identify with that culture. Is it my fault that I wore a shirt that has a Japanese word on it, when I am actually Korean (and an adopted one at that!)? I have little tolerance for the hasty generalizations like this that people make. If I wore a shirt that said "Bon Jour," you can bet no one would assume I was of French descent and tried to speak French to me.
I should put the shirt on my girlfriend and send her out in public with it to see if people say the same things to her. Of course, if I am with her when she wears it, it may just look like she has an Asian fetish.
