How to be a Baka Gaijin (on Trains)

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Being a baka gaijin is not always easy. Being just a baka, or just a gaijin isn’t always that hard, but being both at the same time? Now that’s an achievement. Because I want all of you to achieve your goals and be the best baka gaijin you can be, I’ve put together this short and handy guide for you so you can show everyone in Japan how baka and how gaijin you really are.

Don’t let anyone get you down or tell you otherwise because armed with these tips you’ll be the most baka gaijin Japanese railways have ever seen. Feel free to print them out and take them with you next time you visit Japan. They’ll come in handy, I’m sure.

1. Miss the Last Train

How much more baka can you get than not even getting to board the train in the first place? Many of the most prestigious baka gaijin believe that trains in Japan run 24/7 when in fact, they do not. Many train lines stop running around midnight or 1am. Missing the last train is a great way to show your baka gaijin prowess and all of your friends will be very impressed.

However, if you do end up missing the train (you silly baka gaijin, you) there are a few options. The first and less desirable option is taking a taxi which will most likely end up costing you quite a bit depending on how far you have to travel. Another option is to hang out at an internet cafe and crash there for the night. They’re relatively cheap, have entertainment as well as food and drinks, and quite a few offer amenities such as showers and laundry machines. Not bad, eh?

2. Get Belligerent

If you do make it to the train in time, it’s important to be as violent as possible to show Japan how dominant you are. If you happen to be visiting Tokyo, or another busy area of Japan, chances are it’ll be pretty congested when you get to boarding your train. This is a prime opportunity to take the baka gaijin approach of shoving Japanese women and children to the ground as you make your way to the train (like a man), grumbling and shouting all the way.

Another approach to this is to realize that the congestion is nobody’s fault and it just comes with the territory. Pushing Japanese people into the concrete might not be the best option after all. Perhaps it would be wiser to just be as courteous as possible, try not to elbow anyone in the face, and just look forward to getting off the crowded train and into some fresh air again.

3. Bring Too Much Luggage

Another surefire way to piss people off (including yourself) is to bring too much luggage onto the train. If you just flew into Japan and are all ready to get to your hotel, the best way to make everyone’s day worse is to bring all that luggage onto the train with you. You’ll get in everyone’s way, take up too much room on the train, and if you’re lucky, you might even lose a piece of luggage in the chaos. Baka gaijinity at its finest.

However, if you just can’t handle being this big of a pain in people’s rears, there are other options. If you have lots of luggage, you can always grab a taxi or make use of Japan’s awesome takkyubin services. As I mentioned before, taxis can get kind of expensive, so takkyubin become a much more attractive option. It’s what I used when I was in Japan and it was just fabulous. Takkyubin services will take your luggage from you at the airport and then deliver them to your lodgings either later that same day or some time the next. They’re like, super convenient.

4. Talk on the Phone

Okay, so you’ve boarded the train without cracking any skulls, you decided to leave your luggage in the capable hands of the takkyubin kittens, so now what can you do to exert your baka gaijinity? You talk on your phone. Loudly. On the train, you’ll be likely to see most natives using their phones to communicate by means of text. What fools! Why text when you can blather on about how all your other baka gaijin friends are writing their names in kanji? I mean, the natives probably want to hear your side of the conversation anyway, right? You are very handsome and charming, after all.

Or you could just text if you’re not baka gaijin enough. I mean, not everyone has the conviction to be the best baka gaijin they can be. Don’t worry, I’m not mad. Just disappointed.

5. Board the “Women Only” Car

If none of these other options are doing it for you, the sneakiest way to be a baka gaijin on Japanese trains (if you’re a man) is to get onto the “women only” car. Most of the time these cars are only labeled as such between certain hours of the day so make sure you board it at the most awkward and inconvenient time as possible. No one will question your manliness (or your baka gaijin-ness) ever again. Trust me.

This one is actually pretty hard to pull off since most people will let you know that you’re in line for the women’s only car before you get to board it. The best way to avoid boarding the women’s only car is to pay attention to the signs since most of the time they’ll have a short explanation of the cars in English along with the Japanese. The reason these cars exist is so women can feel safe from gropers on the trains. And remember, kids, groping is a no-no.

Be Proud. Be Baka. Be Gaijin.

And there you have it. Pretty much all you’ll ever need to know about how to act in, on, or around Japanese trains. So next time you’re in Japan, whether it be your first time or your fifty-first time, be all that you can be. Be the best damn baka gaijin this side of The Great Wall of China.** Make me proud.

So tell me, have you ever seen anyone make these faux pas in Japan before? Ever made them yourself? Leave us a story down in the comments!

**Tofugu does not advocate purposefully being a baka gaijin in Japan on a train or otherwise. Please realize that this article was written in good humor. Thank you and have a kawaii day.

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  • awesomemvs

    i was fired from Star Fox for dragging my luggage behind the ship and destroying Falco’s G-diffusers in the process.

  • PrettyInScarlet

    great article John! 

    I would like to add one more thing – my personal pet peeve – putting your feet (with shoes on) on the seats, hand rails, etc… I’m not speaking about shoving soles in general (which is also considered rude in many countries) but about obnoxious manner of putting your feet almost above your ears!!! Gosh, that is so unhygienic, rude and annoying. Japanese people are too polite to say anything… Once I had to ask a guy to put his feet down because he had his feet almost in the face of other people walking by.

  • awesomemvs

    you have no idea what I was thinking of before I noticed the hiking gear

  • Airwalker

    1. You forgot the option of “spend 3+ hours walking, because it turned out that the last train didn’t actually go all the way home”.

    Not that I’ve done that. Twice.

  • tokyo

    I’ve been in Tokyo 3 years and I have seen more Japanese people comitting these faux pas far, far more often than visitors. In fact, I find the Japanese -dominated faux pas of vomiting on trains/platforms every night, groping, knocking people over in the mad dash for the train ( seriously? The next one comes in two minutes), and preteding to sleep or not see people when sitting in the priority seats far more offensive than any of these supposedly ”foreigner” mistakes.

  • Twohandsfree

    Both the author and you are dicks.

  • therealmusashi

    I see all the things you’ve mentioned in this post every single day perpetrated by Baka salarymen, Baka students, and stinky Baka ojii-sans, not gaikokujin (which we prefer, thanks).

    Is this post a confession, or what?

  • http://jeremybeasley.com/ jeremy beasley

    Definitely guilty of #1. It was only after waiting for train for almost an hour did we realize it wasn’t coming.

  • Guest

     First off, that video is about racism, not xenophobia.Which is what the authors satire is in reference to.

    Also, I don’t see how he assumed that this article was only oriented at GAIJIN when it was in the title, sir. So blatantly so.The AUTHOR failed to mention that Japanese do commit these faux pas. That is the fault of the author first, the reader second. When writing you are supposed to ask what audience you are addressing and what message you want to convey and how much detail to put in to present a clear message.

    Finally, since you are so familiar with the dictionary you might want to look up the words culture – since you are using it so much- and country. You might notice when to use one instead of the other.

  • John

    I never stated that only gaijin make these faux pas. Sorry for any confusion.

  • John

    I wonder if that has anything to do with there being a whole lot more Japanese people in Japan than there are foreigners.

  • John

    You poor thing :(

  • John

    I never stated that only baka gaijin make these mistakes.

    Some of my best friends are baka gaijin.

    No it’s not a confession :)

  • Darren

    Also good: Losing your baka gajinity. 

  • frostywontons

    I have definitely brought too much luggage on to the train before. Traveling from Kyushu to Tokyo, my foolish self thought it wise to lug a fifty pound suitcase around several train stations. The most memorable experience was frantically hauling that fifty pound suitcase up a flight of stairs so as to not miss the shinkansen that would leave in five minutes. Narrowly escaped spending an extra night in Fukuoka. 

  • http://espo.in/ Jonas

    It’s obviously okay to take your bag with you on the train to and from the airport, I don’t think that makes you baka-anything. What you shouldn’t do is arrive at rush hour at a station like Shibuya or Shinjuku thinking you’ll have enough space to actually make it to your final destination without hating yourself, haha.

  • http://espo.in/ Jonas

    Nothing wrong with that… Not any worse than teenage girls with 5 shopping bags, which is pretty much a daily occurrence^^

  • http://espo.in/ Jonas

    Same here! I think most of these things are mostly made by natives. The one thing foreigners tend to do in Japan is taking up 2 spots in the train. But that not’s really a big deal, and it’s actually quite difficult sometimes to know where to sit in order to make room for others. Japanese people do it too, the only difference is that when foreigners do it, many tend not to bother asking if they can move over.

  • http://zoomingjapan.com/ zoomingjapan

     I remember having issues putting my luggage anywhere. It was a train that didn’t offer any space (not a local train). I tried to squeeze it in my 2-seater and got hurt. I started bleeding and the Japanese man sitting next to me turned over another set of seats for me.
    I felt bad using FOUR seats, but luckily the train wasn’t crowded and all the Japanese people around me did the same despite not having any luggage.

    I once was woken up in the Shinkansen and asked to empty the seat next to me as it was super crowded. Didn’t notice at all because I was sleeping.
    It’s true, usually you as a foreigner are the last person to be asked to make your seat free if there are still other options.

  • Julie

    Aw, I’m such a big fan of Tofugu and all the writers! But I wish people would quit using the term “gaijin” because it’s negative. NHK doesn’t use it, and it offends a lot of people. Tourists who come to Japan use it all the time. I love these sarcastic posts about house and train (you need to do an onsen one! Too easy!) , but I wish they had a different title.

  • Sebastian Shimomichi

    Why thank you. :P

  • twohandsfree

    Best comment! Cheers!

  • Nelly Nell

    1. Why can’t New York have a women only car? We get groped too.
    2. My cousin thought trains here were bad during rush hour. She said she spent the entire ride pressed up against the door like some bad comedy.
    Maybe more people really should ride bikes. Do they have bike rentals there?

  • doraemon-lofi

    i find this article pretty offensive, infuriating and silly. about all  those points listed up as “baka gaijin” i have also seeing japanese people committing this same mistakes… 

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Nat-Wel/1477579975 Nat Wel

    I consider it an insult John, that you use the word Baka. A functional title such as “Etiquette rules for a Japanese –>topic<–" would be much mrore attractive to blog reader.

  • belgand

    Actually, I think I know precisely because I was thinking the same thing. It seemed so polite too asking you to please do it there. I was wondering what the scam was. Is there a special fee or something? Are they really uncomfortable with that sort of thing in town and you need to take it out out to the hills? Or is it just a slightly odd way to suggest to strangers that they engage in a very popular local pastime?

  • Jenarator

    I didn’t realize I was riding a “women only” train until I was almost to my stop about 40 minutes later. Fortunately, I’m a woman.

  • Vincent

    I climbed Mount Fuji in sweat pants, a hoodie, nike sneakers, a single 500ml bottle of water, no sleep for 30 hours, no meal for 10 hours, and didn’t bring any money.

  • luscher

    of course doraemon-lofi, but you must consider non-Japanese people of good intentions, and our fears of offending, or at least attracting attention to ourselves, in a foreign setting

    publishing this kind of post – with a sense of humor – eases our fears a bit by making us laugh, and gives us the sense that we might only give some natives a funny story to share at work the following day about some ”white devil on the train”

  • Jack CO

    Men can actually ride the womens only trains. By Japanese law, railroad companies are not allowed to prohibit any(paying) customer from riding a train. If you do some look up on google(in japanese) you will see that it is only voluntary to not ride the womens only trains.
    Nothing will happen to you legally if you ride a womens only train, however the women will probably yell at you, and sometimes they will even hit you. I just keep my hands to myself and act calm and do not touch anybody, even if I get hit.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jaracai.williams Yadda Yadda Yadda

    Stop being an asskisser faggot. John is a whiny, bitchy baby complaining about “gaijin” and Americans, and can’t get over his own insecurity. Neither can you.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jaracai.williams Yadda Yadda Yadda

    I’m tired of faggot racist japanese PIGS treating other people like shit just because they’re not from 4 tiny islands of shit, smaller than my STATE, and acting like it’s not their fault. We should’ve nuked Tokyo, and if I see any Japanese immigrants in America I’m going to point at them and yell “BAKA GAIJIN!” Serves you fags right.

  • luscher

    yeah, yeah, yeah … but how do you REALLY feel ?

    [ and when did the archipelago of over 6,000 islands shrink to four ??? ]

  • Samurai Sam

    LMAO. this is just too much…. love the snark. i will be bookmarking this series, for sure. ;)

  • http://www.facebook.com/jaracai.williams Yadda Yadda Yadda

    6000 islands? What you call islands I call rocks and boulders just a wee bit above the water. ISLANDS and rocks are two different things. When I look on detailed maps of Japan, what do I see? Four islands smaller than my state. And that’s supposedly a country of 127 million people.

  • Kai

    Haha, funny… and true.

    I remember receiving a call in the underground. A Japanese friend was accompanying me; he waited to the end of the call (polite as ever) and then mentioned:

    ‘Look at the signs here. You really shouldn’t use your mobile for talking here…’
    Me: ‘Is that very annoying for Japanese people?’
    He: ‘Usually it is ignored when done by a gaijin. But you did it on a priority seat…’

    Yeah, yeah, the next time I ignored the vibration of a call… ;)

  • Timetrapper

    No, he IS talking about foreigners. Baka gaijin means stupid foreigner. This website is making fun of foreigners. It’s quite obvious. Don’t try to deny that. I don’t care what roundabout logic you want to use to defend the author, this site is mocking foreigners in Japan.
    The author has probably lived in Japan a while and wanted a witty way to make fun of noobies in Japan. Mission accomplished, though this isn’t very witty. It’s satirical, but its about foreigners in Japan, so please don’t insult our intelligence by saying its not.

  • Timetrapper

    Ok, this is the owner of this blog’s thoughts and his thought process:
    “Hey look at me!!! I’ve lived in Japan a long time, ohhh all these noobies and tourists for some reason frustrate me/make me angry/I want them to go away. I need an outlet to both stick my nose up at them, mock them, but also provide cover so if I’m confronted I can deny I’m being a smart a$$. Oh I know, I’ll make a common mistakes guide in Japan and indirectly make fun of/mock foreigners in Japan. Yay, I’m one of the witty ones!! I’m a special foreigner in Japan and now I feel good about myself!”
    End of his thought process

    Now my thoughts on the author: Why didn’t he just make a common mistakes guide in Japan and leave out the stupid foreigner part. It’s not witty. It’s snarky. You don’t help anyone, nor promote your sight. You just promote flame wars by doing this. It doesn’t make the story more interesting to be passively rude to people. Oh wait, shocker this guy is wearing thick rimmed black glasses!! Woot, another foreigner who wants to show intelligence he doesn’t have by wearing big black rim glasses so he can look smart, because he doesn’t actually have a strong educational background or work experience to back it up. Another one of these baka na gaijin that come here, live for 1-2 years, pick up Japanese, and become masters of Japan in their own minds and hold their nose up at other foreigners, he’s so witty!!. Actually hes a dime a dozen flunky who failed in his home country, and now has come to Japan, studies some Japanese, and feels a bit less like a scrub, and now feels the desire to passively mock people who don’t have that tiny bit of knowledge that he has finally acquired.
    Good job, well now try to turn it into something useful in the real world loser!

  • juca

    God, learn to smile, man. It’s a funny post. Don’t search hair on a egg. What the hell peoples as you are doing in this blog?

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