OH MY GOD. I've fallen victim to blatant discrimination.

Today, I went to wander Dogenzaka (Shibuya's love hotel district) with Ophey to see if we could find anything worth including in our final Japanese project. The assignment is to introduce something in Japan that would be interesting to people who aren't familiar with the country. We have a presentation prepared on vending machines, but love hotels seemed like a good topic to add as a bonus.

We wandered around a bit, walking into lobbies occasionally to see if there was anything worth taking pictures of and keeping an eye out for reasonable prices, in case we felt like doing some internal investigation. One of the hotels had really low prices for short periods of time and it was relatively sketchy, advertising vibrating panties and mildly kinky exercise machines, so we decided to take a look. In the lobby, the automated check-in board displayed themed rooms and it seemed like the best example we had found so far.

So, I go to take a picture of the board and this guy suddenly comes through the door next to the well-concealed counter and says "Japanese only." So, in Japanese I offered a "sorry?" because I didn't really understand what he meant. He sounded angry the second time he said it and his English was a little less incomprehensible, so I exchanged shocked glances with Ophey and said "well, alright" and left.

I'm thinking of recruiting someone like myself, who's a Japanese citizen but doesn't look Japanese, take my passport, and see what they'll do. Damn. This is my first encounter with blatant discrimination, ever. The Japanese part of me is suffering an identity crisis.

NOTE: Read on if you missed last week's tales of emotional crumblage.