Sorry, we don't speak Japanese

When strolling in Waikiki, we were often mistaken as Japanese. In the malls, the salesperson always opened the conversation in Japanese, and continued to do so even though we were speechless and seem confused. What surprised me is that even the Japanese people make the same mistake. The reason may be that Waikiki is full of Japanese tourists - everywhere we go, more than half of the tourists are Japanese. The tie of Japanese to Hawaii is far more than tourism: actually for a longest time until the recent years, Japanese has been the largest ethic group in Hawaii. Also, during the boom of the 80s, a huge amount of real estates in Hawaii were bought by Japanese (70% of the high end hotels).

I personally don't mind being mistaken as Japanese - on the contrary, it may be a proof of our "proper" behavior as tourists :) No long ago the Chinese government issued a guideline for citizen traveling aboard, and you can image how bad the reputation of Chinese tourists is. We visited the Honolulu city center, and there was this statue of a king standing on the grass. Even there is a big sign "Please don't step on the grass" right in front of the statue, we see people standing on the grass, posting to take pictures. Needless to say, they were speaking Mandarin. After those people left came another group, apparently from Japan, and yes, they can read. This was one of the moments I felt shamed being Chinese.

So next time when you are traveling aboard and people talk to you in Japanese, you can be proud of yourself.