Quote Originally Posted by Maciamo
Many Westerners in Japan complain that when they ask something in Japanese to a Japanese person, they will almost always reply to an accompanying Japanese person if there is one. For example, if I am with my wife or another Japanese person and I ask some information to a shop attendant, real estate agent, metro staff, government official, etc., they will ignore me and reply to the Japanese person with me. This is not just annoying, it's plain rude and disrespectful. This situation even happened to me when I was with a Korean friend who didn't speak much Japanese, juts because she looked Japanese.
This brings to my memory a thing that happened to me when I came to Japan for the first time, back in 1982. I was then attending a summer Japanese language course at an University in the outskirts of Tokyo, and among the students there were quite a few Americans of Japanese descent that were probably sent there by their parents with the hope of getting more acquainted with the language and culture of the old country.

One Saturday morning I was at the bus stop outside the University gate, waiting to get on the bus to the nearest station together with a tall young fellow named Wada who was in the "beginner" class (I was in the "intermediate" class because I had already studied Japanese for two years in my home country). A middle aged man comes towards us and asks Wada if the bus had already passed (it was already two or three minutes past its due time). Wada couldn't understand a word of what he said, and asked me in English: "What does he want?", so I replied in his stead and said something like: "I'm sorry, he can't speak Japanese. The bus hadn't come yet, we are waiting for it too".

I will never forget for the rest of my life the puzzled look of this guy looking in amazement at the "gaijin" who not only answered him in nearly flawless Japanese, but also alleged that his buddy, who looked so much Japanese, couldn't understand his "native" language.