This has been eating at me for two days.

I went to a Christmas party at a club this past Saturday. It was a private party with lots of beer and food, and I had a good time. After that, against my better judgement, I agreed to go with everyone to a mostly foreigner (predominately Brazilian) nightclub down the street. I had a bad feeling about going there. There was close to 15 of us changing venues, and we were all jumbled up as we walked over. I assumed, but wasn’t sure, that my girlfriend went into the club ahead of me. (That seemed awfully strange to me.) It wasn’t crowded in front of the club, so I whipped out my phone and called her to make sure she was in there. A beefy black guy who definitely wasn’t a native English speaker said, “Move.” I told him I was calling my girlfriend who I thought was inside and I would be going in shorty if she was in there. He saunters off, comes back 10 seconds later and tells me to move. I wasn’t blocking anyone’s way, and if I had been I would’ve moved out of common courtesy. I was a little annoyed and in my best whiney voice said, “This is a public sidewalk, isn’t it?” I know, I was asking for it. Then, a white guy (who also was from some country where English was taught as a foreign language) comes up and without saying anything shoves me. Tells me to move, and before I get a word out, shoves me again. And a third time. For a split second, I thought about getting into a fight, but there were three huge bouncers and the only things I would accomplish by getting into a fight would be to get my ass kicked and possibly arrested. None of that would be worth getting into a fight over.

My new Japanese buddy was also with me, and he was also shoved just for being next to me. The white meathead told the black guy not to push the Japanese guy because, “He’s Japanese. He’s okay.” These dumb foreigners know that if they rough up another foreigner they probably won’t get into trouble, but roughing up a Japanese guy is going to be trouble for them. That set me off. From a safe distance, I yell at them in Japanese, and the people from my group that hadn’t already gone in calmed me down and after calling over and over to the people who did go inside, we gathered a little ways down the street and figured out where to go next. Now, the white guy who seemed to be in charge was happy to get rid of me until he saw that I had 14 other people with me who would now not be paying to go into the club. So he comes over and asks, “Do you want to come in?” I wanted to tell him, “Fuck you. Of course not.” But all I could muster the courage to say was “Not anymore.” So, while I may have had my pride bruised a little bit, I was at least happy to know that that guy shoving me cost his bar about ¥50,000 in cover charges plus whatever else we might have spent on additional drinks.