If there’s one thing English teachers are warned about when they come to Japan, it’s to be ready for some personal questions: Where do you live? Do you have a boyfriend? ... The list goes on.
When you are a woman of color, however, these questions — no matter how innocent — can take on a racialist tone: Why is your skin so dark? Why do you have an accent, do you really know English?
As a Pakistani American, those were some of the questions I received from students when I taught at various schools in Shizuoka Prefecture as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, a national effort to get people from other countries and cultures into classrooms to interact one-on-one with the Japanese.