B Robson <luvrethecat@hinet.com> wrote:

> > call the prospective landlord to explain that I am foreign. The 
> > landlord invariably inquires further about what sort of foreigner. 
> > Fortunately, i am not Korean. 

> Horrible thing to think isn't it? I was thinking, lucky I'm not Indian.

When I was getting ready to move from Inogashira to Kouganei, a guy from
the Ivory Coast came to check out my apartment. We chatted a bit, and I
showed him my "blind view" "mansion" (took about 10 seconds.) A couple
month later, I ran into him in Kouganei. He started to talk about how
hard it'd been to find an apartment. I told him, yeah, the Japanese
can really be hard on foreigners looking for apartments, and related
my problems finding a place, at which point he said, "Thank God. I 
thought it was just because I'm black."

Obviously, we became friends at that point.

Mike