Asakusa - Took my brother here when he first visited. Didn’t go over well. I never go there. It’s like Disney Land. Some great temples though. No Japanese people ever took me there.

Roppongi - Took my brother here. Many times. Don’t remember most of them, and it’s best left that way.

Akihabara - Took brother and uncle here. Both loved it.

Shinjuku - Took brother, parents and uncle here. Generally hated due to the crowd. My brother loved it. Came back with a camera full of pics of these wacky establishments off the Kabukicho/Golden Gai path. Not sure how he found the places.

Ginza - Took lots of people there. General consensus was that the Sony showroom was great, rest of the area boring and full of people pretending to be rich.

Shibuya - Live near there, so have always taken people there and spent a lot of time there. People always just think it’s nuts. Just walking around can fascinate tourists.

Ueno - Refuse to go there. It stinks of piss. My brother went on his own and loved it. Came back with tons of cool photos of places I’ve never seen or heard of, and all these new friends he made.

Harajuku - I always take people there, they love it. Takeshita Dori is a big hit. The family loved it.

Tokyo - Boring. Marunouchi or Hibiya/Yurakucho would be much better. Never go there.

Omotesando - Brought the family here multiple times. Everyone loves it. Great restaurants, good shopping, busy people but not full of oyaji. Has an air about it, and you can duck down a side street and it’s quiet. Plus everyone loves Meiji-Jingu. This is the place to bring people. My brother announced it was “full of babes.” My dad nodded his head silently, and we didn’t care that mom and my wife were in some shop for a long time.

From a few experiences, I would have to say that - at least by casual Tokyo usage - 外国人 generally refers to non-Asian foreigners. We don’t really hear 欧米人とかアフリカ人 getting tossed around so much in conversation, and there could be a lot of racial politics involved in that.

A couple of years working at a Japanese university in Tokyo gave me a great chance to get a feel for what kinds of perceptions the kids had. They generally thought that the Nigerians and Cameroonians in Tokyo were American blacks. Other kids would refer to American blacks as afurikajin.

At any rate, in every semester I had them devise marketing plans for increasing the number of foreign visitors to Japan. They were supposed to research it and come back with five suggestions. I heard some of the typical stereotypes from almost every group: “Foreigners can’t use chopsticks.” “Foreigners can’t sleep on futons.” “Foreigners can’t eat raw fish.” “Foreigners can’t eat Japanese food.”

I asked them what they meant by foreigners, where these foreigners were from? Almost every group said the west or America. I found it astounding that none of the groups ever did the research to find out that 50-60% of tourists to Japan were Chinese or Korean, and that’s where most of the money is.

At any rate, I would say yes, in conversation, gaikokujin means Western white. Just like the current usage of zainichi is somewhat of a misnomer - given it’s actual meaning, we’re both zainichi. But usage and meaning are often divorced…don’t even get me going on ‘hafu’…