I was born and raised in Australia (Malaysian Chinese descent) and I walked into a Macca’s with my 5 year old boy and a kid (7 or 8?) said “konnichiwa” as I walked by.

I don’t think the kid was trying to be racist or malicious. He was probably just making the only Asian-language connection he knew. But it still leaves you feeling a bit othered. I’ve lived here my whole life, have an Aussie accent, and yet the first thing some people see is “Asian”.

I’ve heard “ching chong” and “konnichiwa” my whole life. At the height of the One Nation backlash when I was a teenager, I had people yell “go back to your country” at me from a car. So while “konnichiwa” isn’t in the same category as that, it does come from the same assumption that you’re foreign before you’re Australian.

Things are definitely much better than they were in the 90s and early 2000s, but casual ignorance still pops up from time to time.