[steven]

Hahaha... Nyororin, you bringing up the fact that older people in the inaka are the least likely to be surprised at a foreigners japanese ability brought back a memory of mind. I went to see my girlfriend's (not wife's) grandma to tell her we were getting married... and she was by far the least surprised at the idea of my wife getting married to a foreigner. I had no idea what to expect, but that was the last thing I would've expected for sure. I guess when you're around 100 years old some foreigner speaking Japanese won't surprise you! I can only imagine the things she must've seen in her lifetime.

But yea... I guess it's little kids that do stare the most. There was a little girl, just tonight, who was running around the restaurant I was in and she stopped and stared at my wife and I for about 5 seconds (which felt like a minute!). I can't really say anything bad about that though because I know I used to stare a lot at people when I was a kid.

Not to delve too deep-- but as far as "religious talk" goes... people will ask before meals if I'm gonna do the catholic thing and stuff like that. I think setting up a wedding has brought up a lot of those questions, too. I get the feeling there may be more christians here than I expected, because I often see, and sorry to be offensive, what I think are creepy christian signs on the sides of buildings... sometimes literally in the middle of nowhere! They're all the same black and yellow color scheme. There must be something going on around here that make people a little more, what I guess would be, considerate about that kind of thing? I did notice that the statue of the old daimyo (I think) of the old castle (which was taken down MANY years ago and turned into a park) has him carrying a christian sword with a cross on it... so maybe there's some history that I just need to find out about.

I'm sorry to bring this up, but I have to ask... GoNative, is what Sashimister true about the language? Can you really not speak it? If that's the case, then I'd think you'd really benefit from learning as much as you can and talking to actual Japanese people. You don't have to talk about racism directly... just talk to them in Japanese and see how you start feeling about this topic. If your main source for this stuff is all coming from English speakers, maybe there's a bias in what you're reading? It could be your area (which I know nothing about to be quite honest).