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Originally Posted by Nyororin
I question your ability to speak Japanese. Studying outside of Japan, and actually learning it while immersed in the culture are completely different things. If you are making a fair number of mistakes, the other people may feel pressured to adjust their speech for your comprehension (INCREDIBLY tiring and stressful, no matter how friendly you feel toward the other person) or feel they should be trying harder to communicate with you in English.
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I understand what you are saying and it's probably true. But even if my vocabulary is still poor in Japanese but I can speak. I know enough Japanese to live in Japan right now. I have been studying Japanese for 3 years now. And when I didn't understand one particular word they would use their cellphone to search for the English equivalent.
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That "phony intonation" is pretty normal. It`s not "phony", and I have no idea why it exists, but a LOT of people feel they should have a different "voice" in English.
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But while laughing? You don't laugh in English? And she studied in US. I don't think she wasn't confident about her English skill level.
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This one strikes me as more off putting than the rest of what you`ve mentioned. She was using you as a fantasy support - I`m guessing she was the type with a weird complex about how all foreign men are romantic and perfect, (usually from watching western movies...), and "showing off" by telling you how poorly she thinks of Japanese men and how highly she thinks of foreign men. It`s not being open - it`s trying to impress you, and pretty childish. Like the teens who run around saying they absolutely hate their home countries, home towns, etc... And saying they want to run off to Japan because it`s perfect there. Telling a Japanese person this isn`t being open - it`s trying to impress them but being immature about the whole thing.
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Very interesting, since she was probably 25 years older than me. Maybe more. Well yeah, she was flirting. But at the same time we would have interesting discussions too. The "shy thing" was just to show how Japanese can criticize Japanese. And I'm not the western-type guy, I live in Canada but I was born in Nicaragua. People fail at guessing where I'm from usually.