[steven]

This is interesting. I can tell that I had a bit of this in retrospect-- not NEARLY on the level that you have it though. For me it was wanting to isolate myself from English-speaking foreigners to help learn the language. That worked fantastically, but after a while I realized that I would almost go out of my way to avoid people, which was rude. Strangers are another issue, but doing that to people I already knew was getting to me. That didn't last too long, but I think it was too negative of a thing for me.

For me it wasn't a process of realizing it was a problem and working at it. It's just that by the time it worked itself out I could see that I was becoming a little weird in retrospect.

However, your case is definitely strange. I think you seem to realize this yourself, but solving your problem isn't a matter of warming up to foreigners. I think it's deeper than that. In other words, if it wasn't "My Japan Syndrome" then it'd be something else, I'm afraid. I think it's ironic (not in a ha-ha kind of way) that you ended your post by saying you don't have any mental problems other than OCD. From the way it sounds, I think you have more than a minor case of OCD and probably some other problems. The whole data collection thing reeks of this in my opinion.

I think you may very well need professional help... but I'm not so sure. I think this could just be a matter of finding better ways to spend your time. Doing something productive might be key for you. Defining productive might be difficult, but doing something that makes you feel better about yourself (aka positive things) would be a step up.

You need to kind of dig deep into this and try to find out what the root of all this is. For example, what kind of motivation do you have for doing this? A lot of what you are doing seems irrational as these foreigners that you're concerned about would otherwise have no contact with you. It's like you're going out of your way to make these confrontations with yourself. I see a similarity in this and in people who like to cause discord-- which I think people do in order to kind of liven things up in their lives or to look for attention. Are you really bored or lonely or something like that? Maybe you just need to take a break from this irrational fantasy land that you've created and just get out there in the real world and mingle with other people.

What do you do with your time? Maybe you could work on your time management and try to slowly shave off these weird activities from your daily life.

Do you smoke, drink, play games, use the internet, or do anything else habitually?