[Tsuwabuki]

I know every English speaker in my town, but I don't know every non-Japanese. There are many Brazilians and Filipinos. The biggest group is definitely Chinese, here on exchange with the city university.

It's actually quite a large town at 80,000 people. For the most part I don't even notice non-Japanese unless they're my friends. I don't know why I should care, so I've stopped even the natural inclination to stare or to wonder why they might be around.

I also find that my rural city is so much less patronising than Tokyo or Osaka. I realise that individuals are trying to "help out the foriegner" by speaking broken English, gesticulating wildly, or offering English menus, but I live here. I speak Japanese. I'm not going anywhere else any time soon. The people of my town know this, and rarely if ever do I need to ask someone here to "tone it down" the way I need to in bigger cities.

Luckily it is much better than when I lived in Korea, when non-Koreans expected me to acknowledge them in a way separate and apart from the way I acknowledged Koreans. Just because we're both non-Korean doesn't mean I know you or want to talk to you, especially when I am busy.