Still, small world. I had no idea that you’d worked there.

About the rule-bending nature of foreigners – lots of people have these kind of experiences (outside of a sexual paradigm, I mean, though what you said is true to some degree). I find that strangers tell me really wildly personal stuff or feel like they can complain to me about something or otherwise confide in me because I am foreign.

I don’t know if my aura needs polishing or something, but in the good number of years I’ve been here I’ve never experienced anything like that!

I think it’s important to realize that this is not some phenomenon that only foreign women experience, not by a long shot. The UK media doesn’t seem to get that at all. Many Japanese women I know have had unpleasant experiences, and a few have been involved in downright dangerous situations. Look at what went on with Super Free at Waseda University – why no outrage from the UK media then?

About the rule-bending nature of foreigners – lots of people have these kind of experiences (outside of a sexual paradigm, I mean, though what you said is true to some degree). I find that strangers tell me really wildly personal stuff or feel like they can complain to me about something or otherwise confide in me because I am foreign. Thus, I learn all kinds of colorful things, grievances, and preferences that I have never asked about from total strangers. Like I said, normally this kind of thing isn’t sexual in nature, but I do have that kind of thing happen once in a while.

I dunno about you other guys, but I too (like Clay pointed out) get asked if I “like to play sex,” if I like to have sex with Japanese girls in particular, how big my foreign…um…manhood is, when my first kiss / sex / insert-a- cardinal-”base”-query-here was, if I like busty women, if I’m gay, etc. These are uber-personal questions, and I get asked by kids and adults alike. (Granted, as you said, the adults are usually drunk.) The kids are just being crazy hormonal adolescents – both girls and boys. And I have heard of Japanese women propositioning foreign guys, too – though admittedly the instances are far less. At least on the anecdotal level. But one of the guys I went to college with switched from homestay to dorm stay in the midst of his study abroad because his host mother was trying to bed him. Unabashedly. And she had the poor sense to write it down and commit it to paper. Uncool. Anyway.

I’m not saying we should silently forgive this stuff when it becomes serious like train groping and ogling. But I am saying that the awkwardness and offensiveness plays out in a broader spectrum at times. And I don’t think that the foreigner aura creates an easier target on trains. The all-women cars exist because Japanese women have the same issues with perverts. Japanese men may be sexually liberated in one way, but I think more often their dark side is more openly talked about than it might be in other countries. Maybe that contributes to their image. I guess my point is that perverts are perverts the whole world around, and that Japanese perverts are not some specialized breed. I mean, that’s my opinion.