On suddenly being a local celebrity

Probably the biggest adjustment I've had to make so far here in Fujiyoshida is suddenly not being able to blend in. Sticking out in a foreign country, especially one as homogeneous as Japan, is something you think you're prepared for before you come but still ends up hitting you like a ton of bricks. Suddenly everybody here recognizes me. Even if somebody doesn't specifically knows me per se, he probably knows that I'm a new English teacher or at the very least that I'm not Japanese. I was nothing more than a face in the crowd no more than two weeks ago and suddenly I'm dressing up in suits to visit government officials who thank me for coming to their town. People all over town have randomly come up to me and started talking to me just for the opportunity. Kids especially like to run up to me and practice their English. Everyone in town is shocked that I know how to use chopsticks.


I haven't quite decided if I like it or not. There's been some good parts and bad parts regarding my celebrity status so far:

The good:
-I keep getting free stuff our the ass. Just last night I got free desert for no discernible reason other than being a tall, blonde foreigner. I almost always get some sort of free food, a discount or something similar just about everytime I go for food.
-There's some real fun involved when people are shocked to see somebody like me come into their store. Our second night in Fujiyoshida we went into a small yakitori shop that I'm pretty sure had never had foreigners in it. It's always an adventure to eat with a shocked old Japanese man who doesn't speak a word of English.
-Being the center of attention is a huge change for me. I would generally try to avoid it, but here I have no choice so I just go with it. Everybody wants to talk to me suddenly and I've already made a few Japanese friends. One of them is a sushi chef who is studying to become an actor. We've been to his restaurant twice. When we went to his place the second time we felt like we were Norm in the Japanese version of Cheers. We're trying to get him to go to this big lake party on Saturday.

The bad:
-There are times when I feel like a sideshow freak. My second or third day here I nearly caused a traffic jam just by walking down the side of the road. People also get a kick out of the fact that I'm too big for just about everything here and have no qualms about laughing at me whenever I hit my head or can't fit at the low table for dinner.
-I have very little privacy/peace and quiet when I'm out of my apartment. My supervisor always eerily seems to know what I was doing and where I've been the night before. It would also be nice just to be able to go to the store and not have little girls stare at me and have people whisper about me
-Japanese people seem to think it's fun to make fun of me just because they assume they can't understand them. While I the train this guy a few seats down from me kept saying "gaijin-san...HAHAHAHAHA". In general I also just have people point and me and giggle (both children and adults). I'm almost surprised when a Japanese person treats me like a normal human.

Well, that's it for now. I'll try and write a big ol' blog that says what I've been up to sometime in the near future.