(＾∇＾)
When I was single, I toured around Japan while between jobs, and early in my trip hooked up with a couple of fellow Americans—a former college basketball player and multi-millionaire heir, and his girlfriend, an IBM salesperson. He was about 6’5”; she was 6’1”, ponytailed, and looked like a beach volleyball player. I’m 6’3”.
In just the past generation, the Japanese have pretty much caught up with Westerners in terms of height, but 22 years ago, people of our size were still a novelty, and the three of us were mobbed on a couple of occasions—I have some photographs of the millionaire’s girlfriend and me in a parking lot at Mt. Fuji surrounded by high-school girls clamoring for our autographs merely because of our foreignness and our parents’ foresight in deeding us tall genes. (…)
Lastly, whether they are drunk or sober, Japan’s people are at once welcoming and friendly, and yet incredibly prone to either cause foreigners to act in foolish ways, or to act, themselves, in foolish ways in front of foreigners.
