These People ARE Stalkers!

When I first went to Kochi orientation, the presenters told some rare-crazy stories about the local people noticing things we foreigners do and commenting on them. Stories ranged from the benign, "Oh, Steve-sensei, I see you running all the time," to the mildly creepy, "Stephanie-Sensei! You love bananas!" (the response being, "who ARE you?! have you been talking to my grocer?")

I felt very slightly hurt when after living here for almost a month, I had yet to hear any round-about commentary on my lifestyle. Didn't Tano care enough to watch my every move, judge me, and gossip about me behind my back?

And then I got my bicycle.

I have run into several of my kids (also riding their bicycles and usually calling out in slightly confused voices, "mey-ree-sensei?" and apparently I have been observed by quite a few of my teaching colleagues. This is in no way creepy, I'm just glad somebody noticed me!

While we're on the topic of being noticed.

I have never in my life felt popular or noticed in a positive way, but I have always been exceptionally terrified of people looking at me, for reasons that I cannot fathom. This paranoia has caused me to change my cute feminine outfit when I have become unreasonably worried that someone will see me looking like a girl. It has prompted me to never wear several super-adorable skirts and dresses that I bought because I loved them, and let them languish in the closet untouched by sunlight.

I am hoping to be working beyond that problem.

In inaka, I am a singular sight. We have another foreigner, but he is half-asian, so if you don't look too closely, you don't all-of-a-sudden realize that he is not Japanese. But I fit in Kochi-ken like a canary fits in at the penguin house. I'm different colored, I'm different proportioned, I sound different, I act different. Just like Tigger, I am the only one. So people stare all the time. When I whiz through the rice paddies on my bike, they stare like it's part of their tea-break. They're not mean about it, and it's not really "oggling", it's just that they cannot help it.

And since it is part of daily life, I am learning not to mind it.

Actually, it doesn't bother me in the least, and it has really empowered me to wear my water-shoes to the supermarket and my bright green t-shirts to taiko. I can't help it. I am different. And I'm not even as crazy as whities come.