Here is a letter from a student I got a while back in Japan. I thought I would share it with you.
Dear Nick,
Thank you so much for your enjoyable lessons every time! After class last week, I was thinking about what you told us. I do understand you have some stressful life in Japan. I know travelling and living in another country is quite different. I think Japanese people are generally kind and friendly but it would be hard for the people from other countries to live in Japan. The way of life, the tradition, local customs, human relations, and so on.
Tajimi is a small town and we hardly get to know non-Japanese people in everyday life, and most of us speak only Japanese. If you lived in some other big cities like Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama or Nagoya, you life might be comfortable. You are such a nice and friendly person who tries to understand our culture and way of living, even though you have had some unpleasant experiences. you are fed up of being asked something rude, for example, “Are you American?” They wouldn’t know it is rude.
Since the World War II ended, Japanese people have been strongly influenced by the USA. Probably “Gaijin” means “American” for them. I guess. Well, I have textbooks called “Modern English”. I got in the 1970’s, and the first dialog is written like this. “Excuse me. Are you American ?” “Yes, I am from New York”. When I heard your “grumble” last week, I remembered this dialog. In those days the characters in the text were only American and Japanese. I have a recent English textbook for junior high school students, and the characters are American, Australian, Indian, Chinese, Tanzanian and Japanese. Excellent, isn’t it?!
I cannot express well what I think, also my listening comprehension is still poor, but I enjoy learning English from you. It’s good to know the words we learned at school or from dictionaries but native speakers don’t use actually. Looking forward to you next lesson.