Quote Originally Posted by ragedaddy
Therefore, with my experience I have noticed younger people are likely to be more respectful than older generations.
That is true to a certain extend, but there are also older people polite and respectful to foreigners (esp. if they have had contacts with other foreigners before), and young people that are downright racists (I have had a few yakuza-like men shouting at me in the streets as I was quietly riding my bicyle). I have also noticed than young teenagers and especially children tend to be more insulting toward foreigners. It is not that they stare, point their finger and giggle (like bad-mannered children do all around the world), but listenning to their remarks, you can see how their parents or environment has already instilled them prejudice against foreigners.

For example, the other day a 10-year-old or so boy was near my house when I came back home (I think his grandmother lives in that street), but he kept looking at me with suspicious eyes and followed me till my doorsteps. He asked 2 or 3 times with a contemptful voice "nani shiteru no ?" ("what are you doing here ?"). So, as I was going to open my door, I turned to him and replied politely "koko ni sundeimasu" ("I live here"), and he just said in a surprised and still suspicious way "nihongo dekiru no ?" ("oh, can you speak Japanese ?") and he ran away. I could feel that he was not the kind of boy happy to me a foreigner, but at the contrary looked at me as if I was a criminal.

I think that some reasons of people asking me like, "You can actually use chop sticks," or "You can speak Japanese," comes from the fact that there are many Japanese who have never been exposed much to Western cultures.
That's not true. It's impossible not to be exposed to Western culture everyday in Japan. Most movies at the theatre and many movies and series on TV are Western (while there are virtually no Japanese or Asian movies showing in Western countries). There are so many Westerners in Tokyo that it is impossible to take the subway without seeing one. Then with tens of thousands of NOVA, AEON, GEOS and other language schools where teachers are all native speakers (so foreigners), and millions of Japanese attending these classes (even if just a few times), there is a much higher chance that the average Japanese has already met, talked to or at least observed Westerners on TV many times, rather than the average Westerner having met a Japanese (except those living near very touristical spots).

In my opinion, it seems that some people tend to be a little more "Naive," than ignorant. It may seem insulting to Westerners, but I think there are Japanese people that have never fathomed the concept of Westerners actually being able to do such tasks.
These are fake excuses. I know many Japanese people who have lived in Western countries and still ask such dumb questions. Even the Japanese who were introduced to me by a Western friend (and thus having at least one Western friend) still ask these routine questions. Maybe its' just a custom of greeting foreigners in Japan to ask them if they can eat natto or sushi and if they can, try to ask for other kind of food until there is one sort of Japanese food the foreigner cannot eat. But I can feel that they want to be unique and want the "foreigner" to appear inferior for not being able to do such simple everyday things as eating such or such food, using chopsticks or reading kanji (when in fact many Japanese are not very proficient themselves).

Last week, as I was substituting a group English class and reading an English/Japanese article, a 50ish woman seemed very surprised that I could read the kanji for such "difficult" terms as pledge (公約), catastrophe (大災害) or refugee (難民), although these are all pretty basic kanji. When I hesitated for the first kanji of a word (援助資金 : relief fund), she said "aah, anshin shita yo !" ("aah, I feel better now !") as she just couldn't accept the fact that a foreigner could read Japanese after staying only 3 years in Japan. I could feel that deep inside this person wanted to feel like the Japanese were superior to the rest of the world. It didn't help when she proudly said a few minutes later that, "the news on TV said that Australia had pledged the largest relief fund for the Tsunami victims, but in fact it was Japan that had already donated the highest sum so far, and that Japan was the biggest donor in the world". I had to correct her that it was actually the EU (but she didn't seem very happy by that truth).