Pachipro, i just want to reply to you first, yes i believe in when in rome do as the romans do, so my father-in-law when he comes here should wait until everyone is served before starting to eat, that is the way it is done here, or in my family at least, and around my friends houses.

Secondly, i am not inflexible, in fact i do go along with everything when i'm in Japan, because the in-laws said "when you go home, we have to stay here, if you don't do it, we will be outed socially", so yeah, i go along with it all, however, it doesn't mean i can't complain about it later does it? Frustrated dave comments about me being an ignorant foreigner and i'm not, i do understand the culture, but on here i'm just venting about their culture and expressing my complaints.

I love my husband and the reason i married him even when i knew what their culture was like was because i love him, not his race, not his culture, you can't choose someone's race when you choose the person you will fall in love with can you? His personality is the thing i was drawn to, and colour of skin, nationality etc has nothing to do with it.

To frustrated dave, when i was talking about the family that wouldn't talk directly to me, i was talking about the father-in-law's sister and the sisters daughters family. As i said i get along very well with the mother and father-in-law and at times can be closer to okaasan than my own mother in australia.

Pachipro, i know what you mean about how everything changes once you get to japan, when my husband gets to narita, his personality totally changes and he becomes bossy, and he gets treated like a king. It's only when we're back in our rooms that he changes to normal. At first that behaviour was unnerving for me, as it seemed like jekyl and hyde, but my husband reassured me that it was just as annoying for him. He loves australia and he loves the free life and the way of life and going back to japan is a nightmare for him because he has many obligations to fulfil while he is there. The only reason we go back is for his friends and family, if they didn't live there he would never go back as he's not exactly in love with japan.

When i talked about Japanese coming here and being rude, it was my husband that first noticed it and said it to me, and he always says "bloody rude japanese". He feels he has to be a model japanese citizen here so people have a good view of Japanese people, because he sees so many rude japanese that bring our expectations down. We have had japanese homestay and sharemates even while we were married and his main target was to educate them because some of them had never been overseas before and were not used to anyone else's culture or even aware that culture was different.

When my husband is saying "bloody japanese" and he is one, that is the eye opener for me. We have alot of tourists coming to where i live, all nationalities and in fact because i spend alot of time in the city i see alot, and i don't really have a problem with any of them, they're all friendly and seem to be aware of our culture.

Don't get me wrong, i have many many female japanese friends and a few male ones, and i love them to bits, i don't have anything against japanese, in fact there is alot i love about japan too, but since this is a forum, i just expected i could express my views/opinions/complaints to fellow experiencers here.

Pachipro thank you for your comments, i enjoyed reading them.