Yeah, I am sure that being stared at and having your picture taken all the time would get on your nerves after a while. I would think that the people I am close to there would now be over my "newness". I did kind of feel like I was being paraded around, but I was new to them and the first foreigner to be close to their inner circle. No other family or friends have married other than Japanese. Anyway, once was enough for me!
Yes, for the inner circle, they will get used to you. And folks you get to know in daily life will get used to you. Unfortunately, the arrival of each new day brings you people who don't know you and aren't used to you, so it never actually goes away.
That being said, taken all around things are much, much better for the foreigner living in Japan than they were even a decade or so ago. A lot of credit goes to the introduction of the JET system, whereby the youth of Japan get at least a modicum of exposure to foreigners and have the novelty worn off. And some credit must be given to the large influx of Nikkei-jin from South America, at least in areas where they are concentrated. Leaving aside the issue of how people may feel about having a large number of foreigners in their midst, at least they
do get used to having us around. Or at least that is the case in a far larger number of places than used to be the case.
Even for me, working as a truck driver in Japan for quite a long while now, I can definitely see a difference compared to long ago. A difference of a degree I wouldn't find believable had I not experienced it myself. I used to get stared at and pointed at by random people on the street and in surrounding cars, but these days most folks don't bat an eye or give me a second glance. Even at places I go to load or unload these days my foreignness often goes entirely uncommented on, whereas in the past that would be the primary topic and there were even times when it was damned near impossible to even get my job done, since people in the offices would have one of two reactions when I took my paperwork in:
1. Look up, see a foreigner, and rapidly look down again praying to God that somebody else would go to wait on me....often resulting in quite a long wait while someone worked up the nerve.
2. Loudly exclaim, "Oh my God! A foreigner! What shall I do? I can't speak English!!!"
That was my daily routine for more years than I care to remember.
One place (a JA in
Ibaraki Prefecture) even called my company, indignant that they had sent a foreigner, and demanded that I not be sent there again. The person at my company inquired what I had done to give offense. It turned out that my transgression was to drive into their gate while in the condition of not being Japanese. I hadn't even gotten out of the truck yet and they were on the phone already! They were assured that I could speak Japanese sufficiently to do my job, that I was not a danger to them, and asked to let me do my job. If they then had a complaint, they could call back and I wouldn't be sent again. Since I didn't find out about this until about two years afterwards, you may safely conclude that they were satisfied with my job performance.
As for living in Japan...I don't have a real idea yet. My trip was short and I did all the typical touristy things, and it was my first visit so I was wide eyed and amazed at everything. Our next visit will be for 1-3 months, I think I would get a better idea and be able to make a more educated decision. We don't have any plans to live there on a permanent basis, we would like to just take extended visits.
When I got married 21 years ago, our plan was to reside in the U.S. We have actually done so for four of those years. Remember, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.
Oh, the one thing though that sticks out in my mind though, is that I did feel more like an interracial couple in Japan, but don't feel like that here in the US....
That's very interesting. For me it has been just the opposite. For most of the time I have been here I have always been the only foreigner in my life. I am surrounded entirely by Japanese, and until the advent of the internet had little to no contact with other foreigners, so I have always tended to forget that I am a foreigner, or at least not be aware of it to any great degree.