So it was the end of my first year living abroad in Japan, and I'd gotten decent enough at the language. I was on the bus standing near the front when a couple women who I think were high-schoolers boarded.

Now I'm a pretty tall woman (5"10) and I hear comments about a lot in the US, but not nearly as often as I did in Japan. The two high schoolers were speaking Japanese: "wow, look at that woman. Do you think she's American? She has to be if she's so tall. Do you think all American woman are as tall as her?" At this point I turned to them and said in Japanese "I'm taller than all of my friends in America too."

The girls looked really caught off guard and immediately started apologizing. Then they told me my backpack keychain was cute and asked if they could practice their English with me until I got to my stop.

The other memorable one was when I was at an izakaya that had all you could drink alcohol for $12 (!?) and it was right down the road from my apartment so I went there a lot. I remember one day I went in for awhile and I was drinking quite a bit, and most Japanese bars I went to their drinks are not as strong as even weak drinks in the US so I was still only buzzing. After the waitress took my drink order again I overheard her say to whoever she was talking to in the kitchen "it's that American again, she's going to drink our [entire stock]"