Well, actually it accentuates my 'different-ness' here in Japan.
Summer means, as any good Aussie knows, that you wear shorts and sunnies. Not here in Japan, although more and more shorts have appeared here in the eight years since we arrived.
Actually, though, we usually see more shorts in winter than summer. They wear them with tights and boots. Has that fashion statement reached overseas yet?
In summer, most people cover up, especially the ladies. Not because they're avoiding skin cancer, but because they WANT white skin. Ladies wearing gloves and carrying umbrellas is a very common sight. No wonder when I bear my almost luminescent skin, I get stares.
Yesterday I got suited up to ride to the gym - put on my helmet and sunnies - both unusual here and worthy of a few good looks. Then I got to the gym and put on shorts. Being almost the youngest person on the circuit, the only foreigner in the room and in shorts, definitely put me on the edge of what is ordinary here in Japan. Good thing they didn't see me in my sunnies and helmet too :)
Funny thing is that it is our hats that put us on the edge of ordinary at the Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ). There we are known as "The Australian Marshalls who all wear hats." It seems that Americans don't? The school is full of people with Asian or part Asian skin, so I guess we do stand out. However there are enough white-skinned folk around who just don't wear hats that our boys notice and ask why they have to!
So you see, no matter where we go, we don't fit. I wonder whether we'll fit into Australia?
Wearing hats is a great habit to give to your children even if they hate it. I wish I was better at making my girls wear their hats. They usually start out iwth the hats on but somewhere along the line they take them off and I don't enforce their return to the youngsters heads.
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