My new cunning plan

There's been a small technical hitch with my magic sunglasses: The Weather. When I first arrived it was bright sunshine and hot and sticky, but for the past few day's it's become quite cloudy, though just a little bit cooler. So now, I'm stuck with the choice of having everyone stare at me/ ignore me because I'm obviously a foreigner, or just having everyone staring at me because I'm the only one wearing sunglasses in the rain (or inside for that matter)... I can't win :-(

I've also been pretending to be German to stop people from constantly speaking to me in unintelligible English. Only problem with this is I occasionally have to explain my way out of "forgetting" words in my "native" language... (I did try to use the excuse that I had lived in the UK for a long time, but then they of course realised that this meant I understood English. I've also had to bluff my way through a conversations with a restaurant keepers about German football teams and beer...)

Speaking of foreign stuff, there were loads of Russians here yesterday for some reason. And today, I was walking in Motomachi and saw about 5 foreigners in about 2 mins! What's up with that? Get lost people! I'm the only gaijin in this village! Get you're own!

This afternoon I was up in Kitano, a bit lost looking for the Ichinomiya shrine, and so I checked the a roadside map. While I was doing so, a random American woman was walking by and asked (In English) "What ya lookin for? Maybe I can help ya?"(I guess she lives here), so I replied in Japanese, which she just ignored. I said again in English that I was looking for the shrine, to which she replied "Oh, sorry, I just ignore all the shrines" (And the Japanese language it seems)

Oh, and I found the source of all the Gucci bags, turns out there is a store here, (Incidentally, someone should tell Gucci about this as well, it's not on their website. It's next to Yves Saint Laurent in case you were interested.). Apparently there is a Comme de Garcons here as well, or so I was told by a shop assistant in Hankyu Department store (Hankyu also run half the trains in Kobe for some reason), but I'm still looking for that :-(

Oh, and I was the only one in a noodle restaurant for lunch this afternoon so the owners and I had a nice little chat about stuff :-) The man was particularly interested about Europe, though only because there are blonde girls there lol

Oh, and another run in with Japanese primary/high school kids, who are quickly becoming a mortal foe. This time I was walking behind a bunch of them, who, as soon as they saw me, literally RAN to the side of the pavement to get out of my way...

Oh, and I'm still working on a solution to the evil "No Irasshaimase for you" shop assistants (met another one in Urban Research in Sannomiya). I'm sort of tempted to either say お客様は神様だよ ("The honoured customer is a god in case you've forgotten", 'The honoured customer is a god' is a sort of catchphrase for how to treat customers) or maybe something like　お前！「いらっしゃいませ」 といお！ which is something along the lines of "Oi, you! Say it goddamit!, but I think that might be a little undiplomatic, so I'm going to ask Mayuko-san for some advice (we're meeting for kaitenzushi (sushi-go-round) this evening :-))

P.S Does anybody have any idea why Japanese TV has Japanese subtitles?