How I've offended Japanese people

Let me start by saying that I've met a lot of Japanese people, and they're really fun. They always are quite nice, and I've often found myself drinking with people with whom I have no way to communicate with (they didn't speak very well English, and I speak very little Japanese).

One of my favorite events was drinking in a bar with my eigo-jin friends (English people friends), and hearing a lot of Japanese men singing a song in Japanese.

I'm not talking about the standard offensive stuff like blowing your nose, or sticking your chopsticks in the rice. I'll mention three incidents, of which the subway story isn't one of them.

The first, and lesser, incident involved eating in public. It's considered bad form to eat in public, but kind of acceptable, but definitely acceptable for foreigners. It is not acceptable to be walking and eating. I was just standing however, waiting for friends at a common waiting spot, the silver ball (a cool place, but that's a post for another time).

I was talking to a Japanese guy, and his English was pretty good. I was also eating McDonald's, and I had fries. I had two fries drop on the ground. He stopped talking to me, and stared at the fries on the ground for a few seconds, and wasn't talking. He looked at me and my friends as if a little hurt. I then picked it up, and threw it in the trash. He seemed relieved after that, but didn't say anything about it.

I've noticed that there's no trash anywhere, not even cigarette buds anywhere... Japan's really clean.

The second incident involved a few guys I met that same night. They spoke very little English. It was actually a funny incident, and we'd cheers to everything, scream words in Japanese and English, and then cheers again. I learned a lot of Japanese that night, but I forgot it all as I was drinking a bit... I mean a lot...

I was looking for a Halloween costume, and I had two choices, I could go with the one (which will be revealed soon), or GOJIRA!!! (known in English as Godzilla)

I asked my new friends where I could get a Gojira costume. The first guy I talked to was confused, then a second guy came, and I repeated that I was looking for a Gojira costume. The second guy looked shocked, said something in Japanese to the first guy, then they both started saying "no" again and again.

Here is an excerpt of Wikipedia's article about Godzilla: "Godzilla represented the fears of many Japanese of a repetition of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Oups... I'm in a culture where the mere mention of nuclear weapons is taboo.

Well I found a Gojira mask yesterday, but by that point I had already purchased my costume... Think Japanese... Think video games... think electric mouse/bunny...