Ooh, there is one story I forgot to write about here.
A couple weekends ago, I went to a gay bar that a friend's friend (also an exchange student) worked at. And hey, we don't get hit on by sketchy guys! There are a lot of little specialty gay bars in Tokyo, particularly Kabukicho Nichome in Shinjuku - some for gay men, some for lesbians, some for foreigners while others are Japanese only, and different bars for different kinks. This one (Dragon Men in Shinjuku - a really, really nice bar actually) allowed foreigners and prided itself about being able to provide service in English.
Being gay in Japan is a fairly closeted thing (despite how very, very touchy-feely many Japanese boys get with each other when drunk...). It's not so bad in Tokyo, but it's still not exactly something talked about in polite society. Historically, Japan was more acceptable of homosexuality - like the Romans, relations between older men of middle or upper classes (such as samurai) and younger boys who were apprentices were accepted, and it was not banned by Buddhism. In the famous "Tale of Genji," Prince Genji uses a a lady's younger brother as a go-between - and decides to bed the boy who is "more attractive than his chilly sister." And gender lines have been fluid as well - in kabuki plays, women have been banned from the stage since the 1600s, so female parts have been played by men (called onnagata). More recently, the Visual Kei movement, bands such as Dir en Grey, Malice Mizer (particularly Mana, also in Mois dix Mois), and X Japan would sometimes dress up like (very convincing) women. The Westernization of Japan brought with it the stigma of homosecuality.
There are a lot of people on TV who are gay or transgender, and beautiful gay young men are popular in certain genres of manga, but the idea of normal people who are gay is not as accepted. These are a couple of interesting articles on the topic: http://www.starobserver.com.au/community/2008/11/05/sun-not-rising-on-gay-rights/2468 and http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081223i1.html.
Anyway. We met a very nice young Irish guy at the bar, who's been living in Portland for the last 10 years and is taking a break from getting his PhD to teach English for a year in Japan - oh, and he's 21 now. And almost done with his PhD. He also spoke Irish Gaelic (his first language), Scottish Gaelic, another kind of Gaelic, Japanese quite well, Spanish very well, and French. ... Damn. (And obviously more interested in my friend's friend the bartender than us. Siiigh.) We had a few drinks, and then I experienced my first unisex bathroom. Where the toilet was beyond the urinals. I kept trying to wait for them to empty, but guys kept walking past me to go in so eventually I gave up. Just a little bit awkward!
As we got up to leave, a group of Japanese men at the next table starting talking to us. They asked us if we were lesbians (no), if we had boyfriends (yes for two of us), and they were shocked: "Your boyfriend is okay with you coming to a gay bar?" "Yeah, my boyfriend comes with me to gay bars in DC..." my friend said, haha. One was a 34 year old Waseda alum (though he looked as though he was a current student!). They were incredibly nice as well, and interesting to talk to. We're definitely planning to return to that bar, we met a lot of really interesting and friendly people.
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