I don't understand, how does that make it "forever foreigners"? Have you tried telling them you understand japanese and continue conversation? How would the other person know if you arrived yesterday or living there for 20yrs? This is a pretty bad example imo.

"forever" because it's based on the color of my skin, which I can't change, and "foreigner" because they're assuming I don't speak the language of the land. It's quite simple.

You seem to be assuming I think they're making a mistake by doing this, or for some reason shouldn't be doing it, which I never said.

I understand it as opposed to situation when you move from Germany to Italia. If you manage to learn the accent and language, you can pass as Italian and be treated exactly as one in every detail. In Japan, if you are white, it is not possible and you will never achieve that level of assimilation nor will your children.

Statistically, they are right in assuming that you are probably not a speaker of Japanese. Of all white (or black) folk in Japan, perhaps 5% speaks enough Japanese to carry an every day conversation. The rest are tourists, business folk, and weeaboos.

It never bothered me. Whenever I initiated a conversation people just spoke Japanese. Sometimes people would start in English, but the conversation always effortlessly slid into Japanese when I answered in Japanese. Further down from Tokyo the experience tends to be even simpler at times: either you speak Japanese, or you have no conversations at all.