>>8
I suspect even being a "nice gaijin" wouldn't cut it, due to nonverbal social cues that are beyond your knowledge. For instance, maintaining prolonged eye contact generally makes a Japanese person uncomfortable; pouring soy sauce on your rice at a meal would be a blatant insult to the rice god; things like that. I may be completely wrong about those two examples, but that just goes to show, doesn't it?

There are a huge number of ways you can offend somebody simply by not being familiar enough with the subtleties of their culture, especially when they want to be offended and to resent you.