I (just turned 30yo) have recently came back to my home country (I´m located in Latin America) after living a few years in Japan and i´m now facing a small problematic i´ve never thought i´d ever face. But before some context:

I´ve always been quite an average guy: White, 1.81mts, slim, short black hair with the typical latin american haircut (fade-out-almost fully shaved in the sides, short on top), not bad face-wise but quite far from "pretty", well groomed, a bit awkardly shy but extrovert enough and in general good-looking so i´ve had a fair amount of hook ups and romantic partners during my 20s. Still my dating and sexual life was full of frustrations and i had to fight hard my way through the dating pool, especially to get good looking girls cause for some reason i´ve always been a fat-girls magnet (at some point being liked by a slim girl sounded like a God miracle to me lol).

When i moved to Japan i thought that my looks and game were enough to get some asian chicks... how deadly wrong i was. It´s well known at this point that Japan has a reeeally different dating culture, beauty standards and fashion sense than any other western country, so i hit my face at 100km/h straight to a cultural brick wall.

MANY failed and frustrating attempts dating japanese and chinese girls made realized i didn´t have any other choice but to improve my inner and outer game and also how i look. Since i´ve always liked Japanese fashion styles it wasn´t difficult to adapt, actually it was quite fun to look for a change.

After a looong year i was finally able to improve all those lacking aspects (in part thanks to this community <3): Let grow my hair and bleached it, improved 100% my fashion sense and worked my socials skills in japanese and english which resulted in a much better version of myself to the point those changes took me to work in the modelling industry.

When i realized i was able to bring girls over to my place on the 1st date, matches on dating apps pumped up (although not that much), people in the street glazed at me (for those who been in Japan, you know that visual contact in the street is almost 0). At some point i even dated 3 or 4 simultaneously: Spent the night with one on friday, on saturday morning i rushed to meet another, and on sunday with another one. That was something not even in my wildest dreams i COULD NEVER been able to achieve back at my home country. I had to stopped when i started a serious relationship with a lovely woman.

My self-steem was over the clouds, i was feeling quite happy because of everything i had achived and i could finally healed my frustrations carried over my teens and 20s regarding women, sex and how hard i always had it to attract someone. Also becoming 30yo help you with not giving a flying F about lots of topics that stupidily worry you when you are younger.

I succesfully finished my time in the rising sun country and now i´m back in my home country where i´m facing once again the ideal of what is an "attractive man" on this place.

Even though i feel confident because i like myself, my social skills are polished and there is no more language barrier, sometimes i can´t avoid feeling unliked and looked down by women here. Men here in general lacks personality so everyone dress the same and the simplest possible (a plain white t-shirt or football t-shirts with ripped jeans to give you and idea, and wearing a simple buttom shirt is seen as "overdressing") and literally with the same awful shaved hairstyle, so a grown up man with long bleached haired who dress stylish and takes good care of himself is seen as something only gay men do.

Sometimes i feel like a tourist walking here for the way people look at me. Of course those weird glazings don´t stop me from being myself and dress however the hell i want because, like a said, i finally feel confortable with myself and my own persona.

Right now instead of trying to change again (is totally OUT OF THE QUESTION i´m going back as how i looked before Japan, that would be like turning back 100 steps) i´m working my inner thoughts about how i deal with the negative views women could have about me and how i don´t let that affect me at all. I need to get rid of the thought that any woman won´t like me just because i don´t follow the same awful beauty standards this side of the world have.

So this post is not much about asking for help, but to talk a bit more about how i´m feeling lately since this community is quite supportive and to know if someone experienced something similar and how they dealt with it.