I've been a nonnative speaker of Japanese for 12 years now. I'll go weeks without speaking a word of English, since where I live, I'm the only "gaijin." But after several years of consistent hard work, I have trained the 700 people on my island to understand my gaijin Japanese. We are almost at the point of island "isshin-denshin" where I don't have to speak at all -- people instinctively know exactly what I want.
This poses a problem when I go off the island and try to speak with normal Japanese people. To people who are not used to hearing a foreigner speak their language, my Japanese is apparently an all-out assault on their senses. I am presuming I am not alone, however, and that all nonnative speakers of Japanese have at one point experienced some of the following reactions to their accented Japanese:
Cocking the head to one side: