I do know that Japanese people can be somewhat forward when encountering unusual-looking (to them) people, and Westerners generally - fifteen years ago when I was traveling through Japan with my girlfriend at the time (who had an unusual hair texture and style even by American standards, and who must have appeared like a space alien to many of the people that we encountered, especially in out-of-the-way places such as Kagoshima - one of the maids at the ryokan actually asked me directly if it was OK for her to touch my girlfriend's hair - my GF told me that it was OK and so I gave her the go-ahead)
But I have seen the giggling twenty-something Japanese woman syndrome in the US - a few years back I took a blind date (who was probably 5'2" and 275 lbs. or more) to a Japanese restaurant in NYC (that has lots of Japanese nationals as their clientele). The table next to us had four or five twenty-something women seated, and throughout the meal I could tell (even with my limited Japanese language skills) that they were making fun of her. At the end of the meal as I was getting ready to go, I grabbed my coat off of a nearby hook and accidentally knocked down the coat of one of the next table's "guests", and as she rushed to pick it up I tossed out a "gomen nasai" or a "shitsurei shimasu" in her direction, while she and the rest of her friends suddenly became really quiet as they realized that the dumb gaijin at the next table must have been listening to their cackling all along...
Oh yeah...
I like to keep my Nihongo ability secret. I hear all kinds of interesting things that way.
Chinese women can also be quite free with observations and advice.
There are quite a few Chinese women at the health club I go to. They most swim for exercise.
A friend, admittedly obese, was approached by a couple of them at the club and given advice on losing weight.
She looked at them with a stunned expression and said, “I’m fat?? Who knew?”
They don’t seem to have the boundaries that keep most of us from making personal remarks about another’s appearance.