久々に日本語記事を書こうと思えば・・・前回の記事から現在までの大量入力（インプット）に基づいて築いて来た言語力（国語力？）の自身と裏腹な不安も抱いている俺。何でかというと、幾ら「AJATTの勝元」でも私にも間違える可能性は十分あるからだ。というよりは、誰でもそうじゃん？日本生まれ育ちの生粋の日本人だってね。しかし、私の場合は、「やっぱりアイツ外人だね」と、国籍に言葉の間違いを然う〔「コイツどんだけ漢字変換するっちゅうねん」と考えていらっしゃる方もいらっしゃるでしょうが〕帰せられるのが、やっぱり嫌だ。で、さき申し上げたんだけど、やっぱり俺は「AJATTの勝元」で、言わば「常識に囚われない画期的な日本語独学法」の、斯う、代表者というか提唱者なんだから・・・要するに、従来の考えを覆す大いなる主張には大いなる責任が伴う。換言すると、「語学の新説を唱える癖に下手な日本語を使うなっつーの！」って奴だ。

さて、此間テレビに関する記事（嘆き？）を書いた僕（はい！吾輩は一人称の選べない人間である）なんだけど、ネットサーフィンがてらにこのブログにて「テレビ番組の低俗化に関する一考察」という、テレビをジャンクフードに準えるカナリ興味深いポストを見付けちゃった。僕的には、日本語の勉強に役立って来たテレビはもう完全に見て居られない。今では面白いドラマとか有ったら、DVDで観れるまで待つぐらいだ — 大事な思考力が馬鹿馬鹿しい番組に衰退させられないように。だからこの記事を読んで大同感しました。皆ちゃんも読んで見てね。

テレビが低俗しているのではなく、元々低俗なモノだったという考えもあるみたい。確かに今までパッと見た昭和時代のテレビから判断すると、当時でも特に高尚な番組があったとは限らぬ。どっちみち、俺はもうテレビを見ないけど。

最後に、テレビジョンの悪口を散々言って来た私も、繰り返しだけど実はテレビっ子だった — テレビのお陰で日本語が解る私が居る。なんつーか、語学と地理学の最適無敵な道具なんだ、テレビってのは。あるレベル迄ね。なので、どんだけいかほど低俗な番組でも、その内容をまだ理解できない人には、拒否・批判する資格は無い。テレビを批判するのは、語学的にちゃんと理解できるようになってからの特権なのだ。だから、或る言語を勉強中の方には、その言語でのテレビを大量無差別に見る事を是も非もお勧めしたい。そして、理解できるようになったら、番組を真剣に選んだり、テレビそのものを全面的に否定したりしても構わない。

まあ、恐らく真の問題はテレビの低俗化より、低俗化と面白くない化の同時進行。面白くて低俗ならしょうがいないし、面白くなくて高尚でも受け入れられるが、低俗で面白くないは到底赦せぬ！

A lot of people from foreign countries — including people of Japanese descent — come to Japan without a lick of Japanese. And stay that way. For years. Here’s why. I just made this list up based on personal observations, so it’s not complete or definitive. If you have any ideas, feel free to add or whatever.

1. Bad Company
Foreigners who don’t know Japanese have a rough time meeting Japanese people. So they hang out with other foreigners. Result? They get great practice at everything but Japanese. They form their own communities, visit foreign-centric websites, watch movies from back home. Dude, you can even go to a karaoke bar and only play American or Chinese songs. They essentially do the reverse of all Japanese all the time — “anything but Japanese language and people wherever and whenever possible”. They ghetto-ize themselves, creating a foreign enclave in Japan, an enclave that comforts and accepts them for not knowing the language of the country in which they have chosen to live.

2. Getting By
You can get by in Japan without Japanese. Emphasis on the “get by”, as in “survive”, not “succeed” or “thrive”. You can make it. It’ll suck — you won’t know what most signs mean, you won’t be able to negotiate or search for cheaper housing, you won’t be able to search the Internet for the best deals on electronics, you won’t be able to have meaningful conversations with people. But you’ll muddle through. You can take trains, go shopping, point at pictures in restaurants, and learn basic survival phrases. And anything you really can’t do (like go to government offices), your bilingual Japanese girlfriend can help you with.

3. School
Sorry, school. But Japanese language school is about the worst thing that ever happened. Part of this is because a lot of the teachers are either..

4. Condescending Japanese People
A lot of Japanese people, I’m told, are basically taught nihonjinron (日本人論) in middle school (I don’t know whether this is true or not). And what that basically says is that Japan and Japanese are unlike anything else in the world, no foreigner could ever “get it”, and even you Japanese kids will barely get it without years of formal education. Anyway, where the belief comes from is irrelevant, the point is that people go into adulthood believing this. If you don’t know Japanese but have Japanese friends, coworkers or teachers, then a lot of these people may not believe that you can learn Japanese to a meaningful level. Thanks to the suckiness of school, a lot of Japanese people have “learn” English — that is, if habitually spelling and saying “sorry” as “solly” can be constituted as learning English: they “failed” at learning English; they expect you to fail at learning Japanese. That’s a poisonous attitude to be exposed to. Having said that, there are many Japanese people who will encourage you and give you the benefit of the doubt, so you still have the responsibility to overcome this.

Or…

5. Well-Meaning, Do-Gooder Native Speakers
Now, you’d think that I’d be all for native speakers. And I am. But there’s a proviso — I focus on what native speakers do, and what native speakers say, but not what native speakers say to do. Native speakers have no freaking clue…how they did it. They don’t remember being babies because they were babies. You and I get to be babies as adults, so it’s different. Anyway, so, these native speakers perhaps try to figure out how they did it, and they figure it must have been due to school, since, after all, they spent all this time there, right? Wrong. For one thing, they knew Japanese before they went to school — all “normal” toddlers can talk quite fluently. OK, but what about reading and writing? You can’t deny the effect of school on literacy, can you, Khatzumoto? I can. Two points. First, lots of Americans go to school, and look at what that did for their literacy, even with an allegedly “easier” writing system. Second, and more importantly, the way most Japanese kids learn to read is the very embodiment of inefficiency.

Apparently, after WW2, the day they were going to decide the new kanji policy, they locked all the smart people out of the Monbukagakusho/文部科学省 (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology=MEXT) building, and by coincidence the village idiot was left locked inside the ministry building — and so he wrote the kanji policy — and when the smart people finally got the spare keys for the building, they didn’t have time to change the policy because the US military occupation government had set a firm deadline, so they just handed in the document that was there (the one the village idiot wrote), with the result that kids in 5th grade learn “幹”, “版”, “導”, “刊” and “容” BUT HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL 6TH GRADE to learn “干”, “片”, “寸” and “穴”.

Now, the initiated will have realized that kids in Japanese government schools are routinely learning structural-composite kanji before learning their structural components; like building a skyscraper and then building its foundations, or eating a banana and then attempting to peel it, or attempting to run a program before turning your computer on. It’s as if the village idiot wrote the school policy — oh, wait, he did! The village idiot was like “hmm…what is the most illogical, inconsistent, ridiculous way I can do this so that it makes kanji seem difficult?”; he was one malicious motherlover of a village idiot. Fortunately, the Japanese kids who were and are victims of this policy were just that — kids. And as we all know, kids know how to be resilient even when presented with bad logic; they’re persistent like that. And so, the Japanese school system takes it’s sweet-as-poundcake time teaching 1-2 years’ worth of kanji in 10-12 years; all because of one village idiot. The system stays alive because most kids do make it through — they may not understand how the kanji system actually works, but they can read and write and function. Hey, it’s good enough for government work, right? Besides, neither the kids nor the teachers have anything better to do than, oh, take the longest, hardest, most confusing possible road to literacy, do they?

Now, take this idea and try it on an adult. Try to teach an adult an illogical method of reading a logical writing system; try to teach her to peel a banana, throw away the fruit and eat the peel. It will only work if you can get her to keep doing it for 10-12 years, which you won’t — the adult will break.

There is a big bright side: many Japanese people realize the way kanji-learning is being handled by state schools is bunk — I’ve seen private schools on TV that politely ignore the village idiot list. Smart people in the government are working even as we speak, trying to fix the village idiot’s mistakes in various ways. Plus, there’s the Heisig Method.

Anyway, where was I — yeah, so if a native speaker tries to help you with the method of learning Japanese, she’ll probably try to school you. This is NG. Do what she does — watch Japanese shows, spend time with Japanese people, read Japanese books, eat Japanese food. Talk like she does, or her brother does or mother does or her father does, as appropriate for age and gender. But, generally, do not do what she tells you to do; she knows what she’s saying, but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

6. Well It’s Too Late Now Syndrome
So, let’s say you’re foreign. And you’ve been here 5, 10, 15 years. And you still only know survival Japanese. But you weren’t lazy, right? You tried. You bought all the books and tapes and hired a tutor and went to Japanese school and wrote out kanji. But it didn’t work, you think it’s too late now and it’s just “too hard”. A lot of people think that. They’re wrong, but they think that. Forget about the past, think about now — it’s always the right time to do the right thing.

7. Discouragement + Lack of Persistence
Good old negative thinking. Seeing what you can’t do instead of what you can do. People make fun of you, you feel bad, you give up. You three-day-monk it, your water doesn’t boil, you give up. Stop stopping and stop giving up — the hard parts, the days when you don’t feel like doing it, when you want to stop this Japanese act and just go back to being “you”, those are the days when you need to practice even more. You can learn to overcome those days — just see them as part of the legend “I wanted to give up, but by Jordan I kept going!”.

8. Bad Learning Methods…Lots of Bad Learning Methods
Money and resources will not do the work for you (unless you plan to make a neural implant a-la-Matrix, in which case, call me, because I’d be first in line to get a USB port in the back of my head…actually, not first, but as soon as they had a stable version) where was I? Oh, yeah — buying books and materials may feel good, and may give you the impression that you’re “putting your money where your mouth is”, but if you don’t also USE the books, then all you’ve done is spend money.

9. English-language forums/fora about Japanese
This affects people whether or not they’re in Japan. You see, folks, it’s a big Internet out there. And there are lots of cool fora, where you can argue your head off. A lot of people studying Japanese spend a lot of time in these fora, day in day out, petty feud to petty feud, pet theory against pet theory. Talking ABOUT Japanese but not doing it…as if their theories would somehow lead to a solution. These people have confused being obsessed with Japanese with obsessively doing Japanese. The latter gets you good, the former just gets you into heated arguments.

You’re not going to see a forum on this site until we can work out a way to make it truly useful, not just a hang-out trap.

10. Low-A$$ Expectations
“A little bit a day”. “10 minutes a day”. “One or two hours a day”. Forget it. That won’t get you anywhere. You’re trying to learn a language here, not…pick sock lint from between your toes. Don’t get me wrong — I urge, I DEMAND that people have fun and only fun doing Japanese. But, one does actually need to do it. Don’t fear Japanese, don’t be intimidated by it. But respect it enough to give it ample time on a daily basis.

Remember, friends: Japanese is a human language — a learned behavior. It is not carried by blood, it is carried by environment, behavior and lifestyle. Millions of people of Japanese descent — Japanese-Latin-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Japanese returnees abandoned as children in China after WW2 — have zero Japanese skills or awkward, heavily-accented Japanese. Conversely, millions of non-Japanese people have native-level written and spoken Japanese. Zainichis, foreigners on TV, and cetera. There is no magic to it. Change your environment, behavior and lifestyle, and you will change with them.

Comments are posted, questions are asked, responses get long and become articles.

Are you of the school of thought that a person can only learn X languages to complete fluency? Perhaps that was a bad explanation, but I guess would you say that you can use your method multiple times for different languages or would you advise a student to just concentrate on learning, say only Japanese, to complete fluency instead of learning a lot of language to a pretty good fluency?

Second question is, what would you advise someone to do if they studied a language for a good amount of time but they are reluctant to continue because of… whatever. Bad experiences with the culture and/or people of the language? Or perhaps that is an issue for a psychoanalyst, who knows?

Great questions. These are issues I’ve been thinking about myself for a while now, and especially deeply over the past few months. These just my present thoughts, they may well change in the future; I’ve only taught myself one language so far, and so I cannot and do not claim the right to discuss the issues you’ve raised with any authority or particularly deep experience.

How Many Languages?

There’s a lady called KIN Birei, whom I love and hate at the same time. You see her on Japanese TV now and then. Typical fiery, illogical, right-wing, Japanese woman, right? Wrong — she’s Taiwanese, living in Japan in exile since her college days (1958); back then, the government of Taiwan didn’t like it when you said “Taiwan”, because Taiwan = China and cetera. Her Japanese is perfect — at the risk of stating the obvious, just because someone’s East Asian, that doesn’t by any means give them a free pass to other East Asian languages, so her effort is impressive and as praiseworthy as any other learner’s.

Anyway, in one of her recent books, she discusses raising her children here. They were born and raised in Japan by her and her fellow Taiwanese husband, but since Japan doesn’t presently have jus solis, they are Taiwanese. KIN Birei said that she believes, languagewise, it’s “better to have one or a few sharp knives in your kitchen, than many blunt knives“. To the point that she focussed more on teaching her kids Japanese than Mandarin or Taiwanese; I’m not sure how much Chinese her kids know; they may well know some, although it sounds like they might not know ANY. In any case, she said that the most important and useful language in Japan is Japanese, so she thought it crucial that her kids’ Japanese be spot-on, even at the expense of Chinese. I was shocked…To find that I agreed with her. Like I said, I usually hate this woman [she makes baseless and disparaging marks about Chinese people and civilization that feed into the “Chaana’s gon’ git us!” book circuit on the far right: “Chinese people only care about getting the most done for the least effort”, no kidding, it’s called rational thinking]. But I think she’s right about language and kitchen knives.

Too many of us language learners are dabblers, dilettantes, hobbyists. Of course, it depends on one’s goals. But if we really want the maximum benefits of knowing a language, I think those max benefits only come with (native-level) fluency. If you want to be able to actually cut stuff, you need a sharp knife. You want to be able to use your languages to do (cut) ANYTHING. And fast. Understand everything from standard to regional dialects, read fast, speak fast and correctly, write fast and correctly. Otherwise you just have a collection of blunt mental; it looks good on paper, but it doesn’t do anything or it doesn’t do enough. Then there’s the social aspect — again, this is related to language as a social tool — you want to be persuasive. And to be persuasive, it helps to be funny, I think. To be funny takes some cultural plugged-in-edness, and being plugged in takes time — you do have to plug in. Anyway, when I learn a language, I want to know it so well that I would be perfectly OK if it were the only language I knew. Again, it is a matter of goal. At one time, my goal in Japanese was to be able to function completely as an adult in Japanese society, to be comparable to a native speaker in terms of being able to do anything a “typical” Japanese adult could do in terms of language; I reached and passed that goal a long time ago. Now my goal is to be better than most native speakers — to persuade, to amuse and even to linguistically intimidate if necessary for being taken seriously [”how thick is yooour kanji, Mr. Yamaguchi?”]; I plan to live in Japan a long time if not permanently, so this is both my desire and my social responsibility.

Another factor is, personally, I don’t want to spend my whole life learning languages from the bottom up…It takes time and highly focussed energy. I want to spend my time enjoying what I’ve learned, extending what’s already been built. I already get to do that in Japanese; it’s a great feeling just to be able to read or watch anything, talk to anyone, in Japanese. After Cantonese and Mandarin, I’m out of the game, at least for several years…except maybe just enough Russian to travel through Central Asia, if that. Otherwise it’s chill, write, watch, read, talk and just generally “be” — in Japanese and Chinese.

Language skill isn’t only a matter of “get it once, and you’re done”. It’s not catching a ball. The moment you stop using a language, you start losing it. I no longer function in two of the three languages of which I was a native speaker as a child, because of disuse. Last week, after I went for some days without hearing large amounts of Japanese (long story short: hanging out with Americans and their vegetarian Thanksgiving), I knew and my Japanese friends knew — it just took longer to “come out”, and it didn’t come out cleanly. Now, if you are strongly rooted enough in a language, then…you may never experience appreciable loss; I’m sure if I never spoke or read or heard another word of English after today, I’d still be fine. But, such rooting takes time, I think. So, you can get good at other languages, you can acquire several, but neglect may seriously weaken the ones not being focussed on, unless they have deep roots.

So, learning a language is like building and owning a house all by yourself, in that not only do you have to do the construction, but you also have a maintenance burden — a burden that no one else can bear, you can’t get a real estate agent to do if for you — you need to, essentially, live in the house throughout the year, even if not every day. Otherwise, it gets dusty, termites come in and start chewing stuff up, and eventually the house may fall. Technology may one day solve this problem (stimulating the brain directly? I dunno), I think SRSes are a step in that direction, but for now you’re on your own.

I don’t think anyone has the right to say what’s impossible, anyone who does is generally asking to be embarrassed by future generations. I’m just saying there’s a price to be paid for everything, including true multiple-language fluency.

Bad Experiences and Abandoning a Language

As for bad experiences, the International Society of Jerks and Richardheads (ISJR) is a worldwide organization. Wherever there is a language or a culture, ISJR members can be found in it now and then. But good people, lots of good people, far more good people than ISJR members are there, too. Be sure to surround yourself with them. Be sure that you’re not letting individual richardheads represent/taint a whole language and culture for you. And if you still don’t like it, then, yeah, drop the language. But be really sure you’re sure, because it is a large investment of time and resources both mental and physical; it’s not something to throw out lightly.

You know, every now and then, here in Japan, I’ll meet someone who’s a jerk, and I’ll think “what am I even doing here? why did I even bother? Japanese people are so X”. But…that’s unfair; it’s unfair of me to slam all of Japan and Japanese people because of the occasional drunken middle-aged man, or housewives who stare, or even the lady at immigration who is, in fact, a retard [you can talk to her in keigo, and she will respond in baby talk; she is clearly a first-degree retard], or whatever. As it turns out, these people are (1) ISJR members and (2) tend to carry out ISJR activities on Japanese people, too. There are entire creative works more or less dedicated to the things Japanese ISJR members do to Japanese people in Japan (Obatarian about selfish old women, Densha Otoko about drunken men in trains). In the vast majority of cases, it seems to me that if someone is a jerk to you [for being a foreigner], they are generally jerks to fellow countrymen, too — this is a fact. When Momoko and I were trying to get married here (looong story), there was this…creature…at city hall, and I had my Japanese friend T-star talk to him to see if City Hall Creature could be tamed, and T-star calls me back after attempting to negotiate with City Hall Creature and says: “Khatz, that guy…he’s…a richardhead; I have never had to deal with someone so unreasonable. Japanese people aren’t supposed to act this way, and don’t take him as an example for the whole country”. ISJR people aren’t picky.

Most of the time here, old women are telling me that I’m a “nice young man”, more than once older guys have randomly said: “Khatz, you can’t leave Japan! You know so much about it now, it would be a huge waste. You should just stay here forever; you’d be a good Japanese person.” One time, a schoolkid came up to me and went “Harro (hello)” and I said “欧米かっ？！[stop trying to be American!]” and we had a huge laugh about it. I’ve only bought rice twice since I came to Japan because T-star’s family sends me HUGE bags of fresh rice and vegetables from their fields. People will *thank* me for speaking Japanese because they were worried that they were going to have to use their rusty English. The taxi drivers by my train station always take the time to say hello, and update me on what’s happening in Prison Break. The people at the Japanese Consulate in Denver processed my visa with incredible speed, and then said “good on ya, kid; ganbatte in Japan” to me. The other week, I was pausing from a walk to read manga, and a random man stops his minivan and goes: “[You can read Japanese manga?]” and I’m all “…yes?” and he says: “Good job!” and then drives off. So…if you really put your negative experiences into perspective, you’ll probably find that they are easily cancelled out by the positive. Perhaps it’s time to recall what made you want to learn the language in the first place. No matter how many retards get employed at immigration, one person like T-star trumps them all.

Hmmm…

You know, I never thought anyone would be interested in what my life is like in Japan. That is, until someone named Jim who shall remain nameless asked me like three times to write about it. Haha.

It’s been just over a year since I moved here. It’s weird…this country has been a part of my life for such a long time. Whether it was owning stuff from here, or the three Japanese roommates I’ve had (one at high school, two at university), or watching anime, and just generally wishing I lived here. And then of course there was the immersion environment. But still, it can be quite surreal. When I first came, every moment felt like “wow…I’m here? I’m here!” — to this day, whenever I walk into a bookstore filled with low-price manga, I almost have to pinch myself because it’s just so cool.

Kindness

All the Japanese people I know well are the kindest, coolest people I know. ‘Nuff said. And even some of the people I don’t know are some of the kindest, coolest people I know. My roommates helped me immensely both before and after coming here. One roommate’s mother used to send clothes for us both. His grandma still sends us her homegrown rice and vegetables. And then there was that lady (a total stranger), who gave me an umbrella on my second day here. It was pouring rain (and I, in the ignorance learned from 5 years spent in Utah thought that a raincoat would cover my bases); she walked out of her shop to hand me portable shelter: “here, keep it”, she said. My clothes were soaked through, but my heart was warmed. And then there are all the other nice ladies I’ve met on trains, who started conversations about random stuff. And the nose-picking bureaucrat who knew that the reason I didn’t understand him wasn’t because I didn’t know Japanese but because it was 6am on a Monday morning and he was both mumbling and covering his mouth with his gold-digging hand. Nice guy. The businessman who let my friends use his cellphone to call me when I forgot to go pick them up at the station; the store lady who said I was handsome (she probably got a fax from my mother telling her to say it, but it still counts); the cashier at the bookstore who dropped everything she was doing to put a band-aid on my bleeding finger (I had a hangnail and/or a papercut) — seriously, if I weren’t married already, I might have fallen in love right then and there; the many other shop ladies who have handled my dirty kleenexes when I ‘ve had a cold (that’s almost too nice — I hope they didn’t get sick). [Explanation: there aren’t many public trash cans in Japan, so I’m always giving people like shop clerks stuff to chuck away]

This level of kindness is normal in Japan. People are going to be good to you. I’m going to say some bad things about Japan in a minute, but those bad things absolutely pale in comparison to the good things — and it’s easy to forget this; I forget it, too sometimes. But, really, the worst things that have happened to me here have been condescension and impolite curiosity — which, when you think about it, are not world-ending events, although they may feel like it at the time — especially the third time a cop stopped me and asked for ID — I was ready to sue somebody, and 有道出人/Arudou Debito had to suffer through reading a whiny, late-night “this cannot be happening to the great Khatzumoto” email from me…poor guy.

Expectations of Ignorance

I learned Japanese very, very hardcore for almost 2 years before ever coming here. In my own self-centered ignorance, I thought Japan would somehow “know” that. I thought that somehow Japan had “gotten the memo”. But, of course, it hadn’t. So, it surprised (and, I guess, continues to surprise) me, how little knowledge of the Japanese language that some Japanese people expect me to have. It’s weird, because I actually thought that Japanese ability would be considered quite normal in Japan, regardless of ethnicity. And I was actually mourning what seemed to be the inevitable loss of the sort of “prince of Japanese” status that I had enjoyed at college. At the same time, I was looking forward to having straightforward human interactions since I had made it my task to nuke any language barrier between me and a native speaker of Japanese. By the time I came to Japan I had more or less achieved that.

Anyway, to make a long story short, a large minority of people are still shocked whenever I speak Japanese to them. But, unlike my college friends, who got over it and accepted me more or less as a member of the Japanese community (a miserly, tight-fisted member who never gave gifts, but a member nonetheless), some Japanese people never get over it. And so, they keep looking for the thing I can’t do; they keep looking for the ceiling. They accept I can speak, but don’t accept that I can listen and comprehend. Until I listen and comprehend. Then they accept that I can listen and comprehend, but don’t accept that I can read. Until I read. Then they accept that I can read, but don’t accept that I can write. Until I write. Then they accept that I can write but don’t accept that I can write that kanji, you know, “the hard one”. Until I write it — “harder”, older (pre-US occupation), bigger, more strokes. And then it starts to dawn on them that maybe, just maybe…I am a full human being; it takes a while, but they eventually stop talking to me like I’m a retard — they go to normal speed, and stop trying to mix in badly pronounced English as if it will help me understand better. If I sound bitter, by the way, it’s because I am — especially because some people, despite all this, despite the fact that I am almost never without a Japanese book in my face (it is not for freaking decoration, my friend), still just never get over it; there are people who still seem to think I’m a retard; who still talk loudly and slowly and mix in random English words; who still stop every twelve seconds to make sure I understand what they’re saying; who still preface their statements with things like “I know this will be hard for you to understand, because it’s in Japanese, but…”; there are even people who incorrectly correct me (like the guy who tried to tell me that “機嫌” should be written “気嫌”, which would make sense given the meaning of the word, but is completely wrong; I didn’t have the heart or guts to tell this chap that he was an egit, but I quietly refused to correct something that is…correct).

It shouldn’t bother me. I should be bigger person than that. And lately, I just let it go. But it used to bug the heck out of me. Maybe it only bugged me because I was actually insecure? I don’t know. Until recently, most native-level users of Japanese have been ethnically Japanese, 30 years from now I imagine it will be a totally different ballgame. Till then, I’ll just keep letting wide-eyed curiosity and stupid questions slide.

Don’t get me started on nurses. Just don’t.

Including veterinary assistants. I have seriously never met a more condescending group of individuals. Dewd, words like “gall bladder” are really not all that complex; I can read the flaming form. And stop questioning me on my decision to feed my cat raw food. Hello? “Land predator”.

Directions

You know the romantic image of adventurous-but-prudent tourists asking directions? It’s a myth, friends. In Japan, at least. Because in Japan, no one knows where the heck anything is. Even in their own neighbourhood. The combination of not having a grid system or street signs, and being densely populated makes for a high degree of “don’t have a clue what’s around me”-ness. Any country in the same situation would produce the same results. So don’t bother learning how to ask directions in Japanese. No one can answer you. I’m seriously only 10% joking. Not even taxi drivers know where stuff is — they’ll ask you how to get there.

What you do need to know is how to read. So that you can use a GPS unit. I have GPS on my phone, and it’s gotten me safely home from my adventures (on foot and by taxi) many a time. The next time you think that asking someone how to get to Sesame通り will be a great way to start a conversation, remember that you will probably only scare that person (I mean it; she might freak the heck out at the mere sight of you). Repeat after me: people=no, machines=know.

Religion

A lot of people are excited about coming to Japan, all starry-eyed with visions of how great Japan is for not really having religion, they’re all: “wow, Japan, is areligious but safe, clean and ethical”. These people are wrong. I hate to burst your precious little humanist bubble, but Japan has a national religion; almost everyone practices it and there’s no escaping it. It’s called “food”. On TV, in the morning, in the afternoon at night, and in the commercial breaks, there is food. When people meet you, they ask “what do you eat?”, “how do you like Japanese food?”, “have you tried 納豆 (nattou)?”. When people like you, they take you out for food. When people visit each other, they bring food. When people go somewhere, they bring back food as a souvenir. On shows that have nothing to do with food, there is a food section. Food is sacred here. It’s not for snacking on casually on the train and dropping to the floor, no, that would be immoral; that would be 勿体無い(wasteful). Food is for planning around, cooking lovingly, decorating lavishly, garnishing gently, and bowing to gratefully with your chopsticks between your thumb and your forefinger, before making slurping sounds (well, with noodles) as you partake (not “eat” — “partake”) of it. Maybe there is this collective memory of the starvation after the loss of WW2?

I could get started on a more serious rant at people — especially (dis-empowered?) women — for believing in horoscopes and fortune-tellers, but we have things like skepdic for that…then again, I just realized that I am skeptical about some things in skepdic, which I guess makes me recursive skeptic at some level…OK, my inner editor is telling me you don’t need to be reading this.

There’s a lot more to Japan than I just covered, but that should do it for now. It’s really cool here and if you haven’t come, do! In fact, why not just learn Japanese and come live here? No, please, really, please do — and be sure to have kids as well, because if we get more fluent immigrants here, people will stop asking me dumb questions; you’d be doing us all a favour…LoL. Seriously, it’s a wonderful country — come on over!