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The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

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Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#111

Post by eszed »

laurieg wrote: post #55
lmm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of english conversation in Japan functions as de-facto paid compansionship. It's not exactly a front for escorting, but it's not completely not that either. In the west there tends to be a clear sharp line between customer service and sex work, whereas in Japan there is much more of a sliding scale from paying by the hour to hang out in a bar with friendly bar staff, to having more flirty conversations with the…

15 years ago I was a student in Japan and worked a part-time job at one of these conversation places. One of the successful teachers put it best: "You're not a teacher, you're a chat show host". You're doing entertainment first. A game here, a crazy story there. Nothing to challenging, people want to have a polite, entertaining experience. If they learn something along the way that's fine but they won't really care i…

> I think people in general felt they were much freer to speak using English rather than Japanese.

That's true to my experience with Japanese ESL students (not in Japan). Some explicitly told me that themselves; many others had that vibe.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#112

Post by expatjapan121 »

germandiago wrote: post #107
expatjapan121 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you cannot speak japanese and you live in one more-or-less big city, according to all the feedback I got, then, you are basically out. > And anyway, you will never be a japanese. I think you answered yourself that if you _can_ speak Japanese, things are different. The reality is that if you can speak Japanese, it's quite easy to be well integrated with the people. In your example, I don't know if the Romanian le…

I am not saying your experience must be the same. According to the three japanese people in my group here and some other feedback from people living there before, same as you I guess, and they speak japanese quite ok, our conclusion is that being one more is not as easy as in other countries. I say this from the strictest respect to japanese. I like them, I like their culture. If you live there you must know perfectl…

> If you live there you must know perfectly that just bc they act politely does not mean they are thinking you do not bother them.

Since this makes a strong assumption on how people "think", I really don't know how to respond to this.

> If you live there you must know perfectly

No I don't.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#113

Post by expatjapan121 »

germandiago wrote: post #108
expatjapan121 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIUC you are saying OP is correct in that culture exists in the world. And you are affirming that Japanese people believe this too and are fine with people that don't eat "disgusting fishes", like me (cooked I can't do, sashimi I'm fine). So the sentiment that somehow Japanese are incompatible for culture reasons, which is the message I got from the thread I replied to, is not correct in your opinion too, right?

I think you got wrong what I said. I said that becoming part of a group of japanese people where japanese people accept you is more difficult than in other countries. That is different from going around and just interacting with them, which I found smooth and polite. If you think that interacting eith japanese at work or shops or restaurants is the same as becoming part of them, well, that is ok, you seem to live the…

> For example, far fewer japanese speak english than other developed countries

My point was specifically about decoupling culture from language. And notably you didn't clarify about the Romanian who I guess must have spoke Spanish.

Sorry but there are many eastern countries that are considered "developed" while the English speaking population is nothing compared to Western countries like in the Europe. Of course I wish they taught if better to open global opportunities but that doesn't mean anything in terms of culture. It's a language issue and luckily AI is much better at dealing with them than culture.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#114

Post by tmtvl »

bulbosaur123 wrote: post #44

I will get downvoted and hated for what I'm going to say. What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and Japanese? Is anime & JAV to blame here? Look, you have Chinese spoken by 1.35 billion people. Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese, therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel. China is the new emerging superpower.…

> Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese

Obligatory 'Chinese ain't a language, you probably mean Mandarin' comment aside, part of the issue may be that Chinese languages are (mostly?) tonal, which for many Westerners is quite a blocker. N=1, but when I see a down-and-then-up tone, my brain just goes 'nope'.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#115

Post by gramie »

TinkersW wrote: post #92
cavok wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese snow is different, it’s predominantly powder. Different to ski on.

hardly unique..Colorado snow is also mostly powder

But that was used as a non-tariff barrier to prevent the import of foreign goods. If I remember correctly, certain groups also tried to stop the import of foreign beef, because "Japanese intestines were longer [shorter?] and couldn't absorb the nutrition well".

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#116

Post by gramie »

laurieg wrote: post #55
lmm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of english conversation in Japan functions as de-facto paid compansionship. It's not exactly a front for escorting, but it's not completely not that either. In the west there tends to be a clear sharp line between customer service and sex work, whereas in Japan there is much more of a sliding scale from paying by the hour to hang out in a bar with friendly bar staff, to having more flirty conversations with the…

15 years ago I was a student in Japan and worked a part-time job at one of these conversation places. One of the successful teachers put it best: "You're not a teacher, you're a chat show host". You're doing entertainment first. A game here, a crazy story there. Nothing to challenging, people want to have a polite, entertaining experience. If they learn something along the way that's fine but they won't really care i…

I likened it (and my later work a the token gaijin in a large company), as being a pet, or a zoo animal. Treated well, but never integrated. I was told that I could never be a manager in my company, because it would make Japanese people anxious to have a foreign boss.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#117

Post by helboi4 »

expatjapan121 wrote: post #97
germandiago wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been a couple of times in Japan, have some Japanese friends here in Vietnam, where I live. I am spanish. In my humble opinion, japanese society is very kind and well-behaved, but, if you cannot speak japanese and you live in one more-or-less big city, according to all the feedback I got, then, you are basically out. And anyway, you will never be a japanese. I mean, there is much less difference between foreign…

> if you cannot speak japanese and you live in one more-or-less big city, according to all the feedback I got, then, you are basically out. > And anyway, you will never be a japanese. I think you answered yourself that if you _can_ speak Japanese, things are different. The reality is that if you can speak Japanese, it's quite easy to be well integrated with the people. In your example, I don't know if the Romanian le…

If you speak Japanese you will have a waaaaaay better time in Japan. But no they will not ever accept you in the same way you could be accepted in a European country. If you're Korean or Chinese you might get away with it with the younger generation. But ethnicity is still a big barrier there. Source - I speak Japanese.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#118

Post by foobarian »

minebreaker wrote: post #30
sien wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think it compares to various European countries? Say, Germany, Spain, Italy (or any that you're familiar with). Northern Europeans seem to be fantastic at learning languages. It's surprising the rest of the world doesn't copy what they do.

To be fair, it's much easier to learn English if your mother tongue is a variant of Indo-European.

I don't know if it's the Indo-European thing or not, but it seems that the writing system is a huge obstacle. In Europe I don't even have to understand a language to be able to read text out loud, just learn a very limited set of pronunciation rules. Even Cyrillic/Greek is a more or less 1-1 phonetic mapping.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#119

Post by tayo42 »

laurieg wrote: post #64

I've lived in Japan for over a decade and I think this article summarizes some aspects of English education well. I'd like to share a few of my thoughts and experiences too. English is often put on a very high pedestal. Speaking fluent English is associated with being "elite". A tech company in my city is slowly moving to doing all development work in English. I went to a casual tech talk event they held. Every talk…

> doing all development work in English.

You need to do some development work in English. Programing language keywords are all English?

Like there isn't really a python in Japanese?

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#120

Post by saithound »

bulbosaur123 wrote: post #44

I will get downvoted and hated for what I'm going to say. What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and Japanese? Is anime & JAV to blame here? Look, you have Chinese spoken by 1.35 billion people. Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese, therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel. China is the new emerging superpower.…

> therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel

Learning a Chinese language for the business, diplomacy or travel opportunities is a stupid, stupid idea. In the English-speaking West, bwtween 1.6% and 5.0% of the population are native speakers of both some Chinese language and English. The business and diplomacy opportunities that require a Chinese-speaker all go to these people*.

Nobody's going to hire some rando to speak Mandarin when it's equally easy to hire a person who's as good as the natives, and got to spend the 3 years of effort one needs to learn Mandarin on picking up some other useful business skill.

Travel opportunities are not great, either: normally, you can visit the PRC for 15 days, you're railroaded throughout your whole trip, and you're required by law to stay in a select few hotels where the staff speak English anyway. If you're looking to learn a language for the tourism opportunities, you're much better served by learning Spanish, Russian, or for that matter Japanese, which allow you to visit a lot more otherwise hard-to-access destinations.

* You have a slight edge if you also speak some obscure language in a country with few English-speakers who nonetheless want to trade with China. There are very few such countries. All of Africa is out (English and French have very high penetration), as is South East Asia (Chinese itself has a high penetration), as is the Arab world: a few Eastern European countries such as Hungary might qualify, but guess what, Hungary also has a sufficient number of native Chinese speakers to saturate the demand in that niche market.*

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