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My wife and I went to Tokyo, and it stayed in a hotel by Disney. We spent like 4-5 days in Tokyo itself, and another 4-5 at the Disney parks. My experience, e
by wccrawford 4y ago
My wife and I went to Tokyo, and it stayed in a hotel by Disney. We spent like 4-5 days in Tokyo itself, and another 4-5 at the Disney parks.
My experience, everywhere in Tokyo from small restaurants to Disney, was that everyone was nervous to try to speak English with me, but willing to try. Even the waitress at one restaurant that clearly didn't speak much English.
When I tried to speak Japanese, they were delighted. My language partners have highly praised my accent, which I understand to mean that I'm not completely horrible. And I have a decent basic vocabulary and horrible grammar.
I have had some instances (both in Tokyo and with my language partners who were not in Tokyo) where they suddenly started talking way above my level, and I had to ask them to explain things, but I think that's just the weirdness of talking to a full grown adult that speaks like a child, and trying to manage that situation.
- imadethis 4y agoThe 日本語上手ですね！ (lit. your Japanese is good) phenomenon. You know you’ve made it when your Japanese stops getting complimented. Obligatory Dogen: https://youtu.be/Qmfipv-H4_o https://youtu.be/Qmfipv-H4_o
- senko 4y agoI believe this is true for most languages. I've had the same happen (and then stop happening, to my delight) to me with English (non-native speaker with fairly strong Eastern European accent).
- throwawaymaths 4y agoExcept french (in Paris and Quebec -- some other parts of France do this IME, no clue about the rest of the francophone world)
- loufe 4y agoWhat do you mean to say here?
- wccrawford 4y agoI can just barely hear that there's something wrong with his accent on the first 2 examples... But I'm not good enough to point out what it is. It sounds like he's slurring some of it or something. He definitely speaks more fluidly on the last one, too. Thanks for that! I hadn't heard of Dogen before.
- t_mann 4y ago> My language partners have highly praised my accent, which I understand to mean that I'm not completely horrible. Not trying to be mean at all, but one should be careful with such assumptions, especially in a country like Japan that that abounds with social norms and codes that foreigners are almost guaranteed to get wrong.
- wccrawford 4y agoYou're correct about being careful about assumptions about culture, but I'm not assuming much here. I've been told and read many times that that's what that means.