'Shouganai' struck me as more urban where the locals chatter at 200 words per minute. If you ever visit the back-country like Okayama Prefecture and pose one of

'Shouganai' struck me as more urban where the locals chatter at 200 words per minute. If you ever visit the back-country like Okayama Prefecture and pose one of those 'riyuu o fushigi ni omoi masu ...' (wonder why ..) questions you can still elicit both a stoic face and a 'shikataganai' in response. BTW, Jim Breen's Monash U website: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1E http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1E is still a good haunt for researching J-colloquialisms (ad nauseam) when and if you're in the mood. He's a retired IT prof and a friend of Jack Halpern, composer of a popular JE character dictionary.