Code switching is the bilingual superpower. I know, language nerds: Dogen isn't technically bilingual because he didn't grow up with both languages. But he's damned close. Let's say, functionally bilingual.
"It actually aggravates pretentiousness in foreigners." Absolutely unashamed of the horse laugh this provoked from me and the video just kept getting better and better. This whole thing was hysterically funny, as usual.
Indeed. I tried green tea.. it tastes horrible. Then again, I am not much of a coffee person either so I guess I just don't like bitter stuff all that much.
@@ayporos I get the feeling you tried poor quality green tea. Anything in a satchet is gonna be really astringent and flavorless. If you get the opportunity to try some loose leaf green tea that has been properly brewed up, you are in for a treat!
@@SodiumChloride232 Sending you all my support. Some of my friends moved out to Korea for a while to not wake up at 2 am for a whole day of class, maybe you can consider doing that?
0:17 "Japanese people don't use sarcasm." I learned this the hard way 🤣 When I was on JET, I was well known at my school for making puns in Japanese, which everyone thought was pretty entertaining. One day my kyoto-sensei mentioned I should write a daily pun on the blackboard in the teacher's room- I thought he was serious, but just being amused so I literally picked up the chalk and was wondering which one to write when he told me, "oh, no, not really, that was アメリカンジョーク” ... Bruh 🤣 I guess Americans are well known in Japan for being sarcastic? Anyone else find this true? 😂
Ppl from Kyoto are known to be sarcastic. The stereotype is like this, in the case where someone plays piano too loud and disturb their neighbors. -most japanese ppl: complain via apartment manager/some other third party. -ppl from kyoto: says to the person "wow what a beautiful piano performance" (in a sarcastic tone ofc)
@@shizukunoseija8048 In your example, I heard that some Kyoto people might say "You've improved a lot at piano" , implying that the other person has been playing the piano all the time, even the neighbors could hear their progress
@@chey6073 you got me thinking and googling there 🤣 sarcasm can be used either to (1) hurt someone or (2) be humorous right? while being passive aggressive is to hurt others.
0:22 damn, that hit too close to home. Almost our entire class was supposed to have an exchange year in Japan in October 2020, fell completely flat due to Corona, despite having filled out all the paperwork. Was pushed back and back again. Most of us gave up, but some are still trying, my best friend for example thought she could finally go in December, then mister Omicron came around the corner 🥲
You guys are amongst the most unlucky in terms of how Corona affected you. I feel so frustrated, not for myself, but fo people in your shoes. These measures make literally no sense Japan come on... nobody wants another 鎖国
On Jan 2021 I could go back after almost a year in my home country Although I'm originally a abroad student stayed in Japan, and then went back to my country for vacation, and couldn't go back for a year, but finally returned on Jan 2021
"Japanese people are minimalists" Yeah no I was in enough houses owned by Japanese people to know that that's not tr... "KonMari was born out of market demand" ppppffffff
@@neardarkroad1347 it's a movement initialized by a public figured called Kondo Marie to live a more minimalist life by only keeping things that are important to you. It's pretty fascinating. She has youtube and netflix shows if you're interested.
@@Aozora210 thanks. So the joke is japanese want to live minimalist life so much that a celebrity literally made a living on showing how to live minimally?
@@neardarkroad1347 no, it's actually a jab from Dogen on how Japanese people are actually too messy/complicated (the reason why Dogen tells you to google "typical Japanese office") that someone had to invent this movement to live minimalistic because many if not most of them can't do it.
"Trains and buses are never late." Trains, yes, but buses, especially inter-city buses, definitely no. I've only been on a bus a few times, and there was always delay caused by highway traffic, sometimes rather significant (making the trip almost twice as long).
@@SutirthaDas-Suto Wow, what the hell....the most a bus has ever been late in my experience in Kumamoto has just been like 15 minutes or so. And I thought that was bad...
My worst experience was getting back from the Fuji station to central Tokyo by a bus. It is not so far away, but the delay was around one hour, which was something rather unexpected for me, as I had never before experienced a significant delay in Japanese public transport.
green tea is overrated in JP whether by JP or foreign people its all about black/red tea in Chinese communities but I prefer green tea only cuz it helps with digestion and I always get chest pressure or discomfort from red/black tea in restaurants. Green tea is the only damn thing that can make me feel better. Still bad to overdrink though but a lot of green tea (or tea in general) is just watered down....
My Japanese friends have always used sarcasm. It looks like sarcasm that's not remotely similar to the kind used in the Anglosphere is completely dismissed. I actually find it very disrespectful to say that a culture somewhere on Earth can't understand one of the most basic form of humour.
Well, one of Russian bloggers living in Japan said exactly the opposite: Japanese people use sarcasm very often and it's a significant part of their humor culture
"Japanese is easy" said my professor. So I figured I would take her Japanese class...........no. I still am this close to losing my absolute mind over all the kanji and words and phrases and honorifics and-
I do think it depends a bit on what you personally find "difficult" about learning languages. I always struggled with pronunication for non-phonetic spelling (ironically for a native English speaker) and with languages where you have to inflect for agreement, like conjugating the verb based on the gender of the subject or whatever. So although that doesn't make Japanese "easy" for me by any means, it does mean I enjoy learning it more than others I've studied. But yeah, anyone claiming Japanese is easy.... lol no :D
@@radishraccoon3657 This is an example of the principle of Conservation of Linguistic Complexity -- if a language is simple in one area, you can be certain it will make up for it by being complex elsewhere.
@@brendanmurphy8727 I think what makes Japanese difficult are obviously the Kanji if you want to read and write and also the homophones (esp. if you ignore accents). The grammar starts easy for expressing basic stuff but can get overwhelming once you dive deeper and also consider different levels of politeness, gender-specific stuff or archiac variants. IMHO it's not to difficult to get to a decent conversational level but after that it's a deep deep rabbit hole.
@@kaltaron1284 everything you said you nailed it head on. It's easy to of course have surface level talks. And part of what eases Japanese is there is a level of consistency in grammar structure. However as soon as you start going even a bit deeper it gets confusing (i.e. pronunciation, intonation, homophones, kanji, honorifics, certain grammar, social heirarchy). 😅 Like I feel I still want to learn Japanese but I am frustrated nevertheless.
@@radishraccoon3657 Main problems: - some conjugations (i.e. passive form) - homophones (specifically intonation) - intonation + pronunciation - how often do I use kenjougo - certain grammar is totally not sticking - kanji oooooof
I school my students on "japan has four seasons" all the time. When i first heard it, and every time afterwards, it just strikes as both a misunderstanding of climate and relativity, but a weird Meiji-era superiority. Like, i ask them what that means, and i am usually told "spring, summer, fall and winter" I say, "but what seasons do we have here?" そうか同じ "My understanding is that it speaks about diverse climates and stark changes in seasons, like from sakura to momiji" そうです "Does Hokkaido have four seasons? Does Okinawa? ALL of Japan has four seasons? Surely not in that way." あ、ほんま. "So, do you think that hot countries just say 'its summer' always?" Usually this is where i get えー！?! I like to remind people that it is more of a proverb than some unique aspect of Japan. Probably wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't said from a high horse. 誰もが四季があります
The thing about blood types, man. I've encountered an unreasonable amount of these people even just on language exchange apps. It's not just that they're so delusional about what sort of information you can glean from blood, but a good deal are so fucking insufferably vocal about it, haha. It's like it's their favorite topic, like they think they've discovered the secret to understanding the human condition through articles in a fringe magazine.
Been talking to Japanese people in language exchange apps for the last 2 years and havent came across these people even once 🤣 starting to think they dont really exist
It's so ridiculous, especially because it's not even a traditional Japanese or East Asian belief. It just came about through the popularity of a journalist's books in the 70s which dredged up discredited racially-motivated research from the 1930s. Yet you will still see blood type listed in every celebrity interview so their fans can see if they are compatable. But then again I feel the same about astrology.
I like the way Japanese uses sarcasm. Folks will be super polite and professional and just drop sarcasm as naturally as stating something perfectly genuine. It's fantastic.
I might have to, if my exchange slated for next Spring falls through. I did already do one half-year stint back in 2018, so at least I got to go there, but Covid has really fucked up my plans... And I had such a good idea to split a year in two parts so I could get way ahead with the language by studying there, then coming back home and continuing my studies here before taking another deep dive. Shame I can't realistically learn more Japanese as efficiently as I could by going there again, especially now that I have exhausted the classes available here.
Luckily I got into Japan last year when the borders were open for like three days.. but damn…. There’s like five people in my class… the rest are online… RIP. It hurts. Its too true.
personally I don't know what to think anymore. I grew up speaking a germanic dialect, who's grammar is low key all over the place, then I learned German which was okayish, but then French came around and kicked me in the groin with its backwards grammar and at that point English just happened and I don't care anymore if I get wrong or right 💀 Japanese's grammatical structure kinda resembles the one of my dialect and yet I'm struggling. Guess I just reached my linguistic limit.
Japanese wasnt hard to learn when I was studying it. But that's because I enjoyed studying it, and learning stuff is easy when you study it. There's just a lot and trying to *master* it is a lot of work.
Japanese is exponentially more difficult to acquire if you approach it with an English mindset. I still wouldn't say it's easy, especially if we include the written side of things, but the core grammar rules are ridiculously simple as long as you leave your English logic at the door.
The Kishida one hits me so hard... I am supposed to go study abroad in Japan next year and Kishida is just like "I don't care if you have student visa, I'm not letting you in"
my application for a master's programme got cancelled three times already, I gave up the idea to study in japan. Guess I'll go to a country where international students are appreciated and treasured smh
you've completely missed the point of his joke. Mr. Kishida's sarcasm and the covid travel restrictions are two completely different topics. The point of the Mr. Kishida joke was that people will point to one person as an example of something when in reality they are the only person doing it. Its kind of like when someone says "I'm not racist i have a black friend".
@@Bloodyshinta1 It sounds more like you're the one who completely missed the joke. Sarcasm in Japanese is quite common. Mr. Kishida and the travel restrictions are just a funny, twisted and recent/topical example of "sarcasm"(he's not actually even sarcastic, it's just that they have been blindsided multiple times just as they were meaning to ease restrictions).
Thank you for including the jokes that Kishida is doing to us Workers/Students, Man, we've been waiting for almost two years to enter Japan! Come on! Now the serifu comes like this. 「オミクロンが落ち着いたら、入国許可出しますね！」また嘘だ！ 「We'll let you enter once Omicron calms down, okay?」BIG LIE 😑
Any foreign language is difficult to learn for non-native speakers. It takes practice and dedication, like any skill from guitar playing to advanced trig. Even most native English speakers don’t fully understand the many complex rules of English. Some seem arbitrary and confusing. Like how you can’t end a sentence in a preposition, rules like that can really throw people off
The idea that you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition is a fake made-up rule with no basis in anything, similar to the idea that you shouldn't split infinitives--they sound arbitrary because they entirely are! They just had to do with some guys wanting English to behave like Latin, and unfortunately it caught on among a few generations of pedants. I think we're reaching a point where more and more people are realizing that those rules never had any business existing though, thankfully!
"If you get hit by a truck in Japan, you get transported to a fantasy world." "Not even true for those who pass N1." Hahahahahahahahaha * takes deep breath * hahahahahaha Thanks for putting a smile in face after a bad day : )
"Japan doesn't have enough reasons to have kids" is a phrase that warrants some unpacking. I suppose I wonder if there is metaphysical significance to the moment when the question "why did you have kids" actually becomes comprehensible to any society.
Technically you can eat ramen out of the packet, so its instant! They actually make a ramen type snack in malaysia called “MAMEE”, all you do is sprinkle the flavor powder, crush it and eat 🤣
Yeah, the rules are so consistent. If not for kanji, Japanese might be one of the easiest and consistent languages to learn, thus making it a more apt candidate for being the lingua franca. Of course other languages that have similarities with Japanese such as some Slavic and Dravidian languages can also be more apt candidates for being the lingua franca.
@@samuraijosh1595 nihongo vowels are vowels... english vowels are mostly kinda vowels sometimes. once you can get the "u" usage figured out, everything else is very subtle nuance. 🍶
@@samuraijosh1595 If America in particular where to accept Japanese as the lingua franca I would expect kanji to be dropped and either replace kanji with say a similar writing system as Hangul whilst keeping the two kanas or the unfun way of using the alphabet to represent sounds. I prefer the 3 writing system approach, I wouldn't mind if kanji was replaced with something similar to Hangul in that instance.
I am overjoyed at the Ohtani joke. My friend, who is a bit of a weeb, showed me this just cause it's funny, but I was so happy to get a baseball joke as a diehard fan. We'll see how Nuke Arms does representing his country in the WBC!
