My Embarrassing Story in Tokyo┃Listening Practice in Japanese(聴解) 

Use my code JAPANESEAMMO10 and link bit.ly/3fvP3Us to get 10% off (save up to $47!) your own authentic Japanese subscription box from Bokksu! Don't miss out on this amazing snack-journey through Japan! EDIT! 0:28 はい、始めましょう。(hai, hajimema-shou) = "Alright, let's start."

When I first came to Japan, I had a tourist visa. I met a woman, who would later become my wife, soon after and wanted to stay longer. One could get one tourist visa extension of three months but that was it and then one had to leave the country. Coming right back on a tourist visa was often fraught with uncertainty because you could be denied entry if Immigration suspected you were working illegally. Well, I had two passports, so I would use a different passport each time I entered Japan to avoid raising suspicion. When I entered on my German passport, the Immigration officer started speaking in an unintelligible gibberish. I marshalled all my Japanese, trying to guess what he was saying to me. I finally realized he was speaking German with me, and he wasn't half bad! I had been focusing so hard on understanding Japanese that I hadn't recognized he was speaking German with me. I immediately praised him for his German and got the desired entry stamp in my passport. Phew! It might not have gone so well for me, someone entering with a German passport, had I not understood he was speaking German!

i've come across all these verbs when I self-study, but it only really registers permanently in my head when I watch someone say in a movie/video. Thanks Misa!!

I’ve a Chinese born friend who always pretends not to be able to speak Mandarin when she goes back, she says everyone is much nicer to her when they think she’s a tourist.

It's a great feeling going into a video thinking "I'm not gonna understand any of this" and being surprised by how much of a foreign language you actually know. Thank you Misa

00:28 Beginning of the story 07:05 Sponsorship of BOKKSU 09:40 Grammar explanation 14:24 Comments

Actually. You are a teacher. I respect the kind way you teach but also the smile that gives us what we need to get rid of stress from the difficult lesson. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and I wish the best from Greece for your country ... With honor ...

I like videos like these where you just talk about something in Japanese, and I'd love to see more of them. For me it's a great way to learn new vocabulary. It's much better than just thinking of words I'd like to learn in Japanese and look them up in a dictionary because you understand the meaning of words much better if you hear them used in a context, and also a dictionary won't tell you if it's an extremely formal word that's only used e.g. in legal documents, but if I hear みさ先生 use a word in a story I can be sure it's a word that's actually used in speech.

Thanks to all your wonderful lessons, even with my lack of a proper systematic approach to learning the language, I was able to understand 95% of what you were saying while speaking, and the rest by reading the Japanese sentences with the incredibly helpful furigana on top. I and many others greatly appreciate your hard work all these years providing us with free top-quality lessons! Keep making awesome, instructive and entertaining content. Greetings from Greece!

From one person with a really bad sense of direction to another, I appreciated your story (and followup lesson)!

迷う is a verb that I have been struggling to remember and this video was really helpful for hammering it into my brain if nothing else, lol. Thank you Misa.

Haha wow I kinda know that feeling. I was once playing a video game when the teammates started talking shit (you all know how that goes). But at that time I reacted with "but I'm doing all I can!" or something. one of them appologized and said that he felt bad because I was just a kid. He was actually sincere about it and offered to help me. It caught me totally off guard and in my confusion the only thing I could say was "thank you". I was 25 or something.. I don't know why but I just went with it. I could not stop the flow of things XD

外国語を学ぶ人に片言でも話してみてって励ましたり応援したりしてもらったのは本当に心強いです。いつもありがとうございます！

I totally understand the struggle and confusing of train stations in Japan. When I worked there, I used to note down what platform, station I was going to (or transferring to), the exit (if I was leaving the station) or the platform to transform to, plus what line. I got some Japanese snacks and food last week because I did my weekly shopping at Don Don Donki :3

I like when Misa sensei shares her stories with us! The Japanese lesson is a bonus! 😀 I also get lost in my own city a lot, so I know how you feel Misa sensei. 🧭

Uaaa, I’ve been studying Japanese for over three years now and honestly I’m so used to not understanding anything still when I try to do listening or reading practices but more and more lately I’ve been realizing I’m actually able to understand the gists of stories now even if I miss some of the words. It always catches me by surprise when I go into things expecting to not understand but by the end of it I’m laughing along to the story cause I got most of it 😂 I’m so happy to finally be seeing some tangible progress haha!

I love your videos so much, you put so much effort into editing and you make everything so easy to understand.

I really love your channel, keep up the great work!

Love this kind of videos!!!! Thank you

Misa sensei, thank you so much for sharing your personal stories while teaching us Japanese recently! I have been learning from this channel for 4 years it is not until recently that I started to learn about my teacher's background story!

keep up the good work, Misa! Great video

This is such an amazing formate since its a good listening training and also super interesting since its based on a real story !! Thx a lot sensei!

In a Japanese supermarket I was asking where the "suzume" (sparrow) was, I was actually trying to ask where something else that sounded similar to suzume was, can't remember now, tonikaku, huzukashkatta. He looked confused and later when I left the store and thought about it I realised what I had done. I chuckled about it but also felt a bit mortified.

Thanks that was really good looking forward to the next installment.

Very cool! Love this! Thank you for all your hard work!

Thank you so much Misa sensei!

Thank you for the laughs, Misa! Excellent lesson!

This is amazing, even the snack break where i learned more food words. Thank you!!!

You are a great teacher and communicator. Thanks for the great tips!

Thanks for sharing the story!

みさ先生が大好きです whenever you upload i get so happy 😄 you're my favorite channel to learn Japanese from

Thank you for one more video!

Thank you Misa-sensei! I’d love more videos like this!! またね！

Loved this video. Good practice and funny at the same time. More listening practice please

she puts captions in all 3 forms in a simple video like this 🥺🥺 THATS R SESE!!!!!👌 MISA SENSE!!!!!!🤩

I got lost in Shinjuku Station too. lol. But there was a Japanese couple help and guide me. They are so approachable and helpful. I'm so thankful.

Hehe, very cute story! And very relatable as well! I will never forget my first time at Shinjuku station either! 🙈 I had a similar situation once. It was in a book store, and actually I wasn't talking to people much those days, and when I asked a staff-san for help, it was as if I had forgotten how to speak. *lol* When my words didn't want to come out, I pretended to cough, really hard. And then left the shop - without the book I wanted. 😂

Your videos have helped me so much in learning Japanese! これ動画スタイルのは最高だ❕

Oww wowww.. what a detail and perfect lesson served in an under 17 minute video.. Soo Gooodddd.. 動画ありがとうございます✌️🙂

I lost it at the part where she said “I started speaking English back” 😂😂😂 私も方向音痴！

You gave me a few laughs (and insights) on my birthday - arigatougozaimasu!

Thank you so much for this lovely story :)

Thank you so much for the lesson!

muah to you too. thanks for sharing. this is amazing learning material too.

can I just say I love your hairstyles! it stands out in every video how nice it is but I absolutely adore this color

Nice story Misa, thanks for sharing and for the vocabulary. While I've always been amazed by how huge Shinjuku sta. is, I don't find it the most difficult to navigate through. You have 3 main exits (East, West, South) and directions are pretty clear with landmarks that help for orientation (Tocho, Kabukicho, etc). Tokyo sta. is on another lever I think, with so many transfers. Osaka/Umeda is such a maze too. The hardest in my experience is Namba (Osaka), with confusing exits numbers between the station itself and the underground mall. I've always suspected the designers to have made this on purpose to force the commuters going through the shopping area :)

Nice story and lesso . Thank you :)

Great as always thanks for this it was really funny😆.

Thank you ma for this I love you and your channel

I remember when I first visited Akihabara I tried to use the big red SEGA building as an orientation, not knowing there were three of them very close to each other. I got lost so hard especially when I went straight from the first SEGA building and after one turn I ended up at the second one, I was never so confused in my life, I thought somebody would play tricks on my mind. I felt so dumb after finding out there were multiple buildings 😂

I really like how you highlight the stress syllables. For me it's really the hardest part, Your english is very good !

I appreciate the listening practice Misa. You're the best. :)

Funny story! Enjoyed listening and learning some new vocab-- including 焦る-- which sounds conveniently like 汗

I got all panicky after the first part as it was quite difficult to me🥺 But the explanation and the ending were so encouraging. I'm very grateful to you. I'll try again and maybe little by little it'll find some place in my head.

Don’t be embarrassed, it’s a wonderful funny story ☺️💗

Thank you!!

I loved this episode.

Misa, you're sweet. And the incident was funny. I laughed a lot because I have an absolutely impossible sense of direction, so I can easily feel what it feels like to be lost. Then top with even more confusion with languages ​​when both parties just want to be helpful. Thank you for the video. All the best for you Misa. ❤️

I liked this video very much!

こんにちは！　インドからみています、ミサさんのビデオは大好きです！　頑張れ!!

Thanks for this! I always struggle with listening, and you're such a big help!

Wow the timing of watching this, I just learned the word 方向音痴 yesterday! Also, I have a suggestion for the next one. It would be really nice if you could put both the English and the Japanese subtitles into youtube closed captions instead of burning them into the video. I don't know, maybe it's more difficult or something, in which case absolutely no problem at all! It would just make it easier to not see the English subs, and if the Japanese subs were there too I would be able to use yomichan to quickly look up words and add them to Anki. For now though, I found an object which I can put at the back of my keyboard to cover the English subtitles without covering the Japanese subtitles, so it's totally fine if you don't do this. It would just make it even better!

ありがとうございます😊

Thank you 🙏

I always look forward to listening practice with you

Misa Sensei, I love you so much. You have taught me as much as I know thus far. I hope to learn more from you as well. I hope you heal well and the snacks are very much enjoyable

Listening to your embarrassing story totally reminds myself about how I was easily able to communicate with the Indonesian education assistants which had come from overseas to help so many students successfully pass within the senior LOTE classes from high school with how numerous of my family holidays as a child had already adjusted my ears to hearing the basic-Indonesian language mixed with parts from traditional Javanese and that totally impressed all of the surrounding females as there were only like a couple of males present from each year so yeah thanks for reminding myself 😎

Thank you as always for this video. I'm good at directions, so... I've nothing to say 😅

Thanks

I had a similar kinda situation at work recently where I had to speak Spanish to someone and legit could barely remember the most simple words 😂 I took Spanish for five years in school, but I haven’t used it much since then and I’ve been studying Japanese for a year and a half now, so literally every word I tried to think of in Spanish I could only think of in Japanese 😭😂 and even though Spanish sentence structure is closer to English’s, I could only think of japanese. I’ve probably known the word “gracias” my whole life but I had to look it up because all I could think of was “arigatou”

Thank you this is so perfect for people like me. I learn by context and I learnt so much, especially when you speak a little slowly. Somehow my brain just connects the japanese words to the english one and I can really study the grammar and prepositions on the spot. The same thing happened to me after I came back from abroad to Tamil Nadu. I saw this policeman and I thought he was a Hindi speaker so I started speaking to him in Hindi. He thought I was a Hindi tourist and he switched to English because he didn't know Hindi. I realized I made a mistake, but I pretended to be a Hindi tourist and spoke to him in English after that instead of switching to my native language Tamil.

I think everyone gets lost in Shinjuku Station in the beginning. Shibuya and Ikebukuro Stations are difficult too. Even with station maps, it is difficult to find the exit or train platform you want because they are all labyrinths. Those train stations are actually amazing designs to find all the available space to make exits in all different places avoiding all of the underground structures.

I have the 'opposite' experience. I'm from Indonesia. When I visited Japan in 2019, some Japanese mistook me for Japanese or at least they did not recognise/realise that I was a tourist that did not speak Japanese. They would start talking to me in Japanese like this one lady who sat next to me in a bus in Kyoto. I replied to her, "Wakarimasen" but she kept going talking to me in Japanese. I did not understand what she said but I think she was "reformulating" her sentences. She finally stopped when I told her in English, "I'm sorry but I don't speak Japanese." It's so sad though that I could not speak Japanese though I've already been familiar with and loving it since childhood. Now that I'm self-studying the language, I hope someday when I return to Japan, I would already be able to communicate with the Japanese in Japanese. Japan is such an amazing country (at least in my view as a tourist) I cannot wait to come back when the pandemic gets better. Hopefully.

a good video for tonight 😘😘

I have pretty good sense of direction and in a foreign city I really like to just walk the streets and kind of fill out the internal map, or it also feels like when in realtime strategy games you're clearing "fog of war" in the overhead map to find resources. then when thinking of a place to go I can see specific streets, corners and landmarks in my head, but it is much harder to do in a city that has a lot of similar tall buildings, and in some spaces without windows or good landmarks like ikea and some airports can feel really confusing and maze-like

Great video as always. Is there a way to send you local candy to try for your channel. A way to thank you for all lessons and help true the years.

Sutorii wa omoshiroi. Thank you again for sharing and teaching us! ^_^

Misa-san, foreigners who speak Japanese very well also have to switch to broken English sometimes because Japanese staff are trying to be polite and accommodating :) It's always awkward but I feel happy they want to help in my native language, even though Japanese would actually be easier. I totally understand not wanting to embarrass someone who is trying their best to help. :D Two Japanese speaking in English is kind of funny though :D

The beautiful Misa💖💖💖

わかりやすい

NIce channel, good for japanese learners

Similar things happen to me (German) all the time… I work at a very international workplace (in Germany) so now and then Germans speak to me in English (usually I can tell they’re Germans by their accent 😂), but if I just want the interaction to be over with quickly, sometimes I just reply in English instead of starting the whole „are you German by any chance? I’m also German so we can speak German“ it’s always sooo awkwardddd

Hey Misa! Great lesson and kinda funny story. Is there any chance of getting the transcript for these kinds of lessons? I am a beginner learner and still struggle with fast reading a lot.

Hi Misa! Would you please make a video about visiting an onsen?

ありがとうございます先生。 お疲れ様です。

You’re so funny. Thank you.

I don't remember having trouble when I visited Shinjuku Station. It was very big but I was told in advance what exit to use. But Yokohama Station was a nightmare at first. Luckily I stayed there for a couple of weeks so I got used to it.

Misa saaaan 😍

Great , don't worry about lack of direction , I forget where car is parked often ,once it took me 3 days to find it and I often get lost ,I started thinking of getting lost as exploring places unknown to me .

1:26 ZA WARUDO!!

Skip to 15:52 for a nice 'when'

Your hair looks good ! Reminds me of rize in Tokyo ghoul 😻

Finally a word to accurately describe myself!! 方向音痴!!! that's me! I had seen 音痴 as tone deaf... It's so cool that I'm a "direction tone deaf" person And then you went on to describe me in more detail... Holy sh*t

I’ve been lost in Shinjuku Station many times. So freaking confusing!

ahh I miss shinjuku so much.

この話はとても面白くて笑えました！私もミサさんと同じく迷子属性があって目的地に着くまでどんだけ近くても道に迷う可能性が高いです。😅

Tokyo station.. labyrinth, yes! Never able to find my way from the nearby buildings. Will always go to surface and walk into station. But google map is pretty good once you get your directions. Thank god for google map n docomo!

行き方の間違いで面白いい場所を見つけられます。

I laughed my ass off at the lost Misa chronicles, because you made it into a funny tale, but I felt your struggle as I too am houkouonchi, I use to say I get lost on my way from my bedroom to the bathroom in the morning. And being a (tough mild) stutterer I am terrified at the idea of speaking to people to ask for directions, let alone in another language. Nonetheless I survived my Japan trip alone back in 2019, and even asked for food and directions some times (my japanese was awful, well, more awful than today, because I hadn't discovered your patreon yet, and I got hit with the nihongo jouzu hammer more than once T_T well I survived so it's ok), but Google Maps was my saviour. In Japan it even tells you which platform your train is going to arrive at, and because the trains are always on time I just needed to be on the right platform at the right time and I was sure to be on my way. I got lost only once because I caught a tokkyuu instead of a futsuu trying to save time (and almost got to Haneda airport), but I recovered somehow. Gmaps even tells you how crowded you can expect the train to be in the timeframe you are planning to get it, it's amazing and made my solitary trip possible. As always, thanks for your videos, this one was amazing (as always) because you spoke pretty clearly but in a natural way, so the listening practice was intense, but I'm proud to say I got the gist of most of it ad had to pause for some details and unknown words only a few times. Arigatou gozaimasu ٩(＾◡＾)۶

How can I find more of this exact sort of thing? With japanese, english, and romaji subtitles along with spoken words? This precise sort of video is actually quite hard to come by!