I’m halfway through my annual Japan trip, and I’m excited to reflect on some of my language practice!
Table of Contents
Broad Impressions
At the risk of repeating myself a lot on this site, I’m in Japan again. At the time of writing, I’m sitting in a classroom at the University of Tsukuba, where my students are collaborating with their UT peers to put together presentations for this afternoon. Given that they’ll be working independently for the next several hours, I figured I’d start to reflect a bit on my Japanese while it’s still fresh.
To start, I just want to reflect broadly on my impressions of the Japanese language at this point. It’s so, so much easier to understand this time around. I’m really happy I’m taking the courses at OSU, and I’m even more motivated to keep practicing over the next year.
One thing that is much easier for me now is reading. I don’t know how many kanji I know, but I’m Level 3 on Wanikani. So, I have some of the basics. In addition, hiragana and katakana are practically natural for me now, and I can even write them if needed. With that said, there are a lot of kanji that I don’t understand. The only plus side is that I feel like I can infer some of their meaning based on the radicals, but I know that’s probably not true.
By far, the toughest skill is speaking. Even though the course I’m taking is focused on speaking, I still find it hard to listen and respond in Japanese. I think part of that is that I’m so focused on my response that I can’t even hear what someone is saying. It’s significantly easier to eavesdrop than play an active role in a conversation. As a result, I want to spend the bulk of this article talking about some of the speaking interactions I’ve had with locals.
Ordering Breakfast
Speaking with people in Japan is always a little messy. When people see me, they tend to either immediately speak to me in English, or they begin a game of charades. Often, when I respond in Japanese, they often act confused (my bad), continue in English, or switch to rapid-fire Japanese. Let me illustrate.
To start, I want to talk about my hotel breakfast experience. Since arriving in Tsukuba, I’ve had almost a perfect canvas for practicing my interactions at breakfast. Each morning, I’m presented with a choice: a tray of food (i.e., a sort of bento-style breakfast) or an empty tray. As the week has gone on, I’ve refined my interaction from pointing and saying “thank you” (ありがとう) to pointing, saying これ, and saying “please” (お願いします).
The next barrier at breakfast is ordering food. This interaction involves pointing at a card, saying how many I would like, and telling the staff where I’m sitting. Early on, I had to decode this whole experience because I didn’t know how this would work. As a result, I was able to pick out a few phrases from the staff to indicate what they were asking.
As an example, they often would hold up a number, which I was able to infer was asking me how many. Then, one time they asked me something that had the words “seat” (せき) and “where” (どこ), which I assumed was asking me where I was sitting. Now, when I order food, I say something like フレンチトーストお願いします. Then, they’ll ask how many, and I will say 一つ. Then, they’ll ask where I’m sitting, and I’ll say something like 七番.
I’ll be honest. A lot of my interactions have been based on watching others. I’ve been listening to how other folks order their food to see if I can mirror it. That’s why I even say ごちそうさまでした to the staff when I leave. It’s all based on trying to mirror what others are doing in the space. Each day, I go in and learn a new way to address the staff, and each day I try something new.
The Many Failures
While breakfast has been going well, I can’t say the same for my other interactions. For example, we took our students to a 弓道 practice (i.e., Japanese archery). I’m always curious about these students’ lives, but they don’t speak the best English. When I approached a small group of them, I asked if they were going to practice shortly. They didn’t really understand my question, and they even said “simpler English please.” In response, I tried to ask my question in Japanese, something along the lines of 今練習しますか？There was a delay before I heard “yes.” Then, they proceeded to tell me that they practice from 5-8 PM in English.
There are dozens of these kinds of interactions in the day-to-day. Yesterday, I went to lunch in a mall food court, and I ordered by pointing to a menu and saying これお願いします. This worked to get me a nice bowl of gyudon, but when I went to pick it up, they asked me a weird question. It took another worker yelling “spoon” across the counter before I realized what they were asking.
In fact, these kinds of things happen all the time. When you go to stores, you’ll be asked if you want a bag. Personally, I listen for the word “fukuro” before saying お願いします. Likewise, at convenience stores, you might be asked if you want to heat up your food.
Often, the pressure of handling these language interactions makes me hesitant to take them on. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t so easy to opt out of social interaction in Japan. Instead of going to a restaurant online, it’s so easy for me to use the self-checkout at a Kasumi, which I’ve taken advantage of more than once since I’ve been here.
That said, I feel a lot better about my Japanese. It’s just tiring to constantly be learning.
New Phrases, Fun Puns
Speaking of learning, I’ve downloaded a few new phrases to my brain. In my course, I learned the phrase いらっしゃる, which I learned to be the polite way to say “go”, “come”, and “be.” It was taught to us as a way to say something like “thank you for coming” (いらっしてくださってありがとうございます).
Having heard that word several times, I was quite confused when I heard the phrase いらっしゃいませ, which apparently means “welcome.” Previously, I learned that ようこそ was the phrase for “welcome,” so I assume いらっしゃいませ is the polite form. Though, a bit of googling seems to imply that they differ in scope: ようこそ welcomes you to the country while いらっしゃいませ welcomes you to an establishment.
Also, now that I’m in the deep end of Japanese, I’ve learned a lot of really funny puns. For instance, one evening our colleagues took us to an izakaya. On the menu, there was horse sushimi. If you know the word for horse in Japanese, it’s “uma” (うま). The word for tasty is “umai” (うまい), so you can sort of jokingly shout “uma!” while eating it to great effect.
Anyway, I think that’s enough recounting of experiences for one day. I will probably have a larger reflection when I get home, so look out for that. In the meantime, if you like these language articles, you might be interested in some of the following:
- You Will Never Learn a Language With Duolingo
- What It Feels Like to Be a Toddler Again: Learning a Language
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