They said what?

Japan can be strange country and sometimes Japanese people say strange things. It's interesting how everyone thinks that Americans are arrogant and overtly patriotic, but judging by the things I hear here, it's clear that some people haven't spoken to enough Japanese people.

The guy that says "do you understand?" all the time, he's kind of stopped with it, but I still give him a look when he does it, has said plenty of things that make me go "what?!" or "why the hell is that important?" and it's always something that honors Japan in some way. I can't tell you why they say things, or why they believe ridiculous things but some Japanese people do. For example, I told him that I want to go to Hokkaido for the snow festival because I love snow and despite how cold it gets in Miyazaki, it's never cold enough to snow and that's sad. He tells me that I should go to Korea and see the snow there because it's cheaper than going to Hokkaido. Then he says," But...the quality of Korea's snow is a lot less than Japan's snow so you should still try and go to Hokkaido." It's okay, I'll give you a minute to let that digest................


(Pictured: Korea's inferior snow.)

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Japan's snow quality?! Despite the snow coming from the same goddamned sky? I suppose Japan's rain is more awesome than Korea's rain too. The crazy thing about it is that he's not pulling my leg; he truly believes what he's saying....mind boggling.


If you've been in a Japanese office, you know that it's likely that you'll get plenty of gifts from people that went to trips and come back with things to show their remorse for leaving us all alone (ONE part of omiyage). Some people in the office give gifts whether or not they go anywhere. It's still a form of omiyage, but it isn't truly. For the past couple of weeks, I've been given shitloads of Japanese oranges and tangerines. Their oranges don't taste like oranges we're all used to, but it's not bad. We were talking about Japanese tangerines and he was saying that these tangerines are delicious. He said, "There have been studies that show Japanese tangerines are the best in the world." It's okay, I'll give you a minute to let that digest...............
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Japanese tangerines are the best in the world?! My main source of surprise truly wasn't his Japan horn tooting since I hear that pretty much everyday. It was mainly the fact that he said "studies have shown....." like wow, that's great English and I've never heard any other Japanese person say that. His English is usually pretty bad so I'm guessing those tangerines were so important to him that he had to look up how to emphasize that Japanese tangerines blow any other tangerines from any other countries clear out the water. Right.







I create listening sections to tests here. It's everything that I've covered already, there's nothing new on my test papers. It's also quite simple because I'm at an agricultural school. Well, I made it SLIGHTLY harder because I was pleasantly surprised and excited about how they did so well for the first test. Nothing TOO bad though, it was still everything I already covered. I even read a passage with all of the answers in there in the first part, did dialogue with the answers in the second part, and read another passage with the answers therein in the third part. So there's no way these kids CAN'T do well since I didn't even do that for the first test...RIGHT?! Well, imagine my surprise when they tell me Halloween is November 5th, you carve ghosts for Halloween and you're supposed to say "Get Down!" if you're a trick or treater for Halloween (I did laugh about it for while though). It was a tad frustrating and I told the guy I sit next to that it was bit frustrating. You know what he tells me? "Well....I believe that Americans think that they don't have to learn any other languages because English is a universal language. We Japanese (he loves that phrase) HAVE to learn English if we want to go to college and get a very good job, and even if I talk to a Chinese or Korean, we use English to communicate so I think Americans think that they don't have to learn other languages. Don't you think?"......................




Is he out of his damn mind? I asked him ,"Have you ever been to any other countries?" He says,"No, I haven't." I said,"Oh.......well that explains everything doesn't it?" I said it in rapid fire (standard speed for me though) English and of course he didn't understand me. Like why the hell would I agree when I'm SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO HIM and he's met PLENTY of other Americans. I couldn't explain to him that he'd never meet those kinds of Americans because obviously they wouldn't leave America, but to make such a stupid broad statement TO AN AMERICAN is truly mind-boggling, I could only just sit there with wide eyes. The other crazy thing is that he TRULY believes what he's saying and if he said it to other Japanese people they'd agree (well surface agreement- one facet of "tatemae," but who knows if they'd truly believe it). If you don't know what tatemae is and you want to come to Japan, please look it up. Now. Tatemae and honne. Now. Go on...I'll be here.................
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I spoke with this nice Japanese library lady (who according to other librarians, doesn't do anything in terms of working and pulling her own weight) and we were talking about languages. I told her Japanese is very hard but English isn't that bad (of course right?). She explains that English is very hard, but Japanese is the "hardest language ever." I'm like "??????? Really?" She truly believes that Japanese is the hardest language to learn. Let that stew while I continue. Now... she truly does believe that but I think the most frustrating part of that whole thing is that some Japanese people don't even think about other countries but are scholars in whatever thing they think Japan is the best in (fruits, etc). Don't get me wrong though, Japanese is pretty damned hard, but there are other impossible languages that are more impossible than Japanese. I know for a fact that Chinese, Mandarin or Cantonese, as well as Arabic, and one of the many languages in India and are damned difficult to master. It's just strange how I had to remind her that there are more languages in the world than Japanese and English. I think the main strange thing about it is that this was a Japanese lady who has been speaking Japanese for 60+ years and would be willing to bet that Japanese is the "hardest language ever." Right.


I spoke to a friend who was explaining something about Japanese bananas to me. She was speaking with some Japanese ladies and they let her have some special Miyakonojo (where she lives, 45 min by train from me) bananas. Why are they special, you ask? Well, according to something that she read, it said that the special bananas she was eating was actually raised with the soothing sounds of Mozart and were especially made for her town. What the hell? Well, I'm guessing that eating those musical bananas will allow you to put some music into your sad music-less life. Yeah...someone in the government offices REALLY needed to sell some bananas, spun this wonderful story, then watched the money roll in. The sad thing? Everyone there bought it... and the bananas.