I assumed that this was made up for comic effect. I have never gotten this myself – just straight answers.

Fresh in Kyoto, I asked for instructions in quite bad japanese. A young japanese guy answered:”go streitto desu then turn lefto desu”.

At the time i actually might not have understood the answer in japanese, so i appreciated the joke in many ways.

I have been learning the language for a relatively short time (maybe 10 months, maybe not even that) before I got sent to an Osakan university for a year. There seemed to be a lot of pressure put on me (and my foreign coursemates) to actually use Kansai-ben, which didn’t seem to be a problem for most of them, as it was something different than what we were used to – therefore interesting. Unfortunately, I kept on finding it difficult and unnatural. Knowing and understanding was one thing, but using it and having to be constantly self-conscious of ones words (I mean more than usual, it is a foreign language ater all…) was uncomfortable and seemed a bit like cheating. And lead to me being irritated with friends overusing the Kansai-ben. Or more with the pride with which they used it.

I could understand it if it waere a process. If we were living there for a while and after some time of breathing the dialect in we would start using it ourselves. A sort of language osmosis. But spending evenings to learn the dialect and use it, just for the kicks, for the praise and admiration received from Japanese friends felt, to quote some of the people here, weiner-ish. Like tring too hard to be someone else than you actually are. I sometimes felt I shouldn’t be thinking that way, because if that’s what makes them happy, then to each their own. But that’s easier said than done.

I’m far from finding my own identity in the Japanese language but, when I do, I want it to feel comfortable and as much as my third skin as possible (second’s already taken).

Any Japanese-[American/Canadian/Brit/Australian] expats care to comment on perception of accent and grammar? My Japanese is horrid and I was only there for a year, but I noticed some strange looks when my nisei/sansei friends were speaking Japanese.

The other day I was having dinner with a Japanese friend (late 30s), discussing the cost of living after retirement. I was searching for a word and finally found it — older people tend to have ‘tsutsumashii’ lifestyles. Well, my friend commented on my language in a most curious way. The word was felt to be perfectly good Japanese, but perhaps not something that someone might use nowadays. I’ve had similar comments before about choice of expression. (I think I remember that “hakigogochi ga ii” was one of them).

I get the feeling that the Japanese I learnt in Japan was a kind of “good old Japanese” that has partly gone out of fashion as the language changes.

Needless to say, modern vogue words are even more mystifying. Japan is wonderful for coming up with a new crop of vogue words every year, and it’s the vogue words that gaijin pick up that help identify when they were actually in Japan.

Clearly there is no “right answer” to this question, and thankfully, everyone gets to make their own choices and build their own language identities. If speaking in a mix of kanbun and Miyazaki-ben is impressing the table next to you at Café Renoir, who am I to butt in?

As we have seen, writing about these “ex-pat issues” is a great way to win lots of comments, since everyone almost necessarily has an opinion. But to be fair to Japan, I don’t think we will be constantly overshadowing the blog with a constant stream of “what about us foreigners!” posts. We are annoyingly Western enough in our perspectives and choice of topics.

http://pseudo-asian.livejournal.com/

Ah, that is crazy, and in that context I can understand your reaction. Thanks for the explanation.