Just use words in line with your experience of how people use them. When you're relying on other people's opinion on these things it means you lack experience and are more likely to say odd sounding things. If you're comfortable using slang and have heard a lot of it go for it. Just be aware of polite language too for talking to strangers etc.

I would suggest observing how the natives interact with each other rather than how they speak to you, however.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

Javizy Wrote:There's no situation where you'd use motherf**ker in a back-and-forth in place of 'you',

PS. Watch the first 30 seconds of this, and you'll see my frame of reference for this word, and why I'd compare it to お前. Your usuage may differ.

.be

That's actually the same thing I had in mind. Me and my friends thought that was awesome when we were in school, along with some of Samuel L. Jackson's lines in Pulp Fiction. It was just a joke for us though, rather than something we'd maintain throughout a conversation.

For what it's worth, I only use お前 in ツッコミ with my girlfriend. I haven't been in Japan very long, so I don't know any guys I could get away with using it with. I've overheard it in various conversations though - between salary men, brother and sister, and even in an office. At least a few of those people were from Kansai though.

Tori-kun Wrote:@drdunlap: Interesting. I have a friend from Kansai and we use お前 all the time to refer to "you". When I used お前 in the same sense to someone I was equally 親しい (he was from Tokyo, though), he was really offended and went totally berserk. We haven't been talking ever since that and because of that lesson I really got careful with this word.

That reminds me of a time on Shared Talk when I used こんちは～ as a greeting to an おばさん as a kind of joke. I associated it with Doraemon manga, but she got in a strop about it and left the conversation. Appropriacy is certainly important, but so is not being ridiculously stuck-up and maybe giving advice to people who don't know better. It could've just been a spelling mistake for all she knew!

politeness in conversation is a real pain in Japan judging from what I have read from this.. Thanks for the sort of a warning.. By the way, how about watashi and atashi? what seems to be the difference between the two, except for the spelling of course.. I have had a chat with a japanese in Facebook, and she addresses herself as atashi.. hmmm...