Ok, so I've been rewatching the anime 'Welcome to the NHK, but this time without subtitles.

One thing I've just noticed is that Satou refers to his neighbour/friend as just "Yamazaki" with no suffix, where as Yamazaki always uses "Satou-san". Same situation in 'Deathnote', where Yagami Light's detective Father always refers to L as just "Ryuzaki".

I was under the impress that you could only drop the suffix for family members, romantic partners and maybe extremely close friends, so what's going on here; is it an anime thing??

It's hard to say without seeing the full context; politeness levels and usages in anime are often done to create characterization more than anything else (or to conform to a stereotype of a character). Light's father is much older than L, so there's no reason why he needs to show respect to L by putting -san after his name. For the first example I can't say without watching the anime.

Age, social status and relationship all play a role. Also, some people are just more polite than others.

aphasiac Wrote:I was under the impress that you could only drop the suffix for family members, romantic partners and maybe extremely close friends...

In my experience, this typical textbook explanation has fallen short. It could be a trend with younger generations, the fact that I'm not Japanese, or just the way I go about introductions, but I, more often than not, end up on 呼び捨て terms almost straight away. Certainly, I'd say, "extremely close" seems to be a bit of an overstatement.

There seems to be similar fear-mongering with the word 俺, too. You don't need to be a member of the yakuza to use it, and if you're a young guy in a casual situation with other young guys and girls, 僕 is more likely to come across as awkward. 私 is practically a joke. It took me a long time to feel natural using 俺 after learning what the textbooks tell you.

Javizy Wrote:There seems to be similar fear-mongering with the word 俺, too. You don't need to be a member of the yakuza to use it, and if you're a young guy in a casual situation with other young guys and girls, 僕 is more likely to come across as awkward. 私 is practically a joke. It took me a long time to feel natural using 俺 after learning what the textbooks tell you.

The 俺・僕・私 choice is tough even for native speaker males; I've seen Japanese blogs, for instance, talking about this. I've asked a lot of native speakers about 俺 vs. 僕 and I've never been able to get a consistent answer. I almost always use 僕 in preference to 俺, but I certainly don't feel that choice is perfect. I don't think that 僕 is "awkward" any more so than 俺 is as a blanket statement -- it depends on who you're with as well.

As for what to call friends, I find that it often has to do with rhythm, personal preference, and what they're used to more than anything else. I have friends that I call last name+さん, not because I feel less close to them than other people but just because that's what all their other friends call them too.

yudantaiteki Wrote:For the first example I can't say without watching the anime.

Satou and Yamazaki aren't really close friends; they just know each other from high-school, and the coincidently find out they are neighbours. However, I can tell you Yamazaki is an otaku and speaks extremely politely; he uses the -masu form for all verbs, and he fully pronounces the う　at the end of です (sounds strange). Also Satou is 4 years older and is a hikikomori so extremely socially withdrawn; maybe that's why he speaks like Yamazaki is his best buddy, they're probably using it for effect..

Anyway thanks for clarifying, should have known the rules aren't set in stone..