I read a comment from someone while searching the forums about a week ago (can't find the darn thread anymore now) where someone was saying that it's been their experience that the more Japanese someone understood, the less they enjoyed Japan when they finally went, and vice versa. I've been thinking about that more and more since I read it. Do you guys agree?

The only possible reason I can see for that is that it would lessen the mystique? Maybe make it seem like less of an adventure in a strange unfamiliar country?

For me it wasn't so much less enjoyment, but enjoyment of a different kind.

When I first hit the ground with my 5 months of Japanese community college education and half of RTK1, everything was magical and fantastic. What are these crazy flashing signs and lights? Why is everyone so silly? What the heck are they saying in this goofy looking ad? Whenever I got in a weird situation, yo, it's okay! I'm an American!

My last trip this Christmas season was of a different kind. All the signs had names. Hey look, there's a grocery, there's a pharmacy. My head hurts, better get the acetaminophen... well, the aspirin is cheaper, good thing I can read everything. Because I'm Asian, people just go at me 100% in Japanese, and because I can roughly understand it, I try to oblige and I feel bad when I fail because I feel like it's something I should know how to do. My shyness and my fear of doing something rude increased 100-fold. Nothing really felt fantastic anymore and it felt like an alternate dose of reality instead of a mystical place.

On the other hand, I could really enjoy just basic things that I took for granted, like reading the menus at restaurants or having simple conversations with online friends that were actually somewhat deep. Once I got over my lack of confidence I could ask people (albeit with great difficulty) on how to do something that I would've considered impossible beforehand.

It's kinda like... growing up, I guess...

It's natural actually. I remember when I started learning Japanese, it was really like I entered a new world. I was amazed by kanji, by Japanese culture,customs,shows,media,speaking and the language as a whole. Now that I can understand,read kanji and so forth, it doesn't feel amazing anymore. It just feels like something I know/can do. I agree with kainzero, it's just like growing up.

Pros to knowing Japanese in Japan:

Life is easier.

You can have great conversations with Japanese people and foreigners who can speak Japanese but not your native language.

Cons for knowing Japanese in Japan:

You realize just how boring other people's conversations are as in any country.

If you're clearly a foreigner, you have to play the "Does this gaijin understand Japanese?" game with new Japanese people you meet.

For me, I enjoyed Japan more the more Japanese I learned. I went to Japan after one year of college-level Japanese class and stayed for about three years. The more I learned, the more I could actually have conversations with people and make friends, the more independently I could get around and the more enjoyable my life became.

theasianpleaser Wrote:If you're clearly a foreigner, you have to play the "Does this gaijin understand Japanese?" game with new Japanese people you meet.

This is a pro in my book. I like walking into a store in the middle of nowhere and getting the "deer in the headlights" look as they realize "Oh shit....I don't know English WHAT AM I--" "こんにちは！ええとですね、blahblahblahありませんか？”Phew~!"

I enjoy Japan more knowing Japanese. There were enough people before me posting on the internet about the problems of Japan that my view on Japan had already been brought back to reality before I even set foot on a plane. If you are a people person then Japanese really lets you get to know people better and get more out your experiences. If you aren't a people person...then I'm not sure what to tell you.

vix86 Wrote:

theasianpleaser Wrote:If you're clearly a foreigner, you have to play the "Does this gaijin understand Japanese?" game with new Japanese people you meet.

This is a pro in my book. I like walking into a store in the middle of nowhere and getting the "deer in the headlights" look as they realize "Oh shit....I don't know English WHAT AM I--" "こんにちは！ええとですね、blahblahblahありませんか？”Phew~!"

I enjoy Japan more knowing Japanese. There were enough people before me posting on the internet about the problems of Japan that my view on Japan had already been brought back to reality before I even set foot on a plane. If you are a people person then Japanese really lets you get to know people better and get more out your experiences. If you aren't a people person...then I'm not sure what to tell you.

Define "people person". Just curious. Everyones definition of that is different. I would like to here yours.

I think your saying people who can socialize and get out there right? I remember back in highschool I was super shy. People couldn't hear what I was saying and I mumbled when I talked. It was only after taking co-op in highschool that I changed so much. Although when I went to college, things changed for the better but I have tendency to talk a lot if one got me started which is pretty much the opposite of what I was in highschool.

I used to be big into martial arts and loved what I thought to be bushido ... I loved going around Liverpool fighting, getting my nose broken, having glasses broken on my head, the trips to the hospital, the threats of being arrested, the door firms threatening me with rape, the training in blood soaked clothes, the machetes, getting grassed up to a top man in the city, the turning up to uni covered in blood and scars, the punching brick walls, kicking lamp posts, the riding in police cars the getting banned from bars and the rationalizing it all with a type of daft fake politeness and "morality" enshrined in Japanese warrior culture, bowing and muttering Musashi quotes to myself whilst being exceedingly polite to doormen who had threatened to kill me.

The more I studied Japanese the more I moved away from the Japanese martial arts world - People always ask me if I'm into martial arts and I always reply that my love of the Japanese language and kanji in particular has caused me to give a lot less head space to the Japanese warrior tradition.

I have heard a lot of people declare that the more interested in the language you get the less interested in the culture you become and I think there is a lot of truth in this. My new hobby is chess and I think it is due to my dedication to the Japanese language that Japan orientated hobbies don't take up more of my time.

I did really enjoy Japan when I went though.

I made the original comment, I believe.

I think part of it is this: the more you understand Japanese the more similar your experiences will be to those in your home country. The less of the language you know the more confused you are; the more confused you are the more exciting your life is.

If you don't know any Japanese when you come to Japan you will have a lot of amazing experiences that you won't really understand because of the language barrier. It makes everything all the more exciting, and as events unfold you won't be able to guess what will happen next.

As you get better at Japanese you'll be better at knowing what is going on and you won't be so in anticipation of what happens next. Also, as you know more Japanese you get more exposure to Japanese culture, so you'll get better at predicting how people will act.

But, actually, the original comment I made was too simplistic. It's not that as Japanese language ability increases your enjoyment increases

(I.e., the graph doesn't looke like this
| \
Enjoyment | \
| \
| \
| \
|_________________
Japanese Ability
)

Rather, as your Japanese level increases from zero it allows you to have more varied experiences in Japan, so your enjoyment of Japan actually goes up or stays the same. But then as you become closer and closer to actual fluency the enjoyment level starts to go down again because life is too easy and less interesting.

Tzadeck, you're right, it was you, I just found it in the "Has Japan Let You Down" thread.

Well, this is reassuring. My first trip to Japan is going to be in Sept/Oct. By that time I'll probably have finished RTK, Pimsleur, Japanese the Manga Way, and a couple months of sentences and input.

Not nearly enough to dampen my fun, I hope

Bushido = constant bar fights? Whu?

Jarvik7 Wrote:Bushido = constant bar fights? Whu?

Glad i wasn't the only one who kept waiting for the "just kidding".

Jarvik7 Wrote:Bushido = constant bar fights? Whu?

Just goes to show how much people can miss the point. The fundamentalist Christian movement in America is to Christ's message what constant bar fights is to Bushido.

Not that I particularly like either Christ's message (sometimes good sometimes not) or Bushido (weird obsession with the fuzzy concept of an honorable death).

zigmonty Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Bushido = constant bar fights? Whu?

Glad i wasn't the only one who kept waiting for the "just kidding".

was he just kidding?

I can't tell.

No, I'm not kidding I was very much involved in violence in my younger years and childishly used the whole martial arts ethic to justify my childish behavior that could very easily have had me killed or raped (rape is a surprisingly common punishment in the underworld). I used to swallow (what I thought to be) the martial arts ethic hook line and sinker, I would research Japanese martial arts all day. I knew all the names but totally misunderstood the philosophy behind bushido. Japanese culture took up a lot of my head space.

The death of a close friend matured me no end.

My personal hypothesis is that the more you study the language the more it kills your interest in the culture and the more you need another interest. I have seen this happen to a great many of my peers, though none of them were involved in street fighting.

Well yeah being able to read all the mysterious signs does make it seem like just another place on this earth, which it of course is. An a side note, am I the only one who gets the feeling Honyakujoshua is a pathological liar.

The ones realizing that they aren't enjoying Japan are the ones who weren't truly into it in the first place.

Another thought on the topic...After leaving Japan I backpacked around Asia for a few months before coming home. It was an amazing trip, but after having learned to communicate in Japanese and having the experience of living there and understanding what people were saying, I felt like my experience of the other countries was definitely more superficial, and I would have enjoyed them even more if I could have communicated more with people.

@ryuudou wouldn't agree with this at all... I really believe the more you learn the language the more your interest falls...

A somewhat tangential post but here it comes anyway.

The more you understand culture and language of that other part of the world the more you start appreciating your own backyard. In a certain way, by giving yourself a wider perspective, you can more objectively balance those bad and good things you grew up with.

If I'm less interested in living in Japan than I was when I was 19, it's not because I know more Japanese; it's because I'm a vegetarian now, and because I'm more aware of the ways in which sexism can limit one's career in Japan, and because it's hard to work with American publishers when you're living that far overseas, and because I can live somewhere with a Japanese bookstore without having to live a dozen time zones away from my family.

And just because I've decided I'm happier not living in Japan, that doesn't mean that the time I spend reading books and watching TV in Japanese is any less valuable. I mean, unless it's bad TV.

Tzadeck Wrote:I made the original comment, I believe.

I think part of it is this: the more you understand Japanese the more similar your experiences will be to those in your home country. The less of the language you know the more confused you are; the more confused you are the more exciting your life is.

Rather, as your Japanese level increases from zero it allows you to have more varied experiences in Japan, so your enjoyment of Japan actually goes up or stays the same. But then as you become closer and closer to actual fluency the enjoyment level starts to go down again because life is too easy and less interesting.

I totally agree. I remember when I first came to Japan I was excited about 六本木・渋谷・秋葉原. I remember taking photo of vending machines and electric toilets because they were so unusual to me. But now, the more I understand Japanese the more I got interested in normal things as literature, laughter show, etc... The biggest advantage of speaking a decent Japanese is that I can enjoy adult conversation with my father in law. However, the big(?) disadvantage of speaking Japanese is that I finally see Japan as just another country (as it was supposed to be from the beginning, though) as I am finally aware of their politics, television programs, rigid/hierarchical social structures/mentalities, amount of sexual-related crime, condensed living design, etc..
However,　most of those things are the ones I dislike of my own country so I think that`s not a great deal.

Despite being stone mad I am sickened by the sexism that Japanese males show to females. If I was a woman I wouldn't want to live in Japan.

ta12121 Wrote:Define "people person". Just curious. Everyones definition of that is different. I would like to here yours.

I think your saying people who can socialize and get out there right? I remember back in highschool I was super shy. People couldn't hear what I was saying and I mumbled when I talked. It was only after taking co-op in highschool that I changed so much. Although when I went to college, things changed for the better but I have tendency to talk a lot if one got me started which is pretty much the opposite of what I was in highschool.

Bit delayed in response.

What I mean by 'people person' is you have an interest in other people and kind of want to get to know them better. Maybe you just like talking to people, or maybe you are interested in the lives of others. Knowing more Japanese clearly lets you do this. If you weren't a people person though, you'd probably only benefit in being able to read more stuff and consume more media. Its probably a big question of what you value more, but even me, not being a major person and having studied Japanese to be able to consume more Japanese content, still thinks the 'talking to people' aspect still gains tons more from more Japanese skill.

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:Despite being stone mad I am sickened by the sexism that Japanese males show to females. If I was a woman I wouldn't want to live in Japan.

I think japan is the only country in the world that has parts of train dedicated to only females. Japan is hardly a sexist country. It is turning into another feminist country. I know this because when I lived in Japan I had some Japanese friends who were in their 50s and and old gaijin friend who had lived in Japan 40 plus years and they knew that the degradition of japanese women and the subsequent femenist movement was well and alive and killing the soul of the relationship between a man and a woman in japan.
Japan is no longer a gender equal society like it once was, it is now a power is tilted in the womans favor society. This is mostly the USAs fault for importing the liberal feminist movement to japan in the 80s and 90s.

As for knowing more japanese means you dont like japan as much, i think not. Although I went to japan and didnt feel some kind of *mystique* to it, I was able to compare my experiences to the ones I have living in the USA and I can definately tell Japan is way better, as unfortunate as the USA is ruining as it may be