Seriously? That sucks dude
We all make mistakes, we all hurt people without wanting to do so. It's a part of life.
It's even easier to make these mistakes when you don't master the culture / language, but I don't think it's something that can't be overcome.
Hey, I've led a Japanese girl on without knowing, resulting in breaking her heart. I've insulted my tea ceremony teacher (without knowing) so much that my friend begged me to apologize to her. And I've got a BUNCH of other mistakes I've made!

However, if quitting / taking a break is something that feels right to you, then who am I to say it's wrong. Good luck with everything!

personally I think that you were dealing with some fairly stuck-up people if they are going to take such offense.

taking offense where it wasn't intended is in general a pretty lame thing to do... but especially when someone is trying very hard to learn your culture/language and making mistakes. there are plenty of japanese people who would be much cooler in that situation and I would encourage you to make friends with them.

moreover, quitting this late in the game is like giving up on a career and going back for a new bachelor's degree at 40... somehow I don't think your situation is that bad. you lost a battle, but not the war. strap on a pair and move forward.

I've had a terrible/loving (depends on what I focus) experience in the past with a japanese person. thanks to that I learned quite a lot about their culture and above all, got even more interested in it. My brain was empty before, now it's not. I'm assimilating their culture because I dealt with them everyday and study japanese language and culture every day.

But sure, I lost motivation gazillions of times.

Last edited by CarolinaCG (2012 July 27, 5:00 am)

the education system, birth defects, the comparative poverty I was brought up in and the fact that people I was studying with had spent years in Japan when I had never been caused me to seriously consider quitting university.

I forced myself though uni through my mum and got exceptional marks for her.

Doing all of this just made me depressed, ill and bitter and my advice to you would be if you do want to quit then do so. I wasted  three years of my life for an "excellent" degree which meant nothing to me and breaking down in tears.

That said my work with Japanese has broadened my experiences but studying Japanese didn't get me there.

Its pretty ridiculous to quit learning a language; especially if you enjoyed it, on the account of other people.

Find better friends. Those people you knew seem to be pretty crap.

The point is simply, that I don't want to follow any "inborn Japanese rules", they expect me to follow. I'm a foreigner, not a Japanese. I just can talk and understand Japanese, but I don't want to be assimilated in their culture. That does not mean I don't want to learn anything about the culture nor that I'm not interested in it (I love Japanese cuisine, some music and moreover Japanese literature, esp. from Murakami -- which is said to be hated by quite a lot of Japanese for it's frank and open tone it's sometimes written in, btw). I just feel like being also tatemae and obeying those hiearchical rules that lead to a "nice" or harmonous atmosphere demand me to change the way I think.

Basically, the whole discussion escalated like this. I wrote an entry on Lang8 and got a correction from a friend that only understands Japanese (I had posted English as a reference to my Japanese text, too, for other correctors).
In a comment I wrote 「英語できないXちゃんという本当のネイティブからの添削をもらったのを嬉しく思うよ～」 and we know each other already for a long time, on top, she wrote in her own 自己紹介 she is only able to handle Japanese （日本語しか操れない）, so I thought thanking for her disability in English and the superb correction I got therefore, is not wrong nor insulting in the slightest.. However, another friend cut in and scolded me off pretty badly also in front of my other friends who are comparably younger and tried to defend me (which was really awkward. I felt like a baby who needed to be protected and I could not express myself as I wanted to in Japanese to bring my point across). I even excused. I wrote, it was not my intention to insult someone and I was asking for 他の言い方 in order to learn from my mistake...

In previous discussions I also criticised a few of my friends concerning their
a) agreement on 死刑制度 being necessary and good
b) "being proud of being Japanese" statements being patriotistic
c) Japanese being dumbheaded in terms of obeying social strict hiearchical systems and stagnated value system

Long story short, ultimately a)-c) and the recent discussion lead towards one of my best friends so far telling me I was mentally disordered （精神は病む　とか　健康な状態じゃない）.

I'm pretty confused:s

I don't know man... I sure wouldn't give up studying Japanese if you have invested this much into it so far. Especially, if it's just because you aren't getting along with certain people. I've been through this crap before with my Japanese teachers etc. I just endured it, got sick of the language for a little while, then came back by doing something that I originally wanted to do with the language: playing video-games in Japanese. By playing games online, I've been introduced to the gamer culture in Japan, and I'm having the best time I've ever had. Nobody in my guild cares about formalities etc. at all. You are probably just friends with a set of Japanese people that don't match you, that's all.

I completely agree with Necro. Plus, I think Japanese who learn to speak English encounter this cultural difference a lot too. They either get offended every day for people being too forward and pushy, or they go with the flow by just realizing that English speakers have an entire different culture of their own. My wife's parents realize I'm from another country/culture and they are never offended by anything I say. Even when I'm sick, they take me to McDonald's so I can eat cheeseburgers in order to get better

Last edited by Hashiriya (2012 July 27, 6:59 am)

That's how foreign cultures are to the newcomers.

I was in London on a school trip last year, and felt intimidated and slightly insulted when the lady serving drinks at a pub said things like "thank you darling" and "when are you going back to your own country?". I mean, a Norwegian bartender would never have said anything similar. I also had a lengthy conversation with a random stranger outside that pub one evening.

I don't know if she was generally condescending towards me, or that Brits/Londoners act that way. In Norway, personal space is sacred and any stranger who starts a conversation with you is insane, drunk or American -- or a combination of all three.

I assume the difference between Japanese culture and any other culture is much bigger though, but you should learn by mistakes instead of becoming depressed by it. Different cultures requires different behaviour -- there's no way around that.

Dude... who the hell cares if someone gets mad at you? Were you planning on going through life without ever pissing anybody off? C'mon.

Onara wrote:

Dude... who the hell cares if someone gets mad at you? Were you planning on going through life without ever pissing anybody off? C'mon.

I like you.

@IceCream: LOL Another friend of mine read his comments and wrote me an email saying exactly the same thing （彼ってさ２ちゃんねるの右翼に付属してるかも）

@raeesmerelda: When it comes to talking to people on the internet I guess I make use of my anonymity and I am more of an extrovert than in real life. I don't give a shit about communication rules, either. I just say what I think and if someone has a problem with it, he can say it like I do, but not insult for what I am.

@Onara: Thanks.. kind of thinking the same way. Though, I got offended by personal insulsts like "you are a mental retard for the way you think"...

@Inny Jan: I'm 19.

a) I don't perceive myself as an outside nor do I perceive foreigners, i.e. Japanese, living in Germany as outsiders. Same with foreigners in Japan. A discussion about death penalty is -- in my eyes - absolutely unrelated to culture of a country as it's always about killing a criminal.

b) Being proud about what you are is a statement about your own personality including your abilities, disabilities and your achievements. "Nationality" is a conincidence and is unrelated to your effords and achievements. Being proud of it makes, first, linguistically no sense to me (in Russian/German/English), hence it's, secondly, illogical.

c) If they take it as an offense, it's their problem not mine. People coming from abroad are also making provocative comments about Nazis when they talk to me and I show them the way to go/I explain frankly without being sullen or anything childish like that. Being easily offended by foreigners who are not familiar with culture, or, who don't want to be familiar with culture because they have their own one, is childish in my eyes.

My moral codices allow me to call people dumbheaded who don't disagree with facts elder people for example mention just for the damn sake that they are elder and therefore "worth looking up to". They are just elder, just humans like I am, too.

[Edit]

When in Rome, do as the Romans do - right?
No, why should I!? Changing what I am just for the sake of other's way of thinking, culture, background and language? I know 4 languages and I changed the way of speaking, behaving and thinking in each language differently, I would feel schizophrenic. (no harm intended)

Last edited by Tori-kun (2012 July 27, 9:44 am)