My new 2009 goal is to learn 300,000 words in Japanese.

nest0r wrote:

My new 2009 goal is to learn 300,000 words in Japanese.

Maybe you should just learn 299,179 words and then cure cancer?

welldone101 wrote:

timcampbell wrote:

- Spend three weeks in Japan speaking as little English as possible (that's my whole vacation, folks)

Here's a tip.  Everybody will try to speak to you in English.  Many going so far as to run away and find somebody who knows like 3 English words instead of trying to talk to you.  Just KEEP TALKING in Japanese no matter what.  Never give in.  Eventually (1-3 min.) they will switch to Japanese subconsciously.  Make sure you learn the natural phrases Japanese people use to ask for clarification because if you say the evil evil words "I don't understand" they will clam up like a .. well.. clam and look at you with these huge fearful eyes thinking "omg what do I do I'm too terrified to speak English and my cultural programming won't let me say any more words in Japanese!"

Never give in, never surrender!  With basic Japanese, a dictionary, and adequate time you can do anything fully in Japanese with absolutely no English so no matter what don't give in.

I feel like I'm stressing this a little weakly so I'm going to shout now, "DONT LET THE JAPANESE FORCE YOU INTO ENGLISH!"  They will do so automatically and you might start to feel guilty like "well this is probably the only chance they ever have to practice English now I feel bad".  Bullocks, be selfish, they are lazy and can travel if they really want it that badly, stick with the language of the country you are in.

Sincerely,
Person-who-has-had-really-lame-experiences

Thanks for the advice. I've heard similar stories.

A Japanese friend of mine and her friend were in Osaka when a foreigner came up to them. He asked for directions in very good Japanese, and she responded to him in Japanese. Then her friend looked at her in amazement and said: "I didn't know you understood English that well." My friend said, "What are you talking about, I was speaking Japanese."

There does seem to be some kind of block at times against speaking Japanese to white people. For example, at my local Book Off I have spoken Japanese to the staff, and the books I buy there are always in Japanese, yet the staff still speaks to me in English, even when I ask them a question in Japanese, (except for one dude, who I think has a crush on me.) Also, I was at a sushi place near my apartment where the serving staff speaks Japanese. (Most of them here are Chinese.) They know me there, and always see me reading manga in Japanese, and they know I speak it. I was there one day with a female Japanese friend of mine. We were speaking Japanese. When the waitress came my friend ordered in Japanese, the server responded in Japanese. My friend then said to me, in Japanese, "Order in Japanese." So I did. The server responded in English. "Anything to drink." So I asked for water, in Japanese. she said. "OK, anything else?" in English. And I'm thinking ... "Am I missing something here?"

Anyway, thanks for the advice. I do language exchanges three times a week, so my basics are down pretty good - now it's a matter of testing them out in the real world ...

(Hope I haven't just hijacked my own thread )

Last edited by timcampbell (2009 January 05, 8:53 pm)

Hmmn goals for 2009...

-finish JRTK (currently at #400)

- RTK3

- 5,000 more sentences

- give Heisig and Fabrice a deep tissue massage

- donate to this site (I'm broke as a joke!!)

It seems then, if you are in japan and know japanese, you should wear T-shirts with something like this written:

"I'm foreigner but I can read and speak japanese."

mentat_kgs wrote:

It seems then, if you are in japan and know japanese, you should wear T-shirts with something like this written:

"I'm foreigner but I can read and speak japanese."

Makes no difference - whether you like it or not, there will always be Japanese who are scared to be near you just because you are a foreigner or simply because you are somehow different from them - this is not specific to Japan, BTW.

Last edited by kfmfe04 (2009 January 05, 11:45 pm)

welldone101 wrote:

Make sure you learn the natural phrases Japanese people use to ask for clarification

While we are at it, what are some "natural" phrases of this kind?

Since I don't want to hijack any further, here's another goal:
-Finish learning the common kunyomi and onyomi for at least all of the heisig kanji.

I think it's good to tell people who do that off. They don't mean anything bad, they just want to accomodate the foreigner... but if you ignore it, they might not even notice they did it. You shouldn't get mad, but just politely point out that you speak Japanese fine and would prefer if they didn't answer in English when you're speaking Japanese to them.

I wouldn't blame them. 90% of the white people in Japan can't speak Japanese beyond JLPT4 (yeah, I pulled that statistic out of my butt... it's probably much higher!). However, everytime you correct someone who speaks English back to you, you make at least one person realize that just because you're white doesn't mean you can't speak Japanese.

During my year in Japan it happened to me just a few times so I didn't care. I think it happened like.. 3 times possibly. I think it depends a lot upon where in Japan you are. In Tokyo, people are getting kind of used to foreigners so they probably know to a higher extent that white people can speak Japanese at times.

Last edited by Tobberoth (2009 January 06, 6:29 am)

I spent about 2 weeks in Japan recently (first trip yay!), and I came across only one person who responded to me in English (out of maybe 20-30 that I talked to), and that was at the travel information center.  It mostly seemed that people were relieved not to have to speak English.  Weird that you guys have had such a different experience when it was overwhelmingly opposite for me.

Another goal: learn to speak more naturally

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

- stop being tight and actually buy some PS3 games (instead of futilely waiting for bargains that aren't possible... damn shipping prices) <- does this count?

You should try getting some games that are region free. If you were to go to Japan with your PS3 some games might not work.

May I write my goals bilingually? (despite my terrible Japanese)

1）常用漢字を全部覚えます。音読みや訓読みや英語の意味を覚えます。
I am going to memorize all the Jouyou kanji. I will memorize the onyomi, kunyomi and
the English meaning. 

2）アイノー6000単語を始めて、3000の単語を覚えます。
I want to start iKnow 6000 vocabulary and memorize half of it.

3）げんきIとIIを勉強ししまいます。
Finish GenkiII and parts of GenkiI I skipped. (what happens when you teach yourself and fail)

4）聞くの練習。。。1000時間ぐらい
I want to listen to 1000 hours of Japanese.

5) RTK1とRTKIIを勉強しまいます。
I am going to finish RTKI and RTHII this year. (This is only slightly different that the first goal: the kunyomi and the extra kanji in RTK.)

難しく過ぎると思いますか。
Is this too much?

grow a big bushy beard.

- Finish RTKI
- Begin the sentence portion of AJATT
- Eventually be able to express myself completely in Japanese.