February 24th, 2008
If you don’t know what SSDD stands for, then let’s just say not much happened today that you haven’t read before. Library, etc.
About the only unusual thing that happened here is that they have a new guy working at McDonalds and he tried to overcharge me. See; the McDonalds here really ARE just like the ones in the States! I’m sure the guy wasn’t being dishonest, he just didn’t understand my order; on the other hand, he’s the first one ever (at McDonald’s anyway) to not understand me pointing at the pictures as well as ordering using the Japanese names for things.
Here’s one thing I have noticed about Japanese people that is interesting. They pretty much expect any Gaijin to not understand Japanese, so they inevitably expect you to point and pantomime. That’s OK. I can live with that; I’ve done it daily for six months. However, even if you speak grammatically correct Japanese, they often won’t understand you.
It seems that all the Japanese people in Japan speak good Japanese. Duh, right? That’s obvious, but when you think about it, it has an unexpected side effect. They all speak the same language the same way. Although there are some regional dialectical differences, there are very few people here who would talk with what they would consider a “funny accent.” In America, we are used to foreigners speaking in grammatically correct English, but with all manner of odd accents. They don’t get many foreigners here; and so have less exposure to foreign accents. My Japanese, although still improving daily, may as well be Swahili as far as they can tell.
I can order dinner or a train ticket in completely correct Japanese, and people still often won’t “get” what I’m saying. Now, I’ll grant that my accent is almost certainly pretty darned awful, but the sentences I use are usually so short it really would take some effort not to understand them.
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