Wow you use chopsticks very well!
This is one comment that I’ve gotten in Japan multiple times that I find entirely puzzling. For me growing up, all I’ve used at home was chopsticks. I eat with chopsticks, I cook with chopsticks, I… can’t think of anything else I do with chopsticks.
It was weird for me that even with my asian face, and my Chinese name, the thing that people were really impressed by is my skillful chopstick manipulation. I asked someone about it once, and they said… yeah if we think about it logically other asian countries do use chopsticks… I guess we just don’t think really about it, that people outside Japan use chopsticks.
Fair, I guess. Anyway this lead me to thinking more about what other questions or comments that I got pretty frequently. (Oh yeah if you’re not caught up in my life, currently I’m doing an internship in Kamakura, Japan and will be here for another month).
For the most part conversations topics are pretty normal, but limited to a very small set of questions. No doubt limited by my inability to speak Japanese well, despite the other person trying their best to talk to me in English. I’m meeting new people all the time, so I would say most conversations are just a permutation of the following set of questions just with different people (plus other things like: what are your favorite hobbies, and do you like Japanese food).
Where are you from? I’m from America.
Which part of America? Boston, I go to a small college called Olin.
Ohh Olin I know that place. This is where I’m internally going wat? Most people in the U.S. don’t even know about Olin, why do you know about Olin?
We’ve had people visit Olin before. And this is where I remember that they send people to our school’s final exposition sometimes so it’s not that weird that they know of Olin.
Is this your first time in Japan? Nope, this is my fourth time. I think almost every person I’ve talked to has asked me this. To the point where I wonder if I ask other people if it’s the first time they’ve been in the U.S. People usually get pretty surprised when I tell them it’s my fourth time, I guess for most interns this is a rare opportunity to travel around Japan.
What are your hobbies? I like watercoloring. I keep it simple so that people don’t immediately find out I’m a huge nerd.
Do you like Japanese food/ what’s your favorite Japanese food? It would really suck if I was in Japan and didn’t like Japanese food. I also have a really hard time answering any questions about favorites. Partly because I don’t think about things like favorites very often, and partly because I become ten times slower when thinking in Japanese.
Wow your Japanese is so good! Is a compliment I get a lot, and I know that people are extremely sincere when saying that, but I can’t help but feel kind of bad when I hear it. It’s because I know in my heart that my Japanese is kind of shitty and that’s the source of the majority of my troubles here.
Also it feels like something very cultural. In the U.S. I don’t give a second thought about how good people’s English is. When exchange students speak English it doesn’t feel out of place at all, in fact I would find it utterly strange if they didn’t. I don’t compliment non-native speakers on their English even when they are practically fluent. The only times I would compliment them would probably be if they told me that they were sorry their English was bad. It makes me think about how much I take for granted that people all over the world learn English as a second language and how so much of the world accommodates English speakers like me.
I’ve been in places in Tokyo where retail staff would speak English, I’ve seen tourists walk into restaurants and order food entirely in English, the subway signs everywhere have English subtitles. But I can’t imagine the opposite even remotely flying in America.
Anyway, I continue to study Japanese. I’m still bad. But I am slowly (very slowly) trying to speak more Japanese, trying to feel more comfortable, trying to make progress. And progress is being made. But it’s definitely very difficult seeing any improvements on the microscale.
