Japanese Men Refusing to Leave their Rooms

Off Topic
441

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:
My kids are called “half” by everyone and this is somehow perfectly acceptable here. I strongly discourage the use of this word whenever I hear it.

Then, the other day, a new girl joined one of my jr. high classes (15-16 year olds). In conversation, it came up that her great grandmother is Korean, and that she is therefore part Korean (and can speak fluent Korean at the native level, impressively enough). The other kids in class wasted NO time calculating her fractional Korean quotient (1/8) and trying to remember the name for someone who is 7/8 NOT Japanese (which is what all that crap really amounts to).

There was no meanness of any kind involved, they seriously had no concept of how rude and alienating this is. I scolded them roundly and then asked the girl what she thought of it (keep in mind she has been raised as a 100% Japanese). She said the practice did not exactly make her happy, which, coming from a Japanese, contains an altogether far stronger meaning.

Grr…[/quote]

I hate it too. As my father-in-law says, “it’s like saying ‘Jap.’”

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:
My kids are called “half” by everyone and this is somehow perfectly acceptable here. I strongly discourage the use of this word whenever I hear it.

[/quote]

Agree strongly.

Have you found a good replacement word in Japanese?

I’ve struggled with that, short of saying, “His mom is an American, and …”[/quote]

I humbly offer “haiburiddo”.[/quote]

Never heard of that. I’ve been using “mix” and I’ve heard of a lot of others saying this as well. “double” doesn’t work well and “half” is flat-out offensive. [/quote]

Mix is probably the most practical word to use.

442

Actually (I finally caught up in the thread), I’m a bit surprised that you aren’t using “mix” Cortes. When I was in Saitama it seemed pretty “normal” in the foreigner community… 'course where I was there was a lot of Brazilians, so perhaps it was just that group?

Spiderman, what do you say?

443

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
Actually (I finally caught up in the thread), I’m a bit surprised that you aren’t using “mix” Cortes. When I was in Saitama it seemed pretty “normal” in the foreigner community… 'course where I was there was a lot of Brazilians, so perhaps it was just that group?

Spiderman, what do you say?

[/quote]

I think that’s probably the word I will encourage from now on.

444

[quote]Cortes wrote:
My kids are called “half” by everyone and this is somehow perfectly acceptable here. I strongly discourage the use of this word whenever I hear it.

Then, the other day, a new girl joined one of my jr. high classes (15-16 year olds). In conversation, it came up that her great grandmother is Korean, and that she is therefore part Korean (and can speak fluent Korean at the native level, impressively enough). The other kids in class wasted NO time calculating her fractional Korean quotient (1/8) and trying to remember the name for someone who is 7/8 NOT Japanese (which is what all that crap really amounts to).

There was no meanness of any kind involved, they seriously had no concept of how rude and alienating this is. I scolded them roundly and then asked the girl what she thought of it (keep in mind she has been raised as a 100% Japanese). She said the practice did not exactly make her happy, which, coming from a Japanese, contains an altogether far stronger meaning.

Grr…[/quote]

More reason for me to dislike native Japan.

Reminds me of the racial laws/classifications during the Atlantic Slave Trade age.

445

[quote]magick wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:
My kids are called “half” by everyone and this is somehow perfectly acceptable here. I strongly discourage the use of this word whenever I hear it.

Then, the other day, a new girl joined one of my jr. high classes (15-16 year olds). In conversation, it came up that her great grandmother is Korean, and that she is therefore part Korean (and can speak fluent Korean at the native level, impressively enough). The other kids in class wasted NO time calculating her fractional Korean quotient (1/8) and trying to remember the name for someone who is 7/8 NOT Japanese (which is what all that crap really amounts to).

There was no meanness of any kind involved, they seriously had no concept of how rude and alienating this is. I scolded them roundly and then asked the girl what she thought of it (keep in mind she has been raised as a 100% Japanese). She said the practice did not exactly make her happy, which, coming from a Japanese, contains an altogether far stronger meaning.

Grr…[/quote]

More reason for me to dislike native Japan.

Reminds me of the racial laws/classifications during the Atlantic Slave Trade age.[/quote]

Here’s a reason to like them

http://m.nypost.com/p/news/international/japanese_crowd_between_pushes_platform_CavU55JlDDhX7NnUnmKVqK

446

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Cortes, what did you think of Hotaru no Haka?[/quote]

It is a hard movie to watch. My wife put it in again the other day…she seems to need to watch it once/year. You have to be in the right state of mind to watch it though. It always makes me feel like throwing up. [/quote]

I actually just finished it and loved it. I was weeping almost the entire length of the film, but it is just beautiful. Everything that the hateful Dare Mo Shiranai is not. I think I nailed it, in that Dare Mo Shiranai, at least as far as I recall, focused so deeply on the abandonment and the pathos of the situation that I finally felt nothing but what you are describing here, GL: A sick feeling of irredemption (I just made that word up, but it it perfectly appropriate).

Hotaru No Haka, on the other hand, was a celebration of the beauty of life, and love, and used death as a necessary foil so that you could feel just how special that love was. I never felt the movie trying to buy my sympathy for their plight. Takahata respects his audience enough to just show what is and let us decide how we feel about their situation. The moment in the cave where Seita tries to cuddle with his sister and she pushes him away because he was hot and she already sleeping just destroyed me.

Wow. What a great movie. HUGE thanks to Varq. Wow. [/quote]

I read the description of the movie you guys are talking about, I must be missing something or I don’t have any emotions.

447

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
Actually (I finally caught up in the thread), I’m a bit surprised that you aren’t using “mix” Cortes. When I was in Saitama it seemed pretty “normal” in the foreigner community… 'course where I was there was a lot of Brazilians, so perhaps it was just that group?

Spiderman, what do you say?

[/quote]

I never describe my kids as “half” but say “I’m from England, my wife is Japanese, so my kids are half English and half Japanese”. Usually when I talk about my family to people, and show them pictures of my daughters, the response I get is “iiiiiinnnnnaaaaaaa haaaaffuuuu!” But most people I meet are quite interested in English and England and I don’t think they are intentionally trying to be offensive when they use that term.

I myself am “hafu” (dad is Turkish, mum is English), and I always describe myself as “hafu” but when I do, I say it with the thickest, strongest katakana pronunciation I can.

I teach my students that mixed race is probably the safest term to use when talking to non Japanese that they don’t know.

452

Since my life has just changed significantly – long-term live-in girlfriend is out of the picture as of today – I’m giving this some serious thought.

This is what I’m thinking, plan-wise:

  1. I already have an investment in learning Mandarin. I want to reach HSK 3 competency, which is described as “Designed for learners who can use Chinese to serve the demands of their personal lives, studies and work, and are capable of completing most of the communicative tasks they experience during their Chinese tour.” I’m probably 3-4 months away from that.

  1. After getting to that level, switch my focus to Japanese, and attack the language as aggressively as I have Mandarin. It might be a bit tricky finding Japanese speakers in this area, but I can find resources somewhere, even if it has to be over Skype.

  2. Look into what it will take to complete my degree, in as quick a manner as possible, in as least annoying a manner as possible. I think the lack of degree will probably be the single largest thing holding me back from working overseas. Certainly there’s loopholes like working for an American company and getting an overseas transfer… but having the degree provides that little bit more.

Right now I’m not sure what to get a degree in; basically I worked the system so I have 95% of the Computer Science curriculum while skipping most of the freshman-level gen ed classes. Finishing a CS might make sense, if I can find a way that lets me learn at my own pace. But really, I think almost any BS degree would be good.

What kind of timeframe, realistically, am I looking at to have a decent working basis of Japanese for living and working there?

At best, I see this whole process taking 18-24 months before I’d truly move there, but I don’t actually know. And obviously, no decisions have been made yet… but I’m seriously considering this option.

454

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

What kind of timeframe, realistically, am I looking at to have a decent working basis of Japanese for living and working there?
[/quote]

So hard to answer that.

How much time and effort are you going to devote? How much aptitude do you have for languages? What, concretely, do you mean by “a decent working basis of Japanese for living and working there?”

If you’re learning Chinese characters, that will help with literacy, for sure.[/quote]

It’s pretty hard to quantify anything.

I have a decent aptitude for languages, I think. Born in the US, lived in France and went to school for 2 years when I was 4-5, then back to the US. Took 5 worthless years of French classes through high school. Studied bits of Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Italian, German over the years purely out of interest; Turkish most recently before switching to Mandarin seriously.

Character-wise, I know, pretty fluently, around 600 characters and about 1200 “words”. Probably more than that, but going off of word-frequency, that’s about right. As backwards as it sounds, I can actually read Chinese subtitles better than I can understand what they’re saying, although I’m not at a point I can get by without translations.

Time-wise, I can put in at least an hour a day of active learning [on average]; possibly more. I’d be pretty focused about it. And, of course, I can add in some more passive learning via radio and TV.

How would you quantify/specify things more concretely?

455

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Cortes, are you listening? You must teach your sons to say, with fierce pride, whether to adults or other children, “boku ha hafu ja nai yo, haiburiddo da yo!”

Or however you say that in Yamaguchi-ben. :stuck_out_tongue:

[/quote]

Yamaguchi-ben dattara, "nani iiyoru? Boku haafu ja nai yo. Haiburiddo da yo. Wakacchoru? "

*edited typo[/quote]

Surprised that it’s not a bit closer to ours.

And, you guys don’t use “washi?” Or was that because you were thinking he’d be a young boy? [/quote]

Ha, nobody but cartoon characters use washi around here. Just the standard ore.

456

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

What kind of timeframe, realistically, am I looking at to have a decent working basis of Japanese for living and working there?
[/quote]

So hard to answer that.

How much time and effort are you going to devote? How much aptitude do you have for languages? What, concretely, do you mean by “a decent working basis of Japanese for living and working there?”

If you’re learning Chinese characters, that will help with literacy, for sure.[/quote]

Funny, I was just about to answer this, but got sidetracked writing an email to Cortes. Don’t be jealous.

I’d say that literacy in Chinese will be helpful, with two caveats: one, a lot of the simplified characters used for Mandarin are simplified in far different ways than they are in Japanese, and two, Chinese grammar is appreciably different from Japanese, and different characters are used to convey a given concept. I imagine literacy in Chinese will be as useful to an English speaker learning Japanese as a knowledge of Arabic would be in learning Urdu: they use the same writing system, and a number of loan words will present themselves, but the two languages are as different as two languages can be.

As for the question of “how long until I have a working knowledge of Japanese”, this is an impossible question for anyone who has never met you and cannot judge your aptitude for learning a foreign language. Some people can be shown a new dance step or martial arts technique and they will absorb it immediately. Others will have to practice and practice before they can get it right. Some people have a gift for coordination and rhythm, others not so much. There are neurological explanations for this, and similarly, some people pick up foreign languages easier than others.

Questions for you, LoRez: do you speak any other languages fluently now, beside English? Were you at least exposed to another language before the age of five? Do you find Mandarin to be easy now?

If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, then it is safe to assume that you will make quicker progress toward a facility with Japanese than if you answered no.

In my own case, I’ve always found languages to be pretty easy. I am a natural mimic, and can reproduce foreign sounds and accents without too much trouble. Japanese was the sixth foreign language I ever studied, after Russian, Spanish, German, Vietnamese and French. I took three semesters of undergraduate Japanese in college, then right before I left for Tokyo, I took an intensive summer course at the University, where we studied four hours a day, five days a week. At the end of the oral final exam, wherein I had to give an impromptu explanation of the American Civil War in Japanese, my professor shrugged disdainfully and declared, “you’ll survive.”

As it turned out, I learned more in my first three months living in Japan than I could have in three years in a classroom or language lab.

And I suspect that you will too. By all means get as knowledgeable as you can before you go, it’ll help. Just realize that for all intents and purposes, classroom language instruction is the linguistic equivalent of masturbation. And face it: being good at jerking off doesn’t make one a great lover.

457

I see that you preemptively answered a few of my questions while I was writing the commen above. Outstanding.

459

[quote]Chushin wrote:

Quick Goggle = Japan approves child abduction treaty
[/quote]

Thanks Chushin.

This is welcome news, though this part gets my eyebrows arching:

“The new law to be passed in Japan will permit parents to refuse to return children if abuse or domestic violence is feared, a caveat that campaigners recognise as essential but fear may be exploited as a loophole.”

*edited quote snafu

460

[quote]therajraj wrote:
Here’s a reason to like them

http://m.nypost.com/p/news/international/japanese_crowd_between_pushes_platform_CavU55JlDDhX7NnUnmKVqK[/quote]

I don’t think how people treat those who they consider their equal is truly indicative of how open-minded they are.