Aka That Japanese Man Yuta. I make YouTube videos about the subtleties of Japanese culture and the language
Learn Japanese with me by clicking on the link ⬇️
にげろ (nigero) is the imperative form of にげる (nigeru) to escape
We don't use the imperative very often in daily conversations because it can sound too aggressive. When you see this form in a news program like this, you can sense the urgency.
Tsunami can kill people easily
Some countries: we are concerned about foreigners because they might take our jobs
Japan: we are concerned about foreigners because they might not sort out rubbish correctly
I’m proud to announce that my new book GENKI: The Ancient Art or Connecting with Your Original Spirit is out! Soon to be followed by GAMAN: The Ancient Japanese Art of Shutting the Fuck Up and Taking It, Bitch
In Japan (and probably in other higher-income countries) Uniqlo is a very basic brand. I was a bit surprised the first time when someone in a lower-income country told me it's a fancy brand.
To be fair, their quality is amazing and often better than much more expensive brands.
A lot of Japanese people who say something like, "I teach Japanese as a volunteer" don't consciously know how Japanese grammar works and end up saying incorrect things. Speaking a language as your first language doesn't necessarily mean you know how to teach that language.
My life is complete.
Last night, I was talking to this girl and I said, "You are a girl who knows everything."
Then she said, "I don't know everything, I only know what I know."
Where have you been all my life?
Talking to a lot of Japanese people makes me realise that most (not all) Japanese people aren't that interested in foreign countries and cultures, let alone foreign languages.
People like me are pretty rare, and it makes me happy to meet Japanese people who are like me.
Today is the day
This Japanese girl said to me, "Wow, you know everything."
I didn't miss my chance
My life has existed for this very moment
I looked at her and said, "I don't know everything. I only know what I know."
Got this comment on my channel:
"Your Japanese is super good.
I thought you were Japanese for a second."
Should I be having an identity crisis or something? 😂
Many people idolise Japan and think it's perfect. And they get angry and disappointed when they learn that Japan has its own problems--sometimes pretty serious ones. Unfortunately, there's no perfect country on earth.
However, you might like some countries more than others.
Just because you are a native speaker of your language, it doesn't mean you understand the language well. A lot of Japanese people fail at simple reading comprehension tests in Japanese even though it's their first language. This applies to any native speaker of any language.
日本語上手 from Japanese people is not sarcasm most of the time as there's no sarcastic intentions behind it. You can only be sarcastic intentionally (but you can be unintentionally ironic).
It's interesting English speakers hear sarcasm when there's none.
People in Hiroshima and other places in Western Japan tend to be much friendlier than people in Tokyo.
Highly recommended for your 2nd trip to Japan after doing the typical stuff in Tokyo.
How to give Japanese people a headache:
Use romaji (the Latin alphabet) to write Japanese
When people start learning Japanese, many of them use romaji (the Latin alphabet) to read and write Japanese.
This is understandable in the very beginning because it takes some time to
One of the most important skills to learn Japanese is being comfortable with not understanding everything you hear, and still able to enjoy what you can understand
I've always been bad at drawing.
I was so bad at it that I didn't bother making an effort. I couldn't even copy the most simple characters. Drawing is just not for me, I'd always thought.
But a few weeks ago, I had an idea: what if I actually try? There are so many tutorials on
Japan's "politeness" is a double-edged sword. They are "polite" because they don't always tell you what they think directly.
Many people say, "I like how Japan is polite, but I don't like how they are indirect." But it doesn't work that way.
Any opinion?
People who are learning Japanese often try to tell me what "correct" Japanese is, so let me get this straight:
There's no single "correct" Japanese and how we speak Japanese in real life is no less "correct" than how we write Japanese formally.
What's "correct" changes
Learning Japanese is like riding a bike. Once you get the hang of it, you can do it automatically. Until you do, all the explanations about how to ride a bike can sound confusing.
That's why it's hard to explain how to learn Japanese effectively to someone who hasn't gotten it.
The Japanese government finally came up with a groundbreaking measure to combat COVID-19 after spending two months of intense meetings with top specialists:
Give every household two masks
Japanese high school anime: takes 22 episodes to kiss
American high school drama: takes 2 episodes to get pregnant
These cultural differences are so interesting 😀
This is probably the best reply to 日本語上手 I've ever come across so far. It's humorous and not ill-intentioned, but at the same time, it's slightly rebellious. It communicates that you are not playing that game.
Many English speakers pronounce "the" in "the end" like "thuh" instead "thee" and it drives me crazy as I was thought differently
Did I just not notice this before, or is this becoming more common lately?
(It's normally "thuh" but before a vowel sound it's "thee")
In my opinion, if someone is bullied or steal because of an eraser that stands out, the problem isn't the eraser. The problem is the culture in the classroom.
As a Japanese citizen, I feel deeply embarrassed and indignant that this kind of blatant sexism has been consciously practiced in Japan on an institutional level. This is simply not acceptable and there's no excuse
If you are learning Japanese for three years and still using romaji, I'd strongly urge you to evaluate how you are learning Japanese and why you are learning Japanese.
At that stage, you should be getting a lot of input from real-life resources, such as Netflix shows/anime with
When Japanese people say, "I want to learn English," what most of them mean is like, "I want to be able to speak English without making any serious effort."
@ThatYuta
I thought everyone in Japan wanted to study English because I hear “I want to study English” so often and because most students seem very normal, but I realized the people who actually study English seriously are rare and quite unique in Japan
People always circulate this myth that JLPT N1 is hard for native Japanese speakers. It is NOT. Most native speakers should have no problem passing N1 easily.
Can everybody get the perfect score? No. Can you find Japanese people who struggle with some questions, yes you can.
Do you know what some Japanese people do when they forget how to write kanji?
Let's say they are at a meeting and they are writing something on a whiteboard:
お気に入り機能のじっ、、、
Wait... they forgot how to write 実装 (implementation)...
What would they do?
They might
This Japanese person has lived abroad for 20 years and says she speaks English "at a native level". This is what she wrote:
"Everytime I watch funny YouTube, I'm addicted watching another episodes as well."
Oh, and she's a translator.
This reminds me of how some people claim that JLPT N1 is difficult for native Japanese speakers...
It is not, even though many might fail to get the absolute perfect score. But passing should be a piece of cake for most native speakers.
I feel like N1 is WAY below the
It's interesting some non-native speakers of Japanese come up with imaginary rules such as you can't use は multiple times in a sentence.
There's no such rule. You can use は as many times as you want.
Here's an example of a professionally edited book.
Turns out the default kana input keyboard layout (known as "JISかな配列") is extremely inefficient and totally sucks
Your fingers have to travel an excessive amount while typing because the layout spans across 4 entire rows, and the placement of keys is not optimal at all
Learn Japanese Wihe These 2023 Anime Characters
1. Oshi no Ko
Not only is this anime interesting, but most characters also speak Japanese pretty naturally (except for a few characters like Kana, who speaks overly feminine Japanese.)
But characters like Akane speak very
This is how Japan's Self-Defence Force (apparently the fourth most powerful military in the world) recruits new members. This is probably only in Japan lol
It's so easy to paint an entire country, nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or any category of human being in a negative light based on your negative personal experience or prejudice. I like people who are capable of resisting to that kind of bias.
Question of the day at the Tokyo governor conference
"You are telling us not to go out at night. But if you keep holding conferences at night, we will have to go out..."
In Japanese school, you pretty much only learn Japanese, Chinese, US, and European history and the rest of the world is ignored. Travelling made me realise that there is so, so much more to the world.
It's sad that all those Reddit posts and internet forums created misguided men who don’t understand real dating dynamics with real-life human beings and think dating is like a video game where you need to have a certain persona and say the right things.
A lot of people say that Japanese people should express their feelings and emotions more openly and directly.
But a lot of Japanese people think it's not necessarily a good thing to be direct and expressive in many situations.
Some people may even find beauty in subtleties.
It's frustrating to use dictation software that doesn't recognise swear words. Can you just transcribe exactly what I say? Your job is transcribing, not deciding what I can and why can't say.
I've always found ですから and ますから in sentences like this unnatural:
朝ごはんを食べませんでした。忙しかったですから。
I didn't eat breakfast because I was busy.
(Genki)
But it's not easy to explain why it sounds unnatural. It's highly context-dependent.
There's nothing
Completely disagree. Not only is constructive criticism healthy, it's also necessary for us to grow. It helps me understand things more deeply by listening to different opinions.
"Your Japanese is good" doesn't mean a lot
"Your Japanese is better than 99% of non-native speakers" or "How come your Japanese sounds so natural?" definitely means something
But "You speak Japanese better than Japanese people" is probably just flattery
Japanese isn't necessarily a difficult language in itself. I find the structure pretty simple. But the way Japanese people speak it often makes it difficult to understand because many of them are very indirect and roundabout.
In English textbooks, you sometimes see the word "seldom" and a lot of non-native speakers end up using "seldom" very often when they speak English.
But most native speakers (perhaps with some exceptions because I've met someone who said they use it) SELDOM use the word "seldom"
Talking to Japanese people in Japanese in real life isn't a test.
It's OK to forget some specific words and expressions. You can always use different words. You can also look them up or ask people if you really want to find these words.
It's OK to make mistakes. They might
It's really annoying when people assume that I have certain values and opinions just because I'm Japanese. I'm an individual who has my own personality and perspectives.
Most people don't need to be able to handwrite kanji off the top of their heads.
Just learn how to read them so that you can type them if you have to.
If you want to handwrite them, you can look them up on your phone or computer.
Sure, it will impress Japanese people if you
What about skipping writing all together ? My Japanese would have improved more if I ignored writing completely. I actually forgot everything I learned in school and picked it up naturally from just reading things in everyday life. No need to write. Just need to type.