A little less conversation, a little more action,
All this aggravation ain't satisfactionin' me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark.
Those are the opening four lines from the old Elvis Presley song A Little Less Conversation. I love that song.
Anyhow, after a bit of how's it going with a friend recently, our conversation turned to what things were like for me a as foreigner in Japan - probably something I do whenever I can.
One thing I noted was that often whenever I tried to go out to a bar by myself, I would always be swamped by Japanese people - mena dn women - who wanted to practice their English on me.
I'm sure this is something that happens to a lot of foreigners in Japan - and it can be a bit annoying when sometimes you just want to be alone - or you wish that instead of a Japanese man chatting you up, it was that hot Japanese woman. Of course, I am speaking hypothetically as a lesbian woman. I actually, I am a male lesbian. I like women.
But enough of this gay banter, let's get back to the topic. What is it? I have no idea, but let's find out!
Okay... so yes, going out for a drink by one's self in japan often lends itself to Japanese folks trying to get a free English lesson.
It happened to me maybe five or six times before I finally figured it out.
You see, while I was indeed in Japan to teach English and to do some internationalization - usually with some women who really wanted to know my bad English, I realized that I was losing out on valuable opportunities to learn Japanese.
How the hell was I to get any practice speaking and learning Japanese if everyone always wanted to speak English with me?
Ha! I couldn't keep a straight face typing that out! Okay... Japanese people spent a lot of time speaking Japanese with me, and I often responded back in English.
But what if the reverse was true. Often, I did have Japanese people speak English to me - so why couldn't I practice my Japanese on them? So I did.
There is no gaijin law that says that when Japanese people speak English to you, that you can't speak Japanese in reply. The thing is - we all want to learn each other's language!
So, I finally got the hang of things and when someone talked to me in English, I would do my best to reply in my crappy Japanese. At first, it threw the Japanese, as the extent of my Japanese revolved around me asking how much that sashi was... but soon I learned. They began to teach me Japanese as I conversed with them, and they got in some valuable English-speaking with a real-live English listener.
I did this for a while towards the end of my three year stay in Ohtawara-shi, Tochigi-ken, Japan.
I have no idea how effective it was, but I think we each learned something.
Mostly that I, after three years of living in Japan, had little Japanese-language ability.
The point however, is that I tried. They corrected me. They tried and I corrected them. We all learned. It was a different way of teaching, but it seemed to work.
Oh - and happy birthday to my good friend Robert Jones here in Toronto, who never went to Japan, but visited often with his 67 letters. He helped keep me sane. I know, I know... it's hard to call me sane after reading this blog, but these past few years of blog writing and marriage have taken their toll.
Cheers
Andrew Joseph
All this aggravation ain't satisfactionin' me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark.
Those are the opening four lines from the old Elvis Presley song A Little Less Conversation. I love that song.
Anyhow, after a bit of how's it going with a friend recently, our conversation turned to what things were like for me a as foreigner in Japan - probably something I do whenever I can.
One thing I noted was that often whenever I tried to go out to a bar by myself, I would always be swamped by Japanese people - mena dn women - who wanted to practice their English on me.
I'm sure this is something that happens to a lot of foreigners in Japan - and it can be a bit annoying when sometimes you just want to be alone - or you wish that instead of a Japanese man chatting you up, it was that hot Japanese woman. Of course, I am speaking hypothetically as a lesbian woman. I actually, I am a male lesbian. I like women.
But enough of this gay banter, let's get back to the topic. What is it? I have no idea, but let's find out!
Okay... so yes, going out for a drink by one's self in japan often lends itself to Japanese folks trying to get a free English lesson.
It happened to me maybe five or six times before I finally figured it out.
You see, while I was indeed in Japan to teach English and to do some internationalization - usually with some women who really wanted to know my bad English, I realized that I was losing out on valuable opportunities to learn Japanese.
How the hell was I to get any practice speaking and learning Japanese if everyone always wanted to speak English with me?
Ha! I couldn't keep a straight face typing that out! Okay... Japanese people spent a lot of time speaking Japanese with me, and I often responded back in English.
But what if the reverse was true. Often, I did have Japanese people speak English to me - so why couldn't I practice my Japanese on them? So I did.
There is no gaijin law that says that when Japanese people speak English to you, that you can't speak Japanese in reply. The thing is - we all want to learn each other's language!
So, I finally got the hang of things and when someone talked to me in English, I would do my best to reply in my crappy Japanese. At first, it threw the Japanese, as the extent of my Japanese revolved around me asking how much that sashi was... but soon I learned. They began to teach me Japanese as I conversed with them, and they got in some valuable English-speaking with a real-live English listener.
I did this for a while towards the end of my three year stay in Ohtawara-shi, Tochigi-ken, Japan.
I have no idea how effective it was, but I think we each learned something.
Mostly that I, after three years of living in Japan, had little Japanese-language ability.
The point however, is that I tried. They corrected me. They tried and I corrected them. We all learned. It was a different way of teaching, but it seemed to work.
Oh - and happy birthday to my good friend Robert Jones here in Toronto, who never went to Japan, but visited often with his 67 letters. He helped keep me sane. I know, I know... it's hard to call me sane after reading this blog, but these past few years of blog writing and marriage have taken their toll.
Cheers
Andrew Joseph
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