I'm Japanese who is working at the hotel in Tokyo, but I really love foreigner trying to speak Japanese if it is not good. It makes me feel that they respect and like my country, culture and people. Of course, there will be no problem if you don't speak any Japanese. It is good opportunity to try English for person who doesn't have any oversea experience like me.
My favorite moment from my trip to Japan was on the shinkansen, when I talked to an older Japanese gentleman about my family's hometown for over half an hour. He told me he never took any opportunities to speak English with foreigners, and that he had only just then mustered up the courage to talk to someone who seemed approachable after over a decade of waiting. That moment will live rent-free in my brain until I am in the ground. Shoutout to you, old guy!
Yeah, the opportunity to use the foreign language you learned is very special. I never used english much personally to say anything to anyone, even when I was in England. The most was to talk with an english teacher in Catalunia.
@@thomas5585 can confirm, it's always the middle aged japanese men striking up conversation in ski lifits! even the americans who are supposedly chatty don't do that
Sora realized there is constant memes happening around him and is capitalizing on it and actually making some form of money off it. Interesting business model but it works.
Makes sense that local Japanese are starting to watch your channel now. You have the best accent. You're able to do nerd English, broken English, and perfect English.
I have the problem of having relatively ok pronunciation with the few words I know how to say, so I end up getting a very quickly spoken full fluent response when I attempt to speak japanese. This will quickly be followed by both of us exchanging alternating bad english/japanese while apologizing. It's super awkward.
I feel you... The next sentence after basic greetings automatically follows: sorry my Japanese is bad do you know how to speak English yes=> horray no=> sign language + google translate time horrayyy
I'm not Japanese but I'm learning, and this has been my experience with Japanese people on Twitch. They're super cool. They'll speak English if they can, and they appreciate when you speak/write Japanese. Even met a streamer that goes as far as pausing whatever they're doing on stream to use google translate to reply to you in English if they can't put it into words themselves. Which I greatly appreciate. I also try to speak/write Japanese but do the same as fallback. xD
I'm not Japanese but, for years I have delayed myself from visiting Japan due to anxiety over the language barrier and this video has made me feel a little bit more confident. Thank you Sora. (Still plan to learn at least some stuff)
I'm in japan right now using trains like crazy. I asure you, basic vocabulary can get you almost everywhere. The most I use is kore (to point), arigatou, sumimasen, and any way of salute (ohayou, konnichiwa, konbanwa). I use DeepL to translate when needed (like buying movie tickets). If you are not in a constant hurry you will be alright.
I can read Japanese language thanks to playing in a Japanese server game for 2 years+(that went eos) without translation, probably helped by that my native language is traditional Chinese, which used sort of similar word style and pronunciation for many words, and would be able to go to Japan and not face too much of a language barrier except for my broken Japanese
I'm not Japanese but, currently living in Tokyo I feel it's polite to at least learn how to pronounce basic words. I've gotten a few 日本語上手's already and it cracks me up, since I know my Japanese is fecken terrible and it's going to take months to even have a conversation. But that's fine, it's actually very motivating that people show such appreciation for the effort! Oh and if someone hits you with a 日本語上手, responding with まだまだ will gain you instant respect because it shows a humble attitude. Accept that there's always more to learn and it's okay to suck at something, as long as you're improving!
@@HT79 learning kanji just takes time. You can learn the radicals to recognize them better and for example see the difference easier between 待 and 持, but learning just kanji by themselves (with a method like RTK, which is pretty good) only get you so far because they can have a lot of different pronunciations. You generally get the gist of their meaning when you read them, but without knowing the words, you might not know how to read it. For example, the kanji for 上手 (jou-zu) can become 上手い (u-ma-i), 上(ue), 手 (te), 上がる(a-ga-ru), 下手(he-ta), etc. So, you really need to learn the vocabulary not with romaji, but with kanji, hiragana and if needed, furigana for the first few times. There's about 2136 common kanji so it's not going to be done in a month even if all you do is learn to recognize them. If you learn 20 of them per day (should take about 1h with flash cards and repetition of the previous days for memorization over time), it will still take you over 3 months and a half, and all that just to say you know them, without being able to read Japanese because you'd have no idea of how they are meant to be pronounced. But I know some people that have done it like that and it helped them a lot afterwards. 🤷♂️
Well the Japanese spoken language is not super hard, but they (the Japanese) follow their own grammar rules. Learn that before you learn the syntax. Simply because language is a cultural construct over hundreds of years. FYI, lots of loan words in Japanese use English, but are unrecognisable to any native English speaker; they Japanize it. Their written language is even more baffling; a mixture basically of two scripts. As if Romanized characters were mixed up with Greek. This makes learning Japanese a scholarly exercise.
it's a tough road to take but every small progress feels good. My vocabulary still sucks and is probably the biggest reason why I can't build long sentences, but living in central europe is a hard place to find japanese speakers to train. Though with online lessions every week and looking back onto the last 3 months, it has gotten better and it feels GOOD!
@@RenegadeSamuraiI feel that. I just started learning to read hiragana and katakana this week. Its nice to read them even tho I dont know what the translation of the words they build is
@@JJ_38624I've been constructing sentences for past 4 months and slowly learning Kanji using rote memorization by popularity (there is a better method by radical but I'm lazy.). There will get a point where it feels exhausting.
This..... 😂 Dude.... You're amazing! You are literally the embodiment of everything I love about what TH-cam used to be! You sir, just earned another subscriber!
People in cities don't qualify as locals to begin with. They understand so little about the countryside that they're no different than moving into that big city from a foreign country.
Right, but imagine how few or many had moved a decade or two ago. They've lived there for a while, probably had to go to different prefectures, seen things that most people don't see during tours, etc. Those people are more who I refer to. Perhaps they've gained proficiency in Japanese, too. Could they qualify as locals of the cities in which they reside?
@@ronture8279 depends on your "local" standards. They could be. Or, depending on some of the Japanese people that think that native Japanese going abroad to study and come back aren't Japanese anymore, well, they may not be local. It all depends on how you define it.
@@sboinkthelegday3892nearly the entire population of Japan is urbanized, as well as the populations of most countries including the U.S. To say a vast minority of people are locals is kinda gatekeepy to a really small group.
Sora, thanks! You are the most non-trolling “troll”. And you are actually helpful! Thank you again. I was actually wondering about those things too! You put mind at ease.
(i'm not japanese but) looks like sora's channel has become a resource for both students of the japanese language and for students of the english language!! thank you sora the troll!!!
Even better than "arigato" is the "sumimasen" technique. If you say it correctly, they'll ask how long you've been in Japan. If they ask that, you know your Japanese is perfect Jokes aside, that literally happened to me last week on the train back to Tokyo. They really do appreciate people trying and are excited when a foreigner takes the effort to learn.
I think this is a thing in every country, when you try to speak to the locals in their language, you already make a positive impression. It's a sign, that you really have an interest in the language and culture. And like he said...almost no japanese expects a foreigner to speak fluent japanese, or even at all. The bigger the surprise when you actually get out a short sentence in japanese.
I don’t think a lot of people appreciate it. A lot of times my attempts to speak Japanese is answered with abrupt English. Or a weird translation device. Mind you, I studied over two years. Old people seem to usually want to engage, but young people don’t have patience to speak to a foreigner attempting to speak Japanese. I’m shy with a bit of a pride problem so I just continue completely in English.
“Sumimasen” and “Wakarimasen”. The first two phrases everyone should learn, along with “aigo ga wakarimas- ka?” Outside of those three, the only other phrase I highly recommend is “_____ onegaishimas-“. For the uninitiated, the u at the end of _masu is not vocalized, hence my notation.
Me trying to learn Japanese. Watching online courses? Me: No, that doesn't seem fun at all. What about watching a stranger yell 'Rasengan!' on the streets and learning Japanese from him? Me: Giveeee me thattttttttttttt!
SO.FUCKING.TRUE Flashback to LA, last year. In an outlet, a lady is buying a perfume or something. Her baby mumbles words in japanese. *THIS IS MY CHANCE!!!!* "aH, sUmIMaSEn, ANatatAchI WA,NIHonJIN desu Ne?!?!?" ..... And she goes, "Ah, so desu...." Then, it happened... "NIHONGO JOUZU DESU" *I immediately scurry away, as that was the extent of my japanese, never to meet this woman again in my life, probably leaving her thinking...wtf was that about*
Sora so here's something that happened to me. I've been watching your channel for a while and I was always confused why you made foreigners say "konnichiwar". I knew there wasn't an "r" at the end and I wasn't saying it! I've been studying Japanese for a year and a half now, and recently had a chance to visit Japan. I was doing a hike on Mitakesan, there were mostly Japanese people hiking there, they were all very nice and all said "konnichiwa" to me when they encountered me on the trail. So I said "konnichiwa" back. To my horror, what came out of my mouth surely sounded like "konnichiwar"! I was so shocked! I spent the rest of the hike trying to figure out how to *not* do the "~ar" at the end, but no matter how much I tried, every next person I greeted, what came out of my mouth was always "konnichiwar"! I couldn't get rid of it! Might as well just embrace my horrible accent 😂 good job on noticing that little detail, now I'm forever self-conscious 😅
I always assumed it sounded like the intrusive r that Brits do sometimes, because maybe he can’t hear the difference between British and American accents?
@@ferretyluv I don't know what it is! I live in the States and English is not even my first language (but I've lived here for most of my life). Something about how the Japanese elongate that last "a", they actually go "konnichiwaaaa", I mimic that, and end up having some sort of an "r" ghost sound at the end!
I think it's something speficic to English speakers. Like ending Spanish words that end in "-o" with a bit of a "-ou", like "bañou". Spanish speakers do something equivalent when adding an "e-" before words that start with "S", like "espanish".
Oh my god you put the perfect punchline to cap off years of Dogen's "nigongo jozu desu ne" I'm laughing in bed and i just burst out laughing at that one
3:14 When I told my Japanese teacher that Japanese is a difficult language, she said " For me it's not ". So I got the impression that for Japanese people their language is easy, and that English instead is difficult. ...and that's when I realized Japanese is not as difficult as some people make it out to be. Yes, the Kanji and Keigo may be " difficult ", but the grammar is ONLY difficult to people who speak English ( or similar languages ). If your first language is Japanese or Korean then Japanese grammar is common sense. English, on the other hand, is difficult because of the random spelling and huge vocabulary, ...and the grammar should be just as difficult for Japanese people as Japanese grammar is for English people. I know it is common that people view their first language as " not difficult for THEM ", but I can say that I indeed view my first language, Polish, as difficult and everyone who learns it must be a GENIUS. Polish people are constantly fed with propaganda that their language is THE MOST DIFFICULT IN THE WORLD. ...and it might be true lol. While there is no Kanji, the grammar is 100x more difficult than whatever Japanese or English grammar is. It's like Russian grammar, except even more complicated. Verbs, nouns, adjectives, and EVEN NUMBERS conjugate. EVERYTHING conjugates. ...and there are MULTIPLE RULES to how the words conjugate, and even more exceptions than rules. ...and yes, I myself mess up the grammar ALL THE TIME!
It's actually the other way around. Most people have this tendency to believe that their primary language is the most difficult in the world, or at least somewhere in that vicinity - because they learn from experience and exposure, rather than having to work with formal rules most of their lives. This leads to scenarios in which native speakers are aware that rules exist, but can't recall either what the rule was nor explain when (and how) certain exceptions surface. As someone who was born in Brazil and had to hear people claim that "Portuguese is so difficult because of (insert a thousand reasons here, including nouns having genders / the amount of verb flexions and the fact they must be flexed to also agree with the subject / rules on vowel fusion...)", I saw that first-hand during my childhood - and then realised that nearly everyone else tends to state the same about their primary language. This led me to the conclusion that there's no inherent difficulty in languages. All there is (when it comes to language) is personal inclinations (we might fare better with certain types of language over others) and time to address how distant a given language is from your baseline. If languages were truly easy or difficult, then we'd expect linguistic acquisition to happen later in certain countries. This is not the case.
@@sorathetrollit works both ways. When I see someone speak English, I react like you do. And when I speak even broken, incorrect language, the other person appreciates it a lot. It helps us all to get along with each other. It's what I think.
I am not Japanese but I love how your video reflects my experience. In September I went to Japan for the very first time and I barely spoke Japanese all I knew was a little from DuoLingo and I didn't know how to really use the grammar (particles like そ、に and は) were foreign concepts to me still. After I got back I was determined to learn a bit more as I made a friends in Japan and I wanted to actually communicate in their language once I got back. In March I had the opportunity to visit my friends there again, they kept telling me my Japanese was good however I was struggling so hard. It was so confusing for me as I still felt like I couldn't hold up my end of the conversation. I am studying every day and I can't wait untill I get good enough to be able to have a meaningful conversation. These videos are certainly helpful and entertaining for sure. Keep on rocking Sora!
"Harry Gateaux and the Sumo Mason Stone" (It's about a guy who lives under the stairs watching anime all day until a weird flying talking cat-thing gives him an invitation to the magical land of Nee-Hon...)
People all over the world appreciate when someone genuinely puts effort into learning their language. I've never even heard of a foreigner being discouraged or put down for trying (so far).
I don't really discourage foreigner from learning my obscure language, but I always tell them that if they don't plan to live here, then trying to be fluent at it is a waste of time. I know first hand that reaching a reasonable fluency at any foreign language is hard and takes so much time, so I just want to make sure people know what they're getting themselves into.
haaaa.... I am one who got discouraged to learn. I live in Japan and my former boss made so many obstacles for me learn and I gave up, after asking/waiting for more than a year for adjust my day off so I could attend the classes, he just came and said your japanese is good enough and you don't need to learn more than it. He is a sh*t person.... He bullies foreigners and japaneses ppl. In the same workplace I meet so many bad ppl that I completely gave up of learn...
Foreigner Talking in Japanese: "I would like your 'consent' to marry your daughter!" What Japanese Speakers Hear: "I would like your (AC outlet) to marry your daughter!" "Nihongo umai kedo, naze konsento ga..."
one thing i hate more than rude tourists are sweaty gatekeepers. i've been to a couple of bars in japan only to get interrogated by non-japanese residents trying to make me feel weird about being there like saying stuff 'ohh you're only here to try and get japanese women!' even though my girlfriend is literally standing next to me. also had some other dude comment on my tattoos on the train saying 'you're not gonna get into a bathhouse with those!' this weirdo didn't even say or anything and assumed i want to go to a bathhouse in the first place?? i know japan has some bizzare shit, but gatekeeping foreigners are the weirdest
@@ferln4 Considering the Birth Rate is Lessening and the amount of Foreigners visiting are increasing, lets just say, it may slowly go per the norm over some time
I’m not Japanese, but the three times I visited Tokyo the Japanese people were very kind to me. You could also see how happy they were whenever I spoke the few Japanese words and phrases I do know. The look on their faces was “Yes! Good! Keep going! Keep going!” Such a beautiful country, do not be afraid to go if you don’t speak Japanese!!
Some people need a reminder that English isn't a worldwide native language and most try to learn and use it to at least have a common denominator to converse in. Also, some Kyoto and Osaka hotel staff were so fluent in English...it made me freaking humble hahaha
My most embarrassing one was not wearing reading glasses, glancing at a menu, and thinking the “za” hiragana was “gi.” Foolishly asked for “gyougi” when gyouza is a such a basic Japanese food I’ve known what it was since I was a little kid.
gyouza is usually written in katakana (or kanji) in which case gi and za don't look very similar. that's bad luck to have the menu writter choose to write it in hiragana and confuse you
@@bobboberson8297 vegan-oriented restaurant that seems to have half foreigners in it. So the menu is a mix of all of the above probably to try to serve a range of people. I have less than a year of learning (like 350 hours) level B1 they say) so my Japanese ability is still poor, but in this case I truly blame blurry vision and (more importantly) not thinking about context.
I've been having online japanese classes for some weeks now and I hope I'll be fluent enough to understand a full japanese conversation by the end of this year
So on point man 🤣 On my last trip to Japan, I felt more judgement from foreigners, who were somehow fluent in Japanese, than actual Japanese people whenever I gave up and spoke english. Also no wonder I thought Japanese people got better at English recently 😮
After seeing all his voice actor videos with hilariously bad English in them. I can now say after watching this video that he should in fact be the English voice actor in every anime. His English is very very good. Sometimes I just think they could've sent the lines to like 50 people overseas in an email and picked the best ones. It'd be more immersive than having the Japanese accent. Now I just say have this guys do it.
I'm not Japanese, but this is very accurate. You say a few sentences in Japanese, and people say 「日本語がお上手ですね。」. Most of the time, it's either tatemae, or a word of encouragement for you not to completely give up, though. 😂 And indeed, I've met a lot of Japanese people who said something along the line of “Japanese is difficult. Even I don't know how to speak.”
You remind me of an owner of a kyoto sake shop who jokingly answered "I don't see an issue with Japanese, I can speak it just fine" of my usual ice-breaker "It's not easy to learn Japanese but I still try".Never expected that kind of sentence and my brain froze for a few seconds. Good memories.
1:15 i swear this jean jacket foreigner version of Sora is like Sora in real life whenever he hears other foreigners speak broken Japanese to Japansese people. Like Alex for example!
I'm German, lived half a year in Japan and also learned a lot Japanese back then. For me the pronounciation was quite easy, because most letters are just pronounced the same way in German. Hearing this English approach here now was hilarious.
Oh, is that so? In spanish we also have a very similar pronounciation to japanese, but i always thought german would be more similar to english, being english a germanic lenguage.
@@franciscorobledo3192I'm not sure about every letter but related to this video especially "a" and "e" are pronounced the same way in German and Japanese. The "r" however is spoken in German deep in the throat while it is in Japanese, like in most east Asian languages, just a sound you make with the tip of your tongue. Here Spanish would be similar.
As an Australian-Chinese person myself, I've been quite fascinated with the Japanese culture for a long time and I wish to go to Okinawa because it's near Taiwan where some of my relatives live. The thing is that suddenly lots of foreigners are living in Japan or just going in for visiting and some of these shitty foreigners think that Japan is a joke and make fun of Japanese people and even breaking the law, which I think is pretty sad. And as a foreigner myself, this makes me not want to go to Japan that much. And what I meant by shitty foreigners, that especially means you Johnny Somali
As someone who never learned English but somehow speaks and writes in it daily, I don't know how I feel watching this video since I use English to communicate with people in Japan a lot, mostly because my Japanese is still weak, but I'm learning. If English can be an easier bridge between cultures, we should be happy and keep learning each other languages for deeper cultural exchange. That's basically how healthy globalization works.
@LD-Orbs thank you so much, this means a lot to me. I have a lot of things to improve and my grammar is terrible since I absorbed English from tech literature, articles, movies, games, comics, and only recently books (non-fiction, novels, etc). I have to admit watching anime with English subtitles also plays interesting games with your brain, it's like you're learning something from both languages at the same time XD
@@kabatsky Frequent exposure is a great teacher. Coming out of school, my English was terrible, but then I started to watch TH-cam videos in English and played online games.
@@levoGAMES I agree, exposure to media in a certain language helps a lot. That's why I think people who hate on otaku's, absorbing Japanese from anime, are wrong. If you like the language and the products of the culture, it'll help you learn. I know some not Japanese people who got great careers in Japan just following their anime hobbies from when they were young.
If you speak, write in it, and understand it, doesn't that mean you've learned it? Even if you don't know the equivalent for a few words you know in English that still means you learned it, so how could you speak and write in it but not have learned it? I'm curious now
Hahaha, I live in Japan and this is sooo true. When you use awful Japanese as a foreigner, Japanese people be so impressed. However, if you’ve lived here for a while and speak it well, they can’t compute so they say, “I can’t speak English” in Japanese even though you are speaking Japanese to them…lol.
I lost count at how many cool conversations actually started because they heard me say one word in Japanese (usually stuff like “arigato gozaimasu”, “sumimasen”, “konbanwa” etc) and then they would be like “nihongo dekiru no/ dekimasuka?!” and then I reply “zen zen, sonna koto nai desu!” and they go “eegghhh sugoi ne!” and they start piling on with questions about where I am from, how did I learn Japanese, what do I think of Japan, do I think the girls are cute etc etc. Was amazing! Hopefully gonna be great second time I go this May too. Last time I was I was mainly in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto (plus immediate surrounding areas like Saitama, Yokohama, Nara and Kobe respectively), this time I am planning to go to Sapporo, Hakodate and will finish off the trip with Tokyo again, can’t freakin wait ☺️🔥
“Everybody speaks English in 2024” is sadly a very common idea in america…. It’s hilarious to me that people think that some times because I’ll just be like “¿Realmente? ¿Asi que, por que puedo hablar una otra idioma que no es inglés?” *confused screaming*
Heres a cool trick to not be considered a rude foreigner..... Dont be rude. Just look up what people might consider rude like talking on the phone on the train, but that's about it.
My favorite moment from my Japan trip was visiting one of those below street-level bars in Sapporo. My father was with me, and the bar was playing Michael Jackson's Thriller. The bar tender couldn't speak much English and we couldn't speak much Japanese, but we managed to have full conversations over the joys of Michael Jackson music, good saki, and which "thank you" is appropriate to say in conversations because Japanese has so many options! It was a wonderful experience.
Veterans of the Konnichi-War unite! Still got flashbacks of the intense firefights in the Arri-Ghetto to this day. These Nihongo-Joes were tough as nails!
Foreigners says one japanese word correctly Japanese people:his Japanese is too good we must study him and he is not a weeb interesting police catch this man
Memorizing how to say "thank you for speaking English with me" in Japanese (used Google translate) and saying it to store clerks, hotel staff, etc. won me massive appreciation from the locals (far more than it should have). Showing an effort to learn even a little Japanese demonstrates that you respect their culture and that goes a very long way.
I just returned from Japan and I can say that English helps you in about half of the cases, many japanese will try to speak with you in Japanese people just out of their habit I guess. I personally have been learning Japanese for more than two years (very lazy learning tho but I'd surely pass JLPT N5 and maybe get close to passing N4) and that did help in a lot of cases. Sometimes the English they speak is pretty hard to get even if you ask to repeat multiple times haha. Anyway I liked the opportunity to test my knowledge there and it surely made many of them happy or at least raised their mood.
I had a Japanese friend in college who was in the States for foreign exchange. I would use my limited knowledge of Japanese and she was always so impressed 🥰 I miss her. Her English was waaaaaay better than my Japanese 😅 She's also responsible for me taking Aikido instead of another martial art!! And encouraged me to go after the guy who is now my husband! This was all 12 years ago... Wow... Hi Dina/Nao 👋 where ever you are!!
I feel like the sentiment often comes from those of us who are in predominately English speaking countries because often times in language classes they kinda shame you for not "trying your best" when your native accent comes through as you try to speak some other language and they shame you for not knowing an iota of any language when you go to another country or something? I think likely because they're so caught up with the idea of some tourists who actually are rude and get mad at people in X country for not speaking English when that's not the most commonly spoken language there. Idk it's weird. Learning another language is hard, it's definitely not easy to do and also not easy to retain what you learn if you aren't always using the language around people who speak it. I studied Spanish from 7th to 12th grade in school and I cannot have a conversation in Spanish to this day - outside of the classroom, most people I know speak English and if they speak Spanish they usually will switch to English since it's easier than waiting for me to try to translate what I want to say in my head and then respond back. I still make an effort though, but they don't shame me for it, even if my effort is actually not "prim and proper". Social media just kinda makes everyone judgemental and I think they're very quick to virtue signal and assume what people from X country think despite not even being from there. Japanese people have their own mouths, y'all. Let them speak for themselves.
Not to rain on your parade (and if you wanted to do a joke, this whooshed above my head)... but this is not correct. What you said is somewhat akin to "I there isn't Japanese language". ありません ('arimasen') is most commonly used to indicate existence for non-living (or, better said, "non-self-moving") things, much like "there is/are" in English. Some examples are "mizu wa/ga arimasen" ("there isn't water") or "okane ga arimasen" ("there's no money"). There's some subtlety on whether wa or ga is used (and they slightly differ in meaning), but using ga is more of a safe bet when talking about existence. 日本語 ('nihongo') exclusively relates to the language Japanese, not the nationality Japanese. 日本 ('nihon') is Japan, and this noun is combined with other terms to form related words, such as the aforementioned 日本語 but also 日本人 ('nihonjin', Japanese national). Using 私 ('watashi', I) is not incorrect, but it is extremely uncommon. This is a bad habit that should be abandoned as quickly as possible before you form your Japanese knowledge - most Japanese speakers suppress pronouns altogether in most cases. If you wanted to say: "I don't speak Japanese" - 日本語が喋れません ('nihongo ga shaberemasen') / 日本語が分かりません ('nihongo ga wakarimasen', lit. "I don't understand Japanese"). These verbs can be replaced by their casual forms if desired: 喋れない ('shaberenai') / 分からない ('wakaranai'). There are other variations and verbs that can be used, but these are probably the most common ones. "I am not Japanese" - 日本人では有りません ('nihonjin de wa arimasen'). This is super formal, and you'd likely use a more casual register. In decreasing formality, you may also say 日本人じゃありません ('nihonjin ja arimasen') or 日本人じゃない ('nihonjin janai').
Try Japanese pod 101 it helped tremendously with Hiragana and Katakana. Free lessons on TH-cam and website, but I pay for a monthly premium subscription to speak with a tutor to increase my pronunciations. I hope this helps!
I’m not Japanese BUT Currently traveling Japan from Australia and even though I have been learning Japanese for years I feel like I sound like them… the Australian accent comes through on the Japanese even when I try 😂
I agree. Thankfully we now have helpful translation software like Google Translate and DeepL. There is no excuse for foreigners to not make an attempt to communicate properly when we have convenient tools on our phones.
It's funny, because in the English-speaking world, we have a saying that's _exactly_ the same as 「郷に入れば郷に従え」, and it goes "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." In fact, running that phrase through Google Translate on its own even produces that exact line. It's just basic etiquette when you're in a foreign land, and it disgusts me to see how many people don't understand this simple, clearly millennia-old piece of advice.
Kyoto tourists had to be the most obnoxious I've ever seen. Is that a thing? Even worse than Tokyo tourists. And btw, I found it interesting how the police in Kyoto carry around some walkie talkie looking device that has a screen with an automatic translator. I got terribly lost one night and asked them for help and they whipped out this cool translator I had never seen before.
I was in Kyoto at a train station and my Japanese was too limited to properly ask for the directions I needed. I figured if anyone speaks some English, it's probably the woman at the information desk/booth. I tried asking her in English for help but she couldn't speak a word of English, or was unwilling to speak it. Then this guy who just rips the tickets all day came up to me and helped me out, he spoke English quite well.
i'm not japanese but.. i loved this video so much. my first trip to japan i always felt incredibly awkward when trying to speak to people, especially when asking for help with something. i would use google translate to figure out how to ask, then repeat the question like 20 times in my head before completely butchering it when actually asking. everyone i talked to was always super supportive and friendly tho, and it really helped to build my confidence. after that, my second trip was an absolute joy from the very beginning and i loved getting to chat with people with a combination of their limited english and my very broken bits of japanese. and i'll tell you, hearing that "nihongo jouzu desu ne" every once in a while is a magical thing. (even if it is sometimes used as a "yeah good job, but you can stop now.." lol )
I've met japanese tourists in my town, they were a group of boys around my age. I was super drunk and decided to speak to them. First they were scared, then I started to speak my most perfect japanese learned from years of watching anime and my multiple attempt to learn japanese. It was an instant ice breaker and really fun moment especially when I started to talk about gaijin shojo and nihon shojo as they were looking for girls. We had a good time went to bars and some funny places. I've met them again when I went to Tokyo. As a french speaker, japanese accent is not hard at all.
The thing is Japanese people actually like foreigners who speak Japanese badly more than the people who are hella good at it. Some people may misinterpret it as being racist but those people also don't touch grass. Think of it as making it easier for learners to be more comfortable in Japan. I still think that Japanese being one of the hardest languages is just total bs, I learned it and I've never been to Japan and I've never had a teacher. The difficulty of a language is irrelevant if you actually are motivated to learn it. Any language can be easy if you just keep doing it. It's a matter of time. But if you don't want to get good and just want to learn a small amount, that's fine too. Do what works for you. If you go to Japan without learning any of it, nobody's going to take it personally because they already assume every white/black/hispanic person doesn't speak it by default anyway.
In this video you are only allowed to leave comments that start with "I'm not Japanese but"
3 2 1 go
(edit)
or "I'm Japanese but"
I'm not japanese but the country of India would like to know your location
i'm not Japanese but did you watch Attack on Titan?
I’m not japanese but if my name is chinese, do i write it as kanji or katakana?
I’m not Japanese but Sora is cringe.
I'm not Japanese but when will you visit Fiji?
I'm Japanese who is working at the hotel in Tokyo, but I really love foreigner trying to speak Japanese if it is not good.
It makes me feel that they respect and like my country, culture and people.
Of course, there will be no problem if you don't speak any Japanese. It is good opportunity to try English for person who doesn't have any oversea experience like me.
Thank you for existing. We love positive Japanese people like you!
It's always great to see that people like you don't mind us while we're still learning
Hotel staff in Japan, especially Tokyo is the best in the world. You guys rock!
本当にありがとうございます。１５歳ころから、日本に行って、日本人とできるだけ話したかったですけど、今３２歳で、まだ行きませんでした。😂 しかし、二年ぐらい日本語を学んで、夢が諦めないです。いつか、日本に行って、あなたのような優しい人と話したいです。
日本に行った時、ほぼみんなが日本語で話してくれた一方、日本語話せない彼氏に向かって英語も頑張ってくれて…お世話になりました！
My favorite moment from my trip to Japan was on the shinkansen, when I talked to an older Japanese gentleman about my family's hometown for over half an hour. He told me he never took any opportunities to speak English with foreigners, and that he had only just then mustered up the courage to talk to someone who seemed approachable after over a decade of waiting. That moment will live rent-free in my brain until I am in the ground. Shoutout to you, old guy!
Or it could have been an evil person, telling the same story to all English speaking ppl, to live rent free in their heads :)
Yeah, the opportunity to use the foreign language you learned is very special. I never used english much personally to say anything to anyone, even when I was in England. The most was to talk with an english teacher in Catalunia.
very cool. Hopefully he went on to have many more conversations with foreigners.
Random English speaking middle aged men is actually a thing in Japan. They're known for randomly approaching tourists to practice their english.
@@thomas5585 can confirm, it's always the middle aged japanese men striking up conversation in ski lifits!
even the americans who are supposedly chatty don't do that
Sora realized there is constant memes happening around him and is capitalizing on it and actually making some form of money off it. Interesting business model but it works.
What kind of memes?
@Mr_Movie_Fan Sora makes his real life experiences into these memes
The profession you have described is called "journalist"
Envy sounds bad on you.
Makes sense that local Japanese are starting to watch your channel now. You have the best accent. You're able to do nerd English, broken English, and perfect English.
Sora’s preferred style of transportation; INSTANT TRANSMISSION
lol he finally did it.
No wonder he drives so slowly. He knows if there is a delay, just park and teleport.
@@DeGoosey exactly even that gramp car and grandpa shoes can’t slow him down with such an amazing ability 😏
So he learnt it when he was in space?
Elon left shook
I'm not Japanese but, I really like your channel. Love from England.
me 2
Time to cancel my trip to Tokyo. No subtitles…
Just use Google translate
I heard the fanslation is coming out soon so don't worry.
Can I have it?
@@RohitKulan tthT'S THE WORST part. don't use google translate for anything.
I'm not Japanese but...your English is so good and you are a legit genius. Funniest channel I've found in a while. Subbed
I have the problem of having relatively ok pronunciation with the few words I know how to say, so I end up getting a very quickly spoken full fluent response when I attempt to speak japanese. This will quickly be followed by both of us exchanging alternating bad english/japanese while apologizing. It's super awkward.
LMFAO! That sounds like a riot. I wish I could witness an exchange like this irl. I bet it would be super entertaining.
LOL. I know the pain.
Happened to me more than I could count when I was in the hospitality line.
I feel you ... -_-
Imagine this but also having all the mannerisms that Japanese use in conversations and it gets out of hand fast.
I feel you...
The next sentence after basic greetings automatically follows:
sorry my Japanese is bad do you know how to speak English
yes=> horray
no=> sign language + google translate time horrayyy
I'm not Japanese but I'm learning, and this has been my experience with Japanese people on Twitch. They're super cool. They'll speak English if they can, and they appreciate when you speak/write Japanese. Even met a streamer that goes as far as pausing whatever they're doing on stream to use google translate to reply to you in English if they can't put it into words themselves. Which I greatly appreciate. I also try to speak/write Japanese but do the same as fallback. xD
I'm not Japanese but, for years I have delayed myself from visiting Japan due to anxiety over the language barrier and this video has made me feel a little bit more confident. Thank you Sora. (Still plan to learn at least some stuff)
I'm in japan right now using trains like crazy. I asure you, basic vocabulary can get you almost everywhere.
The most I use is kore (to point), arigatou, sumimasen, and any way of salute (ohayou, konnichiwa, konbanwa).
I use DeepL to translate when needed (like buying movie tickets).
If you are not in a constant hurry you will be alright.
@@ivyriry this is good to know. I had not heard of DeepL before. Thank you for the insight!
google lens to translate pictures/from your phone's camera is a lot better than you would think it is from what i've seen.
I can read Japanese language thanks to playing in a Japanese server game for 2 years+(that went eos) without translation, probably helped by that my native language is traditional Chinese, which used sort of similar word style and pronunciation for many words, and would be able to go to Japan and not face too much of a language barrier except for my broken Japanese
The Olympics turned Japan topsy turvey. Its way way more englisg friendly now.
I'm not Japanese but, currently living in Tokyo I feel it's polite to at least learn how to pronounce basic words. I've gotten a few 日本語上手's already and it cracks me up, since I know my Japanese is fecken terrible and it's going to take months to even have a conversation. But that's fine, it's actually very motivating that people show such appreciation for the effort!
Oh and if someone hits you with a 日本語上手, responding with まだまだ will gain you instant respect because it shows a humble attitude. Accept that there's always more to learn and it's okay to suck at something, as long as you're improving!
I can understand a bit of Japanese while listening to it but kanji is like an alien script. How hard was it for you to learn?
@@HT79 learning kanji just takes time. You can learn the radicals to recognize them better and for example see the difference easier between 待 and 持, but learning just kanji by themselves (with a method like RTK, which is pretty good) only get you so far because they can have a lot of different pronunciations. You generally get the gist of their meaning when you read them, but without knowing the words, you might not know how to read it. For example, the kanji for 上手 (jou-zu) can become 上手い (u-ma-i), 上(ue), 手 (te), 上がる(a-ga-ru), 下手(he-ta), etc.
So, you really need to learn the vocabulary not with romaji, but with kanji, hiragana and if needed, furigana for the first few times.
There's about 2136 common kanji so it's not going to be done in a month even if all you do is learn to recognize them. If you learn 20 of them per day (should take about 1h with flash cards and repetition of the previous days for memorization over time), it will still take you over 3 months and a half, and all that just to say you know them, without being able to read Japanese because you'd have no idea of how they are meant to be pronounced. But I know some people that have done it like that and it helped them a lot afterwards. 🤷♂️
Well the Japanese spoken language is not super hard, but they (the Japanese) follow their own grammar rules. Learn that before you learn the syntax. Simply because language is a cultural construct over hundreds of years. FYI, lots of loan words in Japanese use English, but are unrecognisable to any native English speaker; they Japanize it. Their written language is even more baffling; a mixture basically of two scripts. As if Romanized characters were mixed up with Greek. This makes learning Japanese a scholarly exercise.
lol it’s so funny when you respond with basic phrases and older people in Japan are so proud of you. Japanese is hard but not impossible to learn
it's a tough road to take but every small progress feels good. My vocabulary still sucks and is probably the biggest reason why I can't build long sentences, but living in central europe is a hard place to find japanese speakers to train. Though with online lessions every week and looking back onto the last 3 months, it has gotten better and it feels GOOD!
@@RenegadeSamuraiI feel that. I just started learning to read hiragana and katakana this week. Its nice to read them even tho I dont know what the translation of the words they build is
@@JJ_38624I've been constructing sentences for past 4 months and slowly learning Kanji using rote memorization by popularity (there is a better method by radical but I'm lazy.).
There will get a point where it feels exhausting.
This..... 😂 Dude.... You're amazing! You are literally the embodiment of everything I love about what TH-cam used to be! You sir, just earned another subscriber!
"Tokyo is getting so many foreigners that many are starting to qualify as locals."
basically Japan is turning into Hawaii
People in cities don't qualify as locals to begin with. They understand so little about the countryside that they're no different than moving into that big city from a foreign country.
Right, but imagine how few or many had moved a decade or two ago. They've lived there for a while, probably had to go to different prefectures, seen things that most people don't see during tours, etc. Those people are more who I refer to. Perhaps they've gained proficiency in Japanese, too. Could they qualify as locals of the cities in which they reside?
@@ronture8279 depends on your "local" standards. They could be. Or, depending on some of the Japanese people that think that native Japanese going abroad to study and come back aren't Japanese anymore, well, they may not be local. It all depends on how you define it.
@@sboinkthelegday3892nearly the entire population of Japan is urbanized, as well as the populations of most countries including the U.S. To say a vast minority of people are locals is kinda gatekeepy to a really small group.
Sora, thanks! You are the most non-trolling “troll”. And you are actually helpful! Thank you again. I was actually wondering about those things too! You put mind at ease.
KonNICHIwar, ArigAto.
I'll use these words now.
Tuum ingenio bro! 🙏
soomeemasen
Arrreaverderrchi, my Japanese buds! What's up my sugoi chooms?
arigAto goZImasu
Ur Japanese very goodu
(i'm not japanese but) looks like sora's channel has become a resource for both students of the japanese language and for students of the english language!! thank you sora the troll!!!
Even better than "arigato" is the "sumimasen" technique. If you say it correctly, they'll ask how long you've been in Japan. If they ask that, you know your Japanese is perfect
Jokes aside, that literally happened to me last week on the train back to Tokyo. They really do appreciate people trying and are excited when a foreigner takes the effort to learn.
I think this is a thing in every country, when you try to speak to the locals in their language, you already make a positive impression. It's a sign, that you really have an interest in the language and culture. And like he said...almost no japanese expects a foreigner to speak fluent japanese, or even at all. The bigger the surprise when you actually get out a short sentence in japanese.
@@RenegadeSamurai Well in natively bilingual places this works way less often.
I don’t think a lot of people appreciate it. A lot of times my attempts to speak Japanese is answered with abrupt English. Or a weird translation device. Mind you, I studied over two years. Old people seem to usually want to engage, but young people don’t have patience to speak to a foreigner attempting to speak Japanese.
I’m shy with a bit of a pride problem so I just continue completely in English.
“Sumimasen” and “Wakarimasen”. The first two phrases everyone should learn, along with “aigo ga wakarimas- ka?” Outside of those three, the only other phrase I highly recommend is “_____ onegaishimas-“.
For the uninitiated, the u at the end of _masu is not vocalized, hence my notation.
I laughed a lot from the word «konichiwar”
Thank you 😂😂😂
Me trying to learn Japanese.
Watching online courses?
Me: No, that doesn't seem fun at all.
What about watching a stranger yell 'Rasengan!' on the streets and learning Japanese from him?
Me: Giveeee me thattttttttttttt!
People tend to learn things best when what they're learning is engaging, after all
That's why Sora is awesome
SO.FUCKING.TRUE
Flashback to LA, last year.
In an outlet, a lady is buying a perfume or something.
Her baby mumbles words in japanese.
*THIS IS MY CHANCE!!!!*
"aH, sUmIMaSEn, ANatatAchI WA,NIHonJIN desu Ne?!?!?"
.....
And she goes, "Ah, so desu...."
Then, it happened...
"NIHONGO JOUZU DESU"
*I immediately scurry away, as that was the extent of my japanese, never to meet this woman again in my life, probably leaving her thinking...wtf was that about*
Sora so here's something that happened to me. I've been watching your channel for a while and I was always confused why you made foreigners say "konnichiwar". I knew there wasn't an "r" at the end and I wasn't saying it! I've been studying Japanese for a year and a half now, and recently had a chance to visit Japan. I was doing a hike on Mitakesan, there were mostly Japanese people hiking there, they were all very nice and all said "konnichiwa" to me when they encountered me on the trail. So I said "konnichiwa" back. To my horror, what came out of my mouth surely sounded like "konnichiwar"! I was so shocked! I spent the rest of the hike trying to figure out how to *not* do the "~ar" at the end, but no matter how much I tried, every next person I greeted, what came out of my mouth was always "konnichiwar"! I couldn't get rid of it! Might as well just embrace my horrible accent 😂 good job on noticing that little detail, now I'm forever self-conscious 😅
I always assumed it sounded like the intrusive r that Brits do sometimes, because maybe he can’t hear the difference between British and American accents?
@@ferretyluv I don't know what it is! I live in the States and English is not even my first language (but I've lived here for most of my life). Something about how the Japanese elongate that last "a", they actually go "konnichiwaaaa", I mimic that, and end up having some sort of an "r" ghost sound at the end!
@@ferretyluv I thought the intrusive r was what Australians do
I think Sora broke your Konnichiha. xD
I think it's something speficic to English speakers. Like ending Spanish words that end in "-o" with a bit of a "-ou", like "bañou". Spanish speakers do something equivalent when adding an "e-" before words that start with "S", like "espanish".
Oh my god you put the perfect punchline to cap off years of Dogen's "nigongo jozu desu ne"
I'm laughing in bed and i just burst out laughing at that one
3:14 When I told my Japanese teacher that Japanese is a difficult language, she said " For me it's not ". So I got the impression that for Japanese people their language is easy, and that English instead is difficult. ...and that's when I realized Japanese is not as difficult as some people make it out to be. Yes, the Kanji and Keigo may be " difficult ", but the grammar is ONLY difficult to people who speak English ( or similar languages ). If your first language is Japanese or Korean then Japanese grammar is common sense. English, on the other hand, is difficult because of the random spelling and huge vocabulary, ...and the grammar should be just as difficult for Japanese people as Japanese grammar is for English people.
I know it is common that people view their first language as " not difficult for THEM ", but I can say that I indeed view my first language, Polish, as difficult and everyone who learns it must be a GENIUS. Polish people are constantly fed with propaganda that their language is THE MOST DIFFICULT IN THE WORLD. ...and it might be true lol. While there is no Kanji, the grammar is 100x more difficult than whatever Japanese or English grammar is. It's like Russian grammar, except even more complicated. Verbs, nouns, adjectives, and EVEN NUMBERS conjugate. EVERYTHING conjugates. ...and there are MULTIPLE RULES to how the words conjugate, and even more exceptions than rules. ...and yes, I myself mess up the grammar ALL THE TIME!
It's actually the other way around. Most people have this tendency to believe that their primary language is the most difficult in the world, or at least somewhere in that vicinity - because they learn from experience and exposure, rather than having to work with formal rules most of their lives.
This leads to scenarios in which native speakers are aware that rules exist, but can't recall either what the rule was nor explain when (and how) certain exceptions surface.
As someone who was born in Brazil and had to hear people claim that "Portuguese is so difficult because of (insert a thousand reasons here, including nouns having genders / the amount of verb flexions and the fact they must be flexed to also agree with the subject / rules on vowel fusion...)", I saw that first-hand during my childhood - and then realised that nearly everyone else tends to state the same about their primary language.
This led me to the conclusion that there's no inherent difficulty in languages. All there is (when it comes to language) is personal inclinations (we might fare better with certain types of language over others) and time to address how distant a given language is from your baseline.
If languages were truly easy or difficult, then we'd expect linguistic acquisition to happen later in certain countries. This is not the case.
確かに一言でも話されたら日本語上手だなって思ってしまう
"ARIGATO" "KONICHIWAR"
I think so good Japanese speaking traveler
これ逆もしかりで英語喋ってる日本人みると「ハロー」だけでも「えっめっちゃしゃべれるやん！！」ってなるのがおもろいんすよね
@@sorathetroll ああ！だから昔から海外の人にハローって言っただけでめっちゃ英語で話されて待って！待って！ってなっちゃってたのか…腑に落ちたｗ
@@sorathetrollit works both ways. When I see someone speak English, I react like you do. And when I speak even broken, incorrect language, the other person appreciates it a lot.
It helps us all to get along with each other. It's what I think.
Hey look, Sora is practicing his Japanese. No rude American here!
@@starmechlx u nthn different and so we all are xd
I am not Japanese but I love how your video reflects my experience. In September I went to Japan for the very first time and I barely spoke Japanese all I knew was a little from DuoLingo and I didn't know how to really use the grammar (particles like そ、に and は) were foreign concepts to me still. After I got back I was determined to learn a bit more as I made a friends in Japan and I wanted to actually communicate in their language once I got back. In March I had the opportunity to visit my friends there again, they kept telling me my Japanese was good however I was struggling so hard. It was so confusing for me as I still felt like I couldn't hold up my end of the conversation.
I am studying every day and I can't wait untill I get good enough to be able to have a meaningful conversation. These videos are certainly helpful and entertaining for sure. Keep on rocking Sora!
Harry gateaux Sora-san
I will use your wisdom when I visit Japan next week :)
Good luck and I hope you have a good time there!
"Harry Gateaux and the Sumo Mason Stone"
(It's about a guy who lives under the stairs watching anime all day until a weird flying talking cat-thing gives him an invitation to the magical land of Nee-Hon...)
@@helenaborgespeixoto7598 Thanks, it will be awesome :)
Ok, from now on everyone who is visiting my home country (the Netherlands) you have to speak Dutch flawlessly.
If yu don't, everyone will talk to you in.... ENGLISH! *gasp*
Well luckily weed just got legalised in Germany this month and I can get my Bami in Luxemburg so goodbye Netherlands
Even with a sore throat? Guess I'll have to take enough Strepsils to ensure I can say those guttural Dutch consonants properly if my throat is so raw.
I'm not Dutch but that sounds pretty difficult.
@@ImGazu sounds like a skill issue to me
Nah bro only like 20 seconds through and already laughing like crazy
People all over the world appreciate when someone genuinely puts effort into learning their language. I've never even heard of a foreigner being discouraged or put down for trying (so far).
The French would like a word with you.
@@ezraho8449 😆
I don't really discourage foreigner from learning my obscure language, but I always tell them that if they don't plan to live here, then trying to be fluent at it is a waste of time. I know first hand that reaching a reasonable fluency at any foreign language is hard and takes so much time, so I just want to make sure people know what they're getting themselves into.
haaaa.... I am one who got discouraged to learn. I live in Japan and my former boss made so many obstacles for me learn and I gave up, after asking/waiting for more than a year for adjust my day off so I could attend the classes, he just came and said your japanese is good enough and you don't need to learn more than it. He is a sh*t person.... He bullies foreigners and japaneses ppl. In the same workplace I meet so many bad ppl that I completely gave up of learn...
Foreigner Talking in Japanese: "I would like your 'consent' to marry your daughter!"
What Japanese Speakers Hear: "I would like your (AC outlet) to marry your daughter!"
"Nihongo umai kedo, naze konsento ga..."
Haha, good one.
LOL
By AC you mean Assassins Creed?
@@biscuit5359
I mean, obviously not. 😂
@@Lock2002ful lol right? Apollo Creed of course. Boxing is a fine outlet.
This is SOOOOO reaaaaaal. Other foreigners would eat you alive, and then you have japanese people saying 「日本人すぎる」when you use a bit of slang with them
You must at least have JLPT N3 to enter -this ride- Japan
This is the funniest video from you I've seen in a while hahahha
日本語上手ですね
そっちこそ
wwwwwwww
oh my god! it's Bijuu Mike! i loved your old DDLC contents!
Hey, I'm not Japanese, but, I remember you vaguely, weren't you a lets-player that got traumatised by a cute little dating simulator?
I haven't laughed so loudly in front of a monitor in a very long time! Thank you!😂😂
one thing i hate more than rude tourists are sweaty gatekeepers. i've been to a couple of bars in japan only to get interrogated by non-japanese residents trying to make me feel weird about being there like saying stuff 'ohh you're only here to try and get japanese women!' even though my girlfriend is literally standing next to me. also had some other dude comment on my tattoos on the train saying 'you're not gonna get into a bathhouse with those!' this weirdo didn't even say or anything and assumed i want to go to a bathhouse in the first place?? i know japan has some bizzare shit, but gatekeeping foreigners are the weirdest
the only ''war'' in JP is gaijin vs another gaijin/non-japanese residents 😂😂😂
Atleast you didn't had to deal with the Problem Streamers that were arising
This post is right on point!
I hope these gatekeepers are a rare occurrence and not the norm for fellow tourists.
@@ferln4 Considering the Birth Rate is Lessening and the amount of Foreigners visiting are increasing, lets just say, it may slowly go per the norm over some time
I’m not Japanese, but the three times I visited Tokyo the Japanese people were very kind to me. You could also see how happy they were whenever I spoke the few Japanese words and phrases I do know. The look on their faces was “Yes! Good! Keep going! Keep going!” Such a beautiful country, do not be afraid to go if you don’t speak Japanese!!
I always enjoy your blend of education and comedy, it keeps me engaged as well as coming back for more! Thanks for the awesome video!
Dude I cannot with the subtitles 😂 they are so hilarious
Arigato for this lessons lol 😂
@@Retro_Jetistg u obsessed with them or something lmaoo
Some people need a reminder that English isn't a worldwide native language and most try to learn and use it to at least have a common denominator to converse in.
Also, some Kyoto and Osaka hotel staff were so fluent in English...it made me freaking humble hahaha
My most embarrassing one was not wearing reading glasses, glancing at a menu, and thinking the “za” hiragana was “gi.” Foolishly asked for “gyougi” when gyouza is a such a basic Japanese food I’ve known what it was since I was a little kid.
Gyoshi if i read kanji. It is jiaozi in japanese accent.
gyouza is usually written in katakana (or kanji) in which case gi and za don't look very similar. that's bad luck to have the menu writter choose to write it in hiragana and confuse you
@@bobboberson8297 vegan-oriented restaurant that seems to have half foreigners in it. So the menu is a mix of all of the above probably to try to serve a range of people.
I have less than a year of learning (like 350 hours) level B1 they say) so my Japanese ability is still poor, but in this case I truly blame blurry vision and (more importantly) not thinking about context.
Some kana do look alike, but have completely different phonemes. I sometimes get ツand シmixed up.
@@AurumUsagi what helped me with those was focusing on the direction the main stroke was made (top to bottom or vice versa).
I've been having online japanese classes for some weeks now and I hope I'll be fluent enough to understand a full japanese conversation by the end of this year
Japanizu: I'mma beat yo ass up(in Japanese)
Engrishu: "Arigato"
Japanizu: お前をぶち殺すぞ！
English: 駅はどこですか？
"That foreigner is pretty rude.."
"Ahrigahto :)"
*NANI?!*
So on point man 🤣 On my last trip to Japan, I felt more judgement from foreigners, who were somehow fluent in Japanese, than actual Japanese people whenever I gave up and spoke english. Also no wonder I thought Japanese people got better at English recently 😮
After seeing all his voice actor videos with hilariously bad English in them. I can now say after watching this video that he should in fact be the English voice actor in every anime. His English is very very good. Sometimes I just think they could've sent the lines to like 50 people overseas in an email and picked the best ones. It'd be more immersive than having the Japanese accent. Now I just say have this guys do it.
airy gator 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣
I am not American but definitely use this next time I visit Florida.
I'm not Japanese, but this is very accurate.
You say a few sentences in Japanese, and people say 「日本語がお上手ですね。」.
Most of the time, it's either tatemae, or a word of encouragement for you not to completely give up, though. 😂
And indeed, I've met a lot of Japanese people who said something along the line of “Japanese is difficult. Even I don't know how to speak.”
You remind me of an owner of a kyoto sake shop who jokingly answered "I don't see an issue with Japanese, I can speak it just fine" of my usual ice-breaker "It's not easy to learn Japanese but I still try".Never expected that kind of sentence and my brain froze for a few seconds. Good memories.
1:15 i swear this jean jacket foreigner version of Sora is like Sora in real life whenever he hears other foreigners speak broken Japanese to Japansese people. Like Alex for example!
I'm German, lived half a year in Japan and also learned a lot Japanese back then.
For me the pronounciation was quite easy, because most letters are just pronounced the same way in German.
Hearing this English approach here now was hilarious.
Oh, is that so? In spanish we also have a very similar pronounciation to japanese, but i always thought german would be more similar to english, being english a germanic lenguage.
@@franciscorobledo3192I'm not sure about every letter but related to this video especially "a" and "e" are pronounced the same way in German and Japanese.
The "r" however is spoken in German deep in the throat while it is in Japanese, like in most east Asian languages, just a sound you make with the tip of your tongue. Here Spanish would be similar.
Alex: "HAI, KONICHIWAR!"
white hoodie Sora: "hizu Japanizu izu so goodo! Nihongo jouzu!"
yes the power of Konichiwar never fails!
As an Australian-Chinese person myself, I've been quite fascinated with the Japanese culture for a long time and I wish to go to Okinawa because it's near Taiwan where some of my relatives live.
The thing is that suddenly lots of foreigners are living in Japan or just going in for visiting and some of these shitty foreigners think that Japan is a joke and make fun of Japanese people and even breaking the law, which I think is pretty sad.
And as a foreigner myself, this makes me not want to go to Japan that much.
And what I meant by shitty foreigners, that especially means you Johnny Somali
don't get deported Soar
@@Retro_Jet とよださん
@@Retro_JetDHNってどういう意味ですか？
Ngl next to his vids being entertaining they are quite educational on both english and japanese. Its actually quite genius.
As someone who never learned English but somehow speaks and writes in it daily, I don't know how I feel watching this video since I use English to communicate with people in Japan a lot, mostly because my Japanese is still weak, but I'm learning. If English can be an easier bridge between cultures, we should be happy and keep learning each other languages for deeper cultural exchange. That's basically how healthy globalization works.
Your English is amazing for someone who never learnt English!
@LD-Orbs thank you so much, this means a lot to me. I have a lot of things to improve and my grammar is terrible since I absorbed English from tech literature, articles, movies, games, comics, and only recently books (non-fiction, novels, etc). I have to admit watching anime with English subtitles also plays interesting games with your brain, it's like you're learning something from both languages at the same time XD
@@kabatsky Frequent exposure is a great teacher.
Coming out of school, my English was terrible, but then I started to watch TH-cam videos in English and played online games.
@@levoGAMES I agree, exposure to media in a certain language helps a lot. That's why I think people who hate on otaku's, absorbing Japanese from anime, are wrong. If you like the language and the products of the culture, it'll help you learn. I know some not Japanese people who got great careers in Japan just following their anime hobbies from when they were young.
If you speak, write in it, and understand it, doesn't that mean you've learned it? Even if you don't know the equivalent for a few words you know in English that still means you learned it, so how could you speak and write in it but not have learned it? I'm curious now
Hahaha, I live in Japan and this is sooo true. When you use awful Japanese as a foreigner, Japanese people be so impressed. However, if you’ve lived here for a while and speak it well, they can’t compute so they say, “I can’t speak English” in Japanese even though you are speaking Japanese to them…lol.
I'm not Japanese but this dude is funny. Sora when are you going to come visit us in America?
I lost count at how many cool conversations actually started because they heard me say one word in Japanese (usually stuff like “arigato gozaimasu”, “sumimasen”, “konbanwa” etc) and then they would be like “nihongo dekiru no/ dekimasuka?!” and then I reply “zen zen, sonna koto nai desu!” and they go “eegghhh sugoi ne!” and they start piling on with questions about where I am from, how did I learn Japanese, what do I think of Japan, do I think the girls are cute etc etc. Was amazing! Hopefully gonna be great second time I go this May too. Last time I was I was mainly in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto (plus immediate surrounding areas like Saitama, Yokohama, Nara and Kobe respectively), this time I am planning to go to Sapporo, Hakodate and will finish off the trip with Tokyo again, can’t freakin wait ☺️🔥
This video had me rolling! Never stop, I love the sense of humor. The Dr. Pepper tastes like Dr. Pepper.
“Everybody speaks English in 2024” is sadly a very common idea in america….
It’s hilarious to me that people think that some times because I’ll just be like
“¿Realmente? ¿Asi que, por que puedo hablar una otra idioma que no es inglés?” *confused screaming*
Heres a cool trick to not be considered a rude foreigner..... Dont be rude. Just look up what people might consider rude like talking on the phone on the train, but that's about it.
My favorite moment from my Japan trip was visiting one of those below street-level bars in Sapporo. My father was with me, and the bar was playing Michael Jackson's Thriller. The bar tender couldn't speak much English and we couldn't speak much Japanese, but we managed to have full conversations over the joys of Michael Jackson music, good saki, and which "thank you" is appropriate to say in conversations because Japanese has so many options! It was a wonderful experience.
Dokupe kudasai〜♡
(ドクターペッパーください)
wow this "ッ" looks like a happy face ペ(ッ)パ
Katakana, the only thing almost as scary as kanji to new learners 😱
@@PrideSage99 ヵand kanji カ is worst pain ever 😭
↑( •̀ᴗ•́ )و私も英語の勉強頑張るからみんなも日本語の勉強を頑張るのよ!!
Veterans of the Konnichi-War unite!
Still got flashbacks of the intense firefights in the Arri-Ghetto to this day.
These Nihongo-Joes were tough as nails!
Nice.
Foreigners says one japanese word correctly
Japanese people:his Japanese is too good we must study him and he is not a weeb interesting police catch this man
Memorizing how to say "thank you for speaking English with me" in Japanese (used Google translate) and saying it to store clerks, hotel staff, etc. won me massive appreciation from the locals (far more than it should have). Showing an effort to learn even a little Japanese demonstrates that you respect their culture and that goes a very long way.
Sora cringe power level is always above 9000 remember that lol
My scouter once I started watching his streams
I just returned from Japan and I can say that English helps you in about half of the cases, many japanese will try to speak with you in Japanese people just out of their habit I guess. I personally have been learning Japanese for more than two years (very lazy learning tho but I'd surely pass JLPT N5 and maybe get close to passing N4) and that did help in a lot of cases. Sometimes the English they speak is pretty hard to get even if you ask to repeat multiple times haha. Anyway I liked the opportunity to test my knowledge there and it surely made many of them happy or at least raised their mood.
Arigatouw. Konichewar. Ohio. Gosaimasow.
That’s good to hear. Generosity is good for japan 🇯🇵
それは嬉しいですね。寛大さは日本にとって良いことです🇯🇵
😢I think you dropped this king 👑
I had a Japanese friend in college who was in the States for foreign exchange. I would use my limited knowledge of Japanese and she was always so impressed 🥰 I miss her. Her English was waaaaaay better than my Japanese 😅
She's also responsible for me taking Aikido instead of another martial art!! And encouraged me to go after the guy who is now my husband! This was all 12 years ago... Wow... Hi Dina/Nao 👋 where ever you are!!
I feel like the sentiment often comes from those of us who are in predominately English speaking countries because often times in language classes they kinda shame you for not "trying your best" when your native accent comes through as you try to speak some other language and they shame you for not knowing an iota of any language when you go to another country or something? I think likely because they're so caught up with the idea of some tourists who actually are rude and get mad at people in X country for not speaking English when that's not the most commonly spoken language there. Idk it's weird. Learning another language is hard, it's definitely not easy to do and also not easy to retain what you learn if you aren't always using the language around people who speak it. I studied Spanish from 7th to 12th grade in school and I cannot have a conversation in Spanish to this day - outside of the classroom, most people I know speak English and if they speak Spanish they usually will switch to English since it's easier than waiting for me to try to translate what I want to say in my head and then respond back. I still make an effort though, but they don't shame me for it, even if my effort is actually not "prim and proper". Social media just kinda makes everyone judgemental and I think they're very quick to virtue signal and assume what people from X country think despite not even being from there. Japanese people have their own mouths, y'all. Let them speak for themselves.
KONICHIWAR! Oh love that one! It actually made laugh.
Arighetto is my new favorite word.
Alex: *is cringier than Sora*
Meanwhile, Sora: *Inner Aomine awakens* "The only one who can beat me, is me."
日本語が上手いか、ド下手かもう分からなくなってしまいました。恐らくずっとハンガリー語を話してきたわ。
ARIGETTHO Sora now I feel relieved after watching your videos 🤣🙏
I'm not japanese but, i learned this much
watshiwa nihongowa arimase
I MUST BE A GENIUS
Not to rain on your parade (and if you wanted to do a joke, this whooshed above my head)... but this is not correct. What you said is somewhat akin to "I there isn't Japanese language".
ありません ('arimasen') is most commonly used to indicate existence for non-living (or, better said, "non-self-moving") things, much like "there is/are" in English. Some examples are "mizu wa/ga arimasen" ("there isn't water") or "okane ga arimasen" ("there's no money"). There's some subtlety on whether wa or ga is used (and they slightly differ in meaning), but using ga is more of a safe bet when talking about existence.
日本語 ('nihongo') exclusively relates to the language Japanese, not the nationality Japanese. 日本 ('nihon') is Japan, and this noun is combined with other terms to form related words, such as the aforementioned 日本語 but also 日本人 ('nihonjin', Japanese national).
Using 私 ('watashi', I) is not incorrect, but it is extremely uncommon. This is a bad habit that should be abandoned as quickly as possible before you form your Japanese knowledge - most Japanese speakers suppress pronouns altogether in most cases.
If you wanted to say:
"I don't speak Japanese" - 日本語が喋れません ('nihongo ga shaberemasen') / 日本語が分かりません ('nihongo ga wakarimasen', lit. "I don't understand Japanese"). These verbs can be replaced by their casual forms if desired: 喋れない ('shaberenai') / 分からない ('wakaranai'). There are other variations and verbs that can be used, but these are probably the most common ones.
"I am not Japanese" - 日本人では有りません ('nihonjin de wa arimasen'). This is super formal, and you'd likely use a more casual register. In decreasing formality, you may also say 日本人じゃありません ('nihonjin ja arimasen') or 日本人じゃない ('nihonjin janai').
This is the funniest channel Ive seen in the past 20 years, goddamnit.
Currently studying with Genki. It’s not easy but it’s fun
Try Japanese pod 101 it helped tremendously with Hiragana and Katakana. Free lessons on TH-cam and website, but I pay for a monthly premium subscription to speak with a tutor to increase my pronunciations. I hope this helps!
I’m not Japanese BUT Currently traveling Japan from Australia and even though I have been learning Japanese for years I feel like I sound like them… the Australian accent comes through on the Japanese even when I try 😂
「日本では日本語を話せ」と言う人が出てきた原因は、外国人の観光客や移住者の中に日本文化に対してリスペクトのない行動（ごみのポイ捨て、騒音など）を取る人たちが増えてきたので、日本人の間でも「郷に入れば郷に従え」という声が広がり、それが良識のある外国人によって忠告されている事に起因していると思います。
また、日本語を一言も話せない外国人が英語を話せない日本人にひたすら英語で話しかけても通じず「なんでこいつらは英語を話せないんだ？」という態度になる外国人も少なからずいるようで、「ここは日本だ」とインターネット上で怒っている日本人もいます。しかしこの問題は日本語を話せない事ではなく自己中な態度についてなのですが、これがすり替わって前述の忠告に「日本では日本語を話せ」が加わったのだと思います。
それと、少し話せるだけで「凄い！」と思うのは確かですし、日本語を話せない事を責める人はいませんが、出来れば日本語を話して欲しいとは思っていると思います。なぜなら、勉強する人が増えているとは言っても元々低いので、例えばですが1%が2倍になったところで2%、ほとんどの人が話せない事に変わりはありません。円滑なコミュニケーションが取れれば深い関係を築けますし、物事も円滑に進むので、特に移住者は日本語を話せた方が孤立せずに済むかもしれません。
Based
I agree. Thankfully we now have helpful translation software like Google Translate and DeepL. There is no excuse for foreigners to not make an attempt to communicate properly when we have convenient tools on our phones.
@@Herald_of_PerfectionIt's an opinion mate
大賛成です。観光客なら、訪れたい国の言語を詳しく学ぶ義務がないと思います。何故かと言うと、その義務があったら誰も旅行出来なくなってしまって、世界も経験も価値観も狭くなります。
しかし、日本語でコミュニケーション出来る外国人の観点から見ると、「日本に住んでいる・働いている外国人にも拘わらず、日本語の会話が出来ない」のは大問題です。自分の意見が厳しすぎると言われたが、一年間以上日本に住んだ外国人が何となく日本語でコミュニケーションを取れる義務があると思います。
最近、日本に在留する外国人と観光客が一つのグループに混合されて、一般化による意見がインターネットで頻りに投稿されています。その結果として、観光客も日本語が分からなかったら批判されています。以上の批判を受け止めないが、何故こういうふうなった理由を納得出来ます。
It's funny, because in the English-speaking world, we have a saying that's _exactly_ the same as 「郷に入れば郷に従え」, and it goes "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." In fact, running that phrase through Google Translate on its own even produces that exact line.
It's just basic etiquette when you're in a foreign land, and it disgusts me to see how many people don't understand this simple, clearly millennia-old piece of advice.
I'm not japanese but Soraさんビデオズイズベリベリfunny、沢山ｗｗｗｗｗ
I like to think this sketch is from a real life situation.
Kyoto tourists had to be the most obnoxious I've ever seen. Is that a thing? Even worse than Tokyo tourists. And btw, I found it interesting how the police in Kyoto carry around some walkie talkie looking device that has a screen with an automatic translator. I got terribly lost one night and asked them for help and they whipped out this cool translator I had never seen before.
I was in Kyoto at a train station and my Japanese was too limited to properly ask for the directions I needed. I figured if anyone speaks some English, it's probably the woman at the information desk/booth. I tried asking her in English for help but she couldn't speak a word of English, or was unwilling to speak it. Then this guy who just rips the tickets all day came up to me and helped me out, he spoke English quite well.
i'm not japanese but.. i loved this video so much. my first trip to japan i always felt incredibly awkward when trying to speak to people, especially when asking for help with something. i would use google translate to figure out how to ask, then repeat the question like 20 times in my head before completely butchering it when actually asking. everyone i talked to was always super supportive and friendly tho, and it really helped to build my confidence.
after that, my second trip was an absolute joy from the very beginning and i loved getting to chat with people with a combination of their limited english and my very broken bits of japanese. and i'll tell you, hearing that "nihongo jouzu desu ne" every once in a while is a magical thing. (even if it is sometimes used as a "yeah good job, but you can stop now.." lol )
I probably should have gone to jail today for speaking Spanish poorly!🤣
I've met japanese tourists in my town, they were a group of boys around my age. I was super drunk and decided to speak to them. First they were scared, then I started to speak my most perfect japanese learned from years of watching anime and my multiple attempt to learn japanese. It was an instant ice breaker and really fun moment especially when I started to talk about gaijin shojo and nihon shojo as they were looking for girls. We had a good time went to bars and some funny places. I've met them again when I went to Tokyo. As a french speaker, japanese accent is not hard at all.
I'm not a Goomba, but stepping on Goombas is so rude. Sora is cringe again. Call the police!
I’m Hawaiian with a Japanese second family even though I don’t speak the smallest bit of the language, your videos helped!
Arigato Sora!
This isn’t Boku no picu
This isn’t attack on titan
This isn't Re:Zero
Your english isn't bad at all! Sora you're a genius!
The thing is Japanese people actually like foreigners who speak Japanese badly more than the people who are hella good at it. Some people may misinterpret it as being racist but those people also don't touch grass. Think of it as making it easier for learners to be more comfortable in Japan. I still think that Japanese being one of the hardest languages is just total bs, I learned it and I've never been to Japan and I've never had a teacher. The difficulty of a language is irrelevant if you actually are motivated to learn it. Any language can be easy if you just keep doing it. It's a matter of time. But if you don't want to get good and just want to learn a small amount, that's fine too. Do what works for you. If you go to Japan without learning any of it, nobody's going to take it personally because they already assume every white/black/hispanic person doesn't speak it by default anyway.
I'm not Japanese but I like this video.
卵が好き
私も！
Damn, I’m going to Japan in a month and I was banking on those subtitles to help me out in conversation 😂