What anime fans must look like to the Japanese

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I’ve met a few people like this, and no, I’m not one of them…

They’re laughing at me again…

Learning Japanese in a home with three native speakers, I expect them to laugh at me a lot, as I make a lot of mistakes.  A LOT of mistakes…sometimes they are practically rolling on the floor, and between catching thier breath and the next bout of giggles, they correct me.

But this evening something different came up. Apparently my pronunciation of ら, り, る and れ is incorrect but ろ is ok. It doesn’t seem to matter how I place my tongue in my mouth, it comes out the same way.

I can’t tell the difference in how they say it, compared to how I say it, but all three of them were trying to get me to pronounce it right, without success.

Any tips on what I might be doing wrong or how to correct it?

Who wants cake?

My girlfriend and her oldest daughter just had birthdays, and I tried making a Japanese style cake for them, which is traditionally a sponge cake with whipped cream and fruit.

My attempt seemed to turn out pretty good, although I could have probably added a lot more fruit on top, and she was surprised that I put fruit on the sides of it. I’ll do better next time…

You can’t do that on American TV: Part 2 – Batsu (Penalty) Games

Some of the funniest and most disturbing TV from Japan involves Batsu Games which means “Penalty Games” where the people involves are painfully penalized based on random events or by breaking the rules set out at the beginning of the game. In the latter type,  the game is designed to try to make the players break the rules as often as possible.

In this clip, players are given a tongue twister, with a short period of time to complete it without mistakes…Or else…

There’s plenty more after the jump:

JLPT testing coming up!

If you’re serious about learning Japanese, then you are probably already aware of the Japanese Learning Proficiency Test (JLPT).  It is the official certification for understanding the Japanese language.

The test is only available once per year, and registration is only open for a couple of months, this year from Aug. 3rd to Sept 24th and the test date is Dec. 6th. There are only 7 locations to take the test in the US, and seating is limited at many of them. It’s inexpensive to take the test ($40-50 depending on the level)

Guess I’m trying to hard…

My girlfriend made Japanese curry last night…and about halfway through the meal she looked over at me and started laughing hysterically.

Now this is a common occurrence during meals, so much so, that the only reason I was curious was because, as far as I could tell, I hadn’t done anything funny. Usually it’s due to a mispronunciation of something in Japanese, or just the girls teasing me about something, but this time I was clueless…

She was laughing very hard, and I asked what was so funny,  and it took a minute for her to calm down enough to tell me, “You’re using chopsticks!!!”

“Yeah… so?”  I replied.

“I’ve never seen anyone, even in Japan, use chopsticks to eat curry!” she giggled, and now her daughters were laughing too.

“Never?” I said, “Not even once? It works just fine, I find that hard to believe.”

“Seriously, always with a spoon.”

And here I thought she gave me a spoon because she thought I couldn’t handle eating curry with chopsticks.

My Introduction to Natto

Natto, if you haven’t heard, is a popular food item in Japan. It’s basically fermented soybeans, and has been around for over 1000 years.  Most westerners don’t care for it, and not all Japanese do either. But it is a uniquely Japanese food that I knew that I would be sampling eventually, and today was that day.

We were at the Asian market a couple of days ago, and I had mentioned I’d like to try it sometime, so we picked some up.  It was sold in a three pack of little styrofoam containers.

Not knowing anything about how natto is served, I was quite surprised to see her bring it out with a big yellow glob on top of it. I asked her what it was, and she said it was an egg yolk.

Now, I have this thing about raw eggs… I just have issues with that…and seeing it made me feel sick. But I’d made the commitment to try it, so I was going to have to push that mentally aside, I just needed to work up the nerve first.

Bad Translation Made Funny

If you’ve used an online translation program, then you probably have some idea how bad they are. When I’ve used them, I often take the translation and convert it back into English, to have some idea how bad it was.

Now there is a website that does this automatically from english to Japanese, and keeps translating back and forth until the translations match and an equilibrium is found. It also displays phrases that others have done recently.

Try out Translation Party

Another Japanese slang addition…And another reason why the language is difficult to learn.

While driving with my girlfriend today, we were cut off in traffic by another driver. This led to her mumbling a string of choice words in Japanese, only one of which I understood…

I said, “Did you just call that guy an octopus?”

Yes, the word she used was tako (たこ) pronounced like a Mexican taco.

“Why would you call him an octopus?”, I asked.

“It means ‘stupid’ like an octopus has a big head and no brain, just full of black ink.” She said, and told me that it’s in common usage in Japan.

Blood is thicker than water…

No, I’m not talking about family, I’m talking about blood type.

Japanese have a fascination with blood type in the same way many Americans are into astrology. Granted that that astrology is also popular there, but I’m not going to get into that right now.

It’s believed that a person’s blood type also determines their personality, and so there are four personality types based on if a person is an A, B, AB or O.