Seven years in Japan, and you can't speak Japanese? (Video)

funny indeed.
Coming from France, I managed to take the subway by myself in tokyo during a one week exhibition in Tokyo. That must be staged. can’t be eitherway.

Television tends to turn particular cases into general behaviour. that’s the more frightening to me.
Your sentences in brackets are important.

So far, I’ve only checked out the first clip. Pretty amusing. Could be just me, but it seems that she’s lost her Australian accent. She sounds a bit like a North American.
This could be regarded as a sexist comment, but I thought women were better in general at picking up new languages….

I don’t know about that. I definitely think the train incident was staged – you can learn all you need about the train system in a few days in Japan; the underwear and shopping stories… they might not be that far off. It’d be pretty sad if she was living here and couldn’t go shopping by herself.

I think regardless of the amount of time one spends in Japan, you should make an effort to learn the language. I’m just as guilty as anyone else in stumbling across the language plateau; it just goes to show we’re in a very tolerant country. The biggest thing you sacrifice when you choose not to study Japanese is your own pride (i.e. asking your husband for help choosing underwear).

I’m making more of an effort, but it’s hard to ignore certain facts; a lot of Japanese people have at least a rudimentary knowledge of English. English is an ever-growing international language, and more people want to learn it for business communication every day. I know it’s no excuse, but sometimes that’s enough to dissuade people from keeping up their Nihongo studies.

Gambare, students of Japanese.

Why does the show just feature Japanese men, with foreign women?
Is there something wrong with showing Japanese women, with foreign men? Surely they make up a large percentage of interracial couples in Japan.

“Why does the show just feature Japanese men, with foreign women?
Is there something wrong with showing Japanese women, with foreign men? ”

There are many of them in TV show. I think the aim of this show is to see international marriage from the other side.Japanese woman and foreign men as a couple is already a boring theme, I think.

I only saw this show once or twice, so maybe I am not qualified to comment about this, but it is also true that there ARE (or Were) many foreigners who, even spending after lot of years in Japan, can’t speak even basic Japanese.

My german friend who lived in Japan for 5years in Japan (a Roppongi lover), left Japan only knowing basic greetings in Japanese. Amazingly, he received a PHD from a German university and became a expert in Japanese economy!! Incredible!!

I have also a friend who has worked as a coodinator and translator for foreigners, she said to me that Japan experts like Karl van wolfren or Ian Buruma couldn’t speak Japanese except for basics.

She told me that if a Japanese journalis(who assumes that an expert like Ian Buruma MUST have advanced language skills) speaks to Mr. Buruma in Japanese, that he coulc become very angry. In retrospect she and I are always laughing that there were many Japan Experts in the 80ties who were recognized seriously( even among Japanese) but had barely almost no language skills.

As a Japanese, what is most astonishing is this different attitude to language and culture in these 10 to 15year among foreign visitors and resident.

15years ago I was realy astonished when I became aquainted with an Australian teen ager who after spending only 1 year in Japan as an exchange student, could speak Japanese almost accent free and even used slang perfectly.

So , in general, maybe there are exageration in this particular show, but I think deppending on the enviroment, that this could happen even today.

This is odd. I think learning Japanese is fun, and I don’t even live in Japan!

“Imagine a foreigner who had married an American going on US TV, announcing in her language that she made up a song using the English she knew, and then proceeding to sing ‘Poop granny poopy, shit, shit.’ ”

Imagine the tv hosts finding it funny.

Durf is absolutely correct. I’ve been in Japan for almost 3 years now and have been making a good effort of trying to learn Japanese. However, my work is done completely in English (even the Japanese at my office speak English) and we speak English at home (my wife is Japanese, but her English is sooo much better than my Japanese). So after 3 years and hundreds of hours in classes and studying, my Japanese is only barely above an intermediate level (and I’m probably being too easy on myself for saying that). If you don’t actively use the Japanese you learn, it’s very hard to keep it and most will probably just give up and let their SO do the “heavy lifting”.

Oh, and I have called my wife on the telephone for a quick translation at a shop, but I’ve never actually given the phone to the shop keeper.

When/what Ch, is this program on? And the one that features J. woman with foreign husbands (think I have seen this once)?

“I actually find Kinpatsu-sensei’s pulling random justifications out of his ass for the way Japanese people do things amusing.”
I think it is a time honored tradition for Japanese old men to expound on why foreigners do things the way they do as compaired to Japanese. I don’t know if anyone takes them seriously. Anyways, I have observed this behavior from izakaiya owners and teachers.

I have a feeling the scenes themselves were staged, or possibly semi-staged, i.e. she gets to the platform and asks the camera crew, “Is this right?” and they, not wanting to interfere or miss a royal fuck-up, tell her, “Yes, this is the place,” which makes her not pay attention.

That, combined with the producers’ clear desire for exaggerated situations and people’s desire to do what will be popular when they find themselves with an audience, led to what we saw.

I think what was said above about the reasons for it being a show about Japanese men with non-Northeast Asian foreign wives is pretty much correct. The producers want something vastly different from what their viewers know. I think part of it is that the show is meant to be funny, if a Japanese woman were married to a foreign man whose behavior was inappropriate or who spoke bad Japanese, viewers would feel sorry for the poor woman. When it’s a beleaguered husband, it’s funny.

On top of that, Japanese men are a lot more likely than Japanese women to marry foreigners, although, as Ken Y-N mentioned, Chinese, Filipinas, and other East Asians, whereas Japanese women marry Koreans most, but Westerners after that.

A nutty foreign-looking wife just makes better TV than a well-adjusted Chinese or Korean wife who speaks fluent Japanese and can cook Japanese food.

I saw a series last year that had programs about foreign women who married Japanese men ang got screwed in some way. For example, a Japanese man moved to India, married a local woman and ran a successful Japanese restaurant. They had a dozen children.

After a few years, the man moved his family back to Kagoshima, where he started growing Dragonfruit. The farm was unsuccessful, he became an abusive drunk, and his wife finally left with the kids and moved to somewhere in Western Honshu (I think). Long story short, the reconciled and got remarried, but he died and the woman was raising a dozen kids on her own in Japan.

It was done in that variety show style, with contrived moments and all, but took a far less comic tone.

I wanted to blog about this too, right after I saw it. I was watching it with a friend and we were completely stunned at this. There are a lot of us foreigners in Japan and to a degree I think we should SORT OF respect each other, but I found it increasingly difficult to find anything likeable about her willfull ignorance.

That’s not really what I wanted to say, though; I mostly wanted to saw that I find these comments extremely fascinating. Maybe I’m too young in both age and experience here, but thanks for opening my eyes to lots of things, y’all commenty-type people.

As a side comment, few things frustrate me more than Nihonjinron, by the by.

It’s obviously a spoof. The Japanese husband’s English isn’t that good, for starters.

As a foreign visitor with basic Japanese, I appreciate how Japanese in Tokyo and Osaka consider it normal to speak Japanese to foreigners but will use English if communication breaks down. The only time I was ever praised for speaking Japanese was after my ryokan owner found out I had never lived in Japan and had learned Japanese in Korea.

Maybe fake, but it could also be partially true. They are probably asking these people for “what’s the worst/funniest things that have ever happened to you” moments and then exaggerating them to help the ratings. You’d think she’d want to learn the language so she could communicate with his friends.

I think its a spoof as well! Im the foreigner in our JP/USA marriage and though my husband knows more english than I do japanese (only 2 years under my belt in Japan so far) I am constantly using and practicing my nihongo! / GREG – youre serious about the McDs every day for a decade? ugh! >

The girl who sends her dude into the underwear shop is AMERICAN, not AUSTRALIAN.

OK…foreign wife who was on the show…And I DO speak Japanese (and read it too!) Some of it is exagerrated…depends on which producer you get. I missed the above episode (not a regular TV watcher of anything), and am kind of glad. I found the staff very interested in how families with a foreign wife who have chosen to live in Japan integrate with their local community and create their family environment. The staff is with you for a LONG time, and that gets edited down into about 20-25 minutes, and edited into a segment with a “story”. They seem to try for a wide range of experience…and yes, westerners are frequently featured…probably because of the “standing out of the crowd” factor that you don’t get so much with other Asian wives. Overall, this program is better than some of the others that have featured “international couples” over the past 20 years or so…

hmm…is that to me? By the way…I’m NOT mentioned in any of the comments above (not one of the stand-out wives…no problem with that either)
“And if you can speak and read the language, then hy did the show suggest you could not?” I think that was about the woman that started this “conversation” rolling–so not about me (remember about 2 participants a week for the past year…different blurbs about each one)
Some of the participants don’t have much Japanese ability, others are basically fluent. Depends on the episode. Though, none of start out with fantastic Japanese so language problems at one time is the norm…
As for accuracy, most people have fairly run-of-the-mill lives, so they(the TV show) “emphasize” things that seem more dramatic. My husband appeared to be more “stubborn” than he thinks he is (I think he’s a little stubborn, but not as untalkative, etc as portrayed–I have a hard time getting sentences out and smiling before coffee in the morning…he does too and HIS got on the episode…and other clips to support that image, but not the relaxed, chatting we do at other times….) From other people I talked to on the show, most felt it was fairly accurate, and not overly staged, though some parts are repeated again and again (as in, “That was a really great comment…can you say that again, but look this direction so we can get a good take?” Or, “do that again…slowly”

No problem–should have been clearer!