Quote:
Originally Posted by steven
I'm sorry to bring this up, but I have to ask... GoNative, is what Sashimister true about the language? Can you really not speak it? If that's the case, then I'd think you'd really benefit from learning as much as you can and talking to actual Japanese people. You don't have to talk about racism directly... just talk to them in Japanese and see how you start feeling about this topic. If your main source for this stuff is all coming from English speakers, maybe there's a bias in what you're reading? It could be your area (which I know nothing about to be quite honest).
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I get by with everyday conversation stuff but am certainly nowhere near fluent and can't read or write Kanji. It may seem like a big thing after being here so many years but you have to have been to Niseko I think to understand why it's so hard to improve. Not sure if you've heard much of what's gone on up here but there has been a huge amount of foreign investment into the ski resort and many foreign companies operate here. I work alongside Japanese people everyday but they mostly all speak really good english. A lot of the Japanese people working here have spent considerable amounts of time overseas and have come to Niseko so that they can work for foreign companies. Many tell me they just can't work for Japanese companies anymore. I took a few months off work some years back and did a Japanese course in Sapporo but have to admit I get to use Japanese so little here that I've actually got worse over the last couple of years. I work full time, have an active social life and a family. Finding time to study Japanese when I use it so little anyway is just very hard to justify at the moment.
Anyway I have many Japanese friends and have many conversations with them about issues like we're discussing now. My views don't just all come from some english websites, they come from my own experiences of living here for nearly 6 years. And I don't believe becoming absolutely fluent would suddenly give me some new incredible insight into the culture I've been missing all these years. Maybe the Japanese people I often talk to just aren't Japanese enough having been tainted by their time overseas?
