Quote:
Originally Posted by Pogopuschel
Even though what masaegu said is technically correct it also depends on your level of Japanese. If you can't speak Japanese well then people won't expect you to answer with 「ぜんぜん」or the like. It'll just throw them off if you say that (with a thick accent). They'll expect you to say something more gaijin-ish.
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expect and appreciate or understand are completely different things though :P
if someone said you were smart and you were like "yeah I know, ask me what my IQ is, go ahead"
they might laugh it off as a funny typical gaijin answer, but it certainly will rub the wrong way
let me parallel it to make it easier to understand on the other side
westerners expect Japanese people to be overly apologetic and just say sorry in the most ridiculous situations, but we know it's just a cultural difference
and yet when we are faced with a Japanese person who is apologizing because they don't understand you when you're speaking English way too fast and using slang that's local to the place where you're from, you just feel like "stop apologizing you dumbass, I'm the one that's being a douche-bag, none of this is on you, it's all on me, are you retarded or something?"
meanwhile that Japanese person fully knows you're a dick for doing that.
just an example, we expect things but it doesn't always change how we feel about them
When I first came to Japan I met this insanely intelligent woman and when I mentioned that I was glad to have the opportunity to have a conversation with her because of how smart she is, she flat out denied it (of course) but being the westerner I am I totally took the tatemae as honne and accused her of having a massive overblown case of inferiority complex