Hello all. Finished the update a little late today. I’m in a hurry to get home (see below for the reason why) so I’m rushing.
Today’s J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
Hello and Happy Valentines Day from Japan! Today is the day that men of all ages look forward to, when they get chocolate from wives, girlfriends or daughters. My son and I caught the smell of something delicious cooking in the kitchen last night, and we’re both looking forward to eating some hand-made chocolates when we get home. There are many customs that have to do with gift giving in Japan, and one of them is that you must always give a gift in return (o-kaeshi) when you receive something. March 14th has been designated White Day by Japan’s chocolate-and-gift industry, the day that men can return the favor to women who gave them chocolate on Valentines Day by giving them something in return. If you’ve got someone special to give a gift to, why not consider a J-List gift certificate? It’s not chocolate, but it’s almost as good.
In the same way that English spoken in New York or Boston can be quite different from California or Texas, the dialects used in the various parts of Japan can be quite unique, a situation exacerbated by the fact that Japanese tend to be less mobile than Americans, often living all their lives in the same region. Standard Japanese is defined as the dialect spoken in Tokyo, and Tokyo Japanese corresponds to “boring white guy English.” Far more colorful is Kansai-ben, the dialect of the Osaka area, spoken by entertainers in Japan for the same reason that Jerry Seinfeld wouldn’t be Jerry Seinfeld without his New York accent. Other famous dialects include Okinawa-ben with its unique intonation, the elegant-sounding Kyoto-ben, and Tohoku-ben, the impossible-to-understand Japanese spoken in the cold land north of Tokyo. Another well-defined dialect is “gaijiin-ben,” the oddly over-intoned Japanese spoken by foreigners, which sounds cute to Japanese ears. It’s common for DJs and TV announcers to speak with “gaijin” accents in order to sound cool to young people, and foreigners speaking oddly-accented Japanese are a staple in TV commercials.
When a person learns a foreign language, they tend to be very creative in that language because they lack the inhibitions that native speakers have developed over time. After all, the famous Swatch brand name was created by Swiss who didn’t realize that it sounded dorky in English until it was a household name. I’ve seen this tendency to be creative using English time and time again in Japan, for example in the many products that use English to invoke an emotional response, like Melty Kiss (chocolate fudge sold only in the winter). The other day I was eating some Triscuits which I had brought from the U.S., and offered one to my son. He turned up his nose, though, saying that he didn’t want to eat a “tatami cracker” (since it looked to him like a Japanese tatami mat), which struck me as an interesting observation. Back when I taught ESL, I used a list of road signs to create a discussion with some students about what the signs might mean. One sign, a picture of a footprint over a leaf, was giving them trouble, but one student came up with a possible meaning: “Don’t despise Canada.” The correct answer was “nature walk” but his answer was a lot more creative.
