One theme I write about a lot is that Japanese don’t always expect Westerners to speak Japanese, and will occasionally reply in barely intelligible English despite the fact that you’re speaking normal Japanese to them. Over New Year’s we visited my “J-Family,” and my wife’s uncle wanted to tell me about some renovations he’d made to his house the previous year. The only word of English he knew was “house,” so he spent an hour talking to me in Japanese, but using that word in English whenever he needed to refer to his house. When I came to Japan I was so fired-up about learning Japanese, I’d refuse to speak English with Japanese people under any circumstances. Once a Japanese businessman kindly gave me the coin locker he’d been using, saying “please use this” to me in English, and I thanked him with fluent, polite Japanese. Later I felt bad: he’d probably only had this one chance to talk with a foreigner that entire year, and I should have graciously thanked him in English.
A nice picture of a house. You are looking at the house, right?
