When foreigners come to live in Japan, there are certain skills they will need to acquire. When I first arrived in Japan back in 1991, I was surprised to see that almost none of the roads in Japanese cities had names, which made it extremely difficult to learn my way around. I had to get good at visualizing routes inside my brain and learn how to refer to roads in vague terms (“the road with the beauty shop and the convenience store”) when asking for directions. Another skill is getting accustomed to the accents of Japanese people you’ll be interacting with, which can be quite a challenge, as your brain doesn’t immediately understand that someone asking for uu-OH-tah wants a glass of water. When speaking Japanese with people, you’ll need to get good at identifying the subjects of sentences since they’re often left off when the meaning is otherwise clear from the context, or at least faking understanding in certain situations, such as the time I was picked to stand up and conduct the Maebashi Philharmonic playing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Afterwards, the MC asked me something that I didn’t catch, and rather than embarrass myself on the stage with hundreds of people watching me, I replied with the non sequitur so desu ne, which should mean “yes, that’s so” but in effect doesn’t mean anything.
