You’ve Been in Japan Too Long If You “Teach” Someone Your Phone Number

You’ve been in Japan too long if you “teach” someone your phone number. In Japanese, you’d usually use the phrase oshiete kudasai (lit. “please teach me”) when asking someone to communicate information to you rather than itte kudasai (“please say”), as we might in English. When learning Japanese, it can be difficult to figure out which words to use for everyday situations, above and beyond learning the words themselves. What’s funny is, the rules of your new language can get in the way of your first language, a concept called “interference.” In Japanese, the words for “splinter” (a tiny piece of wood) and “thorn” (the sharp protrusions on a rose stem) are the same, toge (toh-gay), which took me a while to get down in Japanese. Once while in the U.S., my daughter got a splinter in her finger, but silly gaijin that I am, I said, “Oh no, you got a thorn!” causing my mother to wonder how her son could make a mistake like that. I’ve also been temporarily confused by the words “mother-in-law” and “stepmother,” which are both represented by the same word, gibo. This is what happens when you go nearly 20 years without recalling certain words.

Even more confusion: cactus needles are also called toge.