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Which is why it's labeled as Calpico everywhere else in the world. edit: terrible snipe
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Apr 10, 2024 11:30
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totalnewbie posted:You guys wanna go to Fuji Rock festival? Hell yeah! If I can find a room haha
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Apr 10, 2024 12:07
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I had the same problem in feb, tickets for Ghibli museum on the official website sold out pretty much instantly and even if you think you got a slot the website crashes twenty times while checking out and it’s gone. I bought walking tour tickets from willer that included the ghibli museum for 5500 yen but that’s still reasonable imo. They still have a few dates available in may and June and I would recommend getting those now if the dates work, they will sell out when it’s closer. Kichijoji park tour is nice too. Someone brought their pet bunny to the park all dressed up, very cute
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Apr 10, 2024 12:35
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The umeboshi strong zero might have been the most wretch-inducing horrible drink I’ve ever had the displeasure of tasting It was like drinking fermented salt water that had so much NaCl in it that it turned cloudy I can only assume that’s what jenkem tastes like
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Apr 10, 2024 14:39
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Alan_Shore posted:Hell yeah! If I can find a room haha It's a camping festival. You can rent a tent in Tokyo or bring your own (which is what I do every year).
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Apr 10, 2024 15:01
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Took the opportunity to lock in a killer CAD-JPY exchange by cancelling my hotel and re-booking one pre-paid. Plus saves me from having to deal with high value card shenanigans while abroad. Arguably exchange could fall more favourably but I'm plenty happy with where it is now. Tamachi stn. area this time. Never done anything around there, but it's right off Yamanote so can't go wrong either way. Looks like the only thing I actually need to do in November now is.. show up at the airport. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 17:52
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Is the constantly crashing 5 step checkout process a bug or a conscious decision? Trying to buy sumo tickets (and falling) was the most frustrating experience imaginable. Made it all the way to confirmation but never got charged and it revoked my server session. On a brighter note I booked up one of the Yokohama industrial zone night cruises and that was pain free. Very excited as I love industrial areas
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Apr 10, 2024 18:59
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You guys think if I did duolingo for like a year I would have enough passable Japanese to manage to travel there? I don’t want to just stumble around praying to find someone that speaks English. Were probably gonna go in like next April
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Apr 10, 2024 19:10
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I think you'd be surprised how English accommodating the major areas are. I'm sure if you are rural it's a different story but most critical signage is in dual language with English already. Don't let that stop you from practicing and learning though! Just don't be afraid of an insurmountable language barrier either
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Apr 10, 2024 19:17
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Part of the reason I want to do it is because I think it would be cool to speak to people in their native language even if I’m doing a terrible job at it. I would hope that people would at least appreciate the attempt. but also I’ve gone on vacation before in areas that primarily don’t speak English and even though it’s manageable it’s still kind of sucks, and if I can try to avoid relying on Google translate, I feel like I would probably enjoy it more.
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Apr 10, 2024 19:21
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And I guess as a follow up question do you think duo lingo is a good service for that? From what I remember it’s free which is ideal.
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Apr 10, 2024 19:22
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:it seems like Japanese restaurants don’t accept Union Pay cards, just Visa/Mastercard/JCB/Diner’s Club), so so far I’ve been relying on my British coworker to help place reservations via his Visa card. Wow, Diner's Club is still a thing? That sounds to me like a place is still accepting gold doubloons, pieces of eight, and clay tablets with pictographic etchings of cows on them. Teriyaki Koinku posted:Oh my dear God, trying to get a Ghibli Museum ticket through the official website/Lawson's is sheer insanity. Also if you're not a huge Ghibli fan -- even if you're a moderate fan -- the museum is kinda "eh". All five of us in my group of childhood friends that went were like "that was ... okay?" and if we had missed it, would not have been sad in the slightest.
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Apr 10, 2024 19:29
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Thumbtacks posted:You guys think if I did duolingo for like a year I would have enough passable Japanese to manage to travel there? I don’t want to just stumble around praying to find someone that speaks English. Were probably gonna go in like next April Thumbtacks posted:Part of the reason I want to do it is because I think it would be cool to speak to people in their native language even if I’m doing a terrible job at it. I would hope that people would at least appreciate the attempt. but also I’ve gone on vacation before in areas that primarily don’t speak English and even though it’s manageable it’s still kind of sucks, and if I can try to avoid relying on Google translate, I feel like I would probably enjoy it more. My general advice for these types of questions is that as a tourist, you're going to tourist places, where all the people you're encountering are very used to tourists who don't speak Japanese. They'll all have enough English (and sometimes Chinese and Korean) to do their jobs well enough and sometimes better. Even if not, they'll be prepared to accommodate your lack of Japanese ability. As for your second point, it's my personal opinion and one that is perhaps not shared by others, but I would rather that people stick with easy phrases that show they made some token effort and then when it comes to anything of substance that they stick with the language they're used to and know. At a certain point, when you do speak enough of the language and can actually meaningfully keep up then it changes, and where that point is depends on the situation, but before that, it annoys me (again, perhaps irrationally) so much to see tourists stumbling along when I know if they just asked in English, they would get an answer. I also feel like doing that in some way invalidates all the effort they may have put into THEIR English study. Like, I put in all this effort to study and learn English so I can help you in your language and here you are barely intelligible, making me struggle despite all this effort I did so neither of us would have to struggle so much. Not trying to be as aggro as I sound, it's just a pet peeve of mine, I guess. Japanese is one of the hardest languages for English-speakers to learn. If you know any other language it'll go a bit easier (3rd is always easier than 2nd, IMO) but it is a maddeningly difficult language so be prepared for that if you want to go down the duolingo path.
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Apr 10, 2024 19:58
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Drops and renshuu are both apps I've tried for Japanese because they are only aimed at Japanese and not a myriad of languages like Duolingo or Babbell or Rosetta Stone. They also both have lots of good free content.
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Apr 10, 2024 20:26
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My honest opinion is that Duolingo will teach you some Japanese and probably enough to OUTPUT some basic stuff, but you will likely um and aw and blink when someone says something in a way that wasn't phrased explicitly like duolingo taught it. It's great one sentence at a time, but then when someone answers you it's extremely unlikely to have prepared you for an actual conversation. So I mean it's not BAD, but if you only have a year I would suggest trying to find a small immersion classroom thing if you're up for the cost and commitment. I learned SO MUCH in a year of immersion one week at a time. Wasn't starting from zero, but it had also been probably ten or twenty years since I last spoke it. I went to Kyoto and had stupid baby conversations with bartenders at various spots so it was definitely worth the effort for me. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 20:44
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AHH F/UGH posted:The umeboshi strong zero might have been the most wretch-inducing horrible drink I’ve ever had the displeasure of tasting I'll second this. My partner described it as tasting the way stink bugs smell. I suppose we expected it to taste like umeshu so I guess that's on us.
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Apr 10, 2024 21:42
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You know what WILL help, actually, is learning how to speak to ESL (and Japanese ESL) people. This sort of goes to why studying Japanese isn't quite as helpful because as was said, output and input are different, and Japanese people often don't have the analogous skill of phrasing things in Japanese in a way that's easy for people studying Japanese to understand. This doesn't mean SPEAK LOUDER or even just speak more slowly, but avoiding the use of potentially ambiguous terms, contractions, clauses, etc. Being direct to the point of "rudeness". "I want X please" is better than "I would like X" (though they're both simple enough that you can just pick out the key word "X" and assume that that's what they want in the situation). There's probably websites or resources for that but that will go further than any Japanese language study you could do in a year, I think, unless you're ready to go all in for that year.
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Apr 10, 2024 22:05
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totalnewbie posted:At a certain point, when you do speak enough of the language and can actually meaningfully keep up then it changes, and where that point is depends on the situation, but before that, it annoys me (again, perhaps irrationally) so much to see tourists stumbling along when I know if they just asked in English, they would get an answer. That point is when you stop getting jouzud the moment you speak any Japanese. (Note, it still can happen as a natural reflex in some cases). Sometimes it's fun to let Japanese people keep struggling in English and doing a reverse jouzu (eigo jouzu desu ne). They're usually really embarassed and it's very cute. One of the benefits of being bilingual! Duolingo cant really teach you Japanese, speaking as a major + having many years of instruction. Sorry, it's the truth. I have the same opinion as all of the other folks here.
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Apr 10, 2024 22:36
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Organza Quiz posted:What is there good to do in Hiroshima other than the peace park/museum? I'm starting to think through a trip for this time next year with my partner, I've been before but he hasn't. Last time I was there I passed through Hiroshima on the way to Miyajima and will probably do the same thing this time, but I think once was enough for the museum and I'd like to see more of the actual city. I spent a week hanging in Hiroshima. Onomichi and Saijo are fun day trips. There's a great French restaurant I stumbled on in Onomichi and the views from the top of the mountains are *chef kiss*. I went to the sake fest in Saijo (it's in October, you need someone from Japan to buy you tickets), and the breweries are next to the train so that's another fun day trip. Miyajima really do suggest giving it a full day as you can find some off the beaten track trails and you'll see more of the deer. In the city itself there's a lovely Buddhist temple on the west side of the city that no one goes to, Mitaki-dera. If you want to hike there's a trail that leads off from it. Another hike I did was the starting at the Toshogu shrine and then following the tori gates up the hill. Being adventurous I found an old anti-aircraft hole in the ground and then at the top is the Peace Pagoda. Again good views, but another hike up a mountain. If you want to have some fun collecting all the shrines, you can hit up all the shrines to the 7 lucky gods. Hiroshima just seemed like a fun city. They had an upcoming zombie walk for Halloween. I guess I'll add I'm in better shape than the average tourist and more willing to explore and get uncomfortable, so I found a lot of stuff. I also preferred the shrines and temples and being outside walking around, taking in the town or city. cheese eats mouse fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 22:42
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some kinda jackal posted:Tamachi stn. area this time. Never done anything around there, but it's right off Yamanote so can't go wrong either way. . I've walked through the maze of old bars between Tamachi and Mita station and thought it would be cool to explore at night.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:00
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peanut posted:I've walked through the maze of old bars between Tamachi and Mita station and thought it would be cool to explore at night. Ding ding ding! This is what’s catching my eye. I’m about to fire up the ol’ Quest 2 and go for a Wander session for the first time in like.. years lol. E: And on the Duolingo thread, I know I said it wasn’t all that useful but I’ve still been doing it for going on two years just because it keeps me doing something in Japanese every day. WaniKani used to be my “thing” but then I was like 95% of the way through the whole thing and I realized I was spending the equivalent of a lovely unpaid part time job just doing reviews. I stopped doing it one day and never picked it up again. Kind of sad, given how much I invested in it, and how close I was, but.. 
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 23:17
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Language knowledge is nice, but you can get by as a tourist in Japan with only English. Most things are signed in both - especially transport, including trains - and many of the screen menus you’d need to interact with are multi-lingual (train station ticket screens, ATMs, etc). Restaurants will often have menus in English if they get enough tourists. Etc, etc. ntan1 posted:Duolingo cant really teach you Japanese, speaking as a major + having many years of instruction. Sorry, it's the truth. I have the same opinion as all of the other folks here. Yeah, it can probably teach a few basic phrases, but the problem is listening. The good news is trying even a few basic phrases will score brownie points with the locals, and show that you care enough to try. Nobody is expecting a tourist to hold court on politics in Japanese, and besides, a poor grasp of the language isn’t enough to sidetrack a fun evening or trip.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:21
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harperdc posted:Most things are signed in both - especially transport, including trains - and many of the screen menus you’d need to interact with are multi-lingual (train station ticket screens, ATMs, etc). As someone who was excited to put years of kanji and japanese to use, it was so maddening to have my eyes immediately dart to the english on literally everything and only be able to say “god drat it, I KNEW how to read that” lol — But you know, as much as I think we’re all kind of dumping on Duolingo or any of the gamified ways of learning — be honest with yourself, if you think you’d be okay with just having some surface interaction in basic japanese with someone who obviously knows you’re a tourist and doesn’t really speak it well, then like.. go hog wild my dude. Order your karaage in what you learned in Duo and just kind of smile and pull out a “aaahh ahaha sumimasen nihongo wa chotto.. ^_^” when they come back with something you don’t understand. Pick up the rest from context or cues. Don’t let it get you down and just enjoy your interactions how you want. I think Duolingo would get you there (or so would Genki volume 1, or any of the other beginner texts, or any number of youtube tutorials). It 100% won’t prepare you to talk about your trip in depth with locals but like.. is that bad? Probably not. Take the small W and let it energize you to do a more thorough job in learning the language for successive trips if it fuels your passion. Not everyone is ready to dive into “serious” language study and I think that’s okay as long as you’re honest and realistic with what you expect to get out of the alternatives  some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 23:22
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Yeah, like I said, I think knowing some phrases will help a lot. Especially ones that aren't questions and thus get you an answer in Japanese you won't understand.ntan1 posted:That point is when you stop getting jouzud the moment you speak any Japanese. (Note, it still can happen as a natural reflex in some cases). Sometimes it's fun to let Japanese people keep struggling in English and doing a reverse jouzu (eigo jouzu desu ne). They're usually really embarassed and it's very cute. One of the benefits of being bilingual! And yeah, but you'll probably need to live in Japan for quite some time (and/or have a degree in Japanese level study) for that to happen, especially if you're non-East-Asian. Never need that level of Japanese (not getting jouzud) as a tourist.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:52
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I've never actually used Duolingo but from what I've seen of people using it for Japanese: to actually get decent enough to hold even a basic conversation you're going to have to put in many, many hours into it. If you're going to actually put that many hours into Japanese study you might as well grab a Genki textbook and work on learning the actual fundamentals. You'll never actual learn to speak the language without having some basic understanding of how the grammar structure works.
Zettace fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 00:07
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Language chat: I'm mainly interested in finding how similar Kanji and hanzi are and where they diverge. Like there have been instances already where I've been trying to register for accounts and reservations and poo poo online on Japanese web pages where I don't understand why some Kanji are placed where they are, but then I translate it to Chinese and I'm like "Oh wow, so that's what they meant to say". E: for example, letter is 信 in Chinese but 手紙 (てがみ, tegami) in Japanese. E2: Re Duolingo, I've done literally all of the Duolingo courses in Chinese, take actual Chinese class at the HSK5 level 3 times a week in China, have previously taught ESL to Chinese learners for 5 years, currently have a 1173 day streak in Duolingo, and now have been casually making my way through beginner Japanese in Duolingo. My thoughts are thus: I think Duolingo is fantastic for complete beginners to get their feet wet in a new foreign language. It's also fantastic to keep people engaged with a foreign language and build a daily habit (I respond really well to streaks and gamified language learning that way). It's great as a supplement to actual classes/textbook learning and even good as a means for structure for the basics/intermediate level. BUT if you're looking to get serious about building fluency in another language and dealing with (ugh) grammar and all of the headache-inducing stuff that comes with becoming fluent, Duolingo won't cut it as your main source of learning material. That said, I wouldn't put so much pressure on yourself to "become fluent" with a year of study just to be a polite tourist at the end. That's an easy way to end up resenting the language you're trying to learn. So, if your standards are actually moving to and living in the country long-term, having full-on conversations in the target language etc then no, don't rely solely on Duolingo. But I think that's missing the point and should be a celebrated as a tool for normies and newbies alike who don't fit those categories for their language learning needs. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 00:36
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totalnewbie posted:As for your second point, it's my personal opinion and one that is perhaps not shared by others, but I would rather that people stick with easy phrases that show they made some token effort and then when it comes to anything of substance that they stick with the language they're used to and know. At a certain point, when you do speak enough of the language and can actually meaningfully keep up then it changes, and where that point is depends on the situation, but before that, it annoys me (again, perhaps irrationally) so much to see tourists stumbling along when I know if they just asked in English, they would get an answer. I also feel like doing that in some way invalidates all the effort they may have put into THEIR English study. Like, I put in all this effort to study and learn English so I can help you in your language and here you are barely intelligible, making me struggle despite all this effort I did so neither of us would have to struggle so much. Not trying to be as aggro as I sound, it's just a pet peeve of mine, I guess. This worries me a little and I hope I haven't been stepping on any toes. As a tourist I enjoy the opportunity to practice speaking the local language when I travel but OTOH I don't think I've ever tried to do that with someone who was proficient enough in English to have the conversation exclusively in that language anyway. I have run into a few people in customer service roles who requested to engage in Japanese instead of English even though they had some basic proficiency so maybe it just depends on the person.
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Apr 11, 2024 01:41
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Yeah, I think by and large people are good at reading the signs and figuring out when they need to just give it up. I'm just extra peeved by it for probably a variety of unrelated reasons.
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Apr 11, 2024 02:29
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I’ve studied some Japanese and can have basic conversation but my wife speaks none and we didn’t really have any issues, for example signage at train stations is excellent and I heard they put a lot of effort into it due to 2020 Olympics. I heard horror stories about Shinjuku station but had no issues navigating it. Just knowing yes/no and pointing and gesturing went a long way. Also I don’t know if it’s due to massive number of tourists they get but especially younger people in Kyoto spoke perfectly acceptable English, and some were probably more fluent than me. As for Duolingo, my biggest pet peeve is that it doesn’t really teach grammar in any meaningful way at all, but I still do use the free version to practice. But being Finnish native speaker the Japanese grammar is a lot more familiar than with any of the Indo-European languages so classroom instruction is always my #1 recommendation.
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Apr 11, 2024 08:06
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Stubb Dogg posted:Just knowing yes/no and pointing and gesturing went a long way. Also I don’t know if it’s due to massive number of tourists they get but especially younger people in Kyoto spoke perfectly acceptable English, and some were probably more fluent than me. English remains the section on the high school and college entry tests with the most points/questions. It’s getting better, slowly but surely.
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Apr 11, 2024 09:15
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If you're wanting to do some study that'll be useful for sure, learn katakana. Hiragana will be for Japanese words you might not know and kanji is a nightmare, but looking at food and drinks menus that will often feature English words writtenin katakana will let you read a surprisingly large amount of them. As for trying to speak in bad Japanese, as a bad Japanese speaker I find it best to stick to questions with only a small handful of potential answers (that you'll understand if you hear them) and generally things will be fine. On a personal question though: when shopkeepers talk super fast when counting out my change, are they saying anything else that I should be paying attention to? I can tell that they're saying the coins that they're supplying and the total amount of change and how much I gave them but it's all so fast that I have no idea if they're saying anything else so I just give a quick "arigatou" and head on my way. Question Mark Mound fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 16:03
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Stubb Dogg posted:I’ve studied some Japanese and can have basic conversation but my wife speaks none and we didn’t really have any issues, for example signage at train stations is excellent and I heard they put a lot of effort into it due to 2020 Olympics. I heard horror stories about Shinjuku station but had no issues navigating it. Is Finnish also a perkele sov language?
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Apr 11, 2024 17:03
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Do you want a plastic bag is a common question I got in the konbini.
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Apr 12, 2024 02:13
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I'm 100 days into duo Japanese. They still haven't taught me how to check into the hotel. My hiragana is good, my katakana sucks. I've got maybe 50 kanji. I think I'll be fine by October but yeah, italian was WAY better. (Going to Kyushu in October. Really excited for nagasaki biopark.)
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Apr 12, 2024 02:39
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When people ask me how I became fluent in Japanese, I tell them that first in the US I was a huge nerd then I took classes for 2 years then I moved to rural Japan and worked at normal Japanese kindergarten for 15 years and also having a good mother in law is important.
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Apr 12, 2024 03:40
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Apparently there's a pseudo-casino in Akihabara called Akiba Guild which is like… a maid casino? Has anyone been there before? Normally I’m not interested in maid cafes since they seem kind of cringe, but a casino might be a different story. E: also any pachinko spots you all might recommend? Or is it like a “once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” kind of deal? Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 07:42
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The doors of every pachinko joint lead to the same shared pachinko dimension.
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Apr 12, 2024 07:51
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:E: also any pachinko spots you all might recommend? no
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Apr 12, 2024 07:59
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Pachinko parlours just makes me feel sad
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Apr 12, 2024 09:19
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If anyone cares enough to have a preference, chances are it's the kind of place where people line up for hours before it opens.
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