anime daisuki 246

[AragakiAyase]

So this semester I'm taking Intensive Japanese Level 2 (Japanese 246) at my university. I decided to look at some of the RateMyProfessor reviews for this professor (lol) to see what I could expect, and I found this gem.




I read this the night before the first day of class so I was a little bit skeptical about the person's apparent bias, but this reviewer was about to be vindicated. First day of class, as I sit down, the girl in front of me reaches out to her friend, makes a cat paw with her hand, and says quite audibly "Nyaaaaaaaa" (meowing in Japanese). my reaction was something along the lines of "you have got to be fucking kidding me". there were other cringey people in the class but none nearly as much as this girl, who unfortunately is also in my discussion section. 2 lecture sections and 4 discussion sections and she has to be in both of them, but it gets even better (worse?).

first thing we do in class is give self-introductions (in japanese). They're supposed to include name, major, year, hometown, and hobbies/things you like to do. The first thing this girl says when it's her turn is "anime daisuki", but she magnificently mangles it and ends up sounding ridiculous. worse, whenever she is called on or answers someone she says "haiiiiiiiii" (yes in japanese) in a super happy super high-pitched voice. pretty much everything she says in japanese is in this tone of voice which keeps making me want to say this to her. You. are. not. an. anime girl. You are a white girl wearing a fuck ton of makeup who can't even pronounce the language correctly.

tldr above review is totally correct because there are other people in the class who are also obviously only in there because of anime and aren't afraid to be obnoxious about it

but wait

there's more

today said girl was talking on the phone in discussion for about 10 minutes, until the TA (who was being far too nice) told her that she couldn't do that in class. Her response? "Sorry, it's my dentist". don't do that in class holy shit, go outside or something

but that wasn't even the main attraction today, that honor goes to another girl who every few minutes kept shouting something along the lines of "I'm so angry right now" and going on about some guy she liked and how she needed to fix it but couldn't fix it and what if he knows she likes him and what if he doesn't like her and what should she do she's so angry I'M SO ANGRY RIGHT NOW

this is gonna be a long semester

[Charu]

The beginning is now

[YoshL]

is she a french satanist

[Red Blaster]

This thread looks to be on par with Charu's one sided library romance.



Pretty sure the 2 people who found that review un-useful were weebs

[YoshL]

[dAnceguy117]

aragakinyaaaaaaaaayase!~

[YoshL]

[Klaius]

[massflavour]

why do you want to learn japanese

[Charu]

Oh my fucking god

[AragakiAyase]

Originally Posted by massflavour

why do you want to learn japanese

go to japan someday is something I'd like to do

[MinaciousGrace]

hahahaha the magnificent waste of time that is school

the best way to learn japanese is to just go to japan

[gold stinger]

this right here



this is how you break your foot

TIL Japan can't fight

[massflavour]

Originally Posted by AragakiAyase

go to japan someday is something I'd like to do

sounds like ur a weeb

[AragakiAyase]

Originally Posted by massflavour

sounds like ur a weeb

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Weeaboo

nope on both points

[Funnygurl555]

I take Japanese at my school and we don't have this at all.
I mean we have peeps who like anime but they're not this crazy. Lots of us (including me) just used to like anime and had to fulfill a language requirement.

[AragakiAyase]

Originally Posted by Funnygurl555

I take Japanese at my school and we don't have this at all.
I mean we have peeps who like anime but they're not this crazy. Lots of us (including me) just used to like anime and had to fulfill a language requirement.

yeah it's pretty hilarious and at the same time scary

there's nothing wrong with liking anime but it becomes a problem when you're very obnoxious/obsessive/disruptive about it in public

[Tyson ultima]

Originally Posted by MinaciousGrace

hahahaha the magnificent waste of time that is school

the best way to learn japanese is to just go to japan

That isn't exactly true since most of the information can fall flat not to mention a lot of japan caters to English speakers. I can't say I learned much from actually visiting and my friend has learned nothing from living there for 2 years. Yes I have studied for 2 years which is where all my learning has come from.

Also japanese is a very sucky language I have an article summing up my feelings about why it sucks and why 90 percent of my friends that did study it wished they learned another language.

[AragakiAyase]

Originally Posted by Tyson ultima

That isn't exactly true since most of the information can fall flat not to mention a lot of japan caters to English speakers. I can't say I learned much from actually visiting and my friend has learned nothing from living there for 2 years. Yes I have studied for 2 years which is where all my learning has come from.

Also japanese is a very sucky language I have an article summing up my feelings about why it sucks and why 90 percent of my friends that did study it wished they learned another language.

Can you link me the article? Japanese overlaps pretty well with Chinese (because kanji) and Chinese would be my next language

[Tyson ultima]

It is a facebook post so I will copy paste it. And the overlap stops just at kanji after that the Japanese language is a shitstorm.
Why you shouldn’t learn Japanese (esp. if your native language is English)
DECEMBER 27, 2015 · FRIENDS
Before I begin, to all my Japanese friends: stop reading now unless you can read this and not take it seriously. 注意:日本人の友達には特に国家主義的な立場あればここから読むのを辞めた方がいい
tl;dr version: learn a different language instead
Credentials: Alright, so I’ve been studying Japanese on and off since about 2010 and have lived in Japan for a total of 2 years now. I’ve also studied Mandarin for about a year and have taken high school German (lol) for 4 “years.” That being said, I have found Japanese to be the worst by far.
It should be no secret at this point, especially to language learners, that the Japanese language is an absolute shitstorm of nonsensical grammar, thousands of Chinese characters that differ in pronunciation depending on what precedes and follows them (not to mention 1 to upwards of 10 different readings each), has a horrendous conjugation system, and is an absolute nightmare to learn/speak. I will be detailing a list of items of why you shouldn’t learn this silly, baffling, illogical, rage-inducing language and should allocate study time elsewhere (preferably a European language). I will detail them in order from, what I think is, the most difficult to least (but still really fucking hard) difficult. Buckle up.
1. Everything sounds the same
A bit of a preface—every language has rules and sounds; every sound is made up of something called a “phoneme;” this is basically any individual sound that differentiates from another, for example, the English “th” in “thing” or the “b” in “build.” We’ve been blessed with English in the sense that we have a whole gamut of different sounds to work with—44 to be exact, and 4 blends: “eur,” “qu,” “x,” and “yew” (the “U” sound, such as in “utility”). Now, guess how many Japanese has? Barely half. It has 17 phonemes and 5 vowels. If you ever wondered why the Japanese can’t pronounce “th” or distinguish between “B” and “V” or “L” and “R,” then you can blame their language’s inherent lack of sounds as the main offender. With this limited sound range, you can expect tons of words to not only sound the same, but are the same on occasion. This coupled with the fact that Japanese is syllabic and everyone just strings an incomprehensible mess of syllables together, you can imagine how challenging it is to learn. Speaking Japanese isn’t too hard but trying to listen to and comprehend it is pure agony. Now now, I realize that every language has homonyms and similar sounding words, for example the English “plane” and “plain,” but they really amped up the bullshit here in Japanese. I’ll give you an example; There’s a word I fucking hate with a passion in Japanese because every time I hear it, I have to cycle through the 50 different meanings in my mind whilst simultaneously extrapolating from context to derive the meaning; this word is “kakeru” and it’s a bitch. Its meanings are, and are not limited to: hang, expend (time/money), make a call, sit, multiply, bet, put on (glasses), lock (a door), sprinkle (seasoning on food), lack, and many more which leads me to my next point:
2. Japanese is a high context language
English is a low context language. It is very explicit what the subject of a sentence is doing, e.g. what X is doing to Y. Japanese? Don’t make me laugh. If you’re foolhardy enough to tackle this language seriously, you had better be ready to dance around issues, get talked circles around, beat around the bush, and basically say/listen to everything in a roundabout manner except the main issue at hand. It is extremely frustrating and not effective. What good is a language if people can’t communicate properly? Now you’re probably thinking “well, you’re not Japanese so you just don’t understand the culture.” Well, I’ve been here long enough and talked to enough people to know that not only is it bullshit, but even natives have extreme miscommunication problems from time to time. I have a Japanese businessman student who comes in to my class and complains incessantly about how the language is engineered so that the boss man can shirk all responsibility for his actions by saying vague, ambiguous shit; this makes it so that the listeners are culpable because they didn’t “understand” what the boss meant. It’s a brutal hierarchical structured pyramid. When I first got to Japan, I was telling people to state the subject of their sentences while speaking Japanese because there’s this cute thing that Japanese people do where they constantly omit the fucking subject in the sentence. What does this mean? It means that if you want to become proficient at Japanese, then you’d better learn how to speak like a caveman and talk like donkey kong. I’ll explain:
Let’s say a simple sentence in Japanese such as “I’m gonna go to the convenience store.” In English, it’s very clear “who” is going “where.” Now, if I were to translate this into Japanese, it would sound like this in English: “to convenience store go.” Yeah, sure makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Who’s going to the convenience store? Are you saying that you make a habit of going? Are you going to the convenience store now? What’s going on here? Can you pass me that tanto short sword now so that I may commit ritual suicide immediately, please? I heard the phrase “okutte kureru?” one time and was completely stumped. In English, it means basically, “can you send (something/someone) for me?” Being an absolutely nonsensical sentence that’s, of course, completely consistent with the rest of Japanese’s incomprehensible grammar, I thought I’d be able to contextualize it. This translates to “can you take me home.” I should have known from the context that the character was asking the other to take her home because IT WAS DARK OUT. Oops! Should have been more observant of the situation, you sorry bastard! But the one that really fucking floored me was this one. My coworker said to me one time: “choko tsuketa mama shabecchatta” which means literally (not a wise thing to take into account when learning Japanese, my friend): “chocolate, attached to something as is, accidentally spoke.” I’ll give you a minute to try to think about this. I was in a different room than my coworker when she uttered this asinine phrase so I had no context to work with, which is an instant death sentence for Japanese communication. Alright, figured it out yet? Give up? I don’t blame you. This translates, in this situation, to “I accidentally talked to someone with chocolate on my lips.” What…? Then why in the motherfucking shitfuck did you leave out critical information such as “who” was talking to “anyone” and “where” the chocolate was?! I can’t see your face you fucking idiot. Jesus motherfucking Christ. I gotta calm down. Maybe this section should have been number 1 which leads me to number--
3. Onomatopoeia words are used in daily conversation
The worst is over, but it doesn’t get much better. Alright, so you remember those “moos” “cock-a-doodle-doos” and “heehaws” that you saw in books as a kid? Imagine incorporating those words into your daily conversation and trying not to sound like an unsophisticated ass. These words are so common that you have to learn them but the problem is that there are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many and the meaning is really hard to contextualize half the time. Are you excited? Might as well say “WAKUWAKU” Oh, is it thundering out? GOROGORO. So basically, what they do is they repeat the first 2 syllables in order to make a “sound” word that can act as a verb/adjective. I’ve been studying Japanese for a few years now and I’m nowhere close to learning all of these. They even use an onomatopoeia for when you’re drunk. Have smooth skin? SARASARA. Are you sweating profusely? DARADARA. Is it raining heavily? ZAAZAA. Raining just a tad? POTSUPOTSU. Man, this language really sucks.
4. There are honorifics and humble language
When you learn Japanese, it doesn’t feel at all like you’re learning just one language. There are 3 writing scripts, and there are several degrees to many words in order to show respect, or lack thereof, to the listener. Let’s use a simple verb such as “eat” to demonstrate what I mean. The casual form of this verb is simply “taberu” or “kuu.” Now if you want to be a bit more polite, we add a polite stem “masu” to the end of it: taberu ----> tabemasu. Now, what if you want to be humble? It becomes an entirely different word, “itadaku.” What if you want to speak respectfully to someone else? It becomes “meshiagaru” but actually those turn into “itadakimasu” and “meshiagarimasu” respectively because why not just add more politeness to the already polite words. Good job, guys. So, if you think your ass can get away with just learning casual forms, then you’re sorely mistaken. Anytime you go to the mall, café, restaurant, city hall, bank, what-have-you, the staff will be speaking to you in this super humble/honorific speech. In other words, you’re fucked either way. Learn Chinese instead.
5. The many Chinese characters
So this section is actually my strength but oppositely, it seems to be everyone’s weakness. Those runes from the moon that they call a writing system, Kanji, is a massive hurdle that you have to overcome while you’re learning Crappanese. For (almost) every character, there is/are a Chinese reading(s) and a Japanese reading(s). There are usually 1 or 2 Chinese readings, because those guys understand efficiency, and then there can be anywhere from 1 to 10+ Japanese readings. The pronunciation of these characters are variable and can change seemingly randomly. I’ll use a simple Kanji such as 生 to demonstrate. Normally this Kanji means ‘raw’, or has to do with ‘life’. 生ビール (nama bi-ru) = draft beer. 先生 (sensei) = teacher. 生まれる (umareru) = to be born. 生きる (ikiru) = to live. 生える (haeru) = to grow. So the pronunciation of just that character has been “nama,” “sei,” “u,” “i,” and “ha” respectively. I myself can count about 15 different readings of that character alone and there are most likely still a few I don’t know. Do you understand the implications of what this means? This means that not only are there 2000+ characters, but you will be spending more time on every other character because they have different readings. This is bullshit.
Conclusion: In the end, I wish I had chosen a less needlessly complicated language and settled on something like German or something, but learning Japanese has had its merits. Japan is a pretty awesome country despite things like the language and food and I recommend everyone visit at least once in their lifetime. However; have no illusions about it. Know that the language is engineered in a way that’s very difficult for foreigners to learn. If you think you can endure the immeasurable bullshit that makes up this language, then be my guest and prepare yourself for many days of confusion, frustration, and misery. If you have any inclinations about studying Japanese seriously, then refer to the following requirements; Japanese is for you if:
1. You don’t mind dumping a hundred hours into learning it but can still barely hold a conversation
2. The Sisyphus boulder that is Kanji sounds appealing to you
3. You like talking like a child or anime characters
4. You’re okay with your high efforts producing low results
5. You are a masochist