Hello! Unlike English, Japanese language itself has three levels of differences in politeness. So when you first meet up with people, you use the at most polite version of Japanese. In Japanese language, age is important. Interestingly, the moment you find out that the person is the same age/younger than you, people start to talk in a casual style. This almost means you can't be friends with someone much older than you. This is because if someone were older than you, you would use polite form. Than means creating wall between you and someone.
If you speak English, you don't change the way you talk depending on the person's age. Because my brain mostly works in English way, so I wanna talk to people more casually in Japanese as well. Get close to people. For me, when I getting to used to the person, I mix polite and casual form. If the person seems totally ok with casual form, then I use casual form no matter how old that person is. In this way, my life has got a lot easier in Japan!
Since I started my university, 80% of my professors are Japanese. But they teach me in English and talk to me in English. So I even got used to talk to Japanese people in English. Actually this is easier for me to communicate with. Because I'm allowed to be straight-forward and tell what I think if it were in English. There used to be things that I could express in English but not in Japanese. But I started to express in both language anyway. Here is a problem. It seems like I seem too straight-forward to Japanese people. Hmmm...I'm still figuring it out. But overall, I think I still like English better because I can feel like I can be myself.
See you tomorrow!
Haruka
Gym In Japan: https://gyminjapan.net
I'm like a guy so cool! I was dyeing my hair with my friend at halls in England.
留言