The pros and cons to life in Japan

Learn Japanese pitch-accent and pronunciation from my Patreon Series "Japanese Phonetics"

Dogen / Dōgen / Japanese / 日本語 / What are the pros and cons to life in Japan? / the pros and cons to life in japan / the pros and cons to living in Japan /

[Double-Negative]

Pros: Japanese uses a lot of loan words from English, so you already know what they mean
Cons: Your brain isn't in English mode, so you don't actually recognize them, and you also don't know whether the English words you want to use have been loaned yet

[briankelly]

Love the 80s comment. That is how it was described to me recently. Japan has had tech from the 2000s for the last 45 years. So was super futuristic, them became the norm, then became outdated.

[earthling]

Pros : you are now live in japan
Cons : you are now live in japan

[shinonomehakase]

Had a hilarious interaction at the hospital here the other week.
One of the nurses ACTUALLY asked me what language I spoke other than Japanese (she didn’t assume it was English). I was really impressed and said it was good on her for asking.
I then left the room, went to the waiting room, and sat next to an 80-year-old man. He, without any prompting at all, turned to me and asked in English, “How long have you been in Japan?”
The juxtaposition was so funny to me.

[RiccardoGabarriniKazeatari]

And the conversation you're going to have is...
日本語お上手ですね。
いや、まだまだです。

[patterbay]

The time at which my Japanese is the best is when I'm explaining WHY I speak Japanese. It's because it's basically a prerequisite to talking to any person.

[thee_master]

The trains are always on time
and so is every single person in the city that needs to get somewhere

[jhawk]

"Every conversation will be the same" there are some specific words and phrases that I am infinitely more comfortable/fluent/fast at speaking than the rest of my Japanese, and sure enough it's the ones I use in the same conversations I have every week

[U.Inferno]

"when you master [kanji], reading is way faster...
"If there's no katakana"
It took me an embarrassingly long time to piece together what ディズニーランド was the first time I read it.

[kokokokoalabrothers]

"none of them are bf/gf material"
Damn took the words right out of my mind

[easybeeee]

potential joke that JPOP is just YOASOBI for people just reading the subtitles 👀

[GaijinGoombah]

"Katakana is a simple, phonetic bridge between native Japanese words and English words."
"There are three times as many syllables added to each word so you won't even understand your own language."
..."Also you're SOL if you're a foreigner who doesn't speak English."

[katyak]

It seems that repetitive conversations is the fate of every foreigner/immigrant😅 I moved to the USA a year ago, and literally every my conversation is "Where are you from? For how long have you been here? Do you study/work, and where? Where do you want/plan to study? How is your English? What are your plans for the future?" and sometimes also "What are your hobbies?" 😢☹️

[dydx_]

Less crime, more natural disasters.
This is something I have never thought of correlating prior.

[smallsymcsmalls]

Everywhere is just as disappointing as where you come from… just in new and exciting ways.

Apart from the politicians one, they are the same everywhere.

[bobfranklin]

An English teach im friends with has a neighbour give him eggs once a week. Not from his homestead or anything, he just regularly gives him some store-brought eggs for.. some reason? So uh, free eggs i guess?

[rurounigaijinn]

Bruh, you do not know many times 「袋お願いします」and [カードで」are the only Japanese I say every day.

[michellespring]

As someone who lived in Japan for 6 years, this is so true (especially the 4 seasons one 😅)

[aJazzyFeel]

it's true that all conversations end up being the exact same... it's like groundhog day. :(

[kheiramakreloufi]

I always enjoyed watching Dogen's videos before going to Japan while still keeping motivated and excited about what kind of interesting things will be waiting for me, now I'm in Japan and still watching Dogen's videos to learn more things especially those that I missed to hear before being excited to go to Japan 😢 still trying to stay motivated....