Yeah, I guess there’s a social expectation for women to be more dainty or elegant or ‘proper’ in Japanese society… still, I guess I just want to do things the ‘right’ way? You’re probably right about its not being as important for me as a man, but I’m sure men can still appear uncouth or ill-mannered, whereas I’d rather present myself as professional or at least respectable. It’ll probably be more pleasant for the people around me that way at any rate.
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In my impression if you are a male you are supposed to just shovel things down as quickly as possible 
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I must eat like a woman then. My main goal is to avoid making a mess and not to be impolite. Shovelling things down is something I only do in all-male company or in private, and usually only after sports. I guess I’ll find out when I spend more time in Japan, but in my experience, guys who do that tend to look very macho, but also potentially loud, insensitive and obnoxious. I’m not saying that the way you eat necessarily implies something about your character, but those character traits tend to appear together, even if it’s not always the case and a guy might simply love his food.
You’re working in Japan at the moment then, I take it? At a Japanese company with Japanese colleagues? (I didn’t see your introductory post if you made one. Sorry.)
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In Japan man shovel.
And funny that you mentioned the term “macho”. In Japanese that means you have a lot of muscles and has a very positive connotation.
I am not working now. At the moment I am a SAHM that’s why I have some time studying.
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Interesting. I didn’t know that. But hey, I think it’s mostly positive in Singapore too. However, there’s still that negative connotation related to being ‘too’ masculine in an overbearing fashion, though how much of that there is depends on the person who’s using the word.
Ah, I see. Well, good for you, as far as studying goes! 
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I know this was not meant to be taken seriously but I’d like to add that native Japanese speakers generally do not have a good grasp on what it takes to learn it as a second language and taking any tips except for grammar / pronounciation / vocab etc. is something I heavily discourage. In other words tips on how you’re supposed to learn.
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I personally think it depends on whether or not those speakers have ever tried to learn anything as a second language, because many of the challenges one faces when learning a new language are fundamentally the same even if the specifics change based on the language. However, yes, generally, it’s common for native speakers to have trouble giving good advice or clearly explaining how something works to a foreign learner, in part because most of their knowledge is subconscious and rarely needs to be verbalised or explained.
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Jokes not on me, I’m already left-handed 
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And に and で when defining context?
Well, looks like I’m at level 4-5. Still a long way to go to Satori.
Awesome read!
In Soviet Russia shovel man Japan.
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Yes exactly. But there’s also this expectation that they should have good advice, and they try their best with good intentions. Instead of saying “I don’t know” they might end up giving advise that doesn’t really work.
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If you Google:
マッチョ or 細マッチョ you know what I mean.
女子マッチョ is also a good one.
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Actually this was the most serious part
Why? In Japan graduating from Toudai is the ultimate top you can reach when it comes to studying.
And there are countless books written on how you can make your kids pass the entrance exam from Toudai.
And here, because of Japanese conservative culture (father works, mother manages everything else) these guides are written by mothers. The more kids you have that went to Toudai, the better you have been as a mother.
And the tips are sometimes hard to follow because they require a lot of money I decided to write single mother because they tend to be poor and would have to come up with a real extraordinary way to make her four kids passing the entrance exam of Toudai.
It doesn’t have a lot anything with learning a language in specific, just how natives perceive education and who would be respected for acknowledging a guide like this.
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In other countries and other languages I would agree but Japan is a bit different.
There is an attitude towards teaching and learning languages that makes it difficult to get an input even from teachers.
And everyone learns English in school while almost no one can speak it.
There are 英会話 schools on every other corner.
Something is going wrong when it comes to language learning in Japan.
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In this case I add stage 0) for you:
become right-hand 
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Yes I know that about 東京大学 and that it’s the most prestigious university in Japan. However a lot of Japanese learners get tips for how to learn Japanese from native speakers that simply don’t know what they’re talking about and who themselves have been trying to learn English (or some other language for that matter) for years without any success. (and typically still think their methods are valid but they themselves lack language learning “talent”)
Learning a language to a high level of fluency and studying to an entrance exam are two very different things.
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Couldn’t agree more.
I think it is a kind of patriotism that makes people believe they are either real Japanese or talented in learning another language. Maybe that’s why people who rarely are good in another language are critical about Japan in general.
Sometimes I have the feeling a Japanese thinks he is betraying the whole concept of being Japanese just by trying to pronounce English not in Katakana.
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Sad thing is, I’ve actually tried that several times. Stupid science class, so much for capillarity
(┛ಸ_ಸ)┛彡┻━┻
Perhaps I should have specified ‘learning another language with some success’, but yeah,
I’ve heard about this. I’ve had a video about it suggested to me quite a few times on YouTube, but I haven’t had the chance to watch it yet. However, just based on the Japanese textbooks I have (like Tobira) and the French textbooks I saw my friend using at university in Japan… I think there’s too much of a tendency to rely on model conversations? Then again, maybe I’m being too harsh because I do remember doing guided role-play exercises when learning French. Still, yeah… I think that people have this tendency to attempt to memorise words and sentences and spit them out in Japan. I’ll have to do some research to confirm whether or not I’m right.
As for this, I’m not sure, but I’d blame language teaching methods and a certain lack of confidence/over-reliance on the part of students. Even for French, for example, students in Japan are first taught approximations based on katakana before they attempt to learn the actual way words are pronounced. The problem is that some of them never get beyond the katakana stage: my friend was telling me that his (Japanese) French teacher got so frustrated at one point that he jokingly said, ‘For the next person who says “oo” instead of “ü”, it’ll be the death sentence!’ That aside, to be fair, English has many more vowels than Japanese, and I have a feeling that very few students are actually taught how the sounds that don’t exist in Japanese are made. Finally, I’d just like to say that I get the impression that many Japanese people admire those who can speak other languages fluently, so it might not be so much that they see it as un-Japanese as that they just don’t know how to get there. It doesn’t help that Japanese is quite grammatically different from most major world languages.
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Interesting. In my observations Japanese learn from a small age to “play” the appropriate role for any given situation and get used to it being very shameful to act against that. They switch between roles many times a day acting really different according to the context. That is different from all other cultures I know where there is always an expression of a self that just gets slightly altered to fit to the surrounding.
It seems that Japanese think speaking English eg requires them to “play” a role that they feel entirely uncomfortable with. That’s why I mention Atsugiri Jason so often because he is a prototype for this. People are fascinated by his exaggerated movements and facial expressions but they don’t want to act so awkward themselves. The English TV programs always show this type of eccentric extroverted noisy foreigners in very strange and bold colored clothes jumping and singing. It is very disturbing.
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Stuff like playing an American?
Not sure whether you’re familiar with the person, but there is this news anchor (and former narrator) called Jinbo Bonji. He’s the main anchor (担当) on Sponichi News Index on Thursdays. He likes to speak in a fairly Americanized way. Here’s an interview with him:
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Of course, if you start with the above words and remove “foreigners”, you end up with batsu games 
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