Not to be a bummer, but if you go somewhere in Japan, odds are it will happen to you. I actually got 日本語上手です’d for saying こんにちは in a kimono shop First step and word in there.
I wouldn’t let it bother you though since usually it indicates that the person is interested in talking/interacting with you. I do find it difficult to get corrections from native speakers, but if you’re in a place online where corrections are expected, I think you’ll probably have an easier time.
Edit: I should add that I spend practically all my time in the countryside. People in Tokyo/Kyoto/Osaka might be less likely to say stuff like that. People in the countryside can be quite friendly though and I highly recommend visiting if a trip to Japan is in the cards for you!
My suggestions have already been suggested by others, so I won’t comment further on that. I think it’d never too early to start working on output though. It’s just like any new muscle you develop (and you quite literally are working out some new part/placement of your tongue). You’re seeking feedback, which is great. Getting feedback during practice, especially when you want it, can help a lot and prevent bad habits. Plus the act of output will help you remember what you’ve already studied. In other words, have fun and 頑張って！
Whoa, I haven’t heard anything about Second Life in YEARS. As a teenager, I used to love the escapism of getting immersed in virtual worlds and making friends from all over the world. I remembering having an account with any active MMO I could find back in 2010 lol. I never would’ve imagined that such a platforms could be used for Japanese lessons. I’m so amazed by this! How did you end up discovering the community?
Funny you mention that - I’ve started doing this with simple statements (頑張ってください、ゆっくり話してください、etc…) but it’s definitely a good idea to ramp it up as a starter into speaking more - thanks for the suggestion!
@jamielin
Do you have any non-anime slice-of-life recommendations?
I think I’ve heard people being quite excited about Terrace House and Midnight Diner on these forums? (I’m not sure if the latter is a drama, but that’s the impression I have.) I can’t really help with slice of life personally because all the dramas I’ve watched (and I’ve honestly only seen a few episodes of each) tend to centre around an intrigue: Galileo and Signal involve detectives, and Confidence Man JP is about conmen with a bit of a Robin Hood dynamic, but what’s interesting is how they see their own purpose and how they achieve their goals. I did watch this drama about social work at one point though. I only caught one episode, but it was fascinating – I didn’t think you could tell a story about something so real while making it interesting. It’s a pity I don’t remember the name though.
That’s tough since I don’t particularly have favorites, I just keep watching from one to another, but from what I experienced for beginners, stay away from Asadora, they have a lot of local dialects. Another one to avoid as beginners would be techie ones such as detective or similar topics about murder, there would be a lot of technical vocabs there although they are more interesting to watch.
Topics around the family, workplace, love story, or even school/university themes should work well as the vocabs are similar across them.
For more structured what to watch, read or listen to, you might want to check this, I found it quite good to summarize the content according to your level.
I would caution people against starting Terrace House.
I’m sort of surprised to see so many people recommending that show without mentioning this, because I think it’s something people should know before starting it.
Warning, this is very bleak, and it mentions suicide and self-harm.
In 2019, a wrestler named Hana Kimura joined the Terrace House cast. I started watching when she joined because I wanted to see how the show dealt with the existence of wrestling kayfabe, which is very protected in Japan (basically they can’t directly talk about the fact that pro wrestling matches are scripted, even though everyone knows it). It was fun at first to see how it balanced wrestling kayfabe with sort of the Terrace House “kayfabe” (for lack of a better word to describe reality television “reality”), and I liked seeing a different side of Hana than we see in her wrestling.
In 2020, though, things got… rough. I was several episodes behind when this happened, but apparently a lot of Terrace House fans got really mad at Hana and decided they hated her because she was rude to one of the Terrace House guys (the fans wanted them to be a couple). So people started sending her death threats and just absolutely horrible messages.
Because of all the abuse she was getting from fans, Hana ended up killing herself on May 23. According to her mother, the nature of Terrace House and the way the staff handled the show contributed heavily to her death. Basically, the show instructed her to play a heel character (heel is a wrestling term for the bad guy or villain), and she received horrible backlash for it from the fans of the show even though it wasn’t in her control. Wrestling fans were always really kind to her and loved her (even though she was a heel), but the reality television fans didn’t have that same awareness of kayfabe, so people sent her horrible abuse just for doing the job she was instructed to do.
Needless to say, seeing this happen in real time was really traumatizing, and I personally can never watch Terrace House again. The show got canceled because of this, and stricter anti-bullying and anti-harassment laws were proposed in Japan to hopefully help prevent this from happening to someone else. But the show environment of Terrace House was actively destructive to Hana, and personally I’m unable to put that aside no matter how good of a learning resource it might be.
I’d very vaguely heard about something like that, but I had no idea it was so bad. Thank you for sharing this information. That’s really sad, especially since it should have been obvious that anything on ‘TV’ is at least partly scripted.
Yeah, I think it was especially bad because this was sort of right when Japan was initially under a stay at home order because of the pandemic, so everyone was trapped at home and was kind of isolated. Depression can be even worse in those circumstances, and trolls have more time on their hands and not much else to do. Bad combination.
And yeah, you would think that it should be obvious that reality TV isn’t truly “reality,” but I think it’s a case where young women in particular face a lot of pressure in the entertainment industry, so that really worsened the fan response that Hana was receiving. I know the idol industry can also be really toxic and destructive, so it’s a problem that goes beyond reality TV and beyond just one television program.
In any case, this had some pretty big ramifications in Japan. If you bring up Terrace House to someone living there, they would probably immediately think of Hana. The news even got big enough that people outside of the country were talking about it, too, though these days I mostly just see it getting talked about in wrestling fan circles.
Yeah, I’ve heard that actresses can face a lot of judgement in the entertainment industry in Japan. That’s normal for any public figure, but judging someone’s character based on acting that they likely have no control over…. That’s sad and unfair.
oh wow, I didn’t know the details of that and it’s so sad to hear. Another thing to mention even on a pure ‘is it good Japanese learning content’ for Terrace House is that they have a habit of making the background music SO loud, especially in ‘dramatic’ discussions. I ended up dropping it for that reason without even knowing about the other information you’ve shared as it was really frustrating to me to not be able to hear what people were saying half of the time because the music drowned it out.
It’s actually from one of several random encounters in Second Life and they told me there’s a Japanese x English language exchange activity at that particular place.
Due to my schedule, I wasn’t able to make it for the Language Exchange event on Fridays but found out on Saturdays they have a weekly Japanese learning via Genki textbook. So when I first joined the community, they were already in the middle of Chapter 6 with Te-form >.< Thankfully Yoshi Sensei is always welcoming and patient towards newcomers.
I never would’ve imagined that such a platforms could be used for Japanese lessons.
Haha, it’s the opposite for me I started Second Life after I’ve heard Kurt Vonnegut gave one of his last interviews there among many university/college sponsored programs. But like you, I’ve only used Second Life as an escape and to chat with people instead of doing any substantial learning.
You can say after the pandemic began, that’s when I started to get my priorities straight and looked into my forgotten interests.
I remembering having an account with any active MMO I could find back in 2010
If you have some free time, I hope you can come back to Second Life again. And if you do, feel free to IM me there and I would love to introduce you to the Japanese friends at Nihongo Tea Room, as well as other Japanese learners too.
First step and word in there.