Beyond Jouzu
Jun. 13th, 2022 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholmBy this point, I like to imagine, Maisie is going round Bristol putting up notices on lampposts with my image, reading "Missing for almost a week. Colouring: blotchy; seldom seen in a collar; answers to 'Lard-ass'." But the truth is otherwise, as I get frequent messages assuring me of her rude health and Dreamies addiction from Hiroko and Rei, who are taking good care of her in Bristol. This leaves me free (or freer) to concentrate on doing the things I'm actually here to do, but also to enjoy myself, albeit with the moderation that has become my hallmark.
Not that moderation was much in evidence at the feast we had at Miho's house on Saturday. She and her husband Hiroshi laid on a truly monumental amount of food, with wine to match, and even gave the guests (four of us) a wine-bottle's worth of home-made ume-shu as a parting gift. The following day was to be the forty-ninth after the death of Miho's mother (that being the day of the final rite of Buddhist funerals), and she generously allowed us to pay our respects at her house next door and to light incense before her urn. It was very moving occasion, though this didn't stop us stuffing ourselves still further on our return. Altogether a very memorable evening, but one sans photographs here.
Any Japanese learner who visits Japan and speaks a little of the language will very soon hear the phrase, "Nihongo ga jouzu!", whether from a friend, a shopkeeper, a waiter, or whatever. It means "You're good at Japanese!" so it's very flattering the first time you hear it. Soon, however, you learn that any attempt to speak the language, no matter how fumbling or inept, is likely to prompt the same response. This much is a commonplace, but I think it became real for me a few years ago, when I merely wished a hotel cleaner good morning and was followed down the corridor by an echoing "Nihongo ga jouzu!" I'm sure that many tourists go to Japan without even that much at their disposal, and that the compliment is kindly meant (albeit that phrase always makes me think of Caroline Bingley), but the ease with which it is elicited does render it less than useful as a way of telling just how jouzu one actually is:
The lore among learners is that the next stage is when people no longer compliment you on your Japanese but ask you how long you have lived in Japan. For a long time that goal has seemed far, far out of reach, but I'm here to tell you that it actually happened to me - not once, but twice in the last 24 hours! Once at Miho's house, and once in a shop where I was buying a rice measure. Naturally, I was delighted!
Then realism set in. The fellow guest at the dinner party was not a native Japanese speaker herself, so perhaps didn't count as a judge, even if she'd overheard me speaking Japanese in what I suppose must have sounded quite a convincing way. As for the shopkeeper, I mentioned that I'd be taking the rice measure back to England, and she asked if I was returning after having lived in Japan for a while - which does sound like it meets the exacting standards I demand of all aspiring compliments. However, then I remembered that there have been no tourists in Japan for the last 2 years. Perhaps it was that, rather than my native-level rice measure talk, that prompted her assumption that I'd been here for a while?
I suppose I could go back to the little kitchenware shop in Koenji where I found the rice measure and ask for an affidavit to settle the matter, but that might be going too far.
I will be going back to Kouenji, though - an area I'd never visited until yesterday, despite its being en route from here to Shinjuku and thence the Yamanote line, and all of central Tokyo's delights. It's one of those neighbourhoods that's full of little local shops and narrow streets, and criss-cross telephone wires - the very opposite of Shinjuku's neon, and generally more to my taste.
Although, to be fair, my favourite sign in Kouenji was in a slightly different mode.
Meanwhile, here in Nishiogikubo a rather niche serial killer appears to be operating out of a local salon...
Never change, Japan. Well, maybe just a bit.
Not that moderation was much in evidence at the feast we had at Miho's house on Saturday. She and her husband Hiroshi laid on a truly monumental amount of food, with wine to match, and even gave the guests (four of us) a wine-bottle's worth of home-made ume-shu as a parting gift. The following day was to be the forty-ninth after the death of Miho's mother (that being the day of the final rite of Buddhist funerals), and she generously allowed us to pay our respects at her house next door and to light incense before her urn. It was very moving occasion, though this didn't stop us stuffing ourselves still further on our return. Altogether a very memorable evening, but one sans photographs here.
Any Japanese learner who visits Japan and speaks a little of the language will very soon hear the phrase, "Nihongo ga jouzu!", whether from a friend, a shopkeeper, a waiter, or whatever. It means "You're good at Japanese!" so it's very flattering the first time you hear it. Soon, however, you learn that any attempt to speak the language, no matter how fumbling or inept, is likely to prompt the same response. This much is a commonplace, but I think it became real for me a few years ago, when I merely wished a hotel cleaner good morning and was followed down the corridor by an echoing "Nihongo ga jouzu!" I'm sure that many tourists go to Japan without even that much at their disposal, and that the compliment is kindly meant (albeit that phrase always makes me think of Caroline Bingley), but the ease with which it is elicited does render it less than useful as a way of telling just how jouzu one actually is:
Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile?
The lore among learners is that the next stage is when people no longer compliment you on your Japanese but ask you how long you have lived in Japan. For a long time that goal has seemed far, far out of reach, but I'm here to tell you that it actually happened to me - not once, but twice in the last 24 hours! Once at Miho's house, and once in a shop where I was buying a rice measure. Naturally, I was delighted!
Then realism set in. The fellow guest at the dinner party was not a native Japanese speaker herself, so perhaps didn't count as a judge, even if she'd overheard me speaking Japanese in what I suppose must have sounded quite a convincing way. As for the shopkeeper, I mentioned that I'd be taking the rice measure back to England, and she asked if I was returning after having lived in Japan for a while - which does sound like it meets the exacting standards I demand of all aspiring compliments. However, then I remembered that there have been no tourists in Japan for the last 2 years. Perhaps it was that, rather than my native-level rice measure talk, that prompted her assumption that I'd been here for a while?
I suppose I could go back to the little kitchenware shop in Koenji where I found the rice measure and ask for an affidavit to settle the matter, but that might be going too far.
I will be going back to Kouenji, though - an area I'd never visited until yesterday, despite its being en route from here to Shinjuku and thence the Yamanote line, and all of central Tokyo's delights. It's one of those neighbourhoods that's full of little local shops and narrow streets, and criss-cross telephone wires - the very opposite of Shinjuku's neon, and generally more to my taste.
Although, to be fair, my favourite sign in Kouenji was in a slightly different mode.
Meanwhile, here in Nishiogikubo a rather niche serial killer appears to be operating out of a local salon...
Never change, Japan. Well, maybe just a bit.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2022-06-13 02:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-06-14 12:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-06-13 03:16 pm (UTC)"The Americans have various peculiarities in conversation which catch the ear somehow. Whenever you thank them for anything, they say 'You're welcome'. I rather liked it at first, thinking I was welcome, but now I find it comes back like a ball thrown against a wall, and become positively apprehensive." —Alan Turing, writing from Princeton, 1936
Perhaps it was that, rather than my native-level rice measure talk, that prompted her assumption that I'd been here for a while?
Congratulations nonetheless!
(no subject)
Date: 2022-06-14 12:08 am (UTC)