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.
"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?
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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!