Comments by "Harry \x22Nic\x22 Nicholas" (@HarryNicNicholas) on "A traveller's guide to Japanese" video.

i love it, i say it's the nearest you'll get to outer space, when i look up at the sky i expect to see rings like saturn.
16
lol, my ex wife of 20 years is japanese and if i asked her what a symbol meant i would usually get a different answer each day for at least a week, it all depends on context, even the weather sometimes. long thin things are counted differently to short fat things, they have no natural swear words, you get called a hippo as an insult, and things like table, chair, spoon tv are kinda japanified, but as they never had these things til they opened the borders they are all english (american) derived, even though the japanese do not understand what you mean when you use them. they have english goods and slogans on all their tee shirts, but have little idea what they say or mean.
1
the MOST important thing to do is to take GIFTS, however small or inexpensive, people will go way, way out of their way to help you, but it is s good idea to acknowledge that help with a gift, thinking that "thank you" is sufficient isn't enough, people remark how japanese who were extremely friendly and helpful ignore you after a while - you didn't show your appreciation with a token. they love english biscuits and tea, and anything to do with royalty. or even an envelope with money for the kids of people who you know well. i was there usually at christmas and new year and my (now ex)wife spent a fair deal of her time gift shopping for friends and even family. not just because it was christmas, she usually goes loaded down with biscuits and tea.
1
sumi-ma-sen is a universal way to apologise if you know nothing else, apologies from visitors almost guarantee you will be treated like royalty. you can also use it to be sarcastic if locals laugh at your ignorance, the japanese are usually quite surprised by people speaking japanese, or at least they were 20 years ago when i was there.
1