日本語会話: The Japanese Conversation Thread

[Bato]

I'm just finishing my first two weeks (ever) in Japan.

I had surprisingly good results by erring on the side of over-politeness and saying

"Sumimasen, Kore onegai shimasu" or "Sumimasen, doko Makurosu/toransufoma desu ka?"

Generally, i got by with a lot of "sumimasen"s and pointing at things... ^^;;;

[GoktimusPrime]

"Sumimasen, doko Makurosu/toransufoma desu ka?"

Correction on this sentence: it should be
「トランスフォーマーはどこですか」
"Toransufōmā wa doko desu ka?"

You basically omitted the topic marker particle "wa" and had adverb "doko" in the wrong position. Remember that adverbs and verbs come towards the end of sentences in Japanese, as opposed to English which typically places them towards the front.

トランスフォーマーはどこですか
Where are the Transformers?

[Bato]

Sorry, yes, I would actually say "XXXX wa doko desu ka?".

Thanks for correcting me

(that's what I get for posting late-ish at night)

[kup]

Thank you for your tips but i an looking for role play conversation to reinforce the ability to communicate. The sumimasen tip is very important and useful. Thank you

[Bato]

Be careful though.

The expression "Knowing just enough Japanese to be dangerous" is actually true.

Again, personal experience, but after I could manage a couple sentences in Japanese, they would fire off in Japanese super fast and point me to signs in Japanese. Once I told them I couldn't read/understand (spoken) Japanese, they would start explaining things in English and giving me the English sign instead :P

[GoktimusPrime]

I'm sure I've linked to this video before, but it's a social experiment to see how many "Western looking" (i.e. non East Asian) people in Tokyo speak Japanese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8-YLAKW7DU

The problem with this experiment was that it was done in Shibuya, which is a popular tourist attraction, and I don't know how many of those people were just tourists or actual residents in Japan. Because naturally you wouldn't expect a tourist to speak the local language as they're just passing through. But a person living in Japan should absolutely be able to speak Japanese (to varying degrees of fluency, depending on how long they've been living there). I'm seriously thinking about doing this experiment myself when I'm in Japan, although we're also hitting a lot of tourist places. But I want to explicitly ask people if they're tourists or residents and just disregard all the tourists from my experiment; i.e. I only want to observe residents. Might get some of my senior students involved... hrmm... something we might discuss on the plane trip.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Shibuya is also likely to attract a lo of people who have studies Japanese, so you might be better off going somewhere else to start I guess.
Also if some guy and a kid came up to me with a mic speaking Japanese to me, I'd tell him I didn't speak Japanese to make him go away.

As a whitey, it's sometimes handy pretending to not understand. Like when I was in a shop looking at TFs and this fat angry dude was stomping around rambling on about the lack of selection. Wouldn't mind chatting to some local Tf fans, but not if they are stereotype looking otaku guys.