hello it's your friend amen here i'm an
american who's been living in
china and japan since 2012 and in this
long time span i've had the chance to
see quite a few countries in asia
and i have to say japan being an
economic powerhouse
and a country with a substantial
population of foreigners
you might think that speaking japanese
probably wouldn't turn a lot of heads
here
especially foreigners speaking japanese
and tokyo
but despite how big and international
this city is
every once in a while you might turn a
couple heads
so i'm going that way i'll see you next
time
now although those kinds of situations
are pretty rare the further you go
outside of the big city the more likely
it's going to happen
even in the suburbs of this city
i've seen that head turn reaction quite
a few times here in japan although
admittedly it's much more common in
china
well with all the reaction videos out
there on the internet about languages
i've gotten constant requests for
japanese reaction videos however i think
that how people really react in japan is
going to be a little bit different from
the way most people believe they will
react
this is especially true for how people
think elderly japanese will react so
let's take a look at a couple
conversations that i think are good
examples and see if it lines up with how
you think it would
foreign
oh
uh
foreign
[Music]
um
were you surprised that she didn't go
they speak japanese
well that was a pretty standard city
reaction and in the center of the city
and in many stores throughout japan
they're taught just to assume that you
know japanese until you prove that you
can't
unlike in china where the iraq reaction
is a little bit more like
more like that but it's also possible
that japanese people are indeed
surprised by foreigners speaking
japanese but they just don't verbalize
it because they don't want to embarrass
you
or to cause a scene both are possible
but it's certainly true that as you go
out of the center of the city and into
the suburbs and even into the
countryside that the reaction changes a
lot
but that could also be because people
tend to be more friendly as you
get out of tokyo and they're just
curious to see you walking around the
neighborhood
they might even want to say hi to you
going outside of tokyo to an area like
this can be pretty fun if you know how
to get there and you know what to see
now of course when you come out here
you're gonna have to rely on yourself a
lot more
because you won't find a lot of english
speakers or english signs
but it's really worth it to get out
where it's a little quieter
and you get a better more realistic
view of what living in japan is actually
like
because tokyo is kind of a special place
one of the best things about leaving
tokyo and going out to the suburbs is
that
it's so quiet here aside from the bugs
those are just cicadas but you don't
have that
constant traffic going through
and people constantly walking around at
all hours of the night
now i do like how quiet it is here and
how peaceful it is here
it just i like this
architecture but i do like tokyo a lot
a lot of people like to badmouth tokyo
to each their own because
i i'm not such a big fan of
quiet suburbia people choose to live in
the suburbs either the north
or south maybe east or west of tokyo
simply because it's cheaper you could
rent an apartment much cheaper out here
in the suburbs rather than downtown and
if you don't mind the commute then
that's a good choice
foreign