How to be funny in Japanese

Hey there.. today I thought I’d share with you something you don’t get to see much when it comes to learning a new language. Sure, you may learn idioms, but will you learn jokes and know how to make your own? I’ll share with you my experience on how to make your friends laugh. Note that you’ll need at least minimal conversational Japanese capabilities.

Making jokes is a great way to remember new vocabulary and entertain your friends.  Fortunately, if you’re sharp, making jokes in Japanese is particularly easy. Plus, your friends will laugh either because it’s funny or they’re being polite and recognize you tried. Either way, you’ll feel good.

ahahaha... she said "思ってサンド"

Method 1: Puns
Homophones are everywhere in the Japanese language, if you haven’t noticed already. Notice three meanings for the one word はし. 橋，箸　and 端. Just as an example. Of course, an opportunity for a pun  will come up given the right context. Take, for example, the word 確かに（たしかに）.You’ll notice they say it a lot… be silly and turn it into たし蟹 making the hand signals for our quotation marks while you say it. They’ll take it as crab. Be creative with your puns. Notice a word that people use frequently and is new to you and create sentences with all the puns possible. In American culture, puns may be corny… but in Japan they love it.

Method 2: Sarcasm
Be careful with this one. It can be offensive if not used in the right context. Make sure you’re with good friends first. In Japanese, sarcasm isn’t so much a tone… they use keigo instead (the super polite form of speech). This is perfect if you need to practice your keigo in a friendly manner without worrying about messing up. Instead of 元気だよ as an answer, you can say, お元気でございます. If you’re a girl, you can do the nasal tone of voice you hear in stores while you say it. Guys can do a silly deeper voice. Do some silly bouts between your friends using keigo. You’ll impress them with your Japanese ability and get a good laugh at the same time.

Method 3: Mockery
Making fun of the things around you is great. Nothing too personal.. again be careful of who you mock. For me, I always loved making fun of the train announcers while riding the train. I’d plug my nose and talk like them and say their sentences. This was great since I learned how to listen to keigo and train language, and I also learned my train stops. I also paid more attention to the marquee and learned to read them faster and I learned the kanji for each train stop I frequented… learning the kanji led me to learn the pronunciation of them when used in other names… for example… 中村橋 and　赤橋… hmmm it’s always ばし!

Method 4: Being Outright Ridiculous
Take a look at Variety television if you’re in Japan. (If not.. maybe you can catch it on youtube or KeyHoleTV). Japanese humor is sort of similar to Monty Python in that it’s just plain silly. Hitting someone on the head if they made a bad pun… shivering if the joke was corny… Notice how light and happy the humor is… always slightly teasing and always ridiculous. Mimicking the actions you see and especially mimicking current, popular comedians (maybe オッパッピー as of 2007) will always spring a laugh and teach you Japanese pop-culture!

Where to not get your humor:
Anime… unless it’s really popular anime like Bleach, One Piece, or classical like Sailor Moon and Pokemon. If it’s something like Cowboy Bebop (not so widely known in Japan) and you try to make a joke relating to it, you won’t be so successful… and if you constantly do it you’ll be otaku. However, you can pretend to be super dramatic like anime does sometimes… turn a regular friend into a 恋人 whom you’re having issues with as a joke.

Overall, making jokes in Japanese has great benefits if you’re careful. Don’t be too insensitive and be careful about who you’re joking with and what the joke is about. Staying away from personal issues and people who aren’t your close friends is usually a good choice. Rule usually goes, the less friendly you are with the person the lighter and more general the joke should be. Otherwise, jokes are a great way to learn Japanese and keep it in your head.

 

Will I sound like a kindergartner?

Elementary children wearing their school outfits

To those who have taken some Japanese and are about to embark on their first trip to Japan, you may be wondering how people there will perceive you as you stumble around trying to form a sentence. Perhaps your limit is ねこがいます and even then your accent shows through your efforts. “Are they going to look down on me,” you may wonder. Fear not. Many are very understanding. Why? They believe that Japanese is a difficult language for foreigners to learn.

Even if you entered a room and introduced yourself like, “koNIchuuWAAH, waTAshi WA James deSU!” They’ll smile, recognize that you tried and may even compliment you with a “じょうず！すごいですね！” But in reality, you know that it was awful and the compliments end up being overly endearing rather than ego boosting like they want it to be. So, it all ends with, “Do they think of me as a 5 year old Japanese child?”

Well, no. Many honestly believe that by complimenting every effort you make into learning Japanese will make you feel better about yourself. It’s not a problem of whether they view you as someone speaking at a Japanese child’s level. They see you as a foreigner that is learning Japanese. Simple as that. However, the Japanese only compliment you when they first hear you speak Japanese or notice an improvement. The biggest problem for learners is not having their Japanese corrected.

If you were to say ねこがあります instead of ねこがいます in conversation, for example, they perfectly understand what you meant to say and move on with the conversation. Even though the sentence is grammatically incorrect, they take it as nothing. Why not fix it for you though so you can improve next time? Well, to them, that would be embarrassing to point out a mistake. They definitely don’t want to embarrass their guest. Plus, if you make a mistake in every sentence, they’ll get tired of correcting all the mistakes you make.

The best way to remedy this is tho let them know you want to be corrected when you first introduce yourself. If you haven’t already, any time is a good time to let them know. Just tell them, “ぶんしょうはちがったら、なおしてください” (文章は違ったら、直してください) and they’ll understand.

Because you are a foreigner, not a Japanese child, you are almost excluded from the rules of Japanese society. As long as you don’t bring too much attention to yourself, obey the Japanese laws, and aren’t too overbearing. So this brings in the topic of casual speech and formal speech (丁寧－ていねい). The way it is done usually is when strangers talk to each other or first meet, they use keigo (警護). For those who haven’t learned yet, keigo is the super formal language. When one refers to oneself, it’s humble. When referring to the other person it’s honorific. However, keigo is considered to be difficult even for the Japanese. As a foreigner you’re expected to use formal speech, ていねい.

You’ll notice, though, that they’ll respond to you in casual speech, which is just dictionary form of verbs. Does this mean you should respond the same? This is hard, because, again they won’t correct you when you’re learning Japanese. If you reply casually, they’ll just take it as that. Normally, a casual reply would be considered rude. But they let it slide just for you. If you continue in ていねい, they may never tell you to switch to casual because they’re assuming that’s how you’re learning Japanese and it’s not their business to fix it. What to do?

Again, communication. Ask them what feels most comfortable when talking to you. Or ask them for a general situation. “一般的に、丁寧で話したほうがいいですか？”（いっぱんてきに、ていねいで はなしたほうが いいですか？） I’m guessing that the first friends you make are ones that already know some English. So don’t worry too  much about sentences in Japanese.

Finally, you are a foreigner!!! I can’t stress it enough. No matter how good your Japanese is, you will always be a foreigner. You will never be Japanese. Even if you married a Japanese person, live in a Japanese home, have a job in Japan, have half Japanese children, you’ll forever be a foreigner. (I guess the only exception is if you’re of full Asian descent, that brings you a bit closer. There’s problems within that too though.) However, the main point is that because you’re a foreigner you’re not always expected to live by the rules of Japanese society. That has good points and bad points. But to answer the ultimate question of this article, you won’t be viewed as a Japanese child, because you’re not Japanese! You’re just foreign, and that’s that.

 

JET – The interview

After successfully making it through the initial process, I gave an interview for the Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) position. Unlike the other participants, I live an hour away from Portland. Others had to stay at a hotel for the night. Dressed professionally, my name was called and I went into one of the four rooms prepared for us.

They had a table set up and three people asking me questions. Two of them were former JET participants, the other was a Japanese language teacher. I felt confident and ready to answer any question they threw at me.

First they asked me the basic questions such as, what is my current position, have I ever applied to JET before, etc etc. Then they asked, “Why did you choose JET?” I knew the worst reply would be, “I love anime and Harajuku fashion!!!”  Which isn’t true.

Then they started to ask me questions based off my answers such as, “You said you wanted to join JET because you want to learn Japanese, but JET is more of a cultural exchange, not language. How would you adjust?” Then they asked me some culture based questions like, “What if a tall American guy came into the classroom and left and your students began to ask, ‘Sensei, when is the American coming?'” and things like, “What if you’re at an izakaya with your faculty and your boss came up behind you and offered a massage?”

Then they gave me a small portion in Japanese to see where my Japanese level is at. Had no affect on my interview, but they wanted to know how well I could speak Japanese.

Lastly, they asked me what my hobbies were. I said one of them was singing. That’s when they made me sing. They told me to sing something for them that would work with little kids. So I sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. They liked it! They asked about any other hobbies I had, and I told them that I like painting.

After that, they asked if I had any other questions.. and I asked.. shook hands and I was out the door. I felt good from my interview and I think I did well.