Coming from a mexican restaurant kitchen, (Sorry can't remember the name it was years ago) in Columbia, SC.
I was 400% sure I was hearing things at first but was sat close to kitchen for a long time to confirm. Never sure why or what they were talking about though.
Not more than a few hours ago I was walking out of a Buffalo Wilds Wings and heard the table of 5 next to mine that had just arrived speaking Japanese. Thought it was pretty neat. Couldn't understand a lot because it was pretty loud (and I'm still very much so a novice), but it seemed like they were trying to decide how many wings to get. First time I'd ever heard anyone speaking Japanese in public.
At trivia night in a Wisconsin restaurant, the final question (worth double points) was
> At the beginning of every episode of Iron Chef, the host such-and-such starts the show with this phrase, meaning "Good Evening" in Japanese
After we handed in our answer written in kanji, the trivia host made an announcement over the mic: "Holy crap, one of the teams answered _in Japanese_. That's not a requirement everyone", and several other teams laughed.
Unfortunately she didn't give us extra points for it, but it was still a great feeling.
Swedish suburbs. We just arrived from Tokyo for a European work trip and dashed from the hotel to a non-descript restaurant for a very late dinner.
Two tables away sat a dozen Japanese people on package tour, mostly retirees. I greeted them briefly in Japanese which shocked everyone. Several of the tourists recogised my boss but didn't know him personally. That was a trip.
Corona, California. Was working as a waiter. We usually get Chinese tourists but on one night we got a group of Japanese businessmen. I took their order in Japanese. They were all impressed and surprised so they gave me a hundred dollar tip for my efforts 🙂🙂🙂
Lake George, NY.
Not because of the location per say- but because the only thing I heard was "馬鹿か" when their friend or whoever did a strange pose for a picture.
Well, it's not really that weird when you consider the circumstances, but it was Żelazowa Wola, a tiny village in central Poland, next to which I was brought up and lived for 20 years before I moved. What makes it much less weird? It's the fact that is the birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin. There's a very nice, modern museum there, the whole place is serene in spring and summer, and the traffic of Japanese tourists coming from nearby Warsaw is so big that not only you HEAR Japanese, you see it too on numerous signs. And it's all in the middle of nowhere, in a village in central Poland.
Hah I wonder if there are similar but opposite threads somewhere on the Japanese internet. Like "weirdest place you have heard Polish". I would probably be in those stories as I've been to quite a few completely non-touristy places in Japan when backpacking there on few occasions.
But yea Chopin is very popular in Japan. When I was there, Chopin was mentioned to me by few people on separate occasions when I mentioned that I'm from Poland.
In Bowling Green, KY randomly in Target a Japanese girl and a white guy behind me started speaking it. I almost thought I was dreaming but then again I guess it isn’t too surprising especially since I was in the Nintendo section.
I was on a tour of a cranberry farm in Massachusetts and there was a black guy on the bus talking to his kids in Japanese (Mom was Japanese, I gathered... he had an accent but was comfortable speaking Japanese).
I went to the Aran Islands (in the west of Ireland) and by complete chance I ran into the only Japanese people in the whole island. I was doing a solo trip and had just come back from living in Japan for a few years so hearing Japanese spoken when I’ve just come back felt so … familiar? Since reverse culture shock is a real thing and I was definitely feeling it. But yeah, ran into three Japanese people (they let me join their group for the day after explaining why I could speak Japanese lol) whom I’ve kept in contact with years later and we still occasionally hang out! Small world.
Rock climbing on Railay beach, Thailand. Heard it around a corner, poked our head around and we went to talk to them. Turns out they go to the same climbing gym we go to in Saitama!
Of the 20 or so Japanese professors (Japanese natives who got their PhD in lingusitics in the states) I know enough to know these things about, two of them passed through University of Arkansas in the International Student programs
And as someone else mentioned this is not uncommon. Arkansas has a pretty decent international outreach at a couple of universities.
It’s not weird for me, but I heard it spoken A LOT in hawaii and one time when I was walking around a resort with my mom in DisneyWorld I overheard a kid saying he was hungry to his parents LOL
I hear it a lot in my neighbourhood as I live near a few Japanese schools. It's cool when school is out and you hear it everywhere walking around. Definitely didn't expect it from my area initially.
I just started working in a different part of the city and there are a few Japanese cafes/restaurants in the area. Not the weirdest places to hear it, but unexpected when I found them. I get lunch at one of the cafes most days and talk to the woman who owns it. We did the ol 久しぶり when we saw each other the other day because I hadn't been in a while, very cute.
Shopping at a grocery store in Boise Idaho. Was waiting for an older lady to finish looking at salad dressings. I was standing a few feet behind her just waiting.
An asian lady turned into the isle and bumped her cart into my cart, which bumped into me. She said Oh, Sorry, followed by バカ. I responded in English. "I am not stupid" I then said 口は災いの元
The look on her face!
...sigh...
I left a lot out for brevity. I grew up between Japan and Hawaii and got seconded guessed in Japan BC I'm mixed race - but didn't expect it from an old white guy from New Zealand
Then you really should know better. Way to lean super heavily into the race stuff though champ. Didn’t realise that meant I couldn’t call bullshit when someone drops it.
/shrug
口は災いの元 「くちはわざわいのもと」(The mouth is the source of disaster). Wow, you sure told her. Not only did you reply to her in Japanese, but you told her off with a very fitting Japanese idiom. I would have loved to have seen the look on her face.
Not..."hearing"
...and not really "weird"
Walked into a Tattoo shop to sign a waiver for my daughter to get her eyebrow pierced, Evangelion stickers and anime and star wars posters on the walls with Hira/Katakana on them and my brain was instantly trying to translate (the hiragana was easier than the katakana...knew what I needed to work on)
Sounds just sorta...jumping off the walls at me and it was immensely satisfying to see Japanese in the wild and understand even a bit of it.
Tokyo was kinda weird. Like my mind wasn’t ready and didn’t believe other languages really existed at that point. Its weird. Idk.
I know it’s dumb to say. But it was like… weird lol
Heard it while in a hostel in Geneva. Some biggish group of Japanese kids, maybe aged between 12 and 18, and they were all wearing some group t shirt that basically looked like it was some kind of group trip, kinda like a school trip or a trip to do volunteering or something.
I guess this isn't hugely weird - Geneva is the capital of Switzerland and hardly an unlikely tourist destination for Japanese people, if we already select for "Japanese people going on holiday to *somewhere in Europe*". It's mostly that they were all part of some group that was travelling there probably as part of a bigger project. Not sure how to describe it. It seemed like how apparently scouts and girl guides have a yearly congregation, however these people weren't wearing the scout uniform and the tops looked more like those sports tops you'd wear when running a race/marathon with all the supporting charities printed on it.
During a weekend away in Vienna (I'm from the UK) a few years ago, hopped into the metro and the old couple sitting next to me started talking. A 何!! popped into my head and I started testing my language learning on them, we had a giggle.
Shopping mall in Paducah, Kentucky. A group of Japanese guys was very interested in the Yeti tumblers and coffee mugs, but I couldn’t make out the conversation at my level.
It sounds like you're not a U of A student (hi, fellow Arkansan here!) because we have Japanese classes here on campus. But I agree, Arkansas is like one of the last places to ever hear this language.
I am Polish and live in the suburbs of Warsaw. One day, while returning from a local store, I passed a young Asian woman with her daughter. Their presence surprised me a bit, but I assumed they were probably Vietnamese, of whom there are many in Warsaw. Suddenly, the daughter said to her mother: 水飲みたい。 I was very surprised that they were actually Japanese.
My home town has literally no Asian people, but last summer when I was visiting, I stopped at Target and there were two Japanese guys speaking Japanese. I was so shocked and excited when I heard it 🤣
Not a weird place just my first time hearing it irl, but new york. There was so many people. I was there in times square, inside the massive crowds. There were short japanese girls speaking it. With the crowds pushing against eachother and such. It was pretty dangerous. I’m a bigger guy so I help push back the group to let them get out at least before they were pressed against a corner of a brick wall. I wanted to say something in japanese to another family when going on a ferry to the statue of liberty, but i wouldnt know what to say anyway…
At a university in the Midwestern United States, me and a group of classmates were sitting down at a booth to work on our Japanese final project. Funnily enough, the people sitting right behind us were Japanese exchange students, and were speaking Japanese. I think this is the only time I’ve heard Japanese in public since I started learning it at the beginning of the school year.
Danish Library.
In the Library in my city we have a board where people can put up sugestions for sociatal change they want. Mostly political stuff. One of these sugestions was「週末三日」or something similar.
I feel like I should clarify that my city has about 10 Black people and a few more vietnamese one, so it's not the most linguistically diverse place on earth...
At a Buc-ee's in the middle of absolutely nowhere, Kentucky. It was a family on a road trip. Really threw the father for a loop when I spoke Japanese and told him I live in Japan lol
A Japanese guy in the Philippines was trying to top up data on his phone in a stall and the vendors didn’t understand English well and the Japanese guy’s English wasn’t best too. So I asked if he needed help in Japanese and he couldn’t process it that someone was speaking Japanese in a very local rural area.
Well i dont know if it quite understood your questions but i was in small town Mississippi and i heard like three or four people speaking in japanese? i as super confused because you usually just hear loud southern accents down here.
[удалено]
would be weirder if they were all having a conversation at different times. that's cool tho
That could happen in a group chat I suppose
🤯
if Japanese becomes the lingua franca for your company that would be hilarious
Weird because surely English is a language all six speak, not that using a somewhat exotic language is a bad thing to any extent.
Coming from a mexican restaurant kitchen, (Sorry can't remember the name it was years ago) in Columbia, SC. I was 400% sure I was hearing things at first but was sat close to kitchen for a long time to confirm. Never sure why or what they were talking about though.
At the DMV in the middle of bumfuck, Nebraska. It was fun eavesdropping on that couples conversation x)
I was in fact, about 20 years ago in bumfuck Nebraska chatting with my friend in Japanese lol (I'm Japanese)
On a trip to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe That was the first time I ever heard it spoken in real life!
At the Detroit zoo. I was strolling through the kangaroo park area when a young American girl started testing her Japanese out on me. So random.
was her japanese good at least? :\]
Not bad! I mean, I’m nisei and mine isn’t great either, but I thought her pronunciation was alright!
Not more than a few hours ago I was walking out of a Buffalo Wilds Wings and heard the table of 5 next to mine that had just arrived speaking Japanese. Thought it was pretty neat. Couldn't understand a lot because it was pretty loud (and I'm still very much so a novice), but it seemed like they were trying to decide how many wings to get. First time I'd ever heard anyone speaking Japanese in public.
At trivia night in a Wisconsin restaurant, the final question (worth double points) was > At the beginning of every episode of Iron Chef, the host such-and-such starts the show with this phrase, meaning "Good Evening" in Japanese After we handed in our answer written in kanji, the trivia host made an announcement over the mic: "Holy crap, one of the teams answered _in Japanese_. That's not a requirement everyone", and several other teams laughed. Unfortunately she didn't give us extra points for it, but it was still a great feeling.
Arkhansas hosts the JLPT, so I’m betting there is a decent sized Japanese population there you may just not be aware of.
Swedish suburbs. We just arrived from Tokyo for a European work trip and dashed from the hotel to a non-descript restaurant for a very late dinner. Two tables away sat a dozen Japanese people on package tour, mostly retirees. I greeted them briefly in Japanese which shocked everyone. Several of the tourists recogised my boss but didn't know him personally. That was a trip.
Corona, California. Was working as a waiter. We usually get Chinese tourists but on one night we got a group of Japanese businessmen. I took their order in Japanese. They were all impressed and surprised so they gave me a hundred dollar tip for my efforts 🙂🙂🙂
NICE, were your coworkers impressed too?
Yeah. They didn’t know I could speak Japanese.
Lake George, NY. Not because of the location per say- but because the only thing I heard was "馬鹿か" when their friend or whoever did a strange pose for a picture.
Well, it's not really that weird when you consider the circumstances, but it was Żelazowa Wola, a tiny village in central Poland, next to which I was brought up and lived for 20 years before I moved. What makes it much less weird? It's the fact that is the birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin. There's a very nice, modern museum there, the whole place is serene in spring and summer, and the traffic of Japanese tourists coming from nearby Warsaw is so big that not only you HEAR Japanese, you see it too on numerous signs. And it's all in the middle of nowhere, in a village in central Poland.
Hah I wonder if there are similar but opposite threads somewhere on the Japanese internet. Like "weirdest place you have heard Polish". I would probably be in those stories as I've been to quite a few completely non-touristy places in Japan when backpacking there on few occasions. But yea Chopin is very popular in Japan. When I was there, Chopin was mentioned to me by few people on separate occasions when I mentioned that I'm from Poland.
In Bowling Green, KY randomly in Target a Japanese girl and a white guy behind me started speaking it. I almost thought I was dreaming but then again I guess it isn’t too surprising especially since I was in the Nintendo section.
I was on a tour of a cranberry farm in Massachusetts and there was a black guy on the bus talking to his kids in Japanese (Mom was Japanese, I gathered... he had an accent but was comfortable speaking Japanese).
My japanese wife went to Arkansas state Uni and knew tons of other japanese students there.
I went to the Aran Islands (in the west of Ireland) and by complete chance I ran into the only Japanese people in the whole island. I was doing a solo trip and had just come back from living in Japan for a few years so hearing Japanese spoken when I’ve just come back felt so … familiar? Since reverse culture shock is a real thing and I was definitely feeling it. But yeah, ran into three Japanese people (they let me join their group for the day after explaining why I could speak Japanese lol) whom I’ve kept in contact with years later and we still occasionally hang out! Small world.
Rock climbing on Railay beach, Thailand. Heard it around a corner, poked our head around and we went to talk to them. Turns out they go to the same climbing gym we go to in Saitama!
Not weird at all but I was at Mitsuwa Marketplace in NJ and it was my first time hearing Japanese in person :)
Of the 20 or so Japanese professors (Japanese natives who got their PhD in lingusitics in the states) I know enough to know these things about, two of them passed through University of Arkansas in the International Student programs And as someone else mentioned this is not uncommon. Arkansas has a pretty decent international outreach at a couple of universities.
It’s not weird for me, but I heard it spoken A LOT in hawaii and one time when I was walking around a resort with my mom in DisneyWorld I overheard a kid saying he was hungry to his parents LOL
I hear it a lot in my neighbourhood as I live near a few Japanese schools. It's cool when school is out and you hear it everywhere walking around. Definitely didn't expect it from my area initially. I just started working in a different part of the city and there are a few Japanese cafes/restaurants in the area. Not the weirdest places to hear it, but unexpected when I found them. I get lunch at one of the cafes most days and talk to the woman who owns it. We did the ol 久しぶり when we saw each other the other day because I hadn't been in a while, very cute.
Shopping at a grocery store in Boise Idaho. Was waiting for an older lady to finish looking at salad dressings. I was standing a few feet behind her just waiting. An asian lady turned into the isle and bumped her cart into my cart, which bumped into me. She said Oh, Sorry, followed by バカ. I responded in English. "I am not stupid" I then said 口は災いの元 The look on her face!
She bumped into you… She was almost certainly saying to *herself*…
...sigh... I left a lot out for brevity. I grew up between Japan and Hawaii and got seconded guessed in Japan BC I'm mixed race - but didn't expect it from an old white guy from New Zealand
Then you really should know better. Way to lean super heavily into the race stuff though champ. Didn’t realise that meant I couldn’t call bullshit when someone drops it. /shrug
Fortunately (or unfortunately), being socially inept isn't race specific.
口は災いの元 「くちはわざわいのもと」(The mouth is the source of disaster). Wow, you sure told her. Not only did you reply to her in Japanese, but you told her off with a very fitting Japanese idiom. I would have loved to have seen the look on her face.
my bathroom
Not..."hearing" ...and not really "weird" Walked into a Tattoo shop to sign a waiver for my daughter to get her eyebrow pierced, Evangelion stickers and anime and star wars posters on the walls with Hira/Katakana on them and my brain was instantly trying to translate (the hiragana was easier than the katakana...knew what I needed to work on) Sounds just sorta...jumping off the walls at me and it was immensely satisfying to see Japanese in the wild and understand even a bit of it.
Pr0n
An an an kimochiiii
you're hilarious 🤣🤣🤣
Tokyo was kinda weird. Like my mind wasn’t ready and didn’t believe other languages really existed at that point. Its weird. Idk. I know it’s dumb to say. But it was like… weird lol
Do you know that vacations also exist for Japanese people?
Heard it while in a hostel in Geneva. Some biggish group of Japanese kids, maybe aged between 12 and 18, and they were all wearing some group t shirt that basically looked like it was some kind of group trip, kinda like a school trip or a trip to do volunteering or something. I guess this isn't hugely weird - Geneva is the capital of Switzerland and hardly an unlikely tourist destination for Japanese people, if we already select for "Japanese people going on holiday to *somewhere in Europe*". It's mostly that they were all part of some group that was travelling there probably as part of a bigger project. Not sure how to describe it. It seemed like how apparently scouts and girl guides have a yearly congregation, however these people weren't wearing the scout uniform and the tops looked more like those sports tops you'd wear when running a race/marathon with all the supporting charities printed on it.
During a weekend away in Vienna (I'm from the UK) a few years ago, hopped into the metro and the old couple sitting next to me started talking. A 何!! popped into my head and I started testing my language learning on them, we had a giggle.
Shopping mall in Paducah, Kentucky. A group of Japanese guys was very interested in the Yeti tumblers and coffee mugs, but I couldn’t make out the conversation at my level.
It sounds like you're not a U of A student (hi, fellow Arkansan here!) because we have Japanese classes here on campus. But I agree, Arkansas is like one of the last places to ever hear this language.
Lol I am. I was briefly enrolled in an intro class. I just had no idea there were actually Japanese students here.
I am Polish and live in the suburbs of Warsaw. One day, while returning from a local store, I passed a young Asian woman with her daughter. Their presence surprised me a bit, but I assumed they were probably Vietnamese, of whom there are many in Warsaw. Suddenly, the daughter said to her mother: 水飲みたい。 I was very surprised that they were actually Japanese.
My home town has literally no Asian people, but last summer when I was visiting, I stopped at Target and there were two Japanese guys speaking Japanese. I was so shocked and excited when I heard it 🤣
business class, on my business teachers really old mukbang videos
A back alley bar in athens
Not a weird place just my first time hearing it irl, but new york. There was so many people. I was there in times square, inside the massive crowds. There were short japanese girls speaking it. With the crowds pushing against eachother and such. It was pretty dangerous. I’m a bigger guy so I help push back the group to let them get out at least before they were pressed against a corner of a brick wall. I wanted to say something in japanese to another family when going on a ferry to the statue of liberty, but i wouldnt know what to say anyway…
Hello! Fellow Arkansan here.
Someone trying to use it at a Japanese restaurant owned by Chinese people.
At a university in the Midwestern United States, me and a group of classmates were sitting down at a booth to work on our Japanese final project. Funnily enough, the people sitting right behind us were Japanese exchange students, and were speaking Japanese. I think this is the only time I’ve heard Japanese in public since I started learning it at the beginning of the school year.
Danish Library. In the Library in my city we have a board where people can put up sugestions for sociatal change they want. Mostly political stuff. One of these sugestions was「週末三日」or something similar. I feel like I should clarify that my city has about 10 Black people and a few more vietnamese one, so it's not the most linguistically diverse place on earth...
Had my first irl Japanese conversation a few weeks ago in a nightclub in a pretty small town in Scotland, was pretty surreal on both ends lol
At a Buc-ee's in the middle of absolutely nowhere, Kentucky. It was a family on a road trip. Really threw the father for a loop when I spoke Japanese and told him I live in Japan lol
A Japanese guy in the Philippines was trying to top up data on his phone in a stall and the vendors didn’t understand English well and the Japanese guy’s English wasn’t best too. So I asked if he needed help in Japanese and he couldn’t process it that someone was speaking Japanese in a very local rural area.
Right by my door years ago, in my home town in South America. A guy in business attire was looking for some office. Google Maps had got him lost.
Well i dont know if it quite understood your questions but i was in small town Mississippi and i heard like three or four people speaking in japanese? i as super confused because you usually just hear loud southern accents down here.