20240627_How_we_LEARNED_JAPANESE_living_in_JAPAN_CJ3eg96ksUQ

00:01 John Daub: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Only in Japan podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about how we learned Japanese living here in Japan. I've been here for this year — my 26th year in Japan. I don't speak fluent Japanese. I'm kind of conversational, I guess you could say, but a lot of people ask me how I learned Japanese here. And I thought in this episode I would share that information with you, do some catchball. We have a Discord server where we have an audience coming in to ask us questions live. So if you'd like to do that, go to discord.gg slash Only in Japan. And joining us in this live stream is this man, Peter von Gomm, who has been in Japan about as long as I have. How you doing, Peter?

00:53 Peter von Gomm: Good, good. Well, I just came back from the dentist, so my teeth are squeaky clean, and I'm happy to see you, John.

01:09 John Daub: Good. Yeah, well, here I am right here. I'm pretty excited about this because this is something that a lot of people have been asking me about — how we learn Japanese, not just me, but I think getting another point of view is important. Your Japanese is pretty good. I don't know whose Japanese is better, but we can get around just about anywhere in Japan and be understood without having any issues with people understanding us.

01:33 John Daub: How would you consider your Japanese?

01:40 Peter von Gomm: I struggle in certain scenarios. I struggle — and you're probably the same — anything to do with business, going to banks and things like that, where they use kind of a more honorific verb conjugation. It's just — it's tricky. It's a hassle. So I try to kind of designate that sort of stuff to my wife to handle. And she grudgingly does that. Sometimes she's OK, but sometimes it's like, it's a pain in the ass.

02:14 John Daub: Can't be bothered doing that. Well, somebody here is fluent in Japanese. So, yeah, in answer to your question, I do jobs in Japanese. I do voice acting jobs in Japanese when they want to. It's called kata-koto Nihongo — so it's when you're speaking Japanese, but it's obvious that you have an accent. So you're picked out of the lineup. People know that you're not a native speaker. But yeah, I mean, conversational, and I get the job done in Japanese. I can book jobs and negotiate and things in Japanese. You read kanji, though. I do not read much kanji. You're pretty good at kanji.

03:01 Peter von Gomm: I can understand a newspaper, and I get scripts coming in from Japanese TV sometimes where I scan it. But yeah, I get the gist of it. I sometimes don't know what the words actually — how to say the words — but I know the meaning of the kanji because I've seen it a bazillion times, you know, because the kanji has a meaning behind it. The way you pronounce it can be different. Like, I remember looking — we both drive here. We have the Tomei Expressway, Tokyo to Nagoya. But that kanji for not for Nagoya also is me in the Tomei Expressway. So like, sometimes kanji can be hard like that. But I can also read the other ways you say it. So sometimes I don't know how to say it, but I can figure out the meaning. And when people ask me, what I say, "Hi," yeah, you guys, I got it right. But sometimes I don't completely have it 100 percent. I get the gist. And right, right? So how did you get to this level of Japanese — by taking classes, by self-studying?

04:10 John Daub: Yeah, primarily self-study. So when I first came to Japan — by the way, you mentioned your Japaniversary is coming up, or maybe it already happened. Mine's coming up. 25 years in Japan is coming up in one month from now. So when I first came here, 1999, I was introduced to the Japanese language through the ward office. So there were volunteer ladies there that were teaching foreigners the basics. Well, I lived in Nerimaku — so, you know, like a community center or whatever. So there's 23 wards in Tokyo, and I lived in the Nerimaku — the ku. There's 23 kus. And yeah, so I went to the ku office, and they had some organized Japanese classes. And so that's where I learned the basics. And then after that, it was just — it was largely from living here and girlfriends and my wife now.

05:24 Peter von Gomm: That's a good segue. How did I learn Japanese? I would say mine is all self-taught. I never went to school. I never took a lesson. I never went to the ward office or the town office. They had them. But I taught English, so there wasn't really much use to learn Japanese because it's discouraged in English schools. They said, "Please don't speak any Japanese in the lessons. It's better if you know no Japanese." So I didn't learn it for the first year. I lived here in Japan. What a waste, right? But I had a girlfriend. Twenty-six years ago — my Japaniversary is coming next month — and she was an English teacher. She was Japanese. She could speak fluent English. She'd lived in Chicago. So we didn't speak any Japanese except for a couple of things. I didn't know konnichiwa, for example. I came here pretty blind. So it was mainly the second year where I started to say, well, wait a second. If I'm going to be staying in Japan for a long time — because I did make that determination — and if you're coming here just as an English teacher for a year, I don't know if you really need to know Japanese. You have to make a decision by making that investment and learning a language that is not really spoken anywhere outside of Japan. Do you really need that skill?

06:45 John Daub: Right. Right. Well, you also have the added benefit of living outside of Tokyo. So we're really spoiled in Tokyo. We can survive quite easily just speaking English. But when you go into the rural areas, that's where you're really forced to — to converse with your neighbors and the community there, where they don't speak much English at all — it really will amplify the speed of your learning the language.

07:26 Peter von Gomm: In a way, it was because — you have if you're going to make some friends and you're the only foreigner in the town, you're going to learn Japanese really quickly. And it's beneficial because everything out there, even today, is in Japanese. You can get by with a translator or Google Translate or apps and stuff, but we didn't have apps in 1999 or 1998 when we came. What did we have? We had dictionaries. I still have my pocket dictionary. I still have the — like, everybody got their information from this. It's got green — it's disappearing. But the Lonely Planet.

08:08 John Daub: Right. Like, I still got the Japanese idioms, pickup lines — how to pick up girls and stuff. I mean, like, I got these books because I wanted to talk to people. And it was through books that we all learned how to do stuff like this. So for me, back in the day, my great — they used to say there were three reasons why foreigners came to Japan. This is twenty-six years ago, before most of the YouTubers that are here now. And people that you talk to before their time — back then, there were three reasons that foreigners came to Japan that I was told to live and stay. It was for martial arts, for anime, manga, and for girls. And if you weren't here for these three reasons, you were very unusual. Those are the three main reasons back then that foreigners came — and they looked at you with a hairy eyeball, right? They would wonder why you're here. I was not here for any of those three reasons.

09:13 Peter von Gomm: Oh, there's the book. OK. What is that?

09:14 John Daub: Yeah. So it's the original point and speak phrase book. So it's got all kinds of categories — of hobbies and friends, right? Oh, that's good. There are different words in there. Yeah. Right. So when I was coming here to Japan in ninety-nine, a friend of mine, Leah in Washington, D.C., I was living in D.C. before I came here — as a going-away gift, she gave me this and several other Japan books. One was called Adventures in Japan. And this is a point-and-speak book. And there was a couple other phrase books. But that was also helpful, you know, but nothing like actually being in the thick of it — and like you say, going out with somebody and going to parties and making friends. But this is a good warm-up to. And the other one I had was called — you probably had this too — Business Japanese for Foreigners or something. It was a — I still have. I remember that one. I'm talking about — it's kind of a thick—

10:21 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. So I studied that too. And actually, I had a private tutor that I paid on a weekly basis, and she would come to my apartment and we'd study Japanese with her. So I paid her like 2,500 yen for an hour. And that was helpful too.

10:49 John Daub: Yeah. Yeah. The private — of students, sometimes the reason they would be taking your private tutoring, at least—

11:01 Peter von Gomm: Right. It's happened.

11:03 John Daub: But it was really clumsy. You know, I want to show this really quickly. I also have something called the Hiragana Times, which is — it's disappearing. Hold it in front. There you go. Now it's totally gone. What? OK. You completely vanished. Oh, did I? Oh, man. This is — yeah, this is super interesting because if you've ever seen this before, it's in kanji, but they have English and they have the hiragana, which is hiragana over the kanji. So it helps you. Right, right. You can break it down for the kanji. So you learn it really quickly. It's — what is it, a thousand yen? You can get this online. It's 40 pages of. Is it still — it's still in print?

11:54 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, you can get them on Amazon, that's co-jp, or their website. Or you can get a digital version off of the app there. But yeah, it's pretty cool to learn. I learned through their articles. Now, sometimes these articles can be like really weird stuff, but usually it has cultural information in there. And that's how I learned the cultural words. By Japan Times, which is a newspaper, had some textbooks back in the day — they don't make them anymore — but they had cultural situations with the vocabulary on like a textbook. And I would go through one of those a day. It was really interesting to learn. And it was just that. But if you didn't have friends to use these words with, it didn't stick so well, which is why living in Japan is probably the best way to learn Japanese because you can use it every day.

12:48 John Daub: Sure. You can't use Japanese every day in the United States. You know, that's — Turbo's in the house. Thank you. Right. What do you think about that? What is the one best thing that anybody who wants to learn Japanese could do? And I think I know what you might say.

13:06 Peter von Gomm: Boots on the ground.

13:08 John Daub: Oh, with a girlfriend. I knew that was coming. So finding somebody — because they're you're together, right? Finding a partner is not easy because let me put it plainly here. I had girlfriends back in the day, but most of them wanted to date to learn English, not to speak Japanese. So they were using you pretty much. Or who was using who? I don't know. But you've got something. You've got something out of it. Look, I'm not going to talk about what happened in the past. All right. But I think I am. But the point is, why are you talking about it then? You brought it up, although I knew you were going to do that. The point is, though, that by getting — especially if you're in your 20s and you're not married — having a person who speaks the other language that you're learning really is beneficial. But, you know, in Japan, English lessons are so expensive. They're looking a lot of people looking for the opposite. So finding a way to find somebody who does not — who wants that — likes you for you and not wanting to learn another language is not as easy, actually, as you would think.

14:24 Peter von Gomm: So living out in the countryside did help in that respect because they didn't back then see any need to learn English whatsoever. They thought it was a novelty, and right now — it didn't always work out. In fact, it literally did not always work out like that. So — but yeah, the point is having somebody who can — that cares enough to correct you. And now this is the — another thing here — what makes Japanese hard learning in Japan? Nobody in real life will ever correct you because they don't want to fight with you or start. They won't say, "No, no, that's not how you would say it." Almost nobody corrects you in real life. They'll just go like this. Because they don't want a confrontation. And you're a foreigner. Probably scary to them. You might freak out, use big body language or emotions. So that was always annoying.

15:19 John Daub: Well, also, they also don't speak at this speed either. You know what I mean? Where we tend to — I remember when I first was here, after going back like a year later or something, some friends of mine in America's like, "Did you realize that you speak really slow and carefully now?" I was like, "No, I don't know what you're talking about." Right.

15:53 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. So we kind of get into a group if you're teaching English — you kind of get into a groove of wanting to be understood and helping facilitate the language to the learner while you're saying that. I noticed, like, maybe by the Discord audio in this stream, Peter's lips are slightly delayed through the live stream. So I don't — let me know in the live chat if it seems like Peter is lip-syncing ahead and then we can mute Discord and turn on this. But the reason why we have the Discord audio is because we have a group of people in here that have some questions that might want to ask us about learning Japanese. So if you like to ask some residents that are living here in Japan for the last quarter of a century, you can go into Discord right now and you can raise your hand. Ask us a question. I'd like to keep it to just specific questions about learning Japanese for right now. And we'll open it up in a little bit about anything else. But for the first 30 minutes or so of this live stream, it'd be nice to talk about this particular topic.

17:09 John Daub: So after all of these experiences in life living here — yeah, I think the most. Haven't — have you learned much Japanese in the last five years? Let's let me put it like this: Is your level of Japanese in the last five years has improved? Have I leveled up?

17:23 Peter von Gomm: Not not much has changed. I mean, I'm always learning new words through work. And then I'll kind of try to focus on that word and, you know, kind of plant it in my brain so that it's there.

17:37 John Daub: Can you unmute your Zoom and mute the — Actually, let's just take Peter off of the — We'll bring you into Discord as a speaker a little bit later. OK, I'm going to mute Discord. You already muted me.

17:59 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, we'll bring you back on. And nobody loves me.

18:04 John Daub: Hold on. Let me get the audio. All right. Say something again. OK. OK. All right. Am I muted on Zoom too?

18:18 Peter von Gomm: You're good.

18:21 John Daub: All right. Cool. Cool. So now that your lips finally meet with the image, we'll go to some questions in a couple of minutes. So our skills really have — I don't feel like I've learned a lot of words in the last five years. I think I've pretty much moved into — I'm OK with the level that I'm at, and I don't have a lot of time in my life to speak Japanese. My son is three years old, so I have a lot — we're speaking mostly English at home now, which is not great for my Japanese. My wife is speaking more English at home now so Leo can have more English immersion here, which is hard to—

19:03 Peter von Gomm: Right. Right.

19:03 John Daub: So I haven't learned many Japanese words or I use it a lot less than I did before that era that we had to live through the last five years. Are you — are you happy with the skill of Japanese that you have, or is that something that you'd like to get better at?

19:27 Peter von Gomm: I, of course, I would love to have more fluency in Japanese, but I don't want to take the time to do that. I don't want to dedicate the hard time to studying, sitting down. And you know what I mean? I've just got too many other things I want to do.

19:39 John Daub: Like you said, you know, you're happy with your level that you're at. You can communicate, you can get the job done and make friends and go to social events and speak in Japanese, and there's no issues. Sometimes when I'm at meetings, though — business meetings — I always really wish that my Japanese was more fluent to be able to, you know, communicate in a business sense. But generally I am in meetings with people that are fluent and bilingual. So we can, you know, have the initial pleasantries in Japanese. But then when it comes down to playing hardball, I kind of fall into English and somebody will help me out with the translation, or—

20:36 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. So I'm not content with my Japanese. I'm with yours. I think yours is fine. I'm never going to be somebody who criticizes somebody else's language skills. You know why? Because I'm not perfect either. And I know that there are people out there — probably younger people — and I think there's some YouTubers that have done that and said, "Here's John speaking Japanese" — and then make fun of me. It's not perfect. I never said it was perfect. Or make fun of other people based on their language skills. Like, "He's been here for two or — people didn't hear that — been 50 years. They can't speak any Japanese. They never needed." Right. Sure. Right. I know tons of people like that, people that have been longer than longer than us. But yeah, look, you speak — everybody's different. Everybody has their own level. Japanese is a language, of course, that sounds better when it's spoken perfect, sort of like French. But look, everybody is going to have their own levels, including Japanese. A lot of people can't even write the kanji anymore because they're so used to word processors and all that other stuff. Yeah. So even Japanese — the level of Japanese is going down here. People can't speak kago, the honorific form, for example. It's something that's harder to do because it's easier to make a mistake. So people try to avoid that if they can, if you don't do that every day. So there's a lot of aspects to Japanese. I'm OK with what I have, but I would like to improve. And I'm not always sure how to do that. I need like private lessons. There's no way I can go into a group lesson knowing what I know and go in. Like, "This is a pen." No, I'm like way on another level, but nobody's ever corrected me or you — nobody's corrected me or you for a very long time.

22:41 John Daub: That's right. So we have these bad habits and we have these ways that we speak, which are going to be very hard to correct. This is why it's really good, I think, to take lessons and to have a strong base before you start to get immersed into the way we did it. And now with so much stuff on YouTube, which didn't exist when we started to learn Japanese, and other free resources, you can get that base pretty quickly. There's really no excuse. Yeah. But I just got into speaking at bars and, you know, I learned mostly at Mr. Donuts talking with grandmothers on my Mondays when I had a day off. Everybody's at work. I'd go to Mr. Donuts before going to the Love Hotel. No, that did not happen because I wasn't — I was not like that with the grandmothers — now they they'd have to pay because I was not very rich.

23:27 Peter von Gomm: Oh, John. John is like, "All right, let's not get off track here." But they were very strict, the grandmothers. And I learned the most by talking to them. They're the most strict. They are.

23:33 John Daub: Some of them are. But the younger people and people — they would never correct you, so you wouldn't learn. The one thing that I did — the first three steps that I did to learn Japanese. The first thing — we write them down, guys, get your pen and paper. This is actually good advice. You really need to learn the pronunciation of Japanese. So get flashcards and make katakana or hiragana. I like katakana because it's the most inspiring because you can read menus and you can read stuff on the street because you know the English words — pizza, pizza. So when you see it, you can phonetically sound it out and go, "Oh, that's pizza." I understand — kōhī (coffee), kōhī. So katakana is really inspiring in that way to learn.

24:22 Peter von Gomm: How about — Chevrolet and Katakana. No. Well, if you see it—

24:30 John Daub: So that's — some of them are actually quite funny. They're humorous and a little bit annoying sometimes. But Chevrolet is she-burēto — she-burēto. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't write it. It's hard to sound it.

24:43 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. If you have a high intelligence, you can sound it out and it'll come to you after a while sometimes. But some things in Katakana — English are not from English — like non — say. I know the French are French and German. Lots of German ones. Lots of Dutch. The non — say — it is the backpack that the kids wear. Right. And like — what's that? That's — it could come from Russian, I believe. So there's a lot of words in Katakana that don't come from English. So throws you — pianist clown for French. Right. Right. What — pierrot means clown.

25:18 John Daub: It doesn't come from English. So some words are taken from another language. It's not — cool down, cool down. You know, it's also interesting — which is beneficial to those who speak Spanish. The vowel sounds in Spanish are the same in Japanese.

25:39 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, I noticed that too.

25:42 John Daub: So I don't go, "Oh, yeah. Yeah." So it's — it was useful for me because I spoke — I learned Spanish in high school. So, yeah, no—

25:52 John Daub: I want some questions. Let's get some questions. All right. Let's go to the questions here. So mute your mute your Zoom and unmute, and I will bring you up into the stage on Discord. Well, the lips have to meet. Right. The lips have to meet. That's just a little odd.

26:31 John Daub: All right. Homer is Peter's name in here. Let's bring him up onto the stage. And then we can get some questions here. Actually, Peso, could you bring Peter up there? He's got his hand raised and I'm going to bring it in. So we're going to take some questions. If you have some questions. Thank you, Peso. If you have some questions, we can take them from you. We'd love to hear from you.

26:50 Scott (Discord Caller): Oh, hey. Hey there. I'm sorry. Sorry. So I've been actually trying to learn Japanese myself. I've been wanting to get to Japan. And is it really hard to actually — to fully learn when you're there or to learn Japanese once you get here?

27:17 John Daub: Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This first time to get a hold of you. Yeah, it would be actually a lot easier to learn Japanese right then and there. There or just start learning the basics. Well, before you come to Japan, learn as much as you can before you get here. What do you think, Peter? Why don't you sound off?

27:51 Peter von Gomm: Well, definitely a benefit to that, because those who study like in university or something, they come here and they're way ahead because they can read and write kanji, but the pronunciations are all over the place. But it's certainly a great foundation to study and know some things. So when you get here, you're not completely blindsided by what's going to be thrown at you — which is how I did it. I didn't know anything. I knew konnichiwa and that was the extent of it.

28:22 John Daub: I mean, every little bit helps for sure. Absolutely. I would — if you have if you're planning to come here and live and you have notice, then by all means, you should study up a little bit for sure. The one thing that we should — all in my — OK, one thing we should consider: there's no one way to learn Japanese. There's no — this is the best way. I know that there are other people out there that are giving lessons and have a way to do it. There's more than one way because everybody learns in different ways. Everybody prepares. Everybody studies in a different way. Some people are more visual with the way that they learn. Some people are more through listening. They can learn a lot. So there's no — no right or wrong way. So the advice that we give you can be taken with, I don't know, maybe a grain of salt because the way that works for you can be different — the way that you absorb information, and the older you get, the more the harder it is to absorb that information. Right. It can be really hard to get through.

29:28 John Daub: But, you know, look, the easiest thing that you can do is to learn Hiragana and Katakana before you get here. Get the flashcards, studying them on the plane. You should be able to see the symbol and you should be able to say the word. I. That's the basis of Japanese. If you can study that — ka, ki, ku, ke, ko — you know, this by the time you hit the ground, you're going to start to pick up things really fast. But if you don't know the basis of Japanese, if you don't know how the words go, if you do not understand ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, then it's Hiroshima. So whenever I hear people say Hiroshima — so you don't know how the way it goes — hi-ro-shi-ma. Like, I understand why they say that. That's the way an American would say that. But if you know the way that the Japanese language works phonetically, it's very easy for you to pick up the language, because instead of learning things in 26 letters, you're learning things in two — ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. It doubles the speed at which you learn Japanese as well. So if you could start to think in Japanese by learning those alphabets, it cuts the time you learn Japanese. And it also makes it so much easier because you're learning the right way. You're learning how to pronounce the words, and you're learning how you're able to read some basic stuff. What do you think about that, Peter?

30:52 Peter von Gomm: I agree. Yeah. In fact, I remember when I came here, as I said, I came in '99 and a family took me under their wing — they were friends of my dad's from way back. And we were driving up to Nikko in the family van, and they had the kids — they were younger. They made ten years younger than me or something. They were in high school at the time. So they were just finishing high school. But they had — they had a book with the ka, ki, ku, ke, ko and sa, shi, su, se, so. So and — you know, ta, chi, tsu, te, to. And I was going through that with them. They were teaching me those sounds. And it was really useful. It's really useful to memorize those — the order of those words and practice the pronunciation. It really helps. And what's great is when you — even if you're not coming to live in Japan, but you're coming as a tourist, they get really excited if you speak even a tiny bit. If you just say ika desu ka (how much is this) or ikura desu ka (how much), the Japanese are just really, really — they embrace that. And like going to any country when you travel to a foreign country, just knowing just a few words rather than going there and being all arrogant and speaking Japanese or speaking English wherever you go — it goes a long ways. And I think it's more fun. It's fun for you, and it's appreciated by the host country.

32:26 John Daub: Yeah, it gives you — foreigners, because Japanese put you in Japanese or not Japanese — like these two categories. Doesn't matter what country you're from so much, but it makes us look better to — like all of us. Like, "Oh, OK, well, they're trying." Really — foreigners are trying. They say, doesn't matter where you're from — foreigners are defacing the monuments of Japan — they just class us all together like that. But if you can learn a little bit of Japanese — but you know what? It makes your trip so much more fun because it almost makes it like a game. It's fun because you learned katakana and hiragana on the airplane, and now you're looking around the country and you're starting to notice stuff. You're starting to — it's starting to get fun, like all this stuff that you're passing. Like, wait a second — did that say what I think it's plugging into one another? You start putting things together, and it increases the happiness or the enjoyment of your trip by like ten times. I had a friend who came to Japan to visit me. It was like 15 years ago. He's a genius. He went to Cornell. He's one of the smartest guys. He was at my wedding — Tom. He learned hiragana katakana in like three hours, that same day. He's reading menus at the restaurant — at Denny's. We took him to Denny's. He could read like all of this — like most of the stuff up in there.

33:43 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. Denny's and "Moons Over Miami" — it's on me.

33:52 John Daub: But I missed that. All right. Let's get another question. That might have covered a lot of it. Long-winded answer.

34:09 John Daub: And yeah, one of them is — from Jien Wanting Lin: "John, is it compulsory for foreigners to have JLPT N2 in order to work in Japan?"

34:22 John Daub: Oh, wow. OK. The — the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test. Did you take that, Peter?

34:31 Peter von Gomm: No. I'm afraid I took it once. It was the most intimidating thing I'd ever done. I was the only non-Asian face in there. Everybody was Chinese. They're Korean. And like, I tried to make friends — nobody wanted to talk to me. Like, it was like a serious thing. It was really intimidating. I failed by one point. This is Level 2 back in 2005, maybe — about 20 years ago. And yeah, I never took it again. I don't need it. I don't need to — the certificate to say that I could—

35:15 John Daub: Yeah, yeah. I don't need that for anything. When I go on Japanese TV, I don't know why they even have me on. I'm not a fluent speaker. They never asked to see the certificate — a certificate. They never asked to see proof. Only perhaps if you're getting like a nine-to-five job at a Japanese company, it might make them feel like you're less of a risk. But if I were to join a company at this stage and I could do the interview in Japanese, no one's going to ask me for my Japanese-Language Proficiency Test score. But I don't know. I've been out of that game for a long time. What do you think, Peter?

35:55 Peter von Gomm: I don't — I don't see the value in that, like you say, especially in the business that we're in having a proficiency certificate or whatever. I remember when I went to the driving school to get my motorcycle license, they give you a test to determine basically if you're a nutter, and I didn't know it was all in kanji. And I was just like — I went up to the teacher. I was like, "I don't — I can't — I don't understand any of this." And he's like, "They can see it."

36:29 John Daub: All right. We weren't — make sure. Right. It's basically to, you know, to weed out people. Like one question is: if a child's crossing the road, will you accelerate? Be I'm on the brakes.

36:42 Peter von Gomm: See stuff like that. That's a no-brainer. Of course, you're going to accelerate — of course, you can put on the brakes.

36:50 John Daub: I got through. They don't know what — it is a good question. And I think for most people that are coming in out of university, you don't have a lot of work experience. You're probably going to be benefited by having that level — to score Level 3. Let me be honest with you — Level 3 is just for a hobby. It's for fun. It's easy. If you can't pass Level 3, then you're not studying enough. It's really — it should be something that's almost elementary for working in Japan. So having a Level 3 has almost no meaning here. It's like, "OK, I passed the test." Level 2 — you actually have to have really studied hard for that knowledge.

37:33 Peter von Gomm: Right. Yeah. You have to be able to read kanji a little bit to have a certain amount of kanji.

37:42 John Daub: But look, there's a secret to these JLPT tests. And it's so simple. Everybody knows the secret. All you got to do is go to the back — the past tests. They just recycle this stuff every five years. You memorize. And this is the way Japan learns — you memorize the questions and the answers to everything. And you just keep doing it over and over and over again. And you know why this is — this is bad. Nobody like who takes a JLPT test. Let's — let's look at this the other way around. In Japan, to enter companies, you need a TOEIC score, which is a teaching of — what is it? Some sort of exam. It's a written exam. So everybody memorizes the old TOEIC tests. They take it. They get a perfect score on TOEIC. Cannot speak a word of English. I'm not kidding. I've met so many people who got — are perfect with. Right. I've got like — I don't even know what a top TOEIC score. 1600 TOEIC score — 960 or something like that. 960. Can't speak any English. Like, I feel uncomfortable. Right. I'm great. I'm writing it. Let's have a conversation by writing it down. So these tests have very little meaning — practical. If you can pass Level 1 and you can do that by just memorizing old Level 1 tests — I don't know if they've changed the format since then — but if you have an ability to memorize the test, you're going to pass pretty easily, and you won't even know Japanese — you'll just have memorized the answers from back to back answers. And this is the best way to study for these tests. Everybody knows this. I don't know if anybody tells you this because they want you to buy the courses where they give you the past test. But I could buy them at the bookstore, and that's how I studied for mine. But I didn't memorize them. I just kind of was a little bit lazy. If I were to ever take it again, I would memorize every test for the last five years. Just go over it. Not understand why. Just go over it. The answers — over and over and over again — and just regurgitate. Information. It's like — Hiroshi getting into the company, but you know, she just — breezes through — when it comes time to deliver. And that happens a lot at the studio. When I go to record studios and the whole office comes in, they're waiting in the studio. And Hiroshi is the guy who has a great TOEIC score. But then push comes to shove, you know, he can't really do it — doesn't know the language.

40:18 John Daub: And yeah. So, you know, next question. Yeah, it's a good — Let's get this rolling. What do you got, Peso?

40:24 John Daub: Yeah. Yeah. We have another Discord user writing in on the fireside text channel. For those who are not familiar with Discord, feel free to join and ask your question directly. But user Meow Meow Meow wonders: "How hard was it to get a hold of Japanese learning materials in the late '90s and early 2000s?"

40:44 John Daub: Wow. Not too hard. You can get it at the bookstores. Amazon came about around 2004. My first order in my Amazon account was 2004 in Japan. And you could get stuff a lot easier because Amazon in Japan was mostly books, and I could get the foreign books through Amazon back then. But there was — it depends where you lived, right? If you lived in Tokyo or Osaka, you had access to books a lot easier that could help you study. But if you lived out in the countryside — and even in some extent Nagoya at that time — you had limited options. There's like one or two bookstores that were quite in Nagoya.

41:30 Peter von Gomm: In Tokyo, Kinokuniya is the main bookstore, right, for foreign books. And, you know, and actually I just remember the name of that. Right. It's still there, isn't it? In Shinjuku — it's still there. Yes, Takashimaya.

41:50 John Daub: Yeah. So the book title that I just remembered was Japanese for Busy People. Yeah, that's the big one. Everybody would recommend. I think that's still in print. Yeah. And there was a couple of levels of it. There might have been two or three levels of Japanese for Busy People. But yeah, so it was not — it was not difficult to get study materials. Of course, obviously, it's a quantum leap now to where we are today, where you can use an AI coach to study Japanese with. That's the next level. It's pretty cool.

42:34 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. Yoji — my son, Joji — he's 14. He's fluent in English and Japanese, but he's growing up as a Japanese in Japan. So his English is his second language. And we got ChatGPT-4 — which is that's a paid version. And you can — you can have an audio conversation with a bot. It's crazy. They're speaking in. And so he would ask a question in — or he read the passage in English, and then the bot would correct him or give him some tips on his pronunciation. And then I was like, "Well, actually, I want to do it. Can I read it? I want to know how my narration skills are." And so I read it through this passage that the bot sent us in the chat. And I read it, and I was like, "Well, so — how did I do?" And he's like, "Well, you're rating me one to ten. How was my pronunciation? How was my narration skills?" He was like, "Oh, I would say it was probably about a nine." And so then I was like, "Well, give me one more shot." So I like really nailed it. I mean, I was like — he's like, "You did really good. You really emphasize the words better. You really improved on that second read." And it's funny — but that's where we are today. So if you're wanting to learn a foreign language — you want to learn Japanese — you can do it with a virtual assistant and really, really learn your pronunciation and your conversation skills. But the where we've — where we've been and where we're going — it's crazy to see. Just — I mean, remember, like, most Japanese had that — that what do you call it? The electronic dictionary that they had — I think it was like five, six hundred dollars for this little—

44:53 John Daub: Yeah. A little indicator with little buttons that look like a Blackberry. This is like 20 years ago. Everybody had one. And I had the regular book — everybody had it around the books because I didn't want to pay five hundred dollars for this gadget.

45:01 Peter von Gomm: But the — the show was — was how is the dictionary you show?

45:10 John Daub: Yeah. Denki Shō? Or something like that. Yeah. They had him at Yodobashi Camera and Big Camera. I remember going through there. They had like dozens of. Right.

45:44 John Daub: And they would be able to — they would be able to speak as say the word right in a little speaker that would help you with pronunciation. I thought that was kind of neat, but that was just like 20 years ago. So we've come a long way really fast. And where we're going — we don't really need English teachers are going to be a thing of the past. You're just going to have AI and have a conversation with them — be able to speak English with your friend on your smartphone, which is just insane.

45:19 John Daub: It's a great question. Yeah. And we do have Gojira Mega 54 with us. Welcome back.

45:26 Godzilla / Meow Meow Meow (Discord Caller): Hello. Hello. I mean — I try learning Japanese a few times, but I can never get the hang of it. Would anybody object to me eating lunch during this chat? It's dinner time over here for me, but whatever.

45:39 John Daub: Yeah, go ahead. We're going to — this will be the last question unless there's one more. But, Peter, this will be your last question. There's one more.

45:55 Godzilla / Meow Meow Meow (Discord Caller): Oh, me. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. As I was saying — yeah, I tried learning Japanese just like a lot of other fans who want to go to Japan someday — they just — so hopefully read the manga, so I don't have to wait for people to translate it for me, because not all translations are good, you know? Yeah. But even a bad one is better than no translation. Sometimes.

46:27 John Daub: Well, that's not true. Bad ones can get you in trouble. That's not true. The question — by the way, I don't hear the audio. Peter, you can't hear the audio. It was about some translations are bad — so it's good to be able to — that I get the gist of it right. What can you say was the question?

46:56 Godzilla / Meow Meow Meow (Discord Caller): OK, hey, oh, man. I — I was talking about — being able to read the language myself, like any other fan of Japan and wants to go there right there, I want to learn. I wanted to learn the language so I could read it and hopefully not stand out so much, you know, but I'm not really — good at learning Japanese. The last time I tried learning, it was at this website called Busuu. B-U-S-U-U. It's that language learning website.

47:29 John Daub: Don't — OK.

47:33 Godzilla / Meow Meow Meow (Discord Caller): Yeah, that was my last attempt before I given up. And I — and this is when everybody was telling me, "You don't really need to learn Japanese" — and I realize — yeah, they're right. And then there's something I also don't know, though, is that most people don't seem to realize —

47:49 John Daub: Yeah, that's another good point — that most of the countries in the world today, including Japan, are doing their best to learn English — rather than America. Vice versa, since language schools — schools for learning a new language — are few and far between, and they don't exist in high school anymore because they consider it a waste of money by today's standards. I don't even see Spanish in most classes these days.

48:25 John Daub: All right. Well, thank you so much for that, Peter. Could you hear the question?

48:30 John Daub: All right. So I think from the takeaway from that is — look, I think if you're American — and yeah, it's not really necessary to learn Japanese. But if you ask — I'm going to ask Peter this before he goes and eats his lunch. I think the fact that I did go ahead and learn Japanese and I took the initiative and studied from books — and I know that made me — then help make me see the world in a different way. And I think it did make me — I think it made me smarter because now I can understand Japanese culture better because when you learn the language and the way that the words are and the way that the people speak and the body language that they show through speaking Japanese, you understand Japanese like ten times better than if you didn't learn Japanese at all. But if you're a tourist coming to Japan, there's not really a real reason to have to learn Japanese, other than it'll enrich your experience. But Peter — how has learning Japanese — do you think — how has it impacted your life? Because now you speak two languages — you're bilingual — and most Americans don't speak anything but one language — most. I know there are a lot of multi-language Americans out there, but I think it's important to learn a second language or a third one because it makes you see things different. I've always envied like Europeans growing up because they're raised in an environment where they are — English is really one of their main languages, you know — in Sweden and the Netherlands and places like that. They have their native tongue, but they also are absolutely perfect in English and they're spoiled. I mean, we are spoiled because we grew up just speaking English, and we expect everybody else to speak our language and to meet us on our ground. But I envy those from these other countries where English is really an important language for them to learn. And so then they've got — you know, many of them are polyglots. They speak their native language, and then German and French and English. And they might take an alternative language — Chinese or Japanese or whatever. It's like, "Wow" — really envy that.

50:59 Peter von Gomm: But yeah, I mean, is it paramount that you learn Japanese if you're going to come here? No, it's not. But it's will highly enrich your experience by taking that challenge and learning some of the language — and especially if — depending on the line of work you're getting into. But you know, if you're working as a trader and you're working for a foreign company here, then probably it's not so necessary. Right. You know, it's case by case. But absolutely, it's way more enriching by learning a bit. And even if you're just coming as a tourist, picking up a few words and surprising your waiter at a restaurant or at the hotel, and throw a couple of words around — they'll get a big kick out of it. It is impressive when you see — I have an Austrian friend who speaks fluent Thai. He's been living in Chiang Mai now for 20-plus years. And when you see him speak Thai, it's just a weird phenomenon — because it's just cool. He needs it for life. Wow. He loves — he's more Thai now than he is Austrian. But like — it's impressive. But, you know, learning another language — it enriches your life, and it's fun. I like to be able to — I like speaking Japanese because it's kind of fun to walk around. And especially with all the tourists that are now in Tokyo — if learning and speaking Japanese kind of separates you from them, because as I said in the beginning of this, there's like two groups — there's Japanese and then there's everybody else — and if you can speak Japanese, you become a little bit closer to that other group. You'd be like in that third group. That's very narrow. It's like this razor thin. And you can tell — because when you come into Japan, there is a foreigner's Japanese and there's that one line that says returnees, right?

53:03 John Daub: Right. And that's where we go. And the returning line is faster than the Japanese line. Most of the time, we go straight through because it's such a small — like one point — zero zero one percent of those returnees that are coming back to go back to work. Right. Look at me. I'm returning. I want that badge. Like, look — I'm not a tourist. I live here. Like, I can speak your language. Test me. Go ahead. Like, you know — and right. Learning Japanese is — it's important for that next stage. If you're going to live here and you don't speak any Japanese, you are basically a tourist. But you might know a little bit of — and you're limited. You're limited in what you can do in your community. You're limited in how you can contribute to Japanese society and Japanese people. You're limited in what your value is to Japan. If you can't understand the language, there's not a lot that you can do. It's same in any country. You got to learn French to work in France for the most part. And that helps. Not that anybody would want to go and do that. Come to Japan. It's a lot better. I don't know. Maybe not. I'm not sure. All right. Well, thank you, Peter. Any closing words of wisdom on learning Japanese for the people out there?

54:19 Peter von Gomm: You are wise with it. It's a beautiful language. And it opens doors and puts smiles on people's faces.

54:30 John Daub: Yes. And we like smiles. We do. So, yeah, enjoy and come to Japan. But not too many of you.

54:37 Peter von Gomm: That reminds me of the live stream we did — at a time — this is Peter von Gomm. Which one?

54:43 John Daub: The one where we talked about "We Don't Want You Here." Was that even the title?

54:50 Peter von Gomm: When it first opened up. Like, "Oh, my gosh, that's a little crowded." We were doing that in — joking. You need a sense of humor with everything you do in your life.

54:57 John Daub: Yeah, of course. But this is Peter von Gomm — the link to his channel. Absolutely. He's a YouTuber in particular on motorcycle and motor vehicles here in Japan. If you are a motorcyclist or somebody who loves cars, his channel is really impressive. He goes to a lot of the motor shows — the main ones — and brings it to you in that professional, polished way that only Peter can do, using the voice that is now the voice of ANA. Can I — am I allowed to say that?

55:27 Peter von Gomm: If you're lucky enough to fly on the Pokémon-themed ANA flights that are global — it's a total crap shoot. I don't think you can book the Pokémon flight, but they're random. And if you are on that Pokémon flight, I am your flight — in flight. What do they call it? They call it "Keen Eye." Now it's like, "Welcome. I invite you on board. Welcome on board. Now we have your attention for the following safety instructions." Were you an anime?

56:02 John Daub: No. No. No. No. Just me. Yeah. And here is — this is my little buddy — my BFF. I don't know. Is it clear? Is that Bistro?

56:18 Peter von Gomm: Yes. He's asleep behind us right now. It's hard for me to show you, but yeah, that's my little boy. What kind of dog is Bistro? Ten months old.

56:28 John Daub: He's a French bulldog. Bonjour. Yeah. And Leo met him. Yes.

56:32 Peter von Gomm: Do I have — do I have the video of Leo getting attacked?

56:38 John Daub: Well, you were like sicking him on him. "Get up. Get up."

56:42 Peter von Gomm: I was.

56:43 John Daub: Oh, Leo. It's good training for Leo.

56:48 John Daub: So Bistro has an Instagram page. If you're interested in seeing posts of Bistro — it's what is it? I am Bistro is the — how did you come up with that name?

57:09 John Daub: Well, it was either going to be — I am — I am either Bistro or Gaston. I like Gaston and because it's French, right?

57:17 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, French bulldog. But if you can see, I am Bistro. I underscore M a.m. underscore B.S.T.R.O. I am Bistro. You can follow Bistro on that Instagram page.

57:38 John Daub: Definitely. And yeah, he's cute. He's a cute, cute guy. He's a keeper. Yeah, the pooper too.

57:46 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. Yeah. He's been pooping a lot lately. You like to share some of those photos behind the scenes with what he's doing. Sometimes it does get a chuckle out of me.

57:51 John Daub: No poop shots. No poop shots. Just — just rear end shots. Then use your imagination. Thanks. Thank you for those. The poop factory. Yeah.

58:02 John Daub: There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Peter, for your time. Appreciate it. Thanks, John.

58:07 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, good fun. We'll catch you again real soon. Bye-bye.

58:12 John Daub: Thanks, guys. Bye for now. All right. How do we hang up? I'm still here. You can just end.

58:21 John Daub: Not anymore. All right. Peter has left the building. I was glad that we could be joined by somebody else — but Peter is still here on the Discord server, but you don't have to. I think he's gone now. We have one more question here — Mamu. How can I help you?

58:45 Mamu (Discord Caller): Yeah, I was just curious. I also really agree with your comment about if you can speak a bit of Japanese, it's basically like unlocking downloadable content for Japan. And when you go to stores and interact with people — I completely agree with that. But yeah, my question is: I've been studying Japanese for about a year and a half, give or take, around that amount of time. I still kind of struggle with reading sentences that have multiple kanji words next to them. Do you have any tips of kind of how to — like break down kind of sentences and do that? That's the one thing I struggle with the most when reading Japanese specifically.

59:25 John Daub: Right. Yeah. It's quite — I still find that very, very difficult when there's multiple different kanji words like next to each other. I'm like, "Oh, is this kanji part of this word? Is that kanji part of that word?" You know, it's quite a challenging thing. Yeah, I'm not really—

59:47 John Daub: I think for me, it's a tough one. The only advice for Japanese is just to keep — keep doing it, never get frustrated with it, and learn a way to have fun with it. And as long as you're having fun, then you keep learning and investigating it more. And, you know, as Peter and I talked about, we didn't really learn much Japanese over the last five years. I think we've reached a level in our conversational abilities where we don't think about it anymore. So that's why it's hard for me to give advice in that way, because I don't think about the words in my mind. I just start speaking. And I guess that's how you know you have a level of fluency. But — was there something?

01:00:29 Mamu (Discord Caller): Yeah, like — I'm assuming you're at the point where you kind of think you can just think in Japanese, and it's not like, "Oh, I'm translating this word back into English," and it kind of just comes out naturally. Right. Something for you.

01:00:43 John Daub: Yeah, that's where I am right now — where, you know, when I'm on TV and there's like millions of people watching this news program and they're talking about sometimes challenging issues, usually about tourism. Like sometimes I don't know what 100 percent of everything that they said — like 85 percent, like 14 stuff. But there's something inside me where I don't get nervous anymore. And as long as you're not nervous, you're thinking rationally, you're able to read between the lines, you can read the body language, you read the room — so you get an idea what someone's saying to you just sometimes by the body language. And I don't — I don't think about it. I don't overthink it. I can just respond. And that makes it — can you give me an example that might — where you're you were challenged by—

01:01:28 Mamu (Discord Caller): Yeah, that's a good question. I just — overall like what I'm say — like when I'm watching videos and I'm reading like — like say I'm watching a video on Kōdō, for example, and I see like a sign in the background of someone that's going through Kyoto, and I see this massive sign. It's just got a bunch of kanji next to each other. And I'm like, "Oh, my God, that's so intimidating to read." Like — I can't really like pull one off the top of my head, but like also stuff like — I read a bit of manga and stuff here and there. And usually with manga, there's a furigana on them. So it makes it a bit easier. But a lot of like — like * seinen* manga, which I'm trying to get into reading because it's a lot more suitable for my kind of age group — I'm 24, so I've shown it — stuff as it doesn't cut it all the time. So I try to read like * seinen* and stuff, for example, it a lot. A lot of the times it doesn't come with furigana. So that — it does — it is quite challenging to read without, you know, pulling up a dictionary. And you don't always want to pull up a dictionary all the time. It's quite tedious. And yeah, it's just overall like I just find that that's one kind of challenging thing. I find that kanji — like I can read about, I don't know, like eight hundred to a thousand kanji, but when they're put together like that, I struggle quite a lot. But that's the one thing.

01:02:49 John Daub: Yeah, the — the best thing that you can do is just to keep reading. You might not know what it says, but the more you experience the kanji, it's the same with English — the words in — if you're studying English, you don't know what the word means, but you keep seeing it over and over again. And then when somebody says that word and explains you the meaning, your muscle memory remembers that word and it sticks. So encountering kanji words that you see — your brain will pick it up when you do learn it. So it's good to keep encountering it, despite the fact that you might not know what it is right now. That's why I like the Hiragana Times really helps. And, you know, when I didn't — I didn't — twenty-five years ago, we did not have smartphones and technology like this to help us make our lives easier. And if we wanted to know the meaning of the kanji, we had to count the strokes in the kanji and be able to find that kanji. And then I would be able to look it up in the dictionary. That's how hard it was. If you didn't have to do that, it's crazy. I'd have to go in, count the strokes, find the kanji, and then I would be able to come up with a meaning. So I did do like three steps. Now I would just give up at that point.

01:04:01 Mamu (Discord Caller): Yeah, I know — it is. You never forget after you had to do all these exercises. It's stuck pretty good — which is why I can read more than Peter, maybe. But like now you can just take a picture with your smartphone. You can use Apple — allows you on that picture to copy. You can paste text on a picture. You can copy the text, copy, paste it into Google Translate and you have it. And Google Translate is not 100 percent perfect. But anybody with an IQ over like 50 can figure out what the meaning is. You read between—

01:04:36 John Daub: I usually copy paste into like — alc — like the Japanese. It's about getting the gist of stuff. You can. OK, and so it's just kind of a long haul kind of thing. Yeah, like you're saying, it's just the more exposure I'm going to get, the easier it's going to become. You know, making flashcards — those kanji. Right. Making flashcards is helpful. Learning the most useful words in those kanji. And then sometimes when I see the kanji together, I know this word and I know this word, and I recognize those two kanji, and when they're put together, I can figure out what the meaning of the word is, but I might not know exactly how to pronounce it. This is — but it sticks in your muscle memory. And then when you learn how to do it, that word becomes part of your lexicon because you just encountered it so much. So there's just brute force with learning a language. I think the more you encounter it and see it, the more it will stick with you. And then when you do learn it, you're like, "Oh, yeah, I now — I know it." Right. It's just there. But if you see for the first time, it doesn't stick. Like I remember when I was backpacking or taking the — the station — I would be traveling to all the train stations like twenty-five years ago. I would see the location names like over and over and over again. And — yeah. English on the bottom — back then, I think some of the local ones, but then when they did — it's stuck really good because I'd seen it so many times before. And that type of brute force learning, I guess — that's a new word — it does it does come back and help. So I never get flustered with things that I don't understand.

01:06:12 John Daub: Here's another thing. The longer I'm here — and the great thing about learning Japanese and not being, like, perfectly fluent — I can tune it out when I'm on a bus. I don't — people can speak Japanese all around me. I can tune that out and not hear that. Just like maybe. Right. That's kind of a good thing. So, you know, unless you want to cheekily eavesdrop on someone. You can do that too. Then I can turn it on. I find like I find like I can I can turn it on and off with another language. That's another thing with the brute force. But because I learned this way, it's just a way that I think in Japanese is different. I'm trying to think of a way to say — it's just different. I didn't go to a classroom. I didn't learn through a teacher correcting me. I learned by brute force. It's the most inefficient, dirty way to learn Japanese. All right. But it's also the most practical way, because a lot of the people who could speak way better Japanese than me don't understand any of the cultural references from the last twenty-five years that I do. Like people are talking about these cultural references, and you can be fluent up to the wazoo and be a better Japanese speaker than Japanese. But you won't know all the cultural references and all the background and some of the stuff that was happening because you just didn't learn the way that I learned. And that is my own strength, I think, with the Japanese language — is that I just know a lot more cultural references, maybe more idioms, maybe more stuff like that, that you can't learn in a school. It's hardcore. Street learning — I learned on the streets.

01:07:51 Mamu (Discord Caller): It's very sad right now. I guess — since you came in with not a lot of baseline in Japanese, you kind of had to brute force yourself to learn this language, like — just being here and being completely immersed in the culture. You know, it's brute force — like me where I did it. I've done a working holiday in Hokkaido. The majority of my learnings been outside of Japan. And so it's a bit different from—

01:08:18 John Daub: Yeah, it's interesting to see the different ways people can kind of learn the language. And there's no right way or wrong way to learn Japanese. There's just your way. And it works for me. I get by just fine. I see TKYO Sam is here. His Japanese is way better than mine. He just speaks almost — well, you can tell he's American. Doesn't Sam translate in that? Well, he's so direct. You can tell that Sam's not Japanese because he's so direct, which is good. You don't want to be—

01:08:43 John Daub: No, I'm not that nice with him. But let me put it to you like this, all right? And Sam will agree with me. You don't want to be speaking Japanese perfectly fluently and be considered Japanese. There's no advantage. Your value to Japan is being not Japanese. So why would you want to be Japanese? There's this group of people that try so hard not to be who they are. They want to warp themselves into being Japanese. There's a lot of foreigners that are like this that live here. When you do that, you're going into a system that's quite brutal. You're going into a system that's not paid well. You're going into a system like this. You get no value. The value that you have is not being Japanese. So if you can speak good enough Japanese and present the value in you — not being Japanese — giving information — that is valuable to Japanese. Then why would you want to be Japanese? I don't—

01:09:45 Mamu (Discord Caller): To me, it's just — the one thing. Yeah, that's the one thing that always confused me. Like, you know, one of the great things about Arnold Schwarzenegger is that he's not — he doesn't speak English like I do — like fluidly as an American. He has a German accent. And if he were to lose that accent, what would be his value? People would see him differently. His value would seem to go down. I think in my eyes as an entertainer, because he's just so — he's such a brand in that way. So when I go on Japanese TV, I don't want to speak fluid Japanese. That's better than the Japanese — because you could turn it off and you wouldn't be able to tell that I'm — I'm not Japanese. I want to be somebody who's lived in this country that has a lot of experience with the culture and has traveled more places in Japan than the vast majority of Japanese have been — more times. I know maybe more. I know maybe more history than maybe my wife about Japanese culture and a lot of stuff like this. But to take that from a Western — from an American point of view — has value to Japanese to learn about it. So that's where I take things. So I don't get flustered when I don't understand something. That's just part of who I am. And I am curious. And if I'm in a live TV show and I don't know a question, I have this thing where I can look at the host and he knows I might not know. And he shifts. There's like a catchball. But if you're always thinking about yourself and — how — how fearful you are — you're missing all the signs around you. It's like using the Force — in order to use the Force, you can't be thinking about yourself. You have to be feeling the Force around you — reading the room. So once you get over the nervousness of yourself, nervousness goes away. That's nervous. This is like a selfish thing. You're not thinking about yourself. I'm looking at the room and I'm everything. So a lot of my understanding of Japanese doesn't come from the fact that I just know kanji. It comes the fact that I can see people's faces and I can read their body language and I can understand enough Japanese to get by. You put that all together and you create the superhuman strength. That is the brute force Japanese. That is what I know. And it's not the same as what anybody else knows. And probably Tokyo Sam can attest to that because his Japanese level is on another level. He's very, very good speaker, but he's very much American. And that's his value in what he does. That's great. He's going to know. Maybe he disagrees. I don't know.

01:12:18 Mamu (Discord Caller): No, I'm with Sam.

01:12:19 John Daub: All right. Thanks for that. Yeah, I appreciate that job. Yeah, that's great. That's good insight. So just — more and more time I need to spend, I guess, and just, you know, not worry too much. Just trust the process, I guess.

01:12:31 Mamu (Discord Caller): All right. Thank you so much.

01:12:32 John Daub: TTY Sam's like 100 percent. Right. So, yeah. You know, I'm never going to be — I'm not going to be fluent. I don't want to be fluent. I don't want to be perfect. I love wabi-sabi. I love that roughness around the edge. I love being me. I — my value is being American. I love being American here because it makes me different. Not because of — you know — America stands for so many great things. You know, it's a very great country to have been from. But — here in Japan, it makes you special — being someone from the outside. At least it did 25 years ago. And it's different than being a tourist who's coming here because you're a visitor. I'm not a visitor. I'm somebody who lives here. And my value is always going to be somebody who can be reading things diagonally, like — we say naname ni — like this. This way to cut across an issue. I can see — I can go to a Japanese town that has no attraction and see the attraction. And to Japanese, that's a huge value. And for Westerners, they might not see that. They don't know Japanese culture. They can't see the attraction. Japanese can see the attraction. They're too close to it. They see it every day, so it's boring to them. But I see it because I can put the A and the B together. And that's my value in what I do on YouTube. What I do — consulting businesses around Japan, prefectures. I do a lot of stuff in the background. I do. I do a lot of stuff in the background that you don't see, where I'll be taking phone calls or going to cities, meeting with them, helping them with their attractions. It's a job. And that's where my experience living here for 26 years comes in and becomes valuable. And, you know, I again — I'm not fluent. I never said I was. I know Japanese, but — conversationally. There's so many foreigners that are better than me. And I don't care because I'm happy with the level that I know. And I'll always learn a little bit of vocabulary and get stronger and stronger. And perhaps one day I will take some lessons and perfect what I have. But I don't feel a need to try to get better than anybody else. This is not a game in that sense. "Oh, I speak better than this other person, this other creator." I know that the viewers like to pit creators against one another and formulate this drama. But I don't see that. I just think that, you know, it's all — we learn. We learn the Japanese that we think is valuable. And then there's always going to be somebody that's better than you — always. You're never going to be the best at anything. And if you are the best, there's going to be somebody that passes you or there's going to be somebody or you're going to lose a step or two. It's always — that's life. So, you know, I can go in and with Sam — order a burger. I can go in and talk to people about political issues. I won't always understand, but I will constantly be learning. And that's the fun part with Japanese for me. Now — you know, I can use what I learned, but if I hadn't taken those first steps 20-some years ago — and I didn't learn Japanese for the first few years, I'll be honest — it took a long time. I memorized hiragana and katakana. I made flashcards. Then I learned verbs, how to conjugate them. I started to fill it in with nouns. And then I learned the wa, ga, de, ni — the prepositions. Once you learn the prepositions, then it makes it — it connects it. And then you all — and then all of a sudden you're speaking Japanese. But it's so different. It's so backwards than English. You have to think in Japanese. You have to learn hiragana and katakana because you have to think in Japanese. You can't think with Roman letters. You can't use this book, right? This book has it in English — katakana. It's — let's see here. I can give you an example here. This is like some of these — these are the pickup lines. These are Japanese idioms. I love this book back in the day to make a racket. Hameo hazard hāzudo — you know, but they did it in mostly English — katakana. So you'd read the English — the Roman letters — partī or hidaku. It's impossible. But if you read the hiragana and katakana, then you start to pick it up and double the speed, and you speak so much better because you can understand it. So your first step in learning this language — if you don't know katakana and hiragana — then you're never going to learn Japanese. You can't learn it with the Roman letters. That's my biggest advice. And I hope that's the first step for anybody. And you don't need to go to a school to learn this. You can learn this by making flashcards. You can learn this by, you know, watching people just showing you the hiragana and katakana. You memorize that alphabet. Just recognize the symbol. I. You. A. O. K. K. Just — you do that. You're — I think you're like 25% of the way of learning Japanese because you're all of a sudden — you're ahead of everybody else because you're starting to think in Japanese by learning their alphabet. And that's the key. Same with Korean. You have to learn — learn Hangul. And it's actually much easier than Japanese. I learned Hangul in a day — was able to start to read signs in Korea. That's crazy, right? So it — it all — it all comes to you.

01:18:07 John Daub: All right, everybody. Thanks so much for the questions. I really appreciate it. We got a robust conversation. Peso — who's one of our moderators — he can speak some pretty good Japanese too.

01:18:19 Peso (Moderator): I speak very little. Now you're so humble. Though I do admit that watching a lot of anime and J-dramas did introduce me to the world of furigana. And just — conquering the ability to read katakana and hiragana gets you quite a bit of a feel for Japanese. Yeah. Quite far when you're visiting Japan, like when you're reading the vending machines and seeing like the — you know, one of those restaurant vending machines. And you can see like they don't — some of the really old or like small restaurants, they don't have the food pictures. They have them in kanji, but some of it is in katakana. So you know that — you know, how karē is written, and then you sort of put in two and two together. And then slowly from that, you gradually — because I've studied a bit of Mandarin Chinese myself for a few years — I could see that. The one that looks like — um — ròu in Chinese is actually niku — meaning meat. So you can — and then combined with this other character that looks very familiar, you get yakiniku. Right. Um, and that's sort of like — you put two and two together, you start building your own vocabulary, and it helps you with reading. Nowhere near the ability to do N2 or N1. But you don't need to. It gets you places. You don't need to. And even if you're doing a job and you can talk fluently in the interview, no one's going to care what level of JLPT. But some companies will, but in the end, it doesn't matter. They want to make sure that you can communicate. Japan is all about reducing risk. And if you pass the test, then you're less of a risk than somebody who hasn't. So that's the reason why those criteria mean something. But if you can speak fluent Japanese, you probably don't need to work in a company. The company is probably going to come to you. Let's be honest with you. I mean, you can come to Japan and probably find a job pretty easily if you could speak fluent Japanese. There's a huge need for workers in so many different sectors. It's unbelievable because of the declining population you've got. If you've got a college degree, and you speak fluent Japanese, you're probably going to be fine getting a job here.

01:20:25 John Daub: And — um — you know, it's an exciting time. I'm humbled and it's crazy to think that Japan is people's choice of destination to want to live. Let me put it just bluntly: Japan is not an easy country to live in. I know it's safe for travelers. There's a lot of stressful things. Once you start to learn a language and you live in a neighborhood, it's not the friendliest. It's not the greatest place in the world to live. There are so many advantages of living in the United States, but there's also disadvantages and advantages in both of those places. And I know that a lot of you see the perfection of living here in Japan, but especially if you don't know Japanese, living in Japan is not perfection. It's frustrating. Go to the bank — get to change money. People ask me, "Where's the best place to change money?" Yeah. If you go to a Japanese bank to — to change money, be prepared to wait for like 45 minutes, as every single bank officer — honk goes or stamps your desire to want to change to a foreign currency. You're like, "No, this doesn't make sense." You could just go to a window and change it. That's what I do at the airport. No — Japanese banks have a way to do it. There's a particular Japanese way that your Western mind cannot decipher. Once you start to learn Japanese, it makes sense. But any foreigner — whoever says to me — and there's — so many like English teachers in particular want to change Japan to be the United States or something. It's like — like — can you speak Japanese? Do you understand anything about the culture? Until you do, your opinion of what would make Japan run better — a country that's over a thousand — like thousands of years old — really doesn't have any relevance unless you can speak the language. And then only then do you really start to understand why things are the way they are. And when you understand why things are the way they are — that's why — when you come to Japan, you're so safe walking the streets. That's why there's no trash anywhere. That's why the trains run so perfectly on time and things just seem to run so smoothly — because in Japan, they run the way that it works — the way that it works. But unless you can speak Japanese, you never will understand why — because you — it's inside of that. And that was the greatest thing that I did — was just — finally get curious. When you can speak Japanese, you don't even need to understand how Japanese works. It's only when you're able to understand the Japanese language that you can learn their language. And then once — and I'll keep talking about this — just being able to understand the Japanese language and then not only the language of the Japanese — but also the language of the Japanese. This is what it is — this is how Japanese is built. It's how people raised me — how many people raised me — until I look like I'm from a place with the people I grew up with. And then it doesn't just get to the people who raised the most. Here's how the people raised me. It starts with just speaking in a different way, right? It's a completely different way. It's a much more multilingual way of speaking. It's not as much the same. It's a much more complicated way of speaking.

01:23:06 John Daub: Thank you.