Yuri to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

A Shoujo ai centred Weblog

Day 7 – Addresses and Communication failures.

Posted on | March 9, 2008 | 10 Comments |

So I went to Tokyo this weekend. Stayed in a capsule hotel in Asakusa (North central Tokyo, by the Sumidagawa) and somehow managed to get up in time to see the end fo the tuna auctions in Tsukiji. But that’s material for another post…

Firstly and most importantly, I have to admit that I was wrong when I stated my underwhelming response to the entry into Tokyo in my first post. The entry route I took this time is probably not something any of you readers will now experience, as there is really nothing much to see in Minami-Chiba-ken (with the exception of Kamogawa seaworld, of course!). The bus takes me via Kisarazu and the Tokyo Aqualine (read: long tunnel). As you emerge the other side, the bus pays the toll and turns onto the Shuto Expressway No.1. At night (and indeed, during the day), this road is one of the most chaotic motorways I have ever seen. The whole thing partially levitates above metropolitan Tokyo with its (usually) 4 narrow lanes splitting off, going up or down one level and rejoining, seemingly haphazardly likening the whole thing to some kind of demented urban tagliatelle. The Yamanote line swoops above like erm…some kind of tagliatelle bird.

Either side of you glow skyscrapers lit on behalf of the ever-late-working OLs and sprawling neon-vomiting suburbs of Harajuku and Shibuya. Ini the middle of it all like some kind of orange marital aid sprouts the Tokyo tower in its twinkling Eiffel-esque glory. That was the interesting part of the day.

Finding my capsule hotel was a headache. For some reason, Japan really messes up my sense of direction. Mostly the problem is, as I mentioned before – Japan’s terrible address system. I’m not sure if someone thought it was sensible at the time, but for someone without an intimate knowledge of the area (namely me) it’s not too much fun.

Here’s what took me a week to work out last time. Japan’s addresses are made up of 3 numbers, a town (machi/cho), ward (ku) and city/prefecture (ken). For example, New Koyo hotel (singles 2500en/night) is 2-26-13 Nihonzutsumi, Taito-ku, Tokyo-to. This means that it is in a part of Tokyo called Taito ward, in the second part of a part of the ward, called Nihonzutsumi and in the 26th block, 13th door. Already confused?

Tokyo is broken up into a number of wards (According to Wikipedia, central Tokyo has 23) each of which are governed separately and vary in size and population. Each of these contain a number of towns which are continuous with each other. Taito-ku encompasses　Nihonzutsumi,　but also Kiyokawa, Hashiba, Asakusa, Higashi and Nishi Asakusa, Senzoku, Minowa, Ryuusen, Iriya, Negishi, Imado, Yanaka, Shitaya, Ikehata, Ueno, Higashi and Kita Ueno, Kaminarimon, Kotobuki, Komagata, Kuramae, Yanagibashi, Tongoe, Kojima and, of course, Taito. Each of these has a number of smaller areas (districts?) called chome. The first number of the address refers to the chome number, the second to the block and the third to the house number. Therefore, New-Koyo is in Nihonzutsumi-2-chome, 26th block, house number 13. Simple, right?

There’s more fun to be had, though. Block and chome numbers don’t always run the way you expect them to. Each chome is laid out differently, so block 18 might be next to 16, 17 and 20 but 19 might be somewhere completely different. Chome similarly confuse – it’s easy to walk out of a district and into a completely different town by mistake. Add to that the fact that almost 100% of all tourist maps omit chome and block numbers and you’ve got many fruitful hours of getting lost ahead of you.

Anyway, I digress (moral: 1）buy a Tokyo metropolitan map in English 2) USE IT) When I finally found my capsule hotel, I was a little disappointed. For 3000en a night, I at least expected free TV ^_^. I think I’m spoiled by youth hostels – next time I’m going back to the run down hotels in Minami-Senju. After checking out my room, I made a trip out for dinner.

Note to you al. Asakusa is an extremely dull place to be at night (10pm). Asakusa -6-chome (known as Rokku) is supposedly famous for its risque red-light district, strip clubs and massage parlours. What I found was a whole host of pachinko halls and one small strip club. So don’t expect a lot. Finally, I came accross the restaurant I was looking for – a kaitenzushi (conveyor sushi) bar called Maguro Bito (I think it’s meant to translate to “Tuna beat”. Here’s how the conversation went (translated helpfully into English)

Man: Are you coming to eat here?
Me: Yes, only myself
Man: (speaks fast Japanese) Blurbleblrbleblurble 10pm
Me: OK, 10pm then

So, wandering around smoky pachinko parlours and the extremely empty Asakusa back streets dodging the hobos and the crowds of drunk office workers, I came back at 10 to find that they had closed. Right. Off to Mos Burger then.

This brings me to what someone commented on earlier about languages. Japanese people have a similar attitude to English as English people have to French and German. They start learning it in middle school whereupon a minority continue studying it into University and the others struggle to remember “1, 2, 3 and can you direct me to the post office”

I think I’ve pretty much established that I’m better at speaking than understanding. Evidence being that I can usually convey what I want to but most people have to resort to English in order for me to understand. This is in stark contrast to German, where I can understand most things (including quite a few German –> English insults), though I would struggle with anything more complex than “Geh geradeaus und es ist auf der linken Seite neben das Kino” It also didn’t help that the first word that came to mind there was “massugu”

The reason I think this disparity exists is first that Japanese is very different from English and second that Japanese is probably the hardest language in the world. I still firmly believe that English is a difficult language, but given a few lessons it is possible to get by though it may take a lifetime to master. Japanese for me seems to be a “takes a lifetime to get by, never mastered” kind of affair. Speaking is difficult due to the differences in casual phrasing. It’s no good usually to look up a word in a dictionary, since you can be pretty sure that:

1) There’ll be hundreds of words meaning the same thing
2) Only one of them is applicable in this situation

For instance, I asked an Osakan student about body weight (taijyuu). Now I only know one word for “raise” – being ageru (you can probably guess I got that off 4chan). Here’s another snippet:

Me: So, tairyou o ageru?
Osaka: Ah, no. taijyuu o fueru
Me: So what’s the difference?
Osaka: Fueru has a (pauses) “marumaru na kanji” (round feeling). Ageru is more vertical.
Me: Ah, I understand, so something like…temperature then – “netsu o ageru”?
Osaka: Ah no. netsu o fueru.

I might even go so far as to say that even English isn’t this complex. I could say that a patient’s weight was increasing, rising, peaking, climbing, exploding, expanding…well, perhaps not that last one. But you see what I mean. Understanding for me is difficult since I only know one word for each concept but there are different synonyms used for different situations. Therefore I can say “tairyou o ageru” and people will understand (even though it’s wrong) though I might not necessarily understand the Japanese style phrasing.

Add to this the large amount of English style “Oh, we just say it like that – it doesn’t literally mean that”, the fact that kanji can be read 2-3 different ways (not including different readings for names) and the fact that my accent and verb conjugation skills are rubbish and you’ll begin to understand the difficulties I have with the language.

On a completely different note, I’ve decided I really like Engrish. At least it shows that Japanese people are trying to accommodate English gaijin and going out of their way to learn/speak an unfamiliar language. On the trains, there are usually announcements in English – and depending on line you get a choice between American or Engrish. I quite prefer the strained tones of a Japanese OL rather than the bawdy non-attempts of an extremely annoying American woman trying to pronounce Japanese placenames. “(high pitched) The neaxt stayshon iyas Tow-yo-sue.”

I think I may have made some enemies with that opinion ^_^. Don’t blame me – I’m British.

Oh and side note 2 – Mos Burgers taste like spaghetti bolognese in a bun. In a good way.

Category: Comment

Comments

10 Responses to “Day 7 – Addresses and Communication failures.”

  1. ニコ厨
    March 9th, 2008 @ 3:10 pm

    まさか体重（たいじゅう）のことを大量（たいりょう）だと勘違いしてるの？
    うむ、日本人を指してＥｎｇｒｉｓｈと侮るGAIJINさんもこの程度なのですか・・・非常に残念

  2. mayun
    March 9th, 2008 @ 7:03 pm

    The street name thing sounds a little intimidating. But at least you got there in the end.

    How friendly are the Japanese people you met so far?

  3. yuribou
    March 10th, 2008 @ 8:45 am

    あは　ありがとうございますです　ニコ厨さん．日本語は悪いですから　ごめんあさいね．残念ですが最後の言葉がやっぱりわからない．それでは日本人は　イギリス人も外人もきらいですか？　本当に？　ここは全然違います．

    mayun: very friendly – at least a lot more friendly than the foreigners I’ve met – the Japanese people seem really pleased that I speak Japanese, while the Americans I’ve met seem really disappointed that I speak English. Perhaps they’re just generally unhappy since Prozac is not available in Japan? ^_^

  4. Alexeon
    March 10th, 2008 @ 7:20 pm

    Hahah! Ive heard that Japanese only tolerate gaijins if they stay for a little while but when they decide to stay longer than just a vacation, like moving there, they start acting differently. Have you seen anything to suggest that that may happen?

  5. CelticKnot
    March 10th, 2008 @ 8:52 pm

    Heh, Tokyo sounds like it embodies the sense -more like frustrating reality- of being lost I so often encounter in cities. At least it seems like there’s plenty of public transportation, nothing is worse than becomming utterly lost and then realizing you have to walk double the distance you originally needed to.

    At any rate, does asking for them to speak very slowly help at all?

  6. HappyHappyJoyJoy
    March 11th, 2008 @ 2:46 pm

    Japanese linguistics! lol I was originally born in Fukuoka, but was moved to the states at a young age. I casually spoke with my parents growing up, but they were not militant about Japanese. My mother is Caucasian/American, and her side of the family was whom we kept in most frequent contact with. Thus, when I became an adult, I realized I’m only at 45-50% proficiency. That’s on a good day. Recently, I’ve decided to take Japanese in a crazy attempt to understand it just a bit more.

    ARGH! = /

    I completely empathize with your situation. It’s funny that you mentioned the synonym conundrum. It’s absolutely frustrating.

  7. Erica
    March 11th, 2008 @ 11:13 pm

    Here’s the key to understanding *why* the block/choume/building system makes no sense – it’s in chronological order.

    Yes, buildings are numbered by when they went up, not the order they are in. Isn’t that sensible?

    Your best bet is a good map with the blocks clerly marked. I use the Kodansha street and rail series- -it’s awesome. “Tokyo City Atlas – A Bilingual Guide.”

    My trick for finding places is to never ask “where” it is, but ask “which way?” Then they point me in a direction, which I follow for a while, then repeat. It’s never failed. I always find where I’m looking for.

    Cheers,

    Erica

    Hungry for Yuri? Have some Okazu!
    http://okazu.blogspot.com

  8. Yuribou
    March 12th, 2008 @ 7:17 am

    Alexeon – Not come across that yet – probably because I don’t really look like a gaijin I get slightly different treatment than the others. Japanese these days seem a little less xenophobic than they’re made out to be i think.

    Yes, asking them tospeak slowly helps – but if you really don’t know the verb in the sentence, you’re unlikely to get anywhere

    Erica – actually, I have that! I have a very male sense of direction though – i.e. I think that I should be able to find something by only looking at the map once – a grievous error on my part…

  9. Pillowcase
    March 12th, 2008 @ 7:36 am

    Yuribou: Since your main problem seems to be input (understanding things) let me show you a few tricks that let me translate Japanese to English more effectively. (I’d like to point out here that I have learned what little Japanese I know entirely from アニメと漫画.) For Japanese characters I use a plain old US keyboard and the Microsoft Standard IME language system that came with my computer; a simple ローマ字–>平仮名/片仮名–>漢字 conversion. May I ask what keyboard/software you use on your computer? A little bit of fooling around and I discovered a handy little tool called the IME Handwriting Pad that lets me use the mouse to draw out 漢字 I don’t recognize and type them out in character form. This combo basically lets me convert most of what I see or hear (in Japanese) into a combination of characters recognizable by text programs. To translate those characters into something I can understand (詰まり英語)I have 4 different options. First is a direct translation using my limited knowledge of Japanese terms and grammar structures. Here I call upon my experience from watching アニメ. Hours and hours of English subtitles accompanying Japanese audio have left a good-sized dent in my language barrier. Next, I’ve noticed that when I’m converting 平仮名 to 漢字 a lot of times helpful little bubbles will pop up next to some of the candidates containing definitions, synonyms, and other notes that help me pick the right term. Third, and most importantly, if I get stuck I can go to Google, type in “babylon define 110″ (without the quotes) and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. At this point I can usually catch most of what comes my way. If all else fails, though, I can rely on my knowledge of what could be considered the second-hardest language in the world (そして日本語の起源), Chinese. It helps to know that all Japanese 漢字 have their Chinese equivalents, and generally the more complex the character, the more closely the meanings match. In the end I can understand 90% or more of what Japanese I encounter, but alas, as I have no real world experience communicating in Japanese, I cannot do much more than string together the occasional phrase (disregarding grammar) if I want to say something.

  10. Yuribou
    March 13th, 2008 @ 5:14 am

    Thanks pillowcase – not using anything at the moment – the japanese keyboards I am using have Japanese kana keys on for typing quickly in kana/kanji so I can quickly switch between
    漢字 and romanji for typing. Havent really got the hang of the interface yet, but it seems to prefer you typing more than one word at a time like I am wont to do.

    I’ve been using Kabuto (Japanese kanji and dictionary) on my PDA which has been invaluable, though kanji must be looked up by hand. Speaking really is fairly easy since you don’t have to get the grammar 100% correct to get across what you need. I’m sure you would do fine

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