Isekai Travels - Japan

One of my Japanese senseis reccomended I check out this cafe called an "English Only Cafe". While the name implies that only English is used, it is actually a cafe where people can go to be in an environment where everyone is only speaking a specific language such as Japanese, French, English or Spanish. In order to attend, you have to sign up via an app called Meetup and then show the staff when you wish to participate. I'll link the cafe at the bottom.

Upon entering, the session had already started and I went up to the cafe counter to ask how it all works. Essentially, you need to buy a drink and then you got to an assigned table where people are speaking whatever your target language is. I got to the Japanese table and was able to have some conversation about my interests and hobbies. I think people asked me a lot of questions because I put a lot of information on the little "about me" name card that asks for occupation, name and hobbies.

I found it easy to speak but it was difficult to hear others because every table had people talking and I am not good at picking out a voice when there is so much noise in the room. Plus, people are wearing masks and Japanese people seem to naturally speak quietly. I feel I would have a lot easier time understanding if people didn't have masks but 仕方がない！

Something that happens alot when learning new words in Japanese is finding out that a new word is just a Japanese word of an English word. This happened a couple times during the session and happens all the time during Japanese lessons. For example, I might ask "how do I say glass" and then the answer is "gurasu (グラス)". Sometimes it feels like I should just say the english words in japanese style before asking, but I think it's safer to ask. Sometimes the conversion is not exactly the same. For example, "McDonalds" is "makudonarudo(マクドナルド)" which is not what I would have naturally guessed as the syllables for the english loan word. Nonetheless, I think it's better to ask to avoid learning a bad habit.

As opposed to American culture, Japanese people tend to avoid correcting you or even saying when they do not understand what you said. I believe this is because of the culture centering around not causing trouble for other people. Correcting and stating misunderstanding are both actions that but a "burden" on the person speaking. My senseis will do this, but also it's sort of their job. For an average person, I think they will just respond instead of giving feedback. For this reason, I commonly ask if I'm understood or if it sounded natural. Maybe getting this confirmation doesn't fit in with the culture because I'm sort of putting a burden on the listener to evaluate what I said. That's a risk I'm willing to take in order to improve though 😤

After the first rotation I met up with a couple at the Japanese speaking table. One a native Japanese woman, Shiori, and Matt, a German transplant who had been in Japan the last four years. Matt and I have similar jobs so we eventually switched to English and discussed the intricacies of how working in tech in Japan may differ from how my American company operates.

I was very suprised to learn that Shiori had learned English so well without ever leaving Japan. She spoke in a very casual style that would lead me to believe she had studied abroad and learned how to joke around in english. She loves anime as well so that made it really easy to get along 😆 Matt's japanese was also very good from living here 4 years. It was nice to have someone to talk about the struggles of learning with and get the perspective of someone who has been working in Japan as a foreigner. Matt said one of the hardest aspects was understanding what formality to use with coworkers. Sometimes a coworker is younger but also has been at the company longer. Thus, it gets difficult to know which style, formal or casual to use.

In Japanese, you generally use the formal style to speak with strangers, people older than you, or people senior to you (senpaiー先輩). The casual style is used to speak with close friends, family, people younger than you, and people junior to you (kouheiー後輩). The difficult comes from when other people are a mix of these things such as being younger but also your senpai at a particular company. Even if someone has only worked at the company a couple days more than you, they become your senpai. My understanding of Japanese workplace culture is that being a senpai gives you a bit of an authority over other people where your opinion/input carries more weight than you kouhais. In my American company, this is completely opposite. I encourage new people to question how we do things at the company. Even if someone has been at the company ten years longer than me, I would not hesitate to question the feasibility something they are proposing. For this reason, I don't think I'd thrive at a Japanese company. I have a hard time staying quiet when I am confident a solution will not provide the best result. I think this is seen as a positive thing in American work culture and has helped me but would probably get me fired or something in a Japanese company 😇

We spoke a bit about how there seems that Japanese people want to be talked to but give off the vibe that they do not want to be bothered. I'm sure there's a mix of people who want to be talked to and not, but it feels like no one wants to be talked to with the way people present themselves. Many people make themselves as small as possible, take up as littlie space as possible, don't look away from their phones, and make no noise. Thus, saying anything to someone feels like you are disturbing them. In America, I would be uncomfortable approaching someone giving this vibe! I sometimes feel like I'm taking up too much space, but maybe that's because I have a bigger frame than alot of the people here. On the train everyone is able to stand super close and not touch. However, I feel like I'm always accidentally bumping someone with my bag or elbow and it's embarassing 😅

It was rewarding to make two new friends from the Cafe! Maybe I'll go back towards the end of my trip. I want to squeeze in as many unique experiences as possible so I'll probably explore Tokyo more this week instead of talking in the cafe. I think it was ok practice but it was kind of surface level conversation that I get a lot of practice doing already.

Shoutout to Matt and Shiori for being so cool 😎 Hopefully we all get time to go out to Akihabara together!! (everyone keeps telling me to go there so I guess I'm officially an Otaku)

English Cafe link
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