![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've spent a year chilling out in Kinokuniya reading things, but it was my roommate - red-headed and effortlessly cool - let me amend that, she does put effort into it - who attracted the attention of someone shooting footage for a Japanese television show about a hundred (a thousand?) Japanese people who are changing the world. So she invited them to come over to our apartment and check out our wacky orientalist-nerd lifestyle. Err -- that is -- I try really hard not to be one of those anime fans who see Japan solely in terms of its pop-culture products, and who is really creepy in their Japanophilia, but I sort of suspect that I may come off that way in the context of a TV interview conducted in a language that isn't my first. Still hoping I haven't made a total idiot of myself.
Notable exerpts:
"Your room is a totally different feeling from Diana's."
"Yeah, because there's nothing on the wall."
"In Japanese, you talk a lot more slowly and calmly."
"Well, of course, because I'm not as good at it."
"I like Hello Kitty because normally I'm pretty serious. So once in a while I like to be childish."
They filmed my bookshelves, and my manga boxes; my dictionaries; my favorite novels; they filmed me playing my kanji kentei game; I gave a shout-out to my novel, because there was no way I was going to announce my job on TV as anything but novelist (well, librarian/novelist).
I have no idea whether we're actually going to get on Japanese TV or anything. Hopefully they'll contact us so that we can see the footage they used. Anyway.
Now I feel weird because I'm out of touch with Japanese norms of politeness in a way that isn't necessarily implied by the way I talk, so I suspect I come off as rude instead of just unskilled with the culture. I mean - I've spent a total of ten months in Japan, over six years ago, and never in a business context where they would've drilled all the politeness into me. I feel kind of bad. Is this something they have a class on at Japan Society?
Notable exerpts:
"Your room is a totally different feeling from Diana's."
"Yeah, because there's nothing on the wall."
"In Japanese, you talk a lot more slowly and calmly."
"Well, of course, because I'm not as good at it."
"I like Hello Kitty because normally I'm pretty serious. So once in a while I like to be childish."
They filmed my bookshelves, and my manga boxes; my dictionaries; my favorite novels; they filmed me playing my kanji kentei game; I gave a shout-out to my novel, because there was no way I was going to announce my job on TV as anything but novelist (well, librarian/novelist).
I have no idea whether we're actually going to get on Japanese TV or anything. Hopefully they'll contact us so that we can see the footage they used. Anyway.
Now I feel weird because I'm out of touch with Japanese norms of politeness in a way that isn't necessarily implied by the way I talk, so I suspect I come off as rude instead of just unskilled with the culture. I mean - I've spent a total of ten months in Japan, over six years ago, and never in a business context where they would've drilled all the politeness into me. I feel kind of bad. Is this something they have a class on at Japan Society?