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owlectomyI'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?
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(no subject)
22/1/09 04:16 (UTC)Anyway, cool? :D
(no subject)
22/1/09 11:32 (UTC)2) I don't think that we do offer classes in that, unfortunately.
3) I think it funny how we live in the same city, and are interested to such a degree in much of the same things, and are aware of one another's lives to some extent, yet even if we were in Kinokuniya at the same time, we wouldn't know it, wouldn't know what one another look like. ... Just funny is all. One of these days, we're both going to post "I happened to be at Kinokuniya today, hanging out at the cafe around 3 o'clock..."
(no subject)
22/1/09 12:52 (UTC)