Couchsurfing hosting in Japan. 6th couchsurfer from Poland
July 02, 2017Taller and smarter guy!
August , 2014
He stayed 1 night but arrived in early afternoon on Sunday so we had enough time to talk about each other culture. He is gentle guy, has lots of knowledge about history, culture and language, I might be wrong the way to describe this but it was interesting for me to hear Poland history after world war Ⅱ.
Noticing about languages.
In my case, I speak just Japanese and very poor English but he speaks some languages fluently and learning Japanese as well at that time. Wow, great! I must study and practicing harder, and I must get at least English skils....Nowadays, every countries people speak English fluently except Japanese people including me. I think Japan is only one country which doesn't has much amount of people speke English in developed country.
Usually, we have excuse about why Japanese people cannot speak English. It's said that learning English is very difficult for Japanese because everything is so different from their language that grammar, pronunciation, letters, expressions etc. I think it's just excuse, it's same for other countries.
Basically, I agree the opinion that English education is not good in Japan. We have learnt English at least for 6 years and it's almost just for exam focused the writing, reading, translating, so we can't have conversations with English. Yes, I agree about that. But we shoud have other ways to get English if we would be more serious about that. Japanese should be noticed about that.
I feel kind of pinch about that. Most of Japanese paticularly children should make more effort to get English skils, otherwise Japanese people might not be able to follow the world on every field in the future...
While some conversations we had, He said he wants to learn Japanese from us. I was very happy to meet a person who wants to learn such a minor language.
The interesting thing was he made me noticed about some unique points of Japanese which I didn't care at all so far with his question.
Especially the counting way, he speak some languages as I mentioned but it seems difficult to understand even for him.
In Japanese, we have to add the kind of unit after the numbers when counting something. For example, in case counting for papers, dishes,or clothes (but it's not all of them) we have to add " Mai " which is the word to describe something thin stuffs, or in case to describe something stick like stuffs, I think it's the deficulut one, such as pen, chopsticks, trees, umbrellas, cucumbers, radishes, steel pipes, we have to choice and use from " Pon,Hon, Bon " after the numbers and each sounds are associated the combination with numbers. For example, like 1 Pon, 2 Hon, 3 Bon, 4 Hon, 5 Hon, 6 pon, 7 Hon...
I also don't know the rules at all about this and it seems just focused for which combination is comfortable to speak.
More complicated one is for animals. Usually, in case counting for animals we use " Hiki or Biki " after the numbers, like for dogs, cats, horses, cows, pandas, fishes, whales, but it change to " Wa " for birds because they have wings.
So how about for rabits? They are not boirds but we have to use "Wa" because they have big ears like wings. Yes, it's complicated like " Male words" and " Female words" in German, Frence , Spanish.
So he asked me, why Japanese made the counting way to be such complicated?
It's better use only just numbers, and it would be make sence even if we don't use adding the units. Yes, exactly, I agree with you.
I really haven't cared those those things at all until he asked me, but it's interesting indeed.
I could found unique one in my language to meet him through Couchsurfing.
I headed to another destination next early morning, but in the night we had good cultural exchange like that.
To aware own country things is also one of the charm of Couchsurfing, I think.
He also played well for my kids! Thanks!
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