From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: fj.misc
Subject: Re: There's-only-one-Truth-ism?
Date: 31 Jul 92 06:44:12 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

markd@csl.sj.nec.com (Mark Dyer) writes:
>In article <2189@aegis.or.jp> davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) writes:
>   mtachiba@rkna50.riken.go.jp (Masahiko Tachibana) writes:
>	[stuff deleted]
>   >    Mr Ishikawa complained that Japanese authorities should try
>   >to expand Japanese language eduction course in many countries in
>   >order that foreigners would not meet with too much difficulties 
>   >when they visit Japan.  (source: fj.news.group)
>
>   IMHO, this isn't a language education problem but just part of the
>   social conventions in Japan. Japan already has a huge amount of
>   language education courses (maybe too much!). Actually people
>   understand and speak English reasonably well. But if they don't want
>   to speak with foreigners that's another story :-)

>I think Mr Tachibana's point was not to teach Japanese more English, but
>sponsor the teaching of Japanese in other countries. This seems like a
>perfectly reasonable thing to me.

Ooops, you're right. I somehow thought he was talking about English
courses in Japan. Sorry about that...

>I attended a conference NEC employees from around the world in Tokyo
>last October. Since one of the things everyone had in common was trying
>to communicate with the Japanese mother company, this topic came up in a
>number of the presentations. Most of the people who touched on the
>subject in their presentations said things like, "to improve
>communication with our counter parts in Japan, we are sponsoring
>Japanese Conversation Classes in our company." It was embarassing for me
>when the only person from the United States who even touched on the
>subject said something along the lines of, "to improve communication
>with our counter parts in Japan, we are finding out which Japanese
>Engineers speak good English."

In addition to being able to speak the same language, I think it's
necessary to be able to share ideas of what communication is all
about. And as I've said before, within Japan, native speakers of
Japanese are not known for their willingness to speak to those
outside their local group. 

However, please note that I am in the kansai, and this may well be
very different that the kanto area where so many posters to fj.misc
seem to be. 

> <back to Dave...>

>   At the end of the first two years things were moving along quite
>   well and I came to the conclusion that Japanese may not in fact be
>   the best tool for communcation. That may sound strange, but to get
>   the idea of what I'm talking about, ask those you know who speak
>   Japanese as a second language how many people they have interesting
>   and frutiful conversations with those who are not 1) members of the
>   same office/company, or 2) spouse/{girl|boy}friend. When I took this
>   informal kind of survey, the answer was none!  And in fact many
>   people I met here in the kansai complained that they never could
>   have anything more than a polite, on-the-surface tatemae conversation. 

>Maybe I'm being silly, but if you put these limitations (1 & 2) on
>don't you basically end up with group 3, "people you don't know very
>well?" If you expand 1 to people you used to work with AND you count
>going to school as work, all that's left are people you don't really
>know. Maybe this is only true for me and my situation, but it seems a
>little silly to say Japanese isn't a good language for communcation
>because nobody ever has involved conversations with strangers in
>Japanese.

I would say that all depends on how your life is structured. Since I
am single and the only family I have is in the U.S. I don't have
many people in category 2. And when I go to NHK Bunka Center in
Osaka I just walk in, same good morning, run somethings on the copy
machine and to one of the classrooms so there is almost nobody in
cateogory 1. When I lived in the U.S. it was somewhat different,
but not a whole lot. 

>Did I miss the point? Of course none of this has anything to do with
>what Dave was really talking about, so I guess I'll stop babbling for
>now! :-)

Maybe we have two points here. From what you say, your life is built
around work and family thus you can't imagine what it might be like
to have your time organized some other way. But, for example, the
relationships we strike up on the net are in outside of 1 & 2. 

I can't help wondering if all the fuss about fj.life.in-japan isn't
somehow connected to some people feeling uncomfortable communicating
with those outside their 1 & 2.... 

>BTW I don't intend this as a flame in any way, shape or form, and I sure
>hope Dave doesn't take it that way.

Nope, I didn't :-) To make sure I hadn't overlooked some slight, I
went back over your words. Couldn't find a hot one in the bunch! 

Dave

--
Dave McLane                                       davidg@aegis.or.jp
Sorry, I can only understand replies in English (or a little French).
You're free to copy/quote/translate this as long as credit is given. 
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087



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