Moments where knowing Japanese has helped you

20 comments

1. Does being able to read the instructions on a bag of okonomi flour count?

2. I work in a high school with a decent sized population of Japanese ELL students. Me knowing Japanese has made them paranoid, not that I’ve caught them saying anything bad, but it definitely has them spooked.

3. Nearly all the time. Every day.

4. As someone living in Japan: it’s helped me to be able to lead a full life. I know that sounds silly but there’s a ton of people who move over here and never bother to learn the language (or don’t try very hard and never get far) and then go online and make statements like “you don’t need to speak Japanese to live in Japan” followed by comments about being depressed and lonely and not having any serious career options.

   It’s also helped me to further enjoy my hobbies and take all of them to a further level than what would have been possible without Japanese. For example one of my interests is video games and in particular I’m interested in learning about the history of video games. Since I know Japanese I can read interviews with developers from scans of old magazines instead of being relient on YouTubers to poorly translate it for me.

5. I don’t know if it counts, but I got my first job largely because I spoke Japanese (and Spanish). The company was working in the auto industry, with subsidiaries in a lot of Spanish-speaking countries and clients from Japan, so I was able to translate documents between the three.

6. I work as a waiter in a Japanese restaurant.

   One day I had a few Japanese customers come in. I didn’t speak to them in Japanese at all, but I was listening to them talk when I was taking their order. They wanted a “hot waiter”, or at least that’s what it sounded like. Fortunately, I heard them speaking Japanese and could make out “hot water” before they actually told me in English what they wanted. Yeah, that was almost uncomfortable.

7. One moment that kinda hurt was when some Japanese students in the US were about to take a picture and I passed in front of them before they snapped the shot. One of them told the girl taking the picture to wait until the ojisan passed then snap it.

   I realized then I was officially an ojisan.

8. Eh…I don’t think that’s really gonna happen outside of the Internet and entertainment unless you live in Japan. But it’s certainly useful being able to understand things on the internet without unreliable translation software. There’s also the possibility that it can increase my client base once I get my web dev career going and my JP is up to par. But I do want to get out of the US at some point and who knows, the new country might just end up being Japan.

9. Lectures of a Japanese professor helped me to understand GraphCut algorithm quickly, when I was given the task to describe it for the whole group during my 3rd grade at university.

10. I’m only N4 but it has helped alot with work. We do mechanical engineering and have 1 customer in Japan. Their plant is in a small town so no one from my company ever wants to travel there since most people there don’t speak any English. I got to be the default guy to travel there since I can navigate the trains and order food on my own.

11. While I wouldn’t say “helped,” I’d categorize it as being “beneficial.” I witnessed a car crash when I was biking with a friend. We both waited for the police and ambulance to come and we each gave our witness testimonies (I translated my friend’s to the police). We were asked to come down to the station at a later date to give a written testimony. Since I was the only one who speaks Japanese (somewhat) so I came to the police station by myself. Was gonna do it purely out of civic duty but then when i was done they gave me money for performing my duty as a citizen. Certainly did not expect that and wouldn’t have been able to do it if I didn’t speak any Japanese.

12. I got lost in Paris and don’t understand French. Luckily there was this Japanese family on vacation. I asked them in Japanese where the station is in my broken ass Japanese and thankfully they understood but got a bit confused how a non Japanese nor French person is talking to them in France in Japanese

13. Built a gundam this weekend with all the instructions in japanese! It’s mostly diagrams, but being able to read the “do this part first” or “Pay attention to which way is up” came in very handy.

14. I play an online game called Project Winter and it heavily relies on voice chat. Some Japanese people play it and since it’s so unpopular they sometimes can’t find any servers to play so they join the US servers. Some speak a little English, some dont. The rest of the players don’t really care too much as long as the majority of the lobby speaks English.

    Even though I can’t do much more than introduce myself and give basic in-game information, they are always so surprised to find someone who speaks Japanese in an English lobby

15. Helps during business meetings when Japanese automotive suppliers talk about pricing. They’re so used to openly speaking in Japanese during meetings because they think no one can understand. If I wait until they finish and then comment about what they just said then it always throws them for a loop.

16. I’m just starting, but I work with medical devices that are developed for Japan. Being able to read some of the kana on the screen is nice

17. I used to work in retail in NYC, a time or two I was able to tell Japanese tourist customers their totals in Japanese, but that was back when all I knew was my busted 4 semesters of not studying very hard Japanese (and it had been like 4 or 5 years since my studying) so I probably got it wrong lol. I’ve since gotten more serious in my studies but have moved far away from where Japanese tourists might want to go

18. True story.

    Some years ago my Japanese girlfriend’s father died and we went back to Japan together for his funeral. Her mother wasn’t part of the picture (but that’s another story) and she was an only child.

    She had been at a university in the US getting a degree, which, to the rest of her family, was a huge betrayal since they thought she should have stayed home to take care of her father, so the moment we arrived they started in on her. I was introduced as her boyfriend, but otherwise completely ignored, as I only spoke a few words to them in greeting, but I understood everything they said and was able to help her deal with it after they left.

    Anyway, her father had some assets to his name, and the rest of her family wanted it all. They’d already raided his bank account, and tried to convince the life insurance agent to pay them directly, even though my girlfriend was the name on the policy (the agent refused). He also had some property that he’d been given many years before, and they tried every trick they knew to get it.

    One day a whole group of them showed up with a document listing all of her father’s supposed debts to them, something like $50,000 worth, and they were haranguing her to sign it. I was in another room, playing some computer game on my laptop, but again, listening to everything. She was holding her own for a while but then at one point it seemed like they almost had her convinced, just to make them go away, when I stood up, walked over to her, and asked her (in English) to come and talk outside, where I got her to calm down and defer their request until after she’d had the chance to research it more (surprise, it was all bullshit).

    Her family were completely floored. They’d totally discounted me, had no clue I’d been listening in the whole time. It was one of those surreal moments that you’d expect to see in a movie but never in real life.

    Anyway, there’s a lot more to it, as it was quite an adventure, but long story short, she managed to keep everything from their clutches, mostly with the help of a personal friend and some surreptitious travel across town to retrieve the contents of a hidden safety deposit box where her father (knowing what his family was like) had kept the deed to the property. I’m not sure if she ever reconciled with her older family, but she got along with some of her cousins, but I don’t know that it matters much since we eventually got married, she got her degree, then an advanced degree, then her US citizenship so she’d never have to go back.

    Then we (amicably) divorced and now, a couple of decades later, as far as I know she’s still making bank working at one of the big tech giants. She’s a survivor.

19. I’ve used it a couple of times at work. I’m a software engineer, and because I was the only person on my team who had some ability to read an East Asian language, I got a lot of internationalization tasks. I didn’t have to do translating, but being able to use our software in Japanese and being aware of how a translator might translate a line made that job a lot easier.

20. Sometimes I sound out katakana to show off to whoever is near by before realizing that the English word was right below it the entire time