Just met my fiancés family…

After 3 years of border closures, I finally got into Japan to meet my fiancées family.

I was impressed by how much conversation I could understand. I even laughed at jokes. However when someone spoke to me directly, I panicked a little and couldn’t understand as much. I wonder if this is because I tried to understand more accurately to reply properly. When listening to a conversation I easily get the gist but when asked directly things like nuance, tense and intention all become important. (Eg: Didn’t you want to not go to the shops? I easily understand the go to the shops, but get lost in the other parts.)

I also spoke less than I know. (Which was expected as I’m a unconfident introverted perfectionist) but I did speak. Usually it was just one or two words here or there. I relied a lot on ‘un’ and ‘大丈夫’. I said more if I had a beer and a one on one conversation and time to think. Ie, not a passing comment while out and about, but sitting down relaxed. I could string a good sentence together like this.

My fiancés dad made a joke because I like beer and said that mochi is good dipped in beer. I believed him for a second until my fiancée said it’s not a thing and to not trust anything he says when she’s not there.

I couldn’t read the kanji at a fancy/local/non touristy restaurant’s bathroom and had to go back the the table to ask someone to help me know which was men’s. 殿方 and 婦人.

I learnt a fun word that is fun to say: おっちょこちょい which means something like careless or scatterbrain.

After living in Australia for almost 10 years, my fiancée has stated to lose Japanese. Which is mildly interesting. Occasionally she’d use a ‘japanglish’ katakana word when even I noticed there was a Japanese equivalent. And sometimes she even stopped what she was saying to ask her family what the word was, to which they replied immediately.

My many past trips to Japan have usually only been touristy areas. It was nice to be in the suburbs of Nagoya. Where there is pretty much no tourism so everything is local. The first time staff at a shop spoke English to me was Maccas at the airport on the way home (understandable). Comparatively, my time spent in big tourist cities, they’ll speak English first up and immediately give you English menus etc. This made me feel less like a tourist and gave me opportunity to practice speaking!

I bought Japanese ‘Goosebumps’ 10 book set for 800 yen and ‘Harry Potter’ 5 of them for 600 yen at book off. Almost perfect condition second hand for about 100 yen per book! If you don’t know book off, you’ve made a critical error. (Second hand games, collectibles, clothes, etc etc.)

My study plan has changed, I will now double my speaking practice as this was my weakest point and lower my other study.

What was your experience finally putting Japanese into practice?