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Why are touristy places so unattractive to me? When I go to a new country, I tend to avoid touristy places. Me: “I went to X country”. “Oh, did you go to place A and place B?” “Not really.” “Why not? What’s the point of going to that country?” “If you go to touristy places, you mostly just see other tourists and shops for tourists. I'm interested in the local culture and get to know the local people.” But the problem here isn’t having tourists in itself. I mean, I've been a tourist in so many countries, so it would be hypocritical for me to say that we shouldn't have tourists. My problem has always been “touristy” places. Tourists go to these places because they are famous and in guidebooks. Attractions, shops, and restaurants specifically cater to tourists. They go there, take photos, eat someone, and leave. Local people usually don’t go there except to show visitors around. But visiting regular, local places as a tourist is different. Those places aren’t made specifically for visitors. You get to experience the local culture. They might not have flashy, touristy stuff, but for someone who’s more interested in people and cultures, I prefer going to those places, because that's the very reason for me to travel. That’s also why I feel disappointed when touristy establishments start pushing away local places, especially in places like Harajuku, where we used to have very distinct alternative cultures. Sure, you can still find interesting places, but the culture is heavily diluted. By the same token, I feel indifferent about places like Tokyo Tower and Sensouji because, as far as I remember, they have also been touristy places, so I don't care how many tourists we have there (although original local residents might feel differently)

Context: I tend to like fringe cultures. Very roughly speaking, what's happening to these areas is basically mainstream cultures pushing away fringe cultures.

Piiiiiii

I feel like Tokyo, especially areas like Shibuya, Harajuku, and Shinjuku, is becoming much less interesting compared to before because of urban development (especially Shibuya and Kabukicho) and tourist-oriented establishments (so many tourist traps in Harajuku and Kabukicho now). These places became interesting because of naturally developed cultures, but they went out of their way to destroy the cultures that made those places interesting in the first place. Another big thing, I think, is social media, with which people have less incentive to go out and meet people who share their interests in real life. Social media isn't all bad, but it's also dictated by the algorithm which social media companies control. A lot of interesting cultures still exist, but I feel like they are more visible online than offline.

I just got eigo-jouzued lol I was at the restaurant, and the tourists next to me were talking about signs they didn't understand. "It says 24 hours, but what's that place?" "It's an internet cafe," I said. Then I explained how internet cafes work here. "Your English is very good." They told me. It's definitely not just Japanese people who do that.

Who can spot her Japanese mistake?

お大事に (odaijini) isn't exactly the same as "take care" in English, and a lot of people misuse it. You'd use お大事に (take care) when someone is sick, and you hope they will recover soon. Doctors often say that to patients. But if you are worried about someone's safety, as in you are saying this to someone who's going on a trip, you'd say 気をつけて (take care).

I'm so passionate about second language acquisition that I sometimes try to make people understand some research so that I can talk about it. My attempts almost always fail lol

My long-ass reply to this comment: > There is no overt or covert linguistic syllabus. More attention is paid to message and pedagogy than to formal aspects of the L2. The idea is that, much in the way children learn their L1…". Not children again, plase. If I wanted to learn like a child I would first need a parent that speaks to me constantly in simplified language, because parents do that too. I think you’ve completely misunderstood the passage, possibly by reacting to the keyword “children” without understanding what it actually means. I encourage you to resist the temptation to pick up keywords and make assumptions about what they mean. Second language acquisition (SLA), even though it’s kind of niche, is still a substantial research area, and a lot of findings are actually pretty counterintuitive, so it’s important to take time to process information. I’ve spent hours and hours reading and rereading technical books and research papers about SLA, and I understand it’s not realistic for me to expect you to make that kind of commitment, but since you’re not familiar with this area, at least taking the time to understand rather than reacting to keywords is, I think, a reasonable request. Of course, I’m not saying that everything I say is automatically right. What I’m saying is that I’m not making points solely based on my intuition, reasoning, or personal experience. I’ve taken a lot of time to do my homework. Now, let me give you some examples of how learning a second language can be very similar to learning your first language, which doesn’t mean they’re completely the same. Let’s go back to the 1960s and 1970s. Researchers started systematically studying how children acquire grammatical structures, including verb inflections, negation, and questions. In the 1970s, researchers also began comparing these patterns with those of second language learners, including adults. For example, when learning English negation, learners may produce sentences like: * “No understand.” * “I no understand.” * “I don’t understand.” * “She doesn’t understand.” (These are simplified examples of developmental patterns) In the 1970s, researchers also studied how children and adults learning English use grammatical forms such as -ing, plural -s, and third-person singular -s. Interestingly, they found similarities in which forms learners tended to use accurately earlier or later, even across different groups of learners (kids, adults, people from different countries, etc.) Of course, this doesn’t mean everyone acquires these forms in exactly the same order. Later research found variations depending on learners’ first languages, learning environments, and other factors. But the important finding was that grammatical development followed certain patterns that weren’t simply determined by the order in which grammar was taught. (This is a relevant point in our conversation.) Researchers studied this by examining learners’ actual language production, using both structured speaking tasks and more spontaneous speech. Now, “spontaneous speech” is an important keyword, because producing a grammatical form spontaneously is different from answering a fill-in-the-blank question, like the exercises you might find in みんなの日本語. For example, imagine a student who has just studied the English third-person singular -s. They can easily answer: “He ___ (play) tennis every day.” “Plays.” Perfect. But when they’re having an actual conversation, they might still say: “My brother play tennis.” Even though they know the rule. This doesn’t necessarily mean the exercises were useless. Explicit grammar knowledge and practice can be helpful. But being able to select the correct form in an exercise doesn’t automatically mean you can produce that form spontaneously during a conversation. That’s a very important distinction in SLA research. On top of that, researchers observed that both children and second language learners produce grammatical forms that nobody explicitly taught them. For example, children learning English sometimes say “goed” instead of “went.” Nobody teaches them to say “goed.” They produce it because they’ve generalized a grammatical pattern. Second language learners also develop their own grammatical patterns, sometimes producing systematic forms that differ from the language they’re learning. So learners aren’t simply memorizing and reproducing whatever the teacher tells them. They’re actively developing their own linguistic system. Now, these are examples from relatively early research, and a much more substantial body of research has developed over the following decades. But the basic point is that we don’t necessarily acquire grammatical structures in the order in which they’re presented in textbooks. Our language-learning system is something like a complex adaptive system that constantly changes based on linguistic experience. Input plays a central role, although interaction, output, attention, and explicit instruction can also contribute. Let me say this in a different way. A lot of people, both in the past and today, assume that adult learners acquire language primarily by consciously learning grammatical rules, doing drills, and answering fill-in-the-blank questions until those rules become automatic. But decades of SLA research show that the process is considerably more complicated. Our brains develop linguistic knowledge through exposure to language, detecting patterns, making generalizations, and gradually becoming more sensitive to how the language works. A substantial part of this process happens implicitly, without consciously memorizing grammatical rules. And since the underlying grammatical system is extremely complex, the linguistic knowledge we eventually develop isn’t simply a collection of textbook rules stored in our heads. For example, native speakers can often immediately recognize that a sentence sounds unnatural without being able to explain exactly which grammatical rule it violates. That kind of intuitive linguistic knowledge is an important part of what second language learners gradually develop. Now, I’m going through this really, really fast, and since I’m not going to write a 300-page book, I’m just giving you a summary of where I’m going with this. > The goal of the chapter is for students to use adjectives in Japanese for the first time, not to build native level sentences using whatever grammar structure best fits the situation or adjectives that are not beginner level and high frequency adjectives. So basically, the みんなの日本語 style of teaching, which follows a relatively strict grammatical syllabus, shouldn’t be confused with the actual process of language acquisition. I’m not saying structured lessons or explicit grammar explanations are completely useless. There’s research showing that explicit instruction can be beneficial, particularly for certain grammatical structures and learning outcomes. But following a rigid grammatical sequence is not a prerequisite for language acquisition, and successfully completing exercises doesn’t necessarily mean a learner has acquired the ability to use those structures spontaneously. And finally, going back to your original comment about children: Saying that adults and children share certain language acquisition mechanisms doesn’t mean adults have to recreate the entire experience of childhood. Nobody is suggesting that you need a parent who talks to you constantly in simplified language. The point is that some underlying processes of language acquisition, such as developing implicit grammatical knowledge and progressing through certain developmental stages, can be similar across first and second language acquisition.

I use human-drawn characters for my Japanese courses, but some people confidently claim they are AI-drawn. At this point, manually drawing characters isn't enough. You need to draw characters in a way that wouldn't be confused with AI.

When I see a comment like this, it really makes me think about how different learners are interested in different things. As a language learner myself, I'm not interested in making sentences that are technically possible but not really used by native speakers, just for the sake of using a specific adjective. As a practical learner, that's not why I'm learning a language. I'd want to at least hear about all the nuances and how specific words are used in real-life contexts from day one, even if I'm an absolute beginner, without the expectation of completely mastering those nuances. So I have trouble relating to people who say that they are more interested in learning a language that's detached from real-life situations and actively don't want to learn how the language is actually used.

She's probably the fastest Japanese speaker I've come across so far lol I had to check if my video was 1.5x Yet, her pronunciation is so clear that I hear every single word clearly. If I speak as fast as she does, my Japanese won't be so clear. youtube.com/watch?v=fkjSLnHp…

What kind of situation do you think of if you hear this sentence without any other context? "When you play with children, you get a little tired, right?" Who's talking about whose experience? What's a possible situation? Is it a statement of a general fact or a reaction to someone's experience, your own experience, or some other situation? Is it part of a longer dialogue or is it a one-off statement?

ぴえん

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