10 things about Japan or Japanese I learned or was exposed to recently

1. The Boyfriend

A reality TV show on Netflix about a bunch of single gay guys living in a house.

And you know what?

It's fucking good.

2. Love is Blind: Japan

I didn't finish the first episode yet but I quite liked it.

3. People might switch between different levels of formality even with the same people

My understanding is that in Japanese, verbs change depending on the politeness/formality level. There is casual, polite, extremely polite, and humble, I think? I only recently started dabbling so I'm not too sure of what I'm saying.

Anyway, so with a close friend you'll probably use the casual way to talk, but with a stranger you'll use the polite way, and when you talk about yourself humbly you'll use the humble way, or something like that. And the very polite way (honorific I think?) with a professor or something? But I was watching The Boyfriend with a Japanese girl, and I asked her what form the guys used. She said it depends. So I guess maybe when someone is like "I would like to invite you to do this with me" they might use the humble or polite form or something? I don't know!

4. "Nani?" means "What?"

But I just saw a video about this a few days after learning it, and apparently it depends (of course).

5. The Okinawa islands is like the Hawaii of Japan

I used to think Okinawa was a city. It's the name of the main island of the Okinawa islands.

6. Watashi wa tabemasu = I eat

You don't pronounce the 'u'.

7. Depending on the intonation of "hashi", it can mean either bridge or chopsticks

And "ashi" is leg, which I found out later.

8. Japanese has what they call "pitch accent" (which is involved in the "hashi" thing)

From what I heard, it's not super duper important or at least it's not nearly as big a deal as tones in Chinese.

Mathieu