Ordering food at restaurants and cafes is pretty easy once you learn and understand a few set expressions.  These set expressions are said all over the country and you will have the same exchange when ordering  no matter where you go. The Japanese service industry lacks personality.  All waiters and waitresses sound the same, say the same things with the enthusiasm of a programmed robot. Staff will rarely start up a conversation, comment on the weather or local news, or ask you anything other than “May I take your order?”.

For someone new to Japan or to the Japanese language it is great because you will hear the same service phrases every time you go out to eat. It won’t be long before you can walk into a restaurant without the fear of being misunderstood. For someone living in Japan for several years you really get sick of the programmed exchange. In most places of customer service Japanese follow a strict code  of “by the book” service. Of course some staff are friendlier than others and may make a comment or show a smile, but generally everyone behaves in exactly the same way. Straying from this  “by the book” service is frowned upon and considered time wasting.

I have worked in restaurants in Japan myself and learned not to talk to customers “too much” and just stick to the manual. I also have discovered restaurants aren’t generally customer friendly when it comes to requesting slight changes to menu items. Try ordering a pizza without onions and chances are they just can’t do it.  It is quite funny. If you do ask for changes on a menu item the waiter or waitress will give you a perplexed look and then run off to the manager. He or she will then return to tell you it can’t be done because of “quality control” or some other bizarre reason. If you are a vegetarian life is going to be difficult in Japan.

Some people may argue that they don’t like to be disturbed when eating out by staff and just want to order and eat -  fair enough. However, I do thinking I am losing my brain when I am at a restaurant and I order two things off the menu and then have the waitress announce to me that she will repeat my order, have my order repeated, then told that the “drink bar” is on my right 3 meters away by the entrance (as if I hadn’t seen it). Keep in mind that I have been served by the same staff before and that I am a regular customer of the establishment.

Japanese girls – hot, cute, sexy, fun loving, naive, polite, immature, ambitious, carefree, introverted, extroverted, Japanese girls are almost as diverse and complicated as Japanese culture. One thing for sure is Japanese girls are hot. In a country where being cute is, for some people, more important than the content of one’s personality Japanese girls love to flaunt their stuff. Everyone likes to feel they look attractive, cute or sexy, but in Japan is taken to the extreme. Being considered beautiful, cute or sexy is highly regarded. It is almost like the old adage “Children should be seen, not heard”. This certainly isn’t my opinion but in Japanese society I do feel there  is a sense that Japanese women are encouraged to be seen but not heard.

By traditional culture a Japanese girl is subservient, polite, reserved, respectful and quiet. A modern conservative Japanese girl would be most of the aforementioned. She would practice one of the art fine Japanese arts such as “Ikebana”, “Kimono”, “Sado” or “Shodo” – (Flower arrangement, Kimono, tea ceremony or calligraphy). She would study at university, get a degree or similar qualification work for a few years, marry and then become a house wife.

The modern Japanese girl is difficult to describe. Anything and everything from your outgoing, worldly cultured, friendly, educated down-to earth and open Japanese girl to your extremely extroverted Gothic-freak Japanese girl. In my ten years of living in Japan I have met some strange Japanese girls. I won’t go into detail, but if the behaviour and mentality of a people tell you a lot about their culture, then Japan’s culture is indeed twisted. The modern Japanese girl is stuck between the last generation of traditionalists (get married, have children, be a good wife by supporting you husband etc.) and their own emerging modern culture. The modern Japanese girl wants freedom, a happy life with none of the pressures and commitments she saw her own mother experience. The modern Japanese girl wants to have fun.

One thing most foreign males find in Japanese girls is a lack of maturity especially in regard to the subject of relationships. Japanese girls become extremely jealous of other relationships and often lack the social skills or maturity to talk about complicated or personal  problems. Also, Japanese girls tend to lack general knowledge and are very ignorant of their own history. I had a Japanese female student who thought Israel was an State in America. A Japanese wife of a friend of mine though that Pearl Harbour was a part of Japan and was bomb by the Americans!!

Anyway, I suspect you came across this page hoping to hot Japanese girl pics or sexy Japanese girl videos. Sorry to disappoint if that was what you were looking for. Keep searching. you are bound to find something.

Sakura is the name for the celebrated and beautiful cherry blossom trees of Japan. I hope you enjoy this video, I spent two weeks documenting the Sakura trees in my local area. I was amazed how quickly the trees changed over night. The cherry blossom trees were in full bloom for less than two days. I don’t think you can find anything more beautiful than watching Sakura petals fall and scatter.

Somei Yoshino

Japan’s most beloved variety and the one I documented in the video is the Somei Yoshino. Its flowers are nearly pure white, tinged with the palest of pink. The flowers bloom, and usually fall within a week in Spring.

There are over 100 sakura varieties. In the video you can see Shidarezakura, weeping cherry blossom trees which have branches that fall like those of a weeping willow, bearing cascades of pink flowers.

The Somei Yoshino Cherry Blossom

Cherry-Blossom Front

Annually, the Japanese track the Sakura Zensen, or Cherry-Blossom Front. Nightly forecasts follow the weather segment of news programs. The blossoming begins in Okinawa in February, and typically reaches Kyoto and Tokyo at the end of March or the beginning of April. Then it proceeds north, arriving in Hokkaido a few weeks later. Japanese pay close attention to these forecasts so that they can plan “hanami”.

Hanami

Drinking and having a picnic under Sakura! Japanese will organize “cherry blossom viewing” parties usually with family and co-workers. They will go to parks to drink, eat and enjoy a few hours of well earned rest under the beautiful Sakura.

In my years o f studying Japanese and living in Japan I have had a never ending battle with verbs. In my experience mastering verbs is one of the hardest aspects of learning the Japanese language. I first realized this when I came to work in Japan for the first time. Having study the basics of Japanese I thought it would take me no time before I would be speaking to the locals. Greetings and small talk weren’t a problem, but listening and trying to understand Japanese having conversations was something else.

In colloquial speech Japanese can almost have entire conversations just using verbs if the subject and object is understood by the speaker and listener. Understanding who or what is being spoken about can be very confusing unless you know and understand verb forms. Learning verbs is difficult because there are so many conjugations. Not having a solid grounding in “verb conjugation” will definitely compromise your ability to speak, read and understand Japanese.

The hardest hurdle with understand Japanese conversation is the ambiguity or vagueness of verbs. Japanese verbs have no plural form, and correspondingly, verbs do not inflect for number. For example, this phrase “Hon wo Kaimashita” could mean I bought a book or I bought some books. We can’t determine the number. Japanese verbs also do not inflect for person. So the verb “iku” to go could mean “I go”, “I will go”, “I am going “, “shall we go”, “will you go”, or “they will go”. Also, in impolite speech a single verb can be a “asked” as a question. Although, this does mean you have less to study or worry about say compared to French or German, understanding or knowing what is being spoken about becomes difficult with complex verbs.

Japanese Verbs – Lesson 1

Basic Japanese……………there is no such thing. Basic Japanese is what deters most people from learning Japanese. While living in Japan I saw hundreds of foreigners, usually English teachers, start learning Japanese and then give up within the space of a month. What happens is these newly arrived teachers get all excited up about learning Japanese and rush off to their local ward office where they can get free Japanese lessons. After a month or so they give up and move on to more exciting cultural adventures like drinking Japanese beer.
The problem is learning Basic Japanese isn’t basic at all. Learning the basics of Japanese is very difficult because the language is completely different to English. There is no common ground – no concrete language aspects to relate what you learn about the Japanese language to English. With complex grammar, two different alphabets, Kanji, hundreds of idioms and the very confusing cultural aspect of the language it isn’t surprising most would be Japanese speakers give up only after a few lessons.

Japanese Phrases

Some basic Japanese phrases and expressions are untranslatable. You are end up memorizing lots of set expressions that in essence hold no meaning to you. Unfortunately, too many formal set expressions are generally considered basic, when they aren’t. However they are fundamental to social interaction in Japan. So you are trapped into learning lots of formal expressions you don’t really understand.
The teaching method is also to blame. It blows my mind how poorly Japanese is taught at private colleges in and outside of Japan. Formal grammar focused conversations are usually the meat and potatoes of most learning courses. These are conversations, to my knowledge to exist in Japan. It all focuses on the “masu” form and speaking politely.

In Japan I have found the best foreigner Japanese speakers are non English speakers. The are forced to speak Japanese in their job and are usually immersed in the language constantly while living in Japan. So there is hope. You just need to get over learning the difficult basics – the fundamentals. If you learn the basics hopefully you’ll get to meet a few Japanese and develop friendships and get some exposure to real spoken Japanese. I felt somewhat freed when I came to Japan and discovered colloquial Japanese. Hopefully you’ll experience the same freedom.
Learning and memorizing a few Japanese phrases is an achievement in itself for most people. Say a few greetings and know a little bit about Japanese food and Japanese will be complimenting your Japanese. Which can be quite embarrassing. The first time a Japanese compliments your Japanese in Japanese you will of course have no idea about what is being said. Once you realize what is being said you will feel like an idiot and probably give up learning basic Japanese.