/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I read an interiew with James Heisig where he mentioned learning to speak Japanese by playing with children, somewhere up in the mountains. How could you even make this stuff up? So when I heard the man was in Tokyo, I knew I had to ask him about it.

Because here’s the extent of what I learned from children by teaching grade school in Japan for several years: The word for lunch. How to say “I’m so cold.” How to say “I’m so hot.” How to grab your teacher’s penis and exclaim “bigu sticku.” How to insert your fingers up his butt in a move known as the kancho. Beyond that, children typically ramble about some toy or cartoon or playground game. They’re not going to coach you on how to make hotel reservations or order up another plate of gyoza. The idea that one could learn to speak from them is insane. They can’t even use the language decently themselves. That’s because they’re freaking kids.

I met Heisig at a writer’s workshop. He seemed a pleasant enough fellow, and a fine teller of grandiose stories. After listening to his well-polished tale about singlehandedly inventing a way of learning Japanese characters that millions of Japanese folks had never thought of in their thousands of years of history, I finally got a chance to ask him, “How did you learn to speak it?”

“I played baseball with the kids,” was his reply. “Up in the mountains. In Nagano.

“You played baseball?” I asked. “With children?

“Yep.

“And that’s how you learned to speak Japanese?

“Sure. Children are the best teachers.”

>>19892820
>fluentin3months

>allowing js on jamal's playground

>>19306391