Japan By River Cruise

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That's What Yasashii Said (w/Ako Suzuki)

/ 29:08/E52
Ako Suzuki, our favorite online Japanese teacher, stops by to talk about Yasashii Nihongo: the effort to make Japanese "kinder" to foreigners. Time permitting, we'll also talk to a landlord, a cab driver, and an immigration official about why they don't care.
Ako Suzuki, our favorite online Japanese teacher, stops by to talk about Yasashii Nihongo: the effort to make Japanese "kinder" to foreigners. Time permitting, we'll also talk to a landlord, a cab driver, and an immigration official about why they don't care.

Ollie recommends a river cruise that initially sucks, but manages to seem like it sucks less by simply changing its surroundings. Not recommend for ALTs who appreciate analogies.

Topics discussed on this episode range from:

  • Misleading statistics about one of our favorite chemical substances
  • Ako's Japanese teaching online platforms and how she used the pandemic to reinvent and increase her success
  • Ollie's inferiority complex
  • Yasashii Nihongo in the news
  • What is Yasashii Nihongo? How did it originate and who is it for?
  • What does Yasashii mean here
  • Why some of us bristle at the necessity of and benefits of this initiative
  • How we've come across Yasashii Nihongo in our own lives
  • Misconceptions about what it is versus how it actually works
  • Why explanations of words in the target language are better than simply resorting to Google Translate 
  • Yasashii Nihongo satisfying a need for practice opportunities at tourist spots
  • The limits of Yasashii Nihongo, and how at the end of the day, depending on your level, it might not matter
  • The precarious balance between communicating simply but also maintaining Japanese politeness
  • How fast food employees have REGULARLY OFFENDED US
  • What Ako thinks about teaching Yasashii Japanese to Japanese people as a business
  • A new Artificial Intelligence Yasashii Nihongo plug-in, so even the robots can talk down to us
  • Seriously though, how this word editor plug-in might really make things easier for foreigners to understand
  • How being able to parse a sentence visually affects reading comprehension
  • The frustrating version of Yasashii Nihongo that every foreigner has been subjected to at least once
  • Why Japanese attempts at simplification sometimes makes things harder
  • A comparison of babies and foreigners
  • How Japanese teachers use their knowledge of grammar levels to create learnable sentences
  • The disconnect between Japanese learners and the average Japanese person in a basic conversation
  • A great piece of advice for people speaking to language learners AND short-tempered podcast hosts
  • A mistake Ako thinks average Japanese people make when trying to simplify their speech
  • Why simple mistakes in your Japanese can sometimes render you completely incomprehensible to Japanese people
  • Why a big part of Yasashii Nihongo is Yasashii listening skills
There are some REALLY funny bits in the extras, including hilarious stories about our own Japanese mistakes. You can get access to them when they're released by supporting the podcast for less than $1 an episode. Become a member at http://buymeacoffee.com. 



Social Media Links:


Ollie Horn: Twitter | Instagram

Bobby Judo: Twitter | Instagram | YouTube


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That's What Yasashii Said (w/Ako Suzuki)

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