Now I’m first!

Vicky-san!

Everything is allowed in war and love

How about talking about the lesson guys?

Yoshiさん！ I’d like to take you up on your offer to pay for all to come to Brazil.

Oh, and I noticed that Yoshiさん was the only one adding 「さん」to names. I guess Nagasaki people have better manners.

Peterさん、I have to disagree that service in Japanese is all that. Especially in restaurants. With no tip to work for…

-Daniel B

I gotta say, you’ve got an awesome team at JPOD 101. Everyone works well together and everyone adds great input into the lesson. Plus, everyone has great personalities.

Thanks for the great lessons!

There’s nothing wrong with not saying san! Doesn’t anyone think it can get redundant at times?

what a great lesson! loved it.

recently i’ve not been able to post on the comments. I type them down and submitted the comment but it would not appear. anyone else had this problem?

No, Andrew, quite the contrary. Proper use of honorifics is a vital part of the language and the culture. If you showed up in Japan one day calling everyone simply by their name, you would very quickly develop a reputation for being “just a rude gaijin.” While people would probably give you at least some slack for being a foreigner, that’s no excuse to not use proper honorifics just becuase you think it’s redundant and corn. I assure you, to the Japanese it’s not.

GAH! *corny

Sophie, although it’s becoming a little more usual for girls to say boku, i wouldn’t recommened it. Stick with Watashi, Atashi or it’s regional variation.

@JP101. Just a thought guys, but it would be great if you get some of the guys (like kachou) to go through the pronunciations a little more as you seem to use women, like Sakura far too often.

Just a though guys.

Sophie,

While it’s true that “-chan” is generally used to address children or younger women, I did work with a man who had asked people to address him with “-chan”. A coworker of his who explained it to me said it was a little unusual, but he didn’t seem to think it was bizarre.

“The” Mr T?

Uh, about Japanese men being masculine…

Hmm… while you do see some Japanese who think they are macho, there’s quite a high proportion of metrosexuals here. You see guys with mirrors tweaking their hair on the train, wearing men’s makeup and carrying “manbags” (refering to the episode of Friends when Joey was carrying one). Tokyo guys at least, often seem pretty fem to me.

-Daniel B

well i doubt anyone will read this, as apparently i’m the first to post to this lesson in months (i just discovered JapanesePod101.com about a week ago, so I’m catching up on a lot of the lessons).

anyway, just wanted to say thanks again to everyone at JapanesePod101.com for the great lessons and learning tools!! Even though I’m a graduate student currently busy working on my thesis (:???:) I am *very* much addicted to this podcast & the Learning Center (i probably listen to 10-20 podcasts a day now, and have 100’s of words in my Word Bank!) This lesson was especially entertaining. I guess it’s the interesting storylines like these that keep me hooked on learning Japanese. I mean in just a couple days after listening to the podcasts I could sense my listening comprehension had improved. In listening to this lesson in particular I was amazed at my own ability to understand Japanese spoken at a relatively fast speed! どうもありがとうございます！

They also read posts though email subscriptions too. Very nice post. 頑張って