Help communicating with Japanese exchange student!!!

[Sign Of The Fish Burger]

Hi there,

We have an exchange student living with us from Japan, and I was wondering if any of you could give me some advice on how to best communicate with her?

Also any suggestions for food ideas. She is shy and I want her to feel as comfortable as possible. She has been to America once before but her english is still not very good.

She nods and smiles a lot- which makes me believe she has no idea what I'm talking about

 

[karman]

i wish you found someone here.

 

[KennyVaughan]

Hi there,

We have an exchange student living with us from Japan, and I was wondering if any of you could give me some advice on how to best communicate with her?

Also any suggestions for food ideas. She is shy and I want her to feel as comfortable as possible. She has been to America once before but her english is still not very good.

She nods and smiles a lot- which makes me believe she has no idea what I'm talking about

just be very kind and always act like a good host wherever you are with her, the cultural barrier is not too strong from my experience.

 

[saki]

Hi, I'm Japanese and living in Australia... hmm, communication must be hard.. hmm, when I used to live up north of Australia with a Korean girl, she couldn't speak English at all, but we managed to communicate by using Korean/Japanese and using dictionary to communicate a lot! Using dictionary and communicating is a good way. What we did was, my Korean friend had electronic dictionary so I just typed English words and she would translate that into Korean and we communicate like that and I taught her English as well.

I hope that would help!

Hmm, look through cooking book with her and cook some food with her?

 

[haya]

You posted this a long while ago, but I just read it today.. I'm living in Japan - been here for the past year. As for food ideas: RICE. Rice and fish. hehehehe... just kidding (kinda).

I hope all's well with you and your exchange student! God bless.

 

[Musician4Jesus]

Saki my name is Amy. I live in the U.S. I'm learning Japanese. Granted the amount of Japanese I know isn't that impressive, because I'm still learning. However I have been looking for somebody who is Japanese to attempt conversational Japanese with (as in writing). I could also really use help with learning some of the different parts of the language. If you're interested, please send
me a private message.

 

[fuzzyjesusfreak]

I can give you some words to say to her.

konnichiwa, ogenki desu ka?
(koe nee chee wah, oh gen kee de soo kah?)

Which means "Hello, how are you?"

Then she will say:

genki desu, arigatou. ogenki desu ka?

you say:

hai, genki desu yo, shikkocho.

And then if she starts talking in Japanese say:

gomennasai, watashi wa wakarimasen, eigo ga wakarimasu ka?
(goe men nah sah ee, wah tah she wah wah kah ree mah sen, e ee goe gah wah kah ree mahs kah?)
Which means "Sorry, I dont understand, do you understand English?"

Then if she says yes, then go with it.

 

[Sign Of The Fish Burger]

Well considering it was a year ago, she's come and gone now

 

[fuzzyjesusfreak]

Oh wow, thats a long time ago, lol. xD

Just think of it as a free Japanese lesson courtsy of Kudo.

 

[Suro382]

Not many free things lately!
This was a great free thing!

 

[XSpiritualX]

I had a guest student from japan living with my family for a year.
First thing we had to accept was, that you have to ask if he wants something (like food) about three times until he says yes even if he wants it! The first two times he always denied because it is some kind of protocol there. This was a real problem because Im german and germans are very direct people so we didn't get this until he had to tell us himself.^^ later he also started to drink lots and lots of wine and astonishingly he could drink alot even tough he was 16 (that's the legal drinking age for teens in germany) and never drank before.