My intro
 

I've lurked around for more than a little bit, even posted a couple of times, and I figure I should probably give a formal intro now. My name is nikuman. I am a corporate lawyer/CB spammer during the day (and much of the night). I work in NYC, live in NJ, and should be making a move to Houston within the year. I'm a father of three/two, depending on how you count. I'm an avid outdoorsy type, more of an environmentalist than you'd think, but far less of a "liberal" (whatever that means) than that sounds.

Yoroshiku.

Irashai...irashai..irashaimase!

Hey, I wouldn't have encouraged you to stop lurking and start posting if I had known you were another attorney. Well, at least you aren't a Ute fan.

Welcome.

Yes, what he said. We need more Japanese-speaking Cougar Fans here.

Welcome.

boku wa enpitsu desu.

You are a pencil or this is your pencil?

That's very good, Arch.

Foreigners (gaijins) are quite rare in Japan. When kids see missionaries they like to yell out something in English just to try it out. And they usually yell out the first thing they learn in their english class. Which is typically:

"This is a pencil."

or

"This is a pen."

or

"This is a red pen."

So everywhere you go, you hear kids shouting "This is a red pen! This is a red pen!". It's strange, but quite funny at the same time.

Another common thing you hear is "Buta kao!" which is literally "Pig face!" (referring to our big noses and round eyes).

Very funny, Brian.

Now, I've forgotten all but the most basic Japanese, but I though Kore wa enpitsu desu was this is a pencil.

And I would have to insert something like anata no to make it mine. So boku throws me for a loop, but then again, I don't really know Japanese other than to irritate Japanese.

In the Philippines they yell "Hey Joe, give me chocolate" which I'm pretty sure is a holdover from the WWII GIs. The full "Hey Joe, give me chocolate" is often shortened to just "Hey Joe" which you hear about 100 times a day. I never minded "Hey Joe" but I liked having a little fun with it so I would often respond "Hey Pedro". You could also tell who the smarter kids were because the ones that got the joke would laugh and the ones that didn't would sit there with a dumb look on their face thinking "My name isn't Pedro" or, better yet, "How did he know my name is Pedro?"

nihongo jozu, desu ne.

Brian, you are one funny boku.

Oh yeah - welcome Nikuman :)

Well in Germany, they yell, "Hey Fuck You Yankee, Go home, Frank Zappa!"

Technically speaking, you could say "boku wa enpitsu desu" in response to a question as to whether or not you'd like a pen or a pencil. The particle "wa" indicates an "as for" type of feeling (i.e., "as for me, I'd like a pencil" is a perfectly appropriate translation depending on your context). But don't get me started here. I know FAR too much about this kind of stuff and am actually one of the few people I know who not only knows when to use wa versus ga but actually knows why.

I like this stuff so remind a simpleton when to distinguish between wa and ga, the emphatic subject as I understand it.

Domo Arigato, Mr. Nikuman-o

(Sorry. I took Latin. It's all I got.)

Well, you've opened a can of worms there....

With the disclaimer that I'm quite rusty on the book-learnin' behind this, there's about 10 or so uses of wa/ga that are discrete. Ga is used as an object marker instead of wo with certain verbs/descriptive verbs (notably dekiru) (zo wa hana ga nagai, lit. "as for the elephant, [his] nose is long" or, as I would translate it, "elephants have long noses"). Ga is also used when indicating that the stated subject is exclusively doing X (boku ga iku, indicating that only I will go). Ga is also used as a marker for the affected party in a passive/affective setting (boku ga haha ni shinareta). In addition, ga should replace wa in all subordinate clauses.

Wa, on the other hand, can usually be consider a particle that designates an "as for X" sort of idea (see the elephant sentence above). It is also used to emphasize the noun which it follows in order to contrast it to other nouns not used (i.e., boku wa iku can be translated as "I will go [but I make no claim as to you]". Which makes sense in the "as for X" explaination.

There are a few more rules that I've forgotten but still (presumably) use in speech. I'll have to consult my old college notes to remember them all.

i just learned enough japanese to get by. i have no idea when to use wa and ga. i thought i heard that wa was when the subject was living, ga otherwise, but that was just some other dorky gaijin.

watakushi no nekko wa/ga jitensha desu.

i made up a joke when i was there:

boku no ha wa nan sai desu ka? (How old are my teeth)
ni-ju sai (twenty)
Questioned looks from the natives.
hatachi [rim shot]

tachi is plural, so ha-tachi, plural teeth.
hatachi also means twenty. completely different kanji.
most of the younger kids at church got it, but the grownups would try and correct me. No, it's a different kanji, then they'd start writting it down to show me.

Welcome, Nikuman. Your username is making me hungry.

Arch, my parents called my brother "boku" as a nickname growing up, you only use it if you're a boy.

aye, yi, yi.
when i heard a wa/ga, i knew what they were saying.
if i messed it up, they knew what i meant.
good enough for me.
were you a japanese major?

As I am self-taught, any helpers I can get I appreciate.

There's a set of verbs for animate/inanimate objects (not really that simple), so that's probably where the dorky gaijin (is there any other kind?) got it from.

Yes, long ago. I particularly got into kanji and classical japanese, although, like everything, i'm a bit rusty. I would be a Japanese professor now if not for the fact that the pay sucks.

other fun:
when eating:

kuimasu
or kuimasho, this drove the locals crazy if you had one in your apt.

o itadku ni natte orimasu (i think.... i honorificaly, humbly partake)

or serve food, tell your comp: itadake

LOL. You're killing me.

or it could have an MTC teacher who saw your little essay above, and just said, oh screw it. eats and poos: wa doesn't eat or poo: ga

i think even more honorrific is:

o itadku ni natte oraremasu.

slang in kyushuu was to end things with batten ga.

so:
itaku batten ga.

domo arrigato gozaimasu batten ga.

boku wa gozaru

Domo Arrigato Roboto is all the japanese i know.

there's all kinds of japanese you just didn't think you knew:

Nice shooting, although pronounced naissu shootingu
Eat Flan
Please play the piano.

LOL.

MTC Japanese is the most grammatically incorrect form around. That's what happens when you have gaijin who learned from gaijin teaching gaijin. And that's to say nothing of the natives who can't explain why they say what they say.

When I taught there, I was an active iconoclast.

From King of the Hill:

"Are you Chinease or Japanease?"

"I'm Laotion"

"The Ocean?"

"No you idiot, I'm from Laos, a small country in Asia"

"Right...so are you Chinease or Japanease?"

I love Japlish. I cook a lot of Asian food which my wife usually barely tolerates. I was making something that wasn't going well, and she asked what is was called. I said "totaru kurappu" with Japanese pronounciation and up and down inflection. It took her a while but she laughed.

I thought we met at the LV Bowl -- aren't you white?

Could be - I was there at the CB BBQ, and I'm as white and nerdy as they come.

Ain't that the truth.