This is an interesting segment I discovered, that airs on the Nippon TV early morning show, “Zoom In!! Saturday “/「ズームイン!!サタデー」. It has the show cast questioning various foreigners in Japan, who are fluent with the language, about their favorite word, food, place or culture shocks experienced in Japan.

Each short interview begins with the phrase – 「どちらの国くにの方かたですか？」followed by a series of funny revelations by the gaijins. This is an enjoyable language practice for learners because of the Japanese level of the foreigners as well as colorful Japanese subtitles for them, which works out as a Kanji learning exercise as well when you don’t understand something by speech alone. Just open up Akebi/Google Translate app on your phone and draw the Kanji you can’t recognize, and there you learnt something new!

The videos often get pulled down from YouTube due to copyright infringement and a few good ones that I’ve watched have gone down as well; so comment below if any of the linked ones are unavailable and I’ll try to upload them elsewhere. The first one has English subtitles, the rest of them don’t, and are meant for your own practice exercise. Please also share if you find more videos from the same series.  Continue reading →