There are facts from that series that I can’t help but doubt the veracity of, but I’m glad that the Puzo/Sinatra restaurant confrontation (which I knew of prior to the series and seems to be indisputably true) made it in.
Glad you’re enjoying.
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Mr and Mrs Smith e3
I actually enjoyed it a fair bit more than 1/2.
The missions are still very weak. The banter was better. The leap into them acting like an old married couple is too sudden.
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I’m surprised it’s working so well. It’s a fascinating story on the surface, but it would be so easy to get it wrong. I’m really loving everyone who does such an affected voice change for their character.
I’ve watched up to episode 6 now. I think I liked episode 5 the best. Episode 4 was pretty dumb and I didn’t like episode 6 at all. There’s some time skips between episodes but it’s not all that clear how much time which makes it feel like they are speed running a relationship.
I really want to like this show but it’s just not that good or at least it’s not for me but I’ll probably watch till the end of the season because now I’m commited to it. 
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Tokyo Vice is back. Time to restrain myself from throwing things at the TV every time Jake appears on the screen (the character and the real person). Otherwise, it’s quite entertaining.
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Loved tokyo vice s1. Every time i see the white guy main character i imagine that it’s you. Sorry
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Unlike the main character, I’m far less handsome, and if it were me, I’d actually be speaking Japanese to the Japanese people around me in the situations where that would obviously be the case.
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How taken aback are Japanese people when a random gaijin speaks fluent Japanese? Is it pretty common or are they surprised?
Spoken Japanese isn’t really any more difficult than any other language (the written language is another story though). That said, Japanese have long tended to believe that Japanese is impossible for anyone but themselves. So much so, that if you managed to just put a couple bumbling sentences together, the average Japanese would praise your ability to the moon. And up to 2-3 decades ago, being a fluent foreign speaker was something of a rarity.
But in the past 20 years or so, there has been a new wave of a zillion foreigners who have studied the language from when they were young through anime, YouTube and the like, and so it’s not really such a rare thing any more.
And interestingly, when praised by a Japanese for speaking excellent Japanese, foreign speakers now tend to view this as an (unintended) insult, as it suggests that one’s Japanese still isn’t that high if a Japanese would bother complementing it.
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That middle paragraph was what I would have guessed.
On the topic of languages in that part of the world, my personal observation is that I’ve encountered a good number of non-Japanese who speak Japanese well, and a good number of non-Chinese who speak Chinese well, but extremely few non-Koreans who speak Korean well. I’d guess we’re not that far from that no longer being the case.
Have never been to South Korea other than the airport so don’t have any firsthand experience there, but in the Netflix Korean drama Itaewon Class (which was quite entertaining btw), there was a black guy who appeared to speak highly fluent Korean, so there’s at least one (and I’m sure many others).
Oh Hail yeah
Yeah, with the influence of films and shows coming out of Korea and how popular they’ve been (Squid Game, Parasite, Past Lives) I can see this changing over the next decade.
On our honeymoon to Japan, we learned how to properly say “Gochuso Samadeshta” (closest phonetics to the English pronounciation) and the chefs and they seemed to appreciate it. That or they were humoring the white people.
Both my kids went through dual-language immersion in Japanese in grade school. The people at our favorite sushi places would completely freak out hearing them speak in Japanese. Also, they learned from native Japanese speakers so I am told they had no accent or something. Of course both immediately abandoned it in middle school, so.
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I see both sides of this (but definitely lean toward accepting Wil Wheaton’s reaction as honest, heartfelt, and legitimate; and therefore worthy of support), and there are some bad takes all around, but Joyce Carol Oates with the worst
Famed author Joyce Carol Oates weighed on the issue after this story was published, commenting, “We can imagine how this highly sensitive individual reacts to assaults on actual persons as in war. Assume he can barely draw breath reacting to the war in Gaza in proportion to the comic assault on an inanimate puppet. Such empathy!”
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Somebody had to do it
I’d guess K-Pop will be a much bigger factor. I’ve learned a couple phrases just b/c I like listening to Blackpink.
I’ll be visiting Seoul for a week in a couple months and was pleasantly surprised that their alphabet is actually quite easy and can be learned in a few hours. Speaking is a whole different ballgame though. I doubt I’ll learn much beyond the basics for such a short visit.
Very cool. I’m so jealous of all the hafu (half-Japanese) and a few gaijin who grew up in Japan who are 100% native speakers. I’m better than most, but having begun learning at 24, I’ll never reach full native level no matter how hard I try.
I’m sure they appreciated it. Saying that at the end of a meal, along with “itadakimasu” at the beginning of a meal, is a must in Japan, so you came off as extremely well-mannered by doing so.
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