I lived in Japan as a child and became very acculturated. I know that when I encountered other Americans, I had one of two responses. If the people in question knew how to act (read: been living in Japan for a while and had learned some manners) I enjoyed their company very much and wanted to talk for hours. However if they were newer visitors (i.e. tourists) I would run and hide so as not to be associated with them. I remember hiding behind some rocks in a garden at a temple when scary American tourists came walking down the path. They took big huge sideways steps like they were bowlegged, chewed gum with their mouths open and talked loudly like they were using a megaphone. If anybody had seen me near then and thought we were together, I would have just died from embarassment.
When my sister and I heard Americans trying to speak Japanese, we would make fun of their accents: "Wattarshi wuh ammurrikuh-jean desuuw" (watashi wa america-jin desu). Americans trying to speak Japanese sounded like they were trying to talk around a big rice ball in their mouth, only backwards. I can't say much about their English of course, being American myself, but I did notice that their use of the pronounced "a" sound as in "cat" and drawn-out vowels did not seem to mix well with the hard consonants. Of course that could have just had more to do with where they were from.
|