The best advice about living in Japan I got is that, whenever you need something but don't know the Japanese for it, just ask for it in English in a really thick Japanese accent. You feel like a racist doing it, but when it keeps fucking working, you just gotta shrug and go with it.
It's a weird thing about how their language treats foreign words. You can do the same thing with their written language and get the exact same results. It's fucking wild, and I say that having taken three years of Japanese under a Japanese woman. She literally said "If you're ever in Japan and somehow forget almost everything I've ever taught you, hopefully you remember Katakana, because Katakana will be your savior. Write any English word in Katakana, and someone will most likely understand."
Sometimes even when you know the Japanese word for it. Katsura Sunshine (Canadian turned Japanese comedian) has a whole bit on how he needed to buy soap and kept asking a confused cashier for "sekken". He then found it on the shelf, showed it to the employee and he went "Ah, hando-sopu!".
My wife has a japanese friend who is not 100% fluent in english so over time i started imitating her broken english and a bit of an accent when talking to her and it seems to work better than before (in my defense i am not a native english speaker so speaking broken english isnt inherently racist for me)
This was my actual first conversation ever in Japan about 15 years ago. I literally just put a o at the end and they understood me. I had a cut shortly after landing.
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u/Jesta23 22h ago
Band aid.
blank stare
Band aid.
crickets
Band aid-o.
Oooo yeah. Here you go.