Announcing the Start of 2010 Japanese Calendar Season!
We're happy to announce the start of 2010 Japanese Calendar Season! Every year J-List posts hundreds of great calendars, which are printed exclusively for the domestic Japanese market, and our customers love having access to such a huge selection of fun and interesting calendars from Japan. The first 20 or so calendars for this year have been posted, including beautiful scenes of Japan in all seasons, breathtaking tea gardens, famous dogs and cats from Japan, cute idols like Yuko Ogura, and more. Note that the bulk of our anime/idol calendars will be posted in a couple of weeks from now, but you can get started checking out the traditional new calendars now.
posted by Peter in Japan at 8:06 PM
4 Comments:
I hope you won't mind a slightly personal message. You certainly don't have to feel any obligation to answer it if you don't want to.
I was curious to know how you address your in-laws. In several anime I've seen, women often address their father-in-law as "otou-san". But I wasn't sure if that convention commonly applied to sons-in-law.
Thinking about it, four possibilities occurred to me. First, maybe you address them by name (presumably with -san). Second, perhaps you call them "otou-san" and "okaa-san". Third, maybe you call them "ojii-san" and "obaa-chan" (or -san).
Fourth, maybe there's a genuine term for such in-laws of which I'm not aware and you use that.
If you feel comfortable talking about that, care to enlighten me/us?
12:46 AM
No problem, any questions are always welcome.
I call them Otousan and Okaasan, and consider myself part of the family. Although I am a "Masuo-san" (named after the father from the popular anime Sazae-san) because I live with my wife's parents although I haven't taken their last name.
I do speak slightly politely to them and them to me. Once my daughter said, Why are you speaking politely to Baachan? (The kids never speak politely to anyone, heh.)
There are words for mother-in-law （姑 shuutome) and father-in-law (姑, shuuto), do not ask me why these both come out to be the same kanji. These words are not used that often except for clarity.
Looks like the proper kanji for Shuuto is 舅, wonder if that's a bug in Mac OS that the kanji comes up wrong.
1:57 PM
I know what you mean about the politeness. I have a friend who's been married for 20 years to a Japanese woman. They go back to Japan a couple times a year to visit her family.
He's fully fluent in Japanese, just as you are, but unlike you he doesn't use it most of the time since he and his wife live in California. So every time they go back, he spends a couple of weeks brushing up just to make sure he doesn't talk like anime, or even worse talk like his wife. And he ***always*** brushes up on his keigo, and is scrupulously careful to use polite forms with his in-laws.
He says they've indirectly hinted through his wife that they wish he'd loosen up, but I think he's afraid he'll make mistakes and be rude inadvertantly. And even with a gaijin-pass, he'd rather not experience that.
12:14 PM
Yes, although you can be loose and polite at the same time. Of course just using "masu" verbs is as polite as you need to be, I don't use real keigo (meshiagaru, etc.).
I hate it when I'm in the U.S. for 1-2 months, my Japanese really gets wonky and I have to force it back into shape. I wonder what would happen if I left Japan for several years.
1:58 PM
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