Despite my lack of language skills, I have interacted with female and male Japanese humans of all ages. Everything from four year olds staring at my braces to my older neighbors asking if I live in the village. There are some differences in behavior from American humans of course, one difference being in the behavior of young boys.
In America, young boys can be crazy but by the time they are in middle or high school they tend to be more quiet. There is usually that one crazy guy in each class, but that's only one guy. In Japan, at least 50% of them are that crazy guy. The majority of my male friends are quiet and like computers so pretty much any craziness is surprising. However, I don't think I have ever seen American boys be this crazy. I asked my Japanese instructor about it and she said it is because in Japan boys are seen as entertainers.
To show you what I mean, I will tell some stories about my interactions with crazy boys.
Part of my program is visiting local schools and the first school we visited was a local middle school. My friend and I picked a second year class (so 13 and 14 year old kids) and played a game of some sort with them in their English class. Everyone seemed fairly calm aside from the one kid trying to get answers from his friends in the back of class and the kid who found a rubber band and was putting it on his head. However, come break time, the kids were running around the room. Realizing my friend speaks Japanese, a group of boys came up to us and were talking to him. They all had their arms over each other's shoulders and the one with the best English said "we're bros." One of them suddenly pointed at us and said "couple?" (my friend is a guy, you see). After realizing what he said, we both denied it. Another boy proceeded to ask the same question. A third boy proceeded to point at us individually and ask. Were they convinced? Nope. They walk past the main house on the way home from school and whenever they see me they start saying "couple" or the name of my friend. They don't even know my name. The just call me Lion boy's girlfriend. They know it annoys me so they just give me this mischievous smile and keep walking.
We have visited many schools and also visited a kindergarten one day. The kids were very excited to see us and talked nonstop. At one point a group of girls were crowded around me and saying something about my sunflower hair clip and then were staring at my braces. I had been squatting down to be more their height but I decided to stand up so my braids hung down in front of me. The girls just stared at them and found it interesting but a couple boys came along and started punching them. Not sure what the logic to that is. This has actually happened a couple more times since then. If my braids hang in front of me (like I'm leaning over or something) little boys will come punch my braids.
One weekend one of the staff from the program took some of us to the beach. I was in a car with her, my housemate, and one of her friends. Her friend didn't really speak much English so he just spoke Japanese at me. He was saying something that sounded funny so I was laughing but the lady told me not to laugh because he was saying something along the lines of "she has a hot body." When we got closer to the beach he started chanting "うみ！うみ！うみ！” which is "ocean" in Japanese. When we were at the beach him and my friend ran around with the kids there and otherwise were crazy. Him and my friend also decided to dig a hole and bury my friend in sand. He drew funny stuff over where my friend was buried in sand.
After the speech contest, somehow the director ended up having a janken (rock paper scissors) match with one of the young boys over who paid for dinner after the event. The boy lost and dramatically flung himself on the floor yelling and so did his friends. They repeated the process and he again lost so the dramatic act continued. Mid way through the dinner, we had everyone switch seats and the director of the program switched seats with me so I was sitting across from the boy who was in the janken match earlier. He called himself "crazy boy" so that's what I will be calling him here. So Crazy Boy introduced himself like you normally do, then continued to say all sorts of crazy stuff in his less than perfect English. He was saying stuff like "I like girls," "I work in car metal factory," "funny funny funny personality," and pointed at a picture of a kpop idol on his phone and said she was his girlfriend. He told the French girl he could speak French so she asked him to prove it and he said "un deux trois." He said some kinda questionable stuff and his friends laughed a lot and corrected him. After the dinner, some of us decided to go to karaoke. He called one of his friends the King of Karaoke and that kid decided to go with us but Crazy Boy was going to drive the rest of his friends home. King of Karaoke hadn't spoken much up to this point, but as his friends were leaving he yelled "fuck you bitch!" Crazy boy responded with "oh, so I'm a bitch?" Hearing kids with broken English swear at each other is hilarious, in my opinion. Later at karaoke, King of Karaoke sang passionately or headbanged to various songs. One of the staff guys was with us and he danced to a silly Japanese song so that was also pretty funny.
We went to a small festival a couple weeks ago and a drunk middle aged man walked up to us and started talking to us. He pointed at one of the boys and the girl standing next to him and asked if they were a couple. They said no and as the conversation progressed various girls interacted with the boy in question and the guy would ask if that girl and the boy were a couple. He went through all of us girls and then went back to the original girl. Him and his wife also wanted us to drink with them, but we politely declined. I'm pretty sure he knew most of us were underage, too.
So those are some of my experiences with crazy Japanese boys! It's definitely interesting how the culture is different and how that changes people's behavior. Hope you found my stories entertaining 😁.
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