When I first heard about this series, I remembered this old British tv series called 'Mind your Language' about a class of foreign students trying to learn English. I remembered the Pakistani always fighting the Sikh and the Chinese girl always quoting from Chairman Mao. It was full of racial stereotypes but that was what made it extremely funny. You can find the episodes on youtube and its bloody hilarious.
Oh course, I didn't really notice that the name of series roughly translates to Japanese that the Japanese do not know. Basically its about things in the Japanese language that probably most Japanese do not realise. The students speak pretty good Japanese and ask the teacher Haruko played by Naka Riisa all sorts of difficult questions that she has to look up.Most of the time its difficult stuff and so my hope of the show teaching me 'practical' Japanese was dashed.
Besides talking about different facets of the Japanese language, the show concentrates on each student per episode and Haruko's attempts to help them solve their problems in Japan. It is interesting to see the show deal with the status of foreigners in Japan and the tight laws and rules that they have to abide by there. They have to be careful as someone making a complaint can cause a student to be deported.
Humour wise, its not as funny as I had hoped it would be. The Japanese stuff is hit and miss for me. I think people with stronger grasp of the language would probably enjoy it more. I don't mind the bad acting because its campy and its not easy to find decent foreign actors. Its still better acting than some people who can continue to star in jdoramas.
Overall, I still enjoyed watching it because its different. Its fun to see Harada Natsuki play the Ojousan Katori who is always pining for Shibuya after seeing her cold doctor in Othros no Inu. The constant fighting between Haruko and the head teacher is funny. Nihonjin no shiranai nihongo is definitely a watchable series but your mileage your vary depending on how good your Japanese is in order to grasp the difficult questions, most of which just went over my head..
No comments:
Post a Comment