Japanese about americans

What do Japanese people think about Americans?

We all know that Japanese culture it is very different from Americans’ culture, but what we might not know is how they perceive that difference.

First of all, let is start with their notable different physical appearance. Japanese people believe that Americans tend to use loose clothes, they use the same clothes in their houses as they do in the street, they are tall people, they eyes are like Disney’ characters and that they may be pretty or fat because they eat a lot of junk food.

About their personalities Japanese people think Americans are not shy as Japanese people, they are loud, cheerful, positive, confident about themselves, and that they respect individualism. A funny fact about this is that some of them think that you can recognize an American because they smell like “freedom”.

Obviously with all of this some good and bad stereotypes are created about Americans in the Japanese people’ mind, for example, they believe that Americans use too many guns in their civil life, their food portion sizes are too big, there are a lot of people with overweight, they curse a lot (especially the F-word), that they cheat and some of them are crazy. On the other hand they believe Americans are very open and they accept people from other countries because there is a lot of immigration in their country so they think they are welcoming and accepting.

In addition they believe that Americans that live in Japan specifically are very kind, friendly, cheerful, positive and sociable and that they are easy to talk to. Japanese people do not really have any bad concept about the Americans that live in Japan.

Finally about their language, they think it is pretty hard to learn because they have a lot of sounds that do not exist in their mother tongue. When they compared it with British English they thought that British English it is much more formal, harder to understand, crisper, refined, and nice to listen than American English, they also find that there are certain words that are only use in one country and that they are pronounce different. They think that British English is like a Kansai accent, while American English is like standard Japanese. And last but not least they say that British people often make American English sound idiotic.

I personally believe that Japanese have been exposed to American culture since war time and that they have influenced their culture too, but they have not lost their own culture; this may be why they teach American English as their second language even if they are not that good at it. As my final thought I believe that thanks to media the whole world have an stereotype about an American, but Japanese people have kept their own modern culture without letting globalization (mostly from the U.S) take control of their daily life.

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