Do Japanese have a problem with us?

[Gennadi]

I say we challenge the japanese players to a taco eating contest. First person that eats 20 pounds of tacos are declared the winner. Then they will be required to use the auto translate function from now on.

[Alhanelem]

It's not so much that they don't like you, but given it's only spoken in their country, the Japanese are quite protective of their language. If you can show them you can understand them (which is difficult without using 3rd party tools) they become a lot more open to you.

There are some who do not like foreigners, especially people who were playing the game before it was released in other regions (because Square Enix did not ever announce its intention to do so ahead of time.) But for the most part, it's because Japanese are a private people and they keep to themselves a bit more than we do.

[bungiefan]

As to the other issues, possible JP players don't have an Arabic keyboard, too. (Yes, our Alphabet letters are called Arabic). I certainly don't have a Kanji one and I'm hoping to study Japanese when I have a little extra money for classes

It's Roman letters, and standard Japanese keyboards are QWERTY with a few extra buttons, and extra paint on the keys to indicate Japanese input when using direct kana input. They normally use Roman letter input, which converts to kana on the fly as they type phonetically what they are saying.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...e_Keyboard.gif



This is a Japanese keyboard, standard with any computer there. They can easily type our letters. In fact, they must to type macros because they have to use the same /commands as we do. /tell /ls /ja /ws and the like.

Auto-translate indicates that you can't input Japanese, and thus they can't comunicate in detail for anything auto-translate can't handle. Thus they just ignore you if they feel their English isn't good enough, since you won't be able to respond in Japanese, and likely can't read it to understand more detailed questions. It was easier before they added the parentheses around the phrases to indicate you were using them.

[Avina]

It's not so much that they don't like you, but given it's only spoken in their country, the Japanese are quite protective of their language. If you can show them you can understand them (which is difficult without using 3rd party tools) they become a lot more open to you.

This is really what it gets down to.

It's sort of inherently awkward to talk to someone who doesn't speak the same language as you. Having lived there and speaking the language you find that they are kinda similar in real life as in the game... they sorta will brush past you and not reach out *unless* you reach out to them and speak Japanese. Then its like everything changes, then they want to sit down with you, and get to know you, because, as Alhanelem said, their language is very important to them and they are honored that you've taken the time to actually learn about them.

And yeah, they use standardized QWERTY keyboards, I believe most type things out in Romanji using the Microsoft IME.

[Alhanelem]

No, there are dedicated japanese keyboards- but they can still be made to type Roman characters.

[Starcade]

Yes, they do have a problem with us.

And they well should.

[Zatias]

I don't find it nice that it's expected of us to learn Japanese to be accepted by their community, as mentioned by a few posters, but there are a few really good points here.

I guess I just have to respect how they feel, but I will keep trying to communicate as best I can. I know there are a lot of nice JPs, and a lot more that attempt to speak English so we understand better. I did notice this "cold shoulder" thing got worse when the first huge server merge occurred, and a lot of them moved to different servers within the first week; maybe it's just Asura. Highly populated server = a higher chance to run into assholes. And no, the "auto-trans update" wasn't an excuse to bring up poor PS2 and its limitations XP So that's on whoever mentioned it

[Zatias]

Yes, they do have a problem with us.

And they well should.

Not even an explanation? Oh well, not like I ever cared, but you're not helping your case. Please seek mental help

[JiltedValkyrie]

Most Japanese keyboards are romanized. But I hear the ones that aren't are easier to type on if you can get used to it.

[Starcade]

I don't find it nice that it's expected of us to learn Japanese to be accepted by their community, as mentioned by a few posters, but there are a few really good points here.

I don't see it that way.

I think the Japanese are (and with cause!) greatly _insulted_ that they have to share the game with the "gaijin", whom I can be pretty clear that they do not respect -- at least in a game-cultural sense.

The barriers set up are just an excuse not to have to come out and clearly say it.