Quote:
Ellis Amdur wrote:
Guillaume -
One of the nastiest statements I used to get in Japan would be, after observing my practice, some Japanese budoka would say, "nesshin desu ne?" (which literally means, "you are really dedicated" - but depending on the person could mean anything from "you are sweaty, crude and eager," "you are crazy, obsessed with what should merely be a hobby in these modern times," "embarrassing us Japanese by caring more about this than we do," "like a big puppy that is trying to run after the big dogs with no hope whatsoever of catching up," etc.
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I see what you mean! I get that a lot in the form of being referred to as "dai-sempai" which as I understand can mean many things such as: technically proficient/powerful/brutal/making up for lack of technique with strength... the curse of being a big foreign guy in Japan I guess
More seriously, it illustrates the that Japanese language being so contextual, it really undermines the value of the interpretations that we can make from reading these sorts of interviews, and that is assuming that the person is not actually voluntarily misleading us...