A Nagoya based foreign resident regularly approaches Japanese people with the cynical intention of improving his Japanese rather than forming meaningful friendships, he has admitted today.
"I have always been interested in Japanese culture," said Simon Poulter, an Englishman working as a junior high school ALT. "I studied a little bit of Japanese at high school, but never to a high level. So, as I want to improve, I take every opportunity to speak to as many people as I can under the guise of friendship. It's much better than actually paying for lessons at a language school."
Poulter says that his usual tactic involves him approaching a group of Japanese in an izakaya when under the emboldening influence of alcohol and asking the first person who makes eye contact with him 'Where in Japan are you from?', often following that question up with 'How old are you?' and 'How long have you been in Nagoya?' He's been known to exclaim "Wow, your Japanese is so good!" when locals speak their native language.
If initial contact is successful, he hangs around with them for as long as possible, ignoring the definite cold shoulders he receives before browbeating the more acquiescent members into exchanging Facebook details with him. He's perfected his technique after observing local tactics for years.
"Of course, I have no intention of keeping any contact with them," Poulter smirked, "but I get a free conversation out of it, and it looks cool on my Facebook page to have more Japanese friends. I've simply adopted methods that seem to work so well here."
While Poulter considers his actions to be little more than harmless fun, the Japanese he has accosted in the past have found it an annoyance.
"I was just having a quiet dinner with my friend at a bar, and Simon started butting in to our conversation with his inane questions in broken Japanese," said Kenta Tanaka, a contact on Poulter's Facebook list. "I tried to politely rebuff him, but he was both drunk and persistent. It happens all of the time, and he wasn't rude or anything, but just once I'd like to enjoy dinner with a mate without being accosted in this way."
But not all of Poulter's 'friends' are as forgiving.
"As a full-time Japanese teacher, it drives me mad when foreigners just use me for free lessons, and it happens constantly," said Gozo Amano. "If you want to take up my time, you should be ready to pay for it."
Poulter currently has 436 Japanese friends on social media. He has never followed up contact with any of them, though he keeps a detailed spreadsheet categorizing them by usefulness, dialect region, and specialized vocabulary they might teach him.
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