CHICAGO – I finally got around to watching “Queer Eye: We’re in Japan!” The four episodes took me longer to watch than most shows because I found myself rewinding to 書き写す (kaki-utsusu, transcribe) the Japanese language in the show.
Netflix didn’t provide Japanese subtitles (Japanese subtitles over Japanese audio is a great study method), so transcription was a helpful technique to shake the rust off my listening skills and ensure I was catching every という (to iu, a connecting phrase loosely equivalent to “such a”), など (nado, et cetera) and すごく (sugoku, incredibly) that helped connect or modify phrases. The language used by participants was also a fascinating crash course in talking to others clearly and openly about who you are as a person, which isn’t always easy to do in any language, let alone a second one.
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