I read an article recently somewhere that explained that most Japanese gamers actually prefer games in English language rather than in Japanese. Not sure for the reason behind this but it does go some way to explain why even Japanese language games often have English menu systems.
[Reply]

Maybe they consider English to be a 'cool' language. If you listen to Japanese media, such as films, anime, games and music, you'll very often find English terms interspersed in the dialogue, even though the Japanese language undoubtedly has equivalent words for them.

One particular instance of this is in the (Japanese) dialogue of Metal Gear Solid 2, where Solid Snake is happily speaking Japanese, then suddenly inserts the word 'scoutu knifu' (= scout knife) in there. Hilarious.
[Reply]

I actually noticed something even stranger in Indian films that I didn't quite get and wonder if any of you know the answer. I left a channel on a while back and a Bollywood film started and it was very odd. They were speaking the first sentence of each conversation in English and the continuing the rest in their native tongue. It was very confusing and it left me wondering why.
[Reply]

The other thing that the Japanese to find to be a status symbol is anything with Elnglish writing. (Just spelt better than what I does!!!)

I used to play the Magic: The Gathering card game, and found that the English versions of the cards sell huge amounts in Japan because it is stylish to have decks constructed entirly with the English versions.

The same goes with their car modifications, they may have Japanese artwork, but they love to get all the English decals.

In some ways it mirrors our fascination with 'kanji' (Japanese writing) and the quantity of people who will get tattoos of 'kanji'.

Mind you, as I am trying to learn Japanese at the moment, maybe all of this is just based on my own viewpoint... (if that is the case then ignore this )
[Reply]

That actually makes sense. We are fascinated with the unusual Kanji letter forms and they with the latin script based English letter forms. The two are very different to the native letter forms of each others country so it is just the same for each country.
[Reply]

Actually, Japanese language doesn't have a word for knife, and so to describe the type of knife, the entire object is described in Katakana as:

スカウト ナイフ which is literally scout knife.

I am currently doing Japanese, have been doing it all year. If you need any help, or anything I will help Also, for writing in Japanese, download this.
This is what I use to write in Japanese. This can be then placed in word if you cannot directly insert it in other sites or such.
[Reply]

I have 'acquired' the Rosetta Stone software... I just fell onto my HDD one day... So I am slowly going through that, when I get the time... After Japanese... Russian!!!
[Reply]

Really? Russian? My gf does russian! Lol how strange
[Reply]