Nov 14

A Book About JETs in Japanese?

Article/Journalism, Books, Humor, Translating/Interpreting, Writers Comments Off on A Book About JETs in Japanese?

Thanks to Ken Haraguchi, a NY-based reporter for Japanese weekly newspaper Frontline, I recently learned that there’s actually a book called どうしてYesも言えないの-アメリカ人が見た日本の学校現場 (Why Can’t You Say “Yes”?) in Japanese written by Yoshio Hotta, a Japanese journalist who interviewed a number of JET alumni in the Washington, DC area.  The title dervies from one of the stories in the book about a JET’s frustration with Japanese people’s tendency to keep things vague, resulting in awkwardness for the gaijin.