I’ve spent the past couple of summers living in my grandfather’s house on Cape Cod after he died, fixing it up to eventually be sold and just generally living there so it looked occupied and so there would be someone there to deal with sudden sewage backup catastrophes and that sort of thing. I used to walk into town some days and wander through the little shops. It was a pretty touristy town in the summers.
People would invariably ask me if I worked there, no matter what store I was in. I could never figure out why. I was wearing paint-stained jeans, battered sneakers, and faded t-shirts and was at least 5 years older than the kids who usually worked in the touristy stores. I don’t remember any peculiar questions, just the fact that people consistently assumed that someone dressed as sloppily as I was was working there was bizarre enough for me.
Some places it’s both the accent and the words. And I’m talking completely incomprehensible. I’m pretty sure there’s an Okinawa-ben (not sure if that’s the name or if there are multiple ones down there) that falls into this category, and also Tsugaru-ben where I live. People in the same ken that aren’t from this side can’t understand Tsugaru-ben at all. The ai sound tends to become e, as in itai becoming ude, and there are many many words that are completely different. Onaji, for instance, is futonzu. There are lots of other accent differences as well, but I’m not all that familiar with it.
I struggle with basic Japanese, but I love trying to learn the local ben as well.
