Is Mark Davis fluent in Japanese?

You be the judge.

Do I speak Japanese? No and yes. I would describe my conversational competency at the level of a toddler who has just experienced a traumatic brain injury, such as being tackled on the blind side by legendary Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus. It aint pretty, folks. On the other hand, I have managed to have hour long conversations, and totally participate in an after hours pilgrim hangout at the guesthouse with Japanese people who speak little to no English. My level of fluency is enough to ask extremely simple questions, and make simple declarative statements. More complex sentence structures, like In the case of X, or What do prefer between X or Y, are totally beyond me. I've taken Japanese 101 four times at like five different colleges, so despite technically studying the language for several years, my fluency isn't that much higher than an experienced tourist. So how do I manage to have meaningful interactions with these people?

1. I know a lot of Japanese pop culture. I know many of the historical figures, major events, television shows, major films, comic books, and random celebrities of Japanese pop culture, and name dropping one or two is enough to get things started. Even if all I can say is, "Takeshi Kitano is my favorite Japanese actor", that`s enough to elicit a "Holy Shit, you know that guy?!" And Japanese and American pop culture is so intertwined now that all I have to do is say I saw Avengers Age of Ultron, and then they say, "DAMMIT that doesn't come out in Japan for another 2 months, man!!!!"

2. Body language goes a long way, I think. I can understand maybe 30 percent, at best, of what people are saying. I can pick out the important words and the familiar words and the bastardized English words, but everything else is just a blur. But all I have to do is smile, or laugh, or show an exasperated face of utter and total confusion and desperation that somehow I get my point across, and vice versa. So I got that going for me.

3. I've done enough crazy shit that even a simple statement is enough to start up a discussion. "I was in the Army." "I went to Hokkaido and chased a bear." "I play accordion." These are all grammatically simple statements, but they`re super bizarre, ridiculous, and fun to talk about, even using super simplistic grammar. And that's not all!!! "I briefly had smallpox in 2006." "I played America the Beautiful for a Japanese General." "Crackheads in Oakland like my music." "My Indian name is Sinking Fish." Ok that last one is fake but you get the idea.

So even though I can barely speak Japanese, I get by with a little help from my friends.