Hi,
one of the things I am very interested in is how the world we are living in is constantly changing due to globalization, more specifically, how the different cultures are intermingling and mixing.
Something “Western" is of course most likely being associated and represented in dramas/movies in English, as it is the Lingua Franca, and America has a huge influence in Asia (e.g. Japan and South Korea). That’s why it’s so much more interesting for me to spot references to other countries and cultures, here in this thread Germany.
I just stumbled upon the "japanized" foreign word "Daneihon" derived from the German word "die Ernährung" in episode 49 of the asadora Manpuku . It was a pretty interesting scene from minute 2 onwards, as it explained the stages of assimilation to the Japanese language!
I'm looking forward to your sightings!
In A Forest of Wool and Steel a concert piano gets tuned. In the dialogue the Japanese tuner speaks better German than the supposedly German pianist, though
When I was watching New Year Blues I was blown away with how excellent one of the actors' German was - then I looked him up and found out he was born and raised in Köln!️?
The MC of Snowdrop was raised in Germany according to the summary.
The 2018 film Unfinished (also known as Departure and a few other names) was set and filmed in Berlin and based on a true story.
https://mydramalist.com/23848-in-the-line-of-fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfinished_(film)
In ep 5 of Jimi ni Sugoi! Koetsu Garu Kono Etsuko a famous stylist going by the name Fräulein Tokiko has a guest role. Although this moniker is a German (nowadays outdated… long story) form of adress, all her international context of where she is coming from revolves around Italy, as do the other characters' actions in this episode’s plot. Maybe that’s just where she’s currently living (she speaks Italian), or maybe that's mixing up Europe's nationalities and cultures on the filmmakers side…
In King2Hearts, first ep, the family of the king watch the fall of the Berlin Wall at TV. Are you interested in this kind of references as well? There were quite a few KDramas with the notion that Koreans feel close to Germany because their country is divided in a similar way.
And of course, the Japanese word for part time job is the same word in Korea, "Arbeit".
In Ep. 3 of Family: The Unbreakable Bond (2023) the actor Sang Hyuk (ML) is talking on the phone in German. I was impressed by the length of his text, though with his pronunciation not so much, to be honest - it was only intelligible with subtitles. In ep 4 the ML is even teaching his little primary school aged daughter to say "Guten Abend"
https://mydramalist.com/720931-sacred-divorce
The ML has studied music in Germany, there are several German references.
the 2FL is supposedly able to speak 5 languages. Her german sounds native, apart from the grammar in the situation where she should either have used first person plural or third person plural (instead of 2nd person singular "Entschuldige mich, bitte." as she was standing up and leaving ) because she was speaking in a business setting with at least two people at the table. well ok, just one foreigner could have been German (finally a foreign actor cast in a role speaking his mother tongue) , though it then would be inconsiderate to speak in a language not everyone understands