I want to crack a joke now but it would be quite mean to both Americans and Futaba ^^
As an American, I am fine with this. The Futaba thing is still an issue, though.
We were talking about plain white rice, but a bowl of sushi meshi sounds pretty nice right now!
Ultimately, I think the whole point of Ayane offering bowls of plain white rice as a first course was part of showing that her culinary skills leave a lot to be desired. It wasn't supposed to be considered normal.
In that case specifically, I have no doubt it was to show a lack of skill. This isn't the first time a plain bowl of white rice has been used in media for that purpose as anime tends to exaggerate cultural aspects of Japan and has been known to do this as a way to show off a character that has little to no domestic capabilities, especially female love interests and friends of the main character as they tend to be the ones chosen as the main bearer of such skills. So when one lacks those skills, the anime tends to make a running gag out of it for at least one episode if not multiple or even throughout the entire series.
I don't know why, probably because Ayane is portrayed as a rich girl who doesn't normally have to lift a finger to make food because Geoffrey is there, but her lack of skill actually makes some sense. It's not like she has ever mentioned going out of her way to make herself something. She goes to the scullery to talk to Geoffrey sometimes, but that is the extent we know of that she consciously goes somewhere or does something she doesn't have to within the confines of her own home.
Looking at Molly talking about teaching herself Japanese because of her hobby reminds me of something I heard from one of my Otaku friends. She said that learning Japanese from anime (especially shonin?) meant that when speaking Japanese with a person from Japan, she was still at a great disadvantage. She did not learn all the nuances of Japanese, especially those associated with the forms expected of women. It would help explain some of Molly's acceptance problems if she only talks like an anime character all the time.
She's correct, the Japanese we hear in the raw audio of anime and the Japanese spoken in real life are not the same thing. A lot of it is exaggerated in anime, as is almost everything, and their dialogue doesn't take into account slang used today or the many different ways to word things, anime focuses on just one or two ways and you won't hear much slang unless it is being used by a character that is of a stereotypical type that speaks in slang terms. Japanese slang is A LOT more common than just select stereotypical groups, I learned this much from an actual Japanese YouTuber who is an English bilingual speaker of both languages and a very good one at that.
As far as the forms of words more often spoken by women, Watashi for I for example, that is somewhat true, but it is WAY exaggerated to the point where only the most effeminate males in anime will speak it, this is actually more common among males than anime lets on, especially under certain contexts. Watashi IS the feminine conjugation of the word for I, but it is not exclusive to females. It all depends on context, especially the amount of respect warranted in a certain context.
Anime japanse and real japanese are pretty different. They are essentially the same language sure, so you'd understand and probably be understood but you'd be frowned upon to say the least. And about those "forms expected of women", yeah there are several of those such as not being able to use imperative forms, not being able to use certain stuff in casual speech and that. Pretty misogynist, but I believe it's changing for the better over the past decades.
You would understand from a vocabulary standpoint as those are identical unless the anime is using terms that have died out. However, yeah, if you use anime Japanese, prepare to get some odd looks or possibly get laughed at behind your back depending on the person who hears you. As for the forms associated with women specifically, it's definitely been changing as you hear it more often from males than in the past. That YouTuber I mentioned does occasional on the streets interviews in Japanese and the occasional male Watashi comes out, though not as often as Boku. I do still have yet to hear Ore used at all outside of anime as, from what I understand, it is an extremely informal form of the word and shouldn't be used outside the most informal circumstances where the level of respect warranted is low at best, which these interviews are not.
