More Words, Deeper Hole

They also seem to resort to using the third person a lot where most languages would use the first or second person. For instance, in the anime "Say I Love You," the male lead asks the girl he's interested in out on a date by saying the Japanese equivalent of "Would Mei Tachibana [her name] like to go out with me?" Apparently choosing among the several different Japanese equivalents of "you" (each of which has different social and hierarchical implications) can be really fraught with potential faux pas unless you're talking to someone you already know really well to begin with.