In one episode of Gabriel Dropout, after the boss of the cafe comforted her that her Japanese will get fluent, Gabriel said, '櫓三年に棹八年'. Then, the background color of the scene shot changes to black.
That sentence seems to be a funny one in that context. Why? Is '櫓三年に棹八年' a playful saying?
This is funny simply because 櫓三年に棹八年 is an extremely rare proverb known to only a few Japanese speakers. An avid learner may know 桃栗三年柿八年, which is a much more common equivalent of this proverb. However, if she knows 櫓三年に棹八年, it means either that her vocabulary level is beyond that of most native Japanese speakers, or that she learned Japanese from some unusual material.
