Sorry if that's a stupid question to Japanese speakers here, I'm just an ignorant Westerner.
Not a stupid question at all. It does have tenses, but it's not as rigidly laid out like it is in English. You get conversations just like Sai's and Naruto's in real Japanese. The tense of a person's point of view is laid at at the start, then the rest is often context- they use a verbal form a lot that doesn't often translate clearly into English- one that suggests conjecture or uncertainty- this is common to use in sentences after the opening sentence tense is clearly laid out. And yes, you can have one person using a past tense and the other a present tense in the same conversation. It does make translating Japanese more difficult, and really easy to make a mistake. You have to look at what tense is said at the opening by the speaker and make the rest of the conversation follow that tense.
Nihongo wa muzukashii desu.
It was this issue that caused problems between American and Japanese business people in the 1970's and 80's- Japanese people also shift into that "uncertain" tense whenever they are with someone who is very certain of their opinions and comes across as either aggressive or confrontational.
Edited by ciardha, 20 May 2011 - 11:56 PM.