Early Experiences of Learning Japanese

Maybe one of the reasons why I enjoy learning Japanese is because of the delicious food. This is what my family and I ate on Christmas Eve.

From my experience of learning Chinese, I know learning a language requires a lot of hard work and one can feel very discouraged at times. A few years ago, I suddenly became interested in learning Japanese. It was not the first time I had been interested, but it was the first time I actually did something about it.
Living outside Japan with only very occasional contact with people who speak Japanese, I have mostly sought to teach myself Japanese, and always in addition to an already busy schedule. While a few months have passed since I was last trying to make an effort to learn, I would like to begin by sharing a little of the things I have been using to help me learn. The best way to illustrate this is by a series of pictures, as follows:

NHK have an Internet radio program with daily lessons for learning Japanese with the lesson commentary in a wide choice of languages besides English. NHK also offered to send the book that goes with the lessons free of charge. The above book is design for Chinese learners of Japanese. In the past, I also found http://www.japanese-online.com/ helpful. They have some very good beginning lessons that you can listen, too, and various ways you can interact with other people learning Japanese.

This book and the CD that comes with it were found in a secondhand store. The content is pretty basic, but that is a good thing as one can easily feel overwhelmed when trying to swim at the deep end. There are many good learning tools available. The important thing is that they have a CD and are not too expensive, unless you have a lot of money to spare and are really committed.

I bought this exercise book a couple of years ago in Osaka in order to practice writing Japanese. It looked so cute that I still have not used it. However, I did find a couple of websites (I forget what they were) which were very helpful for learning to write the hiragana (the more curved Japanese alphabet that is mostly used by small children and also together with the other forms of writing by adults) and the katakana (the "straighter" alphabet used for imported "foreign" words). These websites (which are easy to find on Google) show how each letter or character is written in terms of stroke order and also give a lot of useful advice to avoid confusing certain characters with other characters as well as how to remember them.

When studying on one's own (and especially if one can understand a lot of the kanji (Chinese-looking characters) already), there is probably a greater tendency to write things down. For instance, one might write down a few sentences from the subtitles when watching an anime movie, or copy out a lesson from a radio program. The penciled notes in English are either translations of the whole sentence (if the meaning is known) or else of individual words and expressions that have been recognized.

One thing I have often tried to do when learning a language is to record words and phrases on small cards. This can be helpful, provided that one spends time looking through the cards and reading what is on them.

On YouTube it is easy to find clips from well-known anime movies. Of course, it is better to have DVDs of a few such movies. Preferably, if the movie has Japanese subtitles (which some at least do), then that is even better. In my opinion, listening to Japanese being spoken in daily life is a lot more beneficial than just trying to read from a textbook. The anime movies may be cartoons, but the voices are those of normal people and if they have a character in the movie from Tokyo, then that person will speak with the Tokyo accent, while if the character is from Kochi, the voice will be from Kochi, too.

I will probably post initially at most once per week. You are welcome to leave comments.