Although I often have a minute free here and there I find it difficult to spend the time to pick up my flash cads and review even a few of them.

The only real success I have had of late has been in listening and ‘reading’ Japanese.
In the last few weeks I have bought several manga, listened to a number of anime and podcasts, and also found that I can watch Japanese television at any time (although in lower quality) thanks to a piece of software i ran across online.

While I am still pushing to learn the language and I have not made the progress that I would like by this point i can still honestly say at I making some progress.

I will continue to listen and read Japanese as best I can as time passes and will achieve this goal of becoming fluent in this language.

I will bring more updates as I continue my friends. Till then, be well.

~Daniel

In my last post I focused primarily on my thoughts and analysis between traditional methods of study and self-study for learning a new language. I also indicated that the results of my analysis was to proceed with self-study and specifically to employ the method directed by Khatzu at “All Japanese All the Time.” Khatzu discusses immersion into the language and culture of the language to be learned and I started to go over this at the end of the last post, but primarily I kept to the fun aspect.

This post focuses more on the immersion that Khatzu talks about and what it has really meant to my life. I’ll get to the more specific methods that I am employing in future posts so please bear with me as these early ones are primarily my own thoughts and feelings before I even got started.

As stated yesterday Khatzu advocates immersion of yourself into the target language. By this he literally means exposing yourself to the language, and the culture as much as possible. 24 hours a day every day throughout the year should be devoted to learning the new language and culture. Seriously, if you want to learn the language, and to know all that you can know in the shortest most efficient time this is what you need to do. But that really isn’t feasible for all of us is it?

No, total immersion in this manner is not something that many of us can seriously employ in our lives. Unless we are one of the lucky ones that have the chance to go overseas right in the moment that we decide we want to learn a new language or experience a new culture, we have to adjust to our current circumstances and take the steps that are available for us to learn the new language we have chosen.

In my life moving to Japan tomorrow is not a possibility; although, I will admit that if the financial resources were available I’d be on a plane as early as possible in order to setup a new home over there. (I still have not yet decided where I’d most like to live and likely will need to visit Japan sometime in the near future to help me decide on that, but hopefully I can make that kind of trip soon). But it is possible that I can incorporate at least some part of the Japanese culture into my life. I may not be following his advice completely, but even Khatzu admits that it simply isn’t possible to completely be immersed in the culture at all times since we all need to live and work as necessary to support and enjoy our existence in this world.

Since it is not a real possibility to either move to Japan or be exposed solely to Japanese things all day long every day I have done the best I can to incorporate certain things into my life every day. Primarily this involves listening to Japanese music (I recently purchased several albums and even as I type this I am listening to a mix of L’Arc-en-Ciel, Mucc and Gackt), listening to anime and reading Manga. Eventually I will also subscribe to the Japanese channel which is a station out of Tokyo that is broadcast in North America which Comcast does offer. I will also be buying various magazines, novels and even movies as time goes by. And of course all of these are the un-translated versions.

Why would I spend time looking/listening to the Japanese versions of items when I can’t understand Japanese yet? Why spend valuable time doing something that seems to be a complete waste of that time? That is a question I started to ask myself when this all began since really in none of my previous language courses was this suggested as a way to learn the language.

The answer can be found in young children. Kids learn language fairly easily and all they have to do is to listen. First they listen to their parents, and then to other adults that they are exposed to. They listen to TV and music and everything else that they are experienced to over the first years of their life and as time passes they learn individual words and gain an understanding of the language they hear.

If a child can listen to a language and learn it why cant everyone else? I can and that is the point. By listening to the music, watching the shows and reading the magazines, manga and books I expose my mind to the language and will eventually gain an understanding of the language.
Each moment I expose my mind to the language opens a little piece of my brain to the possibilities of that language and eventually I will hear patterns in the language and in combination with the rest of my studies and the methods that I employ those patterns will gain meaning. As the child learns language by listening to its parent’s speech so too will I learn language by listening to music, movies and tv and reading manga, magazines and novels.

This will help to make the other methods I employ more efficient and effective in helping me to acquire fluency. If the sparks are there already thanks to the materials I have looked at then the links may be somewhat easier to form.

Does this really work? I cant say that it will. All I can say is that in the past heavy listening and reading in the target language was not suggested and I never gained a great understanding of either Spanish or German. And right now I remember so little of those languages that it feels as though I wasted my time in trying to learn them at all.

To gain true fluency in Japanese I will use every method I have at my disposal. And since Khatzu and others have indicated that exposing oneself to the language proves to be an asset then I will make use of every media I can find to help me and I will expose as much of my life to Japanese as possible.

If it does pan out that spending time listening and reading even without understanding helps me to achieve fluency in a quicker and more effective manner than at the end of this process I will definitely be an advocate of exposing as much of your life to the target language as possible.

For now, I will remain quiet and watch what happens as I progress down this path.

So just as a quick recap in order to learn the language you need to keep things fun. Do whatever it takes to make learning the new language a pleasurable experience. We also need to expose our lives to the target language and culture and immerse ourselves as deeply as we can into the target so that it permeates our minds and helps to form the connections that we need in order to make the entire process more effective and efficient.

Tomorrow, I will start on the specific methods that I am employing.

Until then my friends, be well.

~Dae

This post is the first in a series about the method I have chosen, how I came to my decisions and the final results of this method. I hope that some of you may find it beneficial.

To learn Japanese, or any language really, you have a limited set of options which can be separated into two general groups: Classes or Self-Study. Classes are of course the traditional method for learning any language and I, like many of you, have spent my fair bit of time in a class setting learning a foreign language. While self-study is just that and one must trek forward into the unknown expanse of a new language on one’s own skills and determination to acquire this new branch of knowledge.

Before Starting I had to determine how I felt about both methods and debated some pros/cons of each:

Classes: Pro
Structured environment and lessons
Someone to answer questions
Learning with others in the same situation

Classes: Con
Structured environment and lessons
Pace is set by other individuals
What happens after class is done?
It’s a chore and not fun

Self Study Pros
Your choice structure
Your choice pacing
You choose when to start/stop
Learning never stops
It can be FUN

Self Study Con
Your on your own (no study friends or teachers)
Need to find someone to answer questions
Non-structured
No one to push (no incentives, i.e. grades)
No discipline = no progress

Since I have tried the classroom method and I have tried the self-study method in other areas of study I was a little torn on how to proceed. However, in this case I had several reasons to push forward and succeed in my endeavor to learn Japanese that I had not had previously: I will be moving to Japan within the next few years, I enjoy Anime and Manga and would like to be able to read/understand them in the author’s language. Because of this, and the fact that a structured class environment would not fit my current life I am once again pursuing the self-study method.

The question I had to ask once I made the choice to study Japanese on my own was how I would do it? Obviously I cant just pick up a dictionary and start to learn individual words. A lot of people will go out and buy learning software for the language of their choice which brings them back to the school setting, but allows them to go somewhat at their own pace in a structured environment. I considered this avenue and even thought about buying Rosetta Stone as a useful tool for learning the language. But I have tried to learn other languages before (Spanish in high school and German in college) and I can honestly say that the kind of structured environment that is presented for language learning does not always seem to work for me. Something is missing.

In my quest for possible solutions I stumbled across the website All Japanese All the Time. On this site Khatzumoto advocates the method of complete immersion into the language you want to learn. Ultimately his method is to make everything in one’s life as Japanese as possible. He talks about listening to music, reading books/magazines/etc in Japanese, watching Japanese TV and movies and even filling one’s home with Japanese stuff. He also brings up constantly that learning a new language should be fun and that is what I think was truly missing from my previous studies.

If learning the language is not fun and I have no other real reason for doing it then the learning becomes a form of work and even unconsciously I would try to avoid it. This is something that Khatzu has through his site shown me in my own life. I am someone that has tried to avoid some of the things I need to do in my life simply because they are not fun and thus I let them slip to the side. My own writings and study sessions are good examples of things I used to enjoy doing but that lost their element of fun and thus I ended up pushing them aside.

This time though I am keeping the element of fun in my learning. How? By keeping the things I enjoy as part of my daily learning routine. I am listening to some J-rock right now (Mucc, Gackt, and L’Arc-en-Ciel), will be watching some anime later and have some manga to read. While many of the things I am doing are translated for me right now. The point is that I am still listening to spoken Japanese in the music and anime and looking at written Japanese when I read the manga. This at least starts me on the path I need to take and I do not lose the element of fun that these items bring into my life. In other words I am back to enjoying my study sessions and they are not a chore.

Thus, as I continue to work with these items, and continue with the other aspects of my studies I am slowly gaining an understanding of the language and will slowly need the translated versions less and less.

So at this point I can say that the first aspect of how I am learning a new language is to keep the fun in my studies and enjoy the moments that learning bring.

I’ll be back tomorrow my friends with the next installment of “How I am Learning Japanese”.

Till then, be well. また明日

~Dae

Good evening everyone,

In all reality this blog is a rework of my previously site in which I did not feel I was doing an adequate job of chronicling my efforts to learn Japanese, nor my experiences in Japanese culture.

Consequently I am in the process of revamping the entire site and what you see here is the current result. I think that everything is pretty good right now and all that remains is transferring some of my posts over from the old site and reworking them so they flow a little better.

Tomorrow I will return and will present to you the rewrites of those posts I wish to maintain. Until then I hope you are well and have a wonderful day or pleasant dreams.

~Dae