Learning Japanese, the nerdy way

October 2009

Learning Japanese I think I'm learning Japanese I really think so

For everyone else, your goal is to probably be able to watch anime, read manga, and/or play games fairly fluently. Learning Japanese by yourself can pose a great challenge, especially when the tools and resources are hard to come by where you live. Guys and girls, don't feel too disappointed if your local community colleges or universities do not offer Japanese classes. Heck, the guy who did the Sakura Taisen walkthroughs for the Sega Saturn (Lando/Kayama) was self-taught, and he'd never even been to Japan. It is possible to learn Japanese by yourself, but if you don't have the right pronunciation, you will be defeating yourself. Watching tons of anime and other Japanese stuff helps at least with familiarity of pronunciation, and with practice you can pronounce places like Asakusa like a native ("Asa'ksa" instead of "asa koosa" like noobies do, and as I did when I first went to Tokyo over ten years ago). With technology and the Net, it is possible to progress fairly far with Japanese as long as you are motivated and can stick to it. Many language programs for your computer have the ability to critique your pronunciation when you use a microphone. I did that 12 years ago, and I'm sure the software today is even better. I will warn you that I have not heard very positive things about Rosetta Stone. From what I understand, it is an overpriced piece of junk software that presents the language in no real logical pattern whatsoever. I'm certain that there are better, more affordable programs out there.

I started out learning Japanese with simple DOS-based Japanese language programs about 15 years ago, which was fairly fun. I soon took the only Japanese class available to me at a community college (I had to drive downtown since the school I was attending didn't offer it), and it was a Japanese 115 class, which just focused on conversational Japanese and not at all on Japanese literacy. The teacher was pleasant but insane, and a good portion of each lesson was "why my ex husband is evil 115" since she just couldn't get on with her life, apparently. The funny thing is that I knew her ex-husband, and he was a great guy. He later wrote a letter of recommendation for me to get the teaching job in Himeji. Anyhow, after the second class (JPN116) kept getting cancelled due to low attendance, I suggested that we do the second class at somebody's home after it got cancelled twice. The class went through the book "Japanese for Busy People," which is pretty boring unless you get excited with conversations like, "please accept my business card." The series doesn't start to get interesting until the second book. The first Japanese for Busy people has a kana version to give you the option of starting out reading the kana. This is very, very important. If you get caught up reading Japanese in romaji (Roman alphabet characters), you'll only delay your progress. It's like training wheels that will impede your ability to actually learn to ride a bicycle. It's bad enough that even the kana version of the book does not introduce any kanji. Don't get the romaji version! We finished the unofficial 2nd Japanese class at around chapter three of the second Japanese for Busy People book, and that was just before I visited Japan for the first time, and I spent a month there. It was an eye-opening experience, since Japanese for Busy People only teaches the polite -masu conjugation forms of the verbs. It's easy and it's polite, but it doesn't help teach the dictionary forms of the verbs.

I taught myself hiragana and katakana and about 600 kanji while I was taking JPN115 and 116. The summer after I returned from my one month trip to Japan, I took Japanese 101 the fall semester of '98 at the university. I ended up dropping it because I'd already mastered 90% of the material and after realizing that the class only covers the first half of the book. It was a Monday-Friday class and I had to take the shuttle bus between ASU campuses to get all the way across town to take the class. So much of my day was taken up by just the commute alone. Plus, I was already close to graduating, and getting stuck in a class with immature freshman really tried my patience. I should have tested out of 101 and been placed in 102 or even 201. So, it was self-teaching for me from then on. For self-teaching, I'd recommend the book Japanese for Everyone. Japanese for Busy People is geared towards businessmen, but it is also a good way to learn. Just do not bother with a book that has everything written out in romaji. As I said above, if you are serious about learning Japanese, make sure it is at least in hiragana/katakana, and preferably starts in with kanji right away. If not, you'll regret it. The first book is pretty basic and stuffy, but the second and third Busy People books loosen up and have more interesting conversations. I learned a lot from these books, but my two complaints are 1. it should start right away with teaching kanji in the first book, and 2. it should teach the dictionary form of the verbs from the beginning. One book that I think is mandatory to pick up is the book "Read Japanese Today" by Len Walsh. Easy find at any bookstore, and you'll master 600 widely-used kanji easily with this book. It shows the ancient Chinese heiroglyphs and how they evolved into ancient kanji that you may see at Chinese temples and such, and how they became the kanji they are today. You will learn the meanings of the radicals and piece them together to form specific concepts. Another excellent source of kanji learning is the book "A Guide To Remembering Japanese Characters" by Kenneth G. Henshall. He goes through grade by grade of kanji and provides mnemonics for memorizing. Also, I like to type the word "mnemonics" whenever I get the chance because it looks funny. Words are funny 'n stuff. Once you learn the basic elements of kanji, it becomes easier to take a kanji apart in your mind and use the parts as a mnemonic for remembering. Take for example hare or clear skies　(晴れ), which makes sense because it is sun 日and blue 青 together, which describes a clear blue cloudless sky. When you can see how radicals associate with one another, you can quickly learn the kanji. For example, it is easy to see how　mouth 口 and ground　土　together makes puke 吐く (haku). Neat, huh?

The next step would be to get a book like Kodansha's Pocket Kanji Guide. This book is a way to identify kanji you cannot read. The two main ways is to either identify the kanji by its radical or by counting the brush strokes. This is a good way to try translating something you see and you want to try reading it despite the unfamiliar kanji. If you have access to a Japanese bookstore, like maybe taking a trip to Los Angeles or someplace that has a Japanese market, I recommend getting the kanji drills for Japanese children. They show you the stroke order and such, and show the onyomi and kunyomi for each kanji.

Glenn Kardy has an interesting series of books called Kanji De Manga that makes learning fun. I bought his book Japanese Sound FX in his Kana De Manga series. This book teaches the meaning of ubiquitous Japanese onomatopoeia. Boy, I like the word "onomatopoeia"! "Ubiquitous" too!

I must say though, the best way to learn Japanese, of course, is to live in Japan. I taught English for two years, and took two classes at the local shiminkaikan (or civic center as I would translate it). I certainly became rusty after moving back to the States, even though my wife is a J-girl. I try to study when I can, and right now I'm trying to plug away through an intermediate-level Japanese book.

Plug in on the Net

There are several websites that provide information on Japanese language learning and provide online lessons for free. The Internet makes learning Japanese very approachable.

• Japanese<->English Dictionary I use this online dictionary a lot.you can input Japanese as romaji or as Japanese text.
• jisho.org is another online dictionary.
• Learn Japanese Pod Have an mp3 player? Download, go, and learn!
• GenkiJapan.Net It's.... genki!
• Text Fugu is an online Japanese text for self-learners.
• Guide to Japanese focuses on grammar rules
• Yamasa.org is a resource for online Japanese education.
• Nihongo.fm is your hands free Japanese learning source, featuring MP3s you can download and listen to on the go. You can also listen to their radio station for free at Live365.com

This is enough to get you stared. Keep searching the Web and you'll be sure to find more. There are even resources to study Japanese dialects such as Kansai-ben.

Nerdy powers, ON!

Get yourself a Nintendo DS!

Here is a tool I have found to be very useful. You need to get yourself a DS if you don't already have one. One mandatory DS software for tackling neat Japanese crap is the Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten dictionary (gotta love these long software titles). Assuming you can get by at least with a bit of reading ability (it is intended for a Japanese audience afterall), this is an essential tool for plugging your way through import video games and manga. For only about $30, this software can transform your DS into an expensive electronic dictionary. (It also features plenty of hidden Game & Watch games, but enough about that.) You can write a kanji with the stylus pen or spell it out phonetically and it will translate it into English for you. The software can be a bit unforgiving sometimes when you attempt to draw a rather complicated kanji only for it to give you the raspberries and make the screen blank. Sometimes I know I'm drawing the kanji perfectly and it still won't recognize my handwriting. But at least for the times when you draw a kanji and it comes up as something different, you can click on the kanji and it will give you similar ones to choose from. Often the kanji you want is selectable from the list.

I'm trying to plug along through the childrens kanji drill books and test myself with the Kanji Kanken DS program. This is by far the most popular kanji learning software for the DS, and it focuses on passing the Japanese language proficiency tests. It looks like there are newer versions than the one I have, but I like it. It really focuses on stroke order, which at times can be the most challenging for me to remember. Right now I'm only on 9-kyu (2nd grade elementary). My wife got me Kanji Kanken along with Rakubiki Jiten for my DS in the summer of 2007 when we went to Gameland in Torrance, CA. Recently my dear friend Galen gave me Kanji Kanken 2, which I have yet to even start to look at. Kanji Kanken is not a dictionary, so both this and Rakubiki Jiten are essential. The software I have is a bit different than what is shown in the video above, but you get the idea.

There is also a domestic DS software called My Japanese Coach. I do not own this since it is beneath my level, however I have had some people demonstrate it to me. It looks like a decent software, but I was told that the quizzes can be fairly frustrating because it starts throwing words at you that you haven't studied yet just because you're doing well with the course. I was also told that it won't let you just go back and repeat the basics with quizzes since it keeps trying to diversify what you are tested on. Other than that, it looks like a fun way to study the language.

Video games:

Start out easy. I picked up the Ai Yori Aoshi game for super cheap at a local game shop that specialized in import games. I bought this for about $15 on a whim. When I started playing it, I was amazed at how much I could understand, and I was proud of that. The game consists of two scenarios: a vacation to a southern island, and a vacation to a winter vila for a ski trip. Every line of text is spoken by the voice actors from the anime, making it easy to follow along the text. It's impossible to play this game and not learn new kanji to words you already knew. The dialogue is very conversational Japanese, making it easy to understand. The only difficulty I have is with understanding Tina's dialect, because I'm just not familiar with it. In all, it's a very cute game. Have your dictionary and DS next to you, take notes, and learn! There are many games like this. They range from graphical text adventures to dating sims. Thankfully for DVD disc storage space, with newer games, most, if not all, dialogue is fortunately spoken. Not so with the Playstation and Saturn days. Another similar game I bought is DearS for the PS2. I also bought Fate/Stay Night: Realta Nua, thinking it was more of the same. I didn't know much about the game before I bought it, other than that the anime was based off of this game and that the PS2 version doesn't have hentai themes like the computer version did. It turns out that it is a graphical novel, and it features tons of written text with little spoken dialogue. It will be a long time before I can tackle this game. I am currently starting on Shining Tears for the PS2. I've read that in the English version, they removed all of the voice acting. All they did was overdub the battle cries and grunts during the fighting gameplay, as if that was even necessary. It is this sort of crap that needs to stop. It would have been cheaper to just leave the Japanese voices intact, and it defies logic as to why they didn't, especially if they didn't bother dubbing English voices. Anyhow, it's a pretty cool hack and slash game, in the style of Gauntlet or Dungeon Explorer. Very different than the tactical Shining Force games, but it's a cute and fun adventure game.

Manga:

Kimagure Orange Road is one of my favorite anime. I prefer 70's and 80's anime by far. The KOR anime is eloquently artistic, and you just don't see this sort of anime anymore these days. The KOR manga began in 1984, and is a high school romance comedy drama with ESP powers. Conversation is on a high school level, so it is fairly easy to understand. I usually prefer science fiction, but that would require a level of Japanese I'm just not ready to tackle yet. For now, I'm going to stick to something easy. And since I've already seen the KOR anime TV show over and over again, I'm already familiar with the story, so it helps me to understand the meaning of the dialogue better. Manga helps the reader out a lot because most manga has furigana, the phonetic readings to most kanji. So, either a decent dictionary or the DS electronic dictionary will be the only companion you need to read! Not all manga has furigana, however. To my dismay, the Super Robot Taisen manga that has been published in Dengeki Hobby magazine has no furigana. I would be up to the challenge of tackling this manga if it weren't for this. Without the furigana, translating this will be quite cumbersome. My recommendation is to start out simple. You don't have to read just Doraemon if you aren't interested in Doraemon, but pick something that isn't too complex. You're most likely going to be at the level where anything will provide learning experiences, since this is Japanese as it is intended. What I mean by that is that by reading manga, you're not confining yourself to just textbook Japanese. You'll encounter slang, idioms, and colloquialisms. You probably won't understand everything, but just read for gist and enjoy. Something like the Legend of the Galactic Heroes would probably be a cumbersome undertaking, and time period epics may be a bit difficult too. Everyday life manga would be your best bet, like Toriyama's Dr. Slump manga (although it lacks furigana) or perhaps some Cardcaptor Sakura.

So, I hope what I have written is a good introduction on how to unleash your super nerd powers upon the Japanese language learning field of your life. It's hard, and sometimes the language doesn't make sense. It helps if you have more motivation to learn the language than just video games and manga, and I truly hope those of you reading this are not the type who think they know so much about Japanese culture soley from manga and anime. The term "weeaboo" is used to describe anime/manga fans who think they know so much about Japan, and they exalt Japan as some sort of perfect utopia! Japan is great fun, but it has its share of problems just like any other sort of country. If you're into this stuff but also have a well-balanced view on the country, then congratulations and you may just yet learn enough Japanese to help you learn to enjoy Japan's pop-culture on your own without relying on translations. I've read people on forums such as Anime Nation wanting to learn the language, so I decided to put this page together as somewhat of a guide. This also gives everyone a backstory of how I've come to the level of Japanese knowledge I am at now. I am nowhere near fluent, and I cannot watch Japanese movies and such and understand everything perfectly without a translation, but years ago when I was living in Japan, I watched Sen To Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) and Neko no Ongaeshi (The Cat Returns) when they were released in the theaters and I was able to get the gist of the movies with no subtitles. I can now watch movies like Neko no Ongaeshi and Ponyo without subtitles, but movies like Howl's Moving Castle are still difficult for me to understand, because of the level of language used.

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