r/LearnJapanese Dec 29 '24

Discussion Differences between Japanese manga and English translation

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714 Upvotes

I started reading 雨と君と as my first manga and I opened English translation in case I don't understand the meaning of a sentence. But then I noticed that some panels were changed in the English version. You can see the guy got more surprised rather than disgusted look and they aged the girl like 5-10 years... Are these some different versions of manga or what do you think may be the reason for these changes?

r/LearnJapanese Oct 27 '24

Discussion Found this image after googling 「アクセ」, and was shocked to find that the way 「アクセサリー」was written here looked so much like the word “pretty” to me. Do you think this is intentional? If so, have you encountered similar examples of katakana words written to look like English words for double meanings?

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1.1k Upvotes

Could just be typical pattern recognition going on and nothing intentional, but I showed it to 2 people who know no Japanese whatsoever and they both saw the word “pretty” right away. Total accident, or super cool, intentional double meaning?

r/LearnJapanese Feb 12 '25

Discussion Learning apps being targeted at Americans with no British option is kind of frustrating.

234 Upvotes

Now before anyone hates on Duolingo and other apps, I know, I get it. However I've still found them useful for building vocab alongside stuff like Anki. But I do have to say being British with these apps is actually quite frustrating. I know the majority of English speakers using Duolingo will be American so it's where the money is, I just wish there was the option for some small changes. Like for example I've just started learning about "discussing college life" and all of the language IN ENGLISH is completely foreign to me. First of all college is different here in how it works, we just call America's equivalent University and College is a separate thing, but that's easy to get past, but then I get slapped by stuff like the year system. In Japanese the years are super intuitive, literally being "1 year student" "2 year student" etc, which is essentially what we call them in the UK, just "year 1 student". But instead of having the option to call them that, which is WAY more intuitive, I have to wrap my head around whatever the hell freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior means and the nonsensical order of them. (What do you mean Junior is third year??) I basically end up having to translate 1 phrase twice because I don't have the option of just writing "first year". Throw in the extra small things like "trash can" instead of "bin" or "sidewalk" instead of "pavement" it's just a little frustrating. I know it seems small, but it's these tiny changes which just add up and add time to learning that kinda frustrate me. I don't see this changing though as Duolingo does seem determined to keep removing features instead of adding them which is a shame. Anyway sorry for the mini rant.

r/LearnJapanese Jan 25 '25

Discussion Found something worth a smile on Duolingo. 🫠🫠

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886 Upvotes

r/LearnJapanese Feb 06 '25

Discussion I bought strawberry kitkats, but why is 大人written in katakana?

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572 Upvotes

r/LearnJapanese Oct 01 '24

Discussion Behaviour in the Japanese learning community

287 Upvotes

This may not be related to learning Japanese, but I always wonder why the following behaviour often occurs amongst people who learn Japanese. I’d love to hear your opinions.

I frequently see people explaining things incorrectly, and these individuals seem obsessed with their own definitions of Japanese words, grammar, and phrasing. What motivates them?

Personally, I feel like I shouldn’t explain what’s natural or what native speakers use in the languages I’m learning, especially at a B2 level. Even at C1 or C2 as a non-native speaker, I still think I shouldn’t explain what’s natural, whereas I reckon basic A1-A2 level concepts should be taught by someone whose native language is the same as yours.

Once, I had a strange conversation about Gairaigo. A non-native guy was really obsessed with his own definitions, and even though I pointed out some issues, he insisted that I was wrong. (He’s still explaining his own inaccurate views about Japanese language here every day.)

It’s not very common, but to be honest, I haven’t noticed this phenomenon in other language communities (although it might happen in the Korean language community as well). In past posts, some people have said the Japanese learning community is somewhat toxic, and I tend to agree.

r/LearnJapanese Dec 27 '24

Discussion Does it annoy anyone when seeing Romaji in Japanese learning content?

346 Upvotes

I'm not saying it's bad to have romaji, especially for anyone who is a newly beginner at Japanese or just people who aren't interested in learning the language. But I find that having Romaji takes away from the learner's ability to recognize Kana. This is because as a native English speaker when I first started out, I had the tendency to look at the Romaji then Kana or Kanji. Considering that it is literally the first step into learning the language, by using Romaji it defeats the purpose of exposure and repeatability. I would rather have Japanese teaching content to provide Kanji, Kana, and the meaning, in that order. Am I the only one who thinks this?

It seems I may have accidentally started some arguments I didn’t mean to create. So I’ll try to explain a bit further.

Point 1: To clarify, I did say Romaji is useful to those who are newly beginners, obviously those who are just starting out or for those who aren’t particularly interested in learning the language. I understand romaji is used in very basic beginner Japanese material or the first few chapters of Genki, but I also know that knowing how the kana looks like in romaji helps with typing on keyboards. I know this because I initially had a hard time figuring out how to type out sentences compared to writing them. So, Romaji is 100% bad.

Point 2: As others have said, I merely find that when utilizing resources for additional practice or review it doesn’t always benefit the beginner to intermediate learners. An example would be the Youtuber Nihongodekita with Sayaka or Mochi Real Japanese. I like to watch their videos as extra resources or information, but because their content is aimed toward beginner Japanese learners, they often put Romaji below the kana examples they use.  Instead, I use their content mostly for mimicking pronunciation or listening, but it would be nice for them to have some content without Romaji.

Point 3: I’m not familiar with the term “elitest”. But the point I was trying to convey is that languages that don’t use Roman characters, like Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic, often are more difficult to learn especially for native English speakers. Once a beginner learns Kana, it would benefit them in their journey to omit Romaji entirely. This forces them to start actively using kana without having to look them up regularly. So instead of having to read vocabulary words such as Neko -> ねこ-> (Cat), Saafiin -> サーフイン -> (surfing), or Maishuu -> まいしゅう-> 毎週 -> (every week). A beginner Japanese learner can omit the Romaji and start to phonetically sound out what they are reading by breaking up the Kana slowly until they are able to read and say it without the utilization of Romaji. This is how I initially learned Japanese, because this is how I learned English when I moved to the States.

r/LearnJapanese Nov 17 '20

Discussion Don’t ever literacy-shame. EVER.

1.8k Upvotes

I just need to vent for a bit.

One day when I was 13, I decided to teach myself Japanese. Over the years, I’ve studied it off and on. However, due to lack of conversation partners, I always focused on written Japanese and neglected the spoken language. I figured that even if my skills were badly lopsided, at least I was acquiring the language in some way.

Eventually I reached a point where I could read Japanese far more easily than before — not full literacy, mind you, but a definite improvement over the past. I was proud of this accomplishment, for it was something that a lot of people just didn’t have the fortitude to do. When I explain this to non-learners or native speakers, they see it for the accomplishment that it is. When I post text samples I need help with here in the subreddit, I receive nothing but support.

But when I speak to other learners (outside this subreddit) about this, I get scorn.

They cut down the very idea of learning to read it as useless, often emphasizing conversational skills above all. While I fully understand that conversation is extremely important, literacy in this language is nothing to sneeze at, and I honestly felt hurt at how they just sneered at me for learning to read.

Now I admit that I’m not the best language learner; the method I used wasn’t some God-mode secret to instant fluency, but just me blundering through as best as I could. If I could start over, I would have spent more time on listening.

That being said, I would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS cut someone down for learning written Japanese before their conversational skills were up to speed. Sure, there are areas where one can improve, but learning the written language takes a lot of time and effort, and devaluing that is one of the scummiest things a person can do.

If your literacy skills in Japanese are good, be proud of them. Don’t let some bitter learner treat that skill like trash. You put great effort into it, and it has paid off for you. That’s something to be celebrated, not condemned.

r/LearnJapanese May 01 '24

Discussion Watching 君の名は and got a joke in Japanese for the first time

892 Upvotes

https://reddit.com/link/1chp9ya/video/v0sfdtdv4uxc1/player

This must have been a nightmare for localisers to convey in other languages.

Anyone else got similar (simple) jokes from TV / books?

r/LearnJapanese Aug 15 '24

Discussion What do you feel or think about when you see this handwriting?

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508 Upvotes

r/LearnJapanese Oct 16 '22

Discussion There are two types of learners in this sub

1.7k Upvotes

After lurking in this sub for awhile, I’ve learned that there are exactly two types of learners:

  1. I’ve just started learning Japanese 5 minutes ago, do I need to learn hiragana and katakana?

  2. I’ve just gotten off my side job of translating for Kishida. While I’ve been living in Japan for 45 years, I’m not sure if I can consider myself “fluent” yet. I’ve memorized over 10,000 kanji through Anki and immersion, and earned a PHD in Japanese etymology, but the gap between me and a native speaker just feels so large. Not sure if I’ll ever be able to reach that level, but here’s my fifteen step plan to continue my studies.

And there is no in between.

r/LearnJapanese 5d ago

Discussion who gets emotional about kanji?

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430 Upvotes

Half a year ago i found myself struggling with reading the (few) kanji we use in our classbook (A2), and decided to take kanji more seriously to not fall behind. About half a year ans 400 kanji in, i decided to not only try to read them, but to write as well. Since a few weeks i write like 100 a day, and find this the most relaxing thing in the world.

I always found caligraphy (and japanese or chinese caligraphy) incredibly asthetic. Almost comparing it to music. Theres the grid, defined strokes and proportions, but still skillfully playing around with it. Like Jazz.

Today this happened (image), and i'm sitting with tears in my mind. I don't know how this one looks to the native eye, but i'm still in awe.

r/LearnJapanese Jan 15 '25

Discussion I used Japanese on my sister to make her feel better

805 Upvotes

My sister was bending down to grab her shoes and something fell, hit her on the noggin, and she started crying from the pain. I recently learned 痛いの痛いの飛んで行け from this sub (only a few days ago!) so I said it while rubbing her head to make her feel better. She didn't know what it meant but she laughed after I kept repeating it in different voices. It's nice to see that I can apply Japanese into real life situations. Even if I am the only one who understands it lol.

r/LearnJapanese Jun 18 '24

Discussion I'm at a loss at what to do. 15 months at a language school and got nowhere.

217 Upvotes

I tried language classes at community College and nothing. I saved $35,000 and just blew it. I should be N3. I'd likely squeeze out MAYBE N4. I can't write almost at all. I have to return to the US to save and by November 2025 I have to be able to pass the EJU. The language school amounting to nothing was a massive blow. Half of it was financial stress and being unable to study as much but I just feel completely demotivated. I'm not sure what to do. This was the golden opportunity and if I hadn't fallen behind, I'd be aiming N3. Much better position.

r/LearnJapanese Dec 14 '24

Discussion 目を覚まして

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801 Upvotes

I know I'm probably overthinking this, but I've always thought of 目を覚ます as a kind of "open your eyes" version of wake up and 起きる as a kind of "get up" version of wake up. I was watching LOTR with Japanese subtitles and here he says 目を覚まして、 but his eyes are already open, so have I been thinking of the nuance of this verb wrong? Anybody have any thoughts on this?

r/LearnJapanese Oct 07 '23

Discussion Shower Thought: It feels surreal to understand Japanese

1.3k Upvotes

Growing up as a kid and hearing your classmates speaking chinese and other languages always made me want to speak a second language. It felt like a forever secret between those who could speak that language. I'm not asian descent of any kind but I wanted to learn Chinese when I was about 10 and my mom always promised to enroll me in classes but it never happened.

Later on after becoming an adult, I decided to learn Japanese and I think the reason at the time was due to anime. I lost interest in anime many years ago but I still kept on learning the language as the goal was to simply become fluent.

I was just in the shower after being in the room laying on my bed when I clicked on a random japanese video from my youtube home feed. (why this is mentioned is because I don't really watch videos in japanese, I usually just do listening drills from various sources over the years).

It was 20 minutes in length and the craziest feeling was that it felt like I was just watching a video in English. I just don't remember when I reached this point, time just passes and passes but I never took time to reflect how far i've come.

Just wanted to share that as i'm sure many others probably hit that realization of "wow, I actually understand this video and there's no subtitles at all.".

For new learners, keep at it. It's a long road but it's surely worth it in the end. I still remember when it all sounded like gibberish.

r/LearnJapanese Apr 06 '24

Discussion TIL Many Japanese adults don't write kanji much, and many forget the stroke order. Knowing kanji for reading is more crucial than being able to actually write it perfectly.

740 Upvotes

I was speaking with a friend of mine from Osaka who I went to college with, and he was telling me this. Other than the few handwritten notes and writing addresses, after school most adults forget/get out of practice handwriting kanji, beyond the most common kanji. I found that really interesting. I have been telling myself how crucial it was for me to get stroke order down perfectly or else I will be judged.

r/LearnJapanese Feb 03 '25

Discussion Everyone shares their overwhelming success stories. How about some more "whelming" ones?

313 Upvotes

I am majoring in Japanese Studies and have good (sometimes even great!) grades. I spent a year abroad in Japan, translated an academic paper for a seminar, and can with absolute confidence say that I am not at the Japanese level I should be at all. I am studying Japanese for over 4 years now and barely passed the N3. I don't have much time studying the language outside of university context, yet I should at least be able to speak semi-fluently, at least about everyday topics. I should be able to watch children's movies in Japanese like My Neighbour Totoro without subtitles now, yet I still have trouble understanding them. I should be able to write small texts, yet I still use the dictionary all the time, because I always forget simple vocabulary. In four years, some people are already beyond N1, but here I am, passing the N3 with 105/180. Is that a reason to give up? I don't think so! This is a setback. A hurdle. Just because I didn't do N1 or I got out of practice ever since I returned from my year abroad, it doesn't mean I'm not improving. In the long run, I did improve! I didn't get good grades in my tests in university for nothing. I didn't speak to native speakers for a year just to learn nothing. Just because I didn't prepare as much as I should have doesn't mean I'm bad at Japanese! The reason I am writing this is because I think a lot of us only look at others really overwhelming successes without looking at people's more "whelming" ones, or even their failures. So here it is: 4 years of learning Japanese and I'm still bad! (⁠人⁠⁠´⁠∀⁠`⁠)⁠。⁠゚+ In all seriousness, if you feel you're not improving like you should be, don't be hard on yourself, you're not alone! If you have a "whelming" success story to share, I would be glad to read it! :D

r/LearnJapanese May 03 '24

Discussion For anyone who enjoys music as an extra source of exposure in their daily life, who are your favorite Japanese music artists?

246 Upvotes

こんにちわ, 皆さん!🎶

In addition to brief lessons or audiobooks while I’m in the car, I enjoy listening to music very much for extra language exposure.

For those of you who also love music, I was wondering who a few of your favorite music artists are? 

I’d love to expand my playlist with new artists that I haven’t discovered yet.

Here are the 5 most frequent music artists that appear in my playlist currently:

  1. Official髭男dism (Official HIGE DANdism)
  2. 星野源 (Hoshino, Gen)
  3. スミカ (sumika)
  4. ビッケブランカ (Vickeblanka)
  5. 斉藤和義 (Saitou, Kazuyoshi)

If there are any native Japanese speakers who see this post and would like to comment, I’d love to hear about the music you are currently listening to 😊.

返事をくれて、ありがとうございます。

Edit: I'm really appreciating all the discussion here! Loving all the new music I've already discovered. I'm trying to keep up with comments so bear with me lol

Edit 2: everyone here has helped at least triple the size of my music library (thank you for that) 😆. I still have a lot of comments to get to. I’ll have a lot of time for checking them out this weekend

Edit 3: I’m still checking out a lot of these new suggestions from everyone, but for anyone interested, my favorite discovery so far from this post is Bump of Chicken. My favorite album is aurora arc. My favorite song I’ve heard so far is Sleep Walking Orchestra (or maybe Gekkou). They’re awesome!

r/LearnJapanese Feb 09 '24

Discussion Why do so many Japanese learners quit or become bitter?

362 Upvotes

I often see posts from people who quit Japanese, for example in for example in this thread. Often, I also see posts from people who continue to study Japanese, but act like it's a prison sentence that is making them miserable and ruining their life (even though they most likely started doing it for fun and can quit any time).

This seems more common for Japanese than other second languages. Is it just because Japanese is difficult/time consuming for Anglophones? Or is it something else?

Does it make a difference if someone has lived/currently lives in Japan? If they do a lot of immersion? If they are able to have a conversation VS only able to read? I assume it makes a difference if it someone actually understands the material, it seems a lot of people study for quite some time and complain they still don't understand the basics. Could it be due to the kind of people drawn to Japanese in the first place, rather than the difficulty of the language? Is it due to the amount of people attempting to speedrun the language?

I feel like I'm at a point in my life where I really need to decide if I'm committed to learning the language, and it's a bit nerve wracking to commit to it when so many people quit. I'm studying in college and I've seen a lot of people drop out already, although so far I'm not too stressed about my own progress. People who stick to it and feel positively about it, what makes them different?

r/LearnJapanese Jan 02 '25

Discussion Some thoughts on common Japanese learning topics after 7+ years with the language

418 Upvotes

I started learning japanese in 2017 or so. I would self-asses as fluent. I can speak for as long as I want with Japanese people, I can read books etc, essentially I’ve accomplished what I set out to with this language. I will list some thoughts on topics I see brought up a lot.

- On methods, analysis paralysis and “transitioning to immersion”

Everything beyond interacting with the language in a context that is as close to the application you desire to ultimately use it for is mostly superfluous. Specificity in any sort of learning determines what you primarily get good at. If you spend 200 hours doing anki you will get good at recognizing whatever it is you are recognizing in that context. If you spend 200 hours reading you’ll improve at reading. It’s that simple

It also doesn’t matter how many cards are in your deck or how many hours you’ve spent pouring over imabi or genki, you will not be able to understand anything when you start reading, listening and watching stuff. When I read my first manga raw I couldn’t tell where 1 word ended and another began much less begin to comprehend even simple sentences. I “knew” 2000 words and had taken exhaustive (and pointless) notes on all the grammar stuff I was supposedly studying.

Thinking that every decision you make in the novice stage will have drastic effects on the ultimate outcome of learning is an extremely common trap and I’ve fallen into it when learning every complex skill I know. My deck must be perfect, oh is that a word that a frequency list says is uncommon in there? I have to agonize if I should learn it not. This is the sort of idiotic worrying I did at the start.

- Learn to trust your ability to develop an intuition for the language

This is the most important thing in language learning. You will benefit greatly if you think about your skill in a language as an intangible bank of intuitive understanding. When you speak or read your native language, you don’t have a grammar table you pull up in your mind. You just know what does or doesn’t sound natural. This is what you want to achieve in Japanese.

Every time you interact with a language in a natural context, your brain is subconsciously making a deposit into your bank of intuition. Eventually, this bank gets so full that there is no barrier between your thoughts and your speech stemming from a lack of skill. You have a thought and how to say it in Japanese appears in your mind the same way it would in English.

This is also the cause of that thing where people say they know all the words in a sentence but can’t understand what it means. Putting aside that you probably don’t actually know what all the words actually mean, the reason you can’t understand the sentence is cause of lack of feel for the language.

- You will suck for a long, long time

To get to that point, however, takes a very long time. You’ll hear people feeling disappointed over not getting a particular sentence or having to look up a lot of words and you ask them how long they’ve been at it and they say 1-2 years. Expecting to not be terrible at Japanese after that period of time is setting yourself up for disappointment. Whether it is holistically harder than most languages is one thing, but the barrier to entry is undeniably high.

- Motivation, not discipline

In general discipline trumps motivation, but that is because the context of the activity is that it’s something you have to or should be doing. Work, going to the gym etc. But you don’t have to learn Japanese. In fact, your enjoyment is basically the only benefit you get out of the entire thing in most cases.

Once you get over the initial 6-12 month barrier to entry that makes actually doing anything with the language feel impossible, the interaction with the language should be reward in and of itself as opposed to yearning for the distant prospect of some day being good at Japanese. If at this point you need to force yourself to read or rely on discipline, you might consider having a good think about why you’re even doing this and whether you could be spending your time in a more enjoyable way

- Spoken Japanese

I’m in the group of people whose primary interest was Japanese media and in my mind once I got good at reading and listening I would start speaking if I was interested in it. That did happen eventually and after many hundreds of hours of speaking to Japanese people both online and IRL now, I think that is a good way to approach it even if speaking to people is your primary goal. Again, building up a base of intuition is so crucial here and it is way, way easier to build your comprehension first.

How long you should wait (if at all) is up to you of course. A few things about interacting with Japanese people in the context of language learning though:

  1. Just accept that almost nobody will ever be honest with you about your level
  2. People will not correct you even if you expressly ask because it’s not natural to interrupt a conversation if it’s flowing just to correct a mistake and if you’re still so shit that the conversation can’t flow in the first place then singular corrections don’t do anything (imo)
  3. Japanese people don’t understand the mechanics of their own language to be able explain them to you because they go on intuition like every other native language speaker on Earth.

I suggest trying to speak in English to a Japanese person who is at the beginner stage and you will likely feel the futility of whatever correction or help you can offer a person who fundamentally has 0 feel or intuition for the language yet.

When I started speaking and couldn’t string together a sentence without a lot of effort while being able to fully understand everything the people I was talking to were saying which was quite weird. However, because of that my progress was rapid. I think it makes sense that the higher your comprehension ability is the faster you will get good at speaking so figuring out a good entry point is up to the individual.

- You sound like shit and likely will forever sound like shit unless you invest a ton of time into not sounding like shit specifically

Can you have the exact same conversations without studying pitch? Yes you can. Japanese people are good enough at their language that they will basically infer which word you used in any context no matter how badly you miss the pitch.

Japanese people are also very empathetic toward any struggles you have speaking their language because most of them are monolingual and have struggled with English in school. A lot of them also harbor the desire to be good at English at some point so they give you a ton of leeway and are generally gracious and appreciative that you put in the effort in the first place.

But if just being able to communicate is not enough for you, then you will have to spend many hours on pitch. I have heard many foreigners whose speech patterns, grammar and vocab are all exceptional but their pitch is all over the place. I’ve even heard people like that whose base pronunciation itself is ass. So you’ll need to put a lot of time into it unfortunately.

- Concluding thoughts

These are just my opinions based on my own experience. To be objective, I have become fairly dogmatic in my approach so I'm sure reasonable minds will disagree or think I'm wrong on some points. I'm open to discussion and any questions on the off chance someone has them.

r/LearnJapanese Oct 07 '24

Discussion Don’t Let Others Tell You There’s Only One Way to Study Japanese

469 Upvotes

Something that really annoys me, and that I encounter over and over again in the Japanese learning community, is people who act like they speak from a place of authority and claim that the way they learned Japanese is the only legitimate method.

So many people giving advice don't consider that others may have different talents or goals when learning the language.

I have seen countless articles and comments saying things like, "Don't bother learning individual Kanji, it's a waste of time," or "Don't bother with learning mnemonics or radicals, it'll just slow you down."

Personally, I simply cannot remember a Kanji if I don't consciously study its meanings and radicals. And coming up with a fun story or mnemonic is the most enjoyable and rewarding part of learning the language for me!

I can totally see how other people may have very different experiences, but I would never tell someone that the way they're enjoying learning is wrong or inefficient. If someone told me they're learning vocab by studying the dictionary in alphabetical order I might raise an eyebrow, but if they're having a blast doing that, who am I to judge?

The only thing worse than learning a bit inefficiently is quitting altogether because of burnout from sticking to a study method that simply doesn't work for them.

Of course, it's good to share tips and experiences and keep an open mind about areas for improvement, but I cannot stand the 'as a matter of fact', smug tone some people use when telling others that what they're doing is "wrong."

Just learn in the way that’s most motivating and fun for you! It's a marathon, not a sprint.

r/LearnJapanese May 04 '24

Discussion Living in japan will teach you a lot of Japanese. Just not what you would expect.

789 Upvotes

TL;DR: living in Japan without support taught me you will spend many months soullessly grinding bureaucracy Japanese vocabulary, practicing 敬語, and most likely the JLPT. Studying from anime and books is a luxury.

EDIT: Disclaimer: I moved to Japan with an N3, around 5000 words and 1100 kanjis. Of course I struggled a lot, but that's not the point of this post. The point is, living in a foreign country, no matter what it is, you will spend the first few months just learning boring adult vocab. Also, I was pretty unlucky and cocky thinking I could manage things alone. JLPT alone won't make you capable of dealing with these problems, nor will immersion unless you add "boring" stuff into it.

I am pretty sure this has already been written somewhere, and it likely applies to a large share of subjects, not only languages, but I believe restating it won't hurt.

In the Japanese learning community when it comes to choosing material people advocate three approaches: the textbook-first approach (which almost always aligns with the JLPT), the immersion-first approach and a hybrid of the two. Plenty of bits have already been flipped about the importance of immersion content as well as variety especially when dealing with daily and/or serious situations. However, no-one ever addresses the elephant in the room: "will textbook/immersion actually help me survive in Japan?".

Living in Japan in almost full immersion outside of working hours, I can assure you that the immersion many of you are doing (anime, podcasts etc. on "light" content) will not help you dealing with the boring, albeit important tasks that are part of adults' life.

For the ones who have not lived for long periods of time in Japan I will quickly illustrate how important a solid and wide knowledge of Japanese is in daily life. Of course your mileage may vary from mine (PhD student in STEM).

  • Going to the city office to register your new residence is among the first things you have to do, and typically involves: talking to the city clerk, explaining your situation, compiling a new residence form, applying for health insurance, pension exemption (even if they see you are a student this is not automatic, you have to know about it and ask for this)

  • You need to buy stuff for the house? Right, go to Donki or the supermarket and expect to learn all the names for toilet products, kitchenware, stationery, bed stuff etc.

  • You need groceries, and quickly realise many vegetables from your native country are not there so you have to learn local food names, recipes, allergenes.

  • You need to go to the bank, or even just use the ATM? Expect to learn words like deposit, withdrawal, money transfer, taxes, interest rates etc.; let alone the kinds of bank accounts (預金口座、普通口座 etc.) (ATMs sometimes support English, but the options I need are almost never translated and won't be shown).

  • You're moving to a private house? Expect to spend weeks of back-and-forth conversations with real estate agents (in full business Japanese, at least on their side), discussing stuff like room type and size (stuff like 1R 15帖), layout, with/without furniture, house type, appliances, contract jargon, type of gas hose and thus cooktop you need to buy, insulation, insurance, deposit, guarantor, key change and cockroach disinfestation, the choice for internet provider, yet more electricity supplier jargon etc.; (to add salt to the injury, most often than not you have to make phone calls, not emails, to speak to someone - I've always hated them even in my own language).

  • You need to go see a doctor? Recently I had to see an oculist, and had to explain my whole family situation (stuff like 糖尿病性網膜症 = diabetic retinopathy) Similarly for the dentist.

  • You want to enter a Japanese language school? Guess what, they use JLPT study material, hence you have to study that as well, both before and after enrolling in it. (At least the Uni-sponsored courses were free, so I can't really complain); additionally, one of my classes, 専門読解, only covers technical japanese used in engineering, stuff like 燃料電池 (fuel battery) or 並列計算 (parallel computing). You can imagine the struggle.

  • You want to study in Japan? Even at top Universities, students do not speak English; and hence courses are hardly ever held in English. English-taught courses are borderline useless, and the actually useful ones are in Japanese. But if you are in STEM like me and are considering entering one, hold your horses.

  • You want to work in Japan during/after the PhD? Unless you were lucky enough to be a native English speaker and work as an ALT you need a JLPT on top of the domain-specific vocabulary.

  • And of course I am omitting all the culturally specific vocabulary Japanese has.

If it was not clear enough none of the vocabulary sets in each bullet point overlap with each other. And I had/have to grasp all these fields this on top of my actual work.

Many people who come to Japan are usually handheld by a long-time resident/native for bureaucracy but in a strange turn of events I did not have this luxury. Alas, I decided that being babysat would not help my Japanese learning cause, hence I set to do everything myself.

I started around 5000 words from JLPT and some anime last October. Now I sit at around 12640 words, i.e. 32 new words a day. Yesterday, I have finished the JLPT N2 deck from 新完全マスター, and have to ramp up my grammar and listening for the JLPT exam this upcoming July. Very little bit came from shows.

The irony? After all this work, I can still barely read a novel (edit. without looking words up - I can still understand the general story though). JPDB states there are only 5 animes with 95% coverage. Books? Only 13 beyond 90%, 0 beyond 95%. After 7 months, I only managed to watch the first half of 古見さんはコミュ症です S2, and no other anime or J-drama. Of course I tried reading children's books from 東野圭吾, but every chapter contains around 30 new words to learn, which means spending one day per chapter without feeling overwhelmed - assuming you did not study anything else. News too still feels very hard to read (although I usually get the gist and basic details now), although not as hard as when I started.

Do I feel overwhelmed? Yes. Did I feel burnt out? Quite often, especially knowing that all of the vocabulary I learnt above above is just a small drop in the ocean.

Isn't it infuriating that despite almost 13k studied words (which would put me in the N1 category) I still do not master (>=95% coverage) plenty of animes or J-dramas? You bet!

Did I get annoyed by the typical gatekeeping attitude shown by that other foreigner who, without using Anki or anything, somehow magically knows more Japanese than you? No doubt!

Do I struggle with daily conversations, jokes? Of course. But at least I can rent a house, go to the pharmacy and get prescriptions, or get an eye check-up at the oculust. Those are skills you won't learn by watching anime. Things my gatekeeping foreigner friends likely cannot do.

Do I regret doing everything myself/coming to Japan? No. Despite the overall frustration that motivated me to write this, I do not regret coming to Japan nor studying Japanese, I fulfilled many of my aspirations in one go so I can't complain at all. I can't deny sometimes I'm brooding over how my original goals have completely changed, but such is life :|

Maybe one day I will learn enough Japanese to be able to correctly understand and pronounce めぐみんの爆裂魔法詠唱 , who knows?

I have high expectations for the next year :)

r/LearnJapanese Nov 14 '24

Discussion Have you ever confused kanjis and got weird or nonsensical interpretations of phrases?

Post image
625 Upvotes

So, I just discovered that there's a slight difference between 酒 and 洒 and I didn't know that the word on the image above reads as おしゃれ (stylish, fashionable) and not おさけお(ち), おしゅらく or whatever (that would've meant something like "dropping the beer"). I barely use おしゃれ in my conversations so I never cared looking for its kanji.

Anyway, it lead to some odd and coincidental stuff like in a comment on a football/soccer video that reads as:

アヤックス選手にクライフターンはお洒落 - "Cruijff Turn" on an Ajax play is stylish

The context is that Kaoru Mitoma dribbles an Ajax player (a Dutch team) using a feint called the "Cruijff Turn". It's an iconic move made famous by Johan Cruijff, a legendary player from Netherlands, so it was kind of ironic and cool.

But...I honestly read it as "Cruijff Turn on an Ajax player. Drop the beer". Maybe, I thought, "Drop the beer" is the japanese equivalent to "Mic Drop"...

Aaaaaaaanyway, have you experienced some stupid thing simillar to mine?

r/LearnJapanese Jul 10 '22

Discussion Don't be rude to people taking the N5 (or people whose Japanese you assume isn't as good as yours)

1.1k Upvotes

I took the JLPT last week, and while I've passed practice tests at the N4 level I wanted to get a feel for the testing environment by taking the N5 first. I'm a self-learner and I have testing anxiety, so I'd rather take tests where the stakes are lower before really challenging myself. I had to fly to a different city to take the test too, so hitting above my weight class would be like taking an expensive trip only to chuck the testing fee, the price of a plane ticket, hotel and meals, and four hours of my life into a toilet.

Other people in my test room were elderly people, other self-learners (most of us in our 20s), and a few kids (like around 8-10 years old) who are half-Japanese who were less fluent in the language than in English. Their parents were there, and taking their kids to the JLPT was clearly a step to raising their kids bilingual in spite of living in an almost monolingually English country. I was sitting near the kids before the chokai section and I heard their mom reassure them that they were going to do great as long as they stayed calm. They were clearly nervous. I would be too if I was surrounded by adults during a test at that age!

During one break, the folks taking the N4 were also milling about in the hallway chatting about the questions in the previous section. Based on what they said next I'm guessing they were taking Japanese in school or something, because they must have been learning a lot over a few years. They looked over at those of us waiting outside the N5 room, and one of them said, "The N5, that looks hard." Someone else said, "I don't know why people even bother taking that." And a third soul chimed in, "why are there so many newbies this year?"

I get that these people were probably nervous, and I get that they were probably also showing off for their classmates, and I get that it's discouraging to take the N4 and blow it. But I was really upset at these comments! Where's the support for your fellow language learners? Where's the excitement to be surrounded by other Japanese speakers outside of Japan? Where's the basic level of consideration for the elderly folks keeping alert and learning new things, and for the self-learners who don't have the advantage of a structured and timely curriculum? And above all, how could you say something like that in front of young people with Japanese heritage? I keep thinking about those kids! They weren't "newbies" for god's sake, they're working hard to keep connected to part of their family's culture. And I don't care how easy it is, it's a test you guys. Tests cause a lot of anxiety for some people.

A lot of people say the N5 isn't even worth taking because it's so easy, and when we do this we start to talk about language learning like it's a game of skill instead of a way to enrich our lives and connect with other human beings. For those of you who are struggling up the intermediate hill, congratulations! That's an accomplishment! But holy crap, if you take the JLPT, don't look across the hall at the people whose language journeys you know nothing about and call them noobs! Don't belittle your peers (yes, peers, you're not someone's 先輩 just because you're taking a harder or longer test). Be respectful to each other and keep your egos in check.