Learning Japanese

Ohayo Gozaimasu!

Good morning!

ItsJustTomBobson’s blog with a little international lingo! Not particularly in-depth and fluent but I can provide it in very small spades!

Just don’t ask me to transcribe anything in Kanji. I cannot, for the life of me, get my head around that!

This post, I guess, is just to talk briefly about what’s become my New Year’s Resolution. As I’ve talked about before, I have such an appreciation for the country of Japan. I watch a lot of anime, Japanese wrestling and I’ve read a lot about the culture of Japan, which just fascinates me in general. Therefore, why not at least attempt to learn the Japanese language?

I’m not planning to be able to transcribe it in Kanji or be able to write in Japanese. I simply want to be able to speak the language a little and be able to have some conversations in the language. I think that’d be a really cool skill to master so I made it my New Years Resolution (earlier on in the year) to start learning the language properly.

“Hokusai’s Japanese Kanji faith, Album” by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ CC0 1.0

I already knew certain words due to the power of anime! When you hear the words “NANI” yelled out so many times, you’re going to be able to make the connection that “nani” means “what”! These things just happens when you hear something in a different language over and over again.

However, I started to expand my dictionary a little bit more this year. I’ve tried a few things in order to understand the language and here’s my list of some of the ways I’ve tried to understand the Japanese lingo!:

1. YouTube videos – About four years ago, I saved an hour long video on YouTube under the “Watch Later” category. About four years later, I actually watched that video as a starting point. The video was actually extremely informative and helpful with tips of how to learn the language. It was with the “Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com” channel, which actually holds a lot of similar videos like it with tops of learning the language. I’d very much recommend it.
2. Duolingo – Duolingo is a free-to-use app which can give you very basic lessons and practice sessions of whatever language you’re interested in. I tried this for a couple of weeks (daily) but, after a while, you can only get so much out of hearing the same words over and over again. It’s good for consolidating and practicing a handful of words but not for understanding and conversing in the language. I stopped using it after a while and put learning the language on the backburner for a bit.
3. Audiobooks – With my Spotify premium, I discovered an audiobook also from the JapanesePod101.com people which has someone reinvigorated my interesting in learning the language. They are 10-15 minute lessons which gives you some very thorough explanations and consolidation of certain phrases and words. This was certainly a lot more effective than Duolingo and I’m still listening to the audiobook now.
4. Social Media – My YouTube and Instagrams feeds have been flooded with reels and shorts as these videos give brief explanations as to what certain words mean. This, on its own, doesn’t really feel like a lot. However, if you’re in the habit of mindlessly scrolling through your phone, you do come across the same words over and over and it helps stick certain words into your brain.
5. Small whiteboard of words – I have a small whiteboard which I’ve updated with certain words I’ve come across or whatever I want to remember. If I’ve got a certain phrase that I want to consolidate, this has certainly been effective when I get to see the word constantly as I walk around my house. The phrase “Kore wa nan desu ka” is now stuck in my head due to this method! (NOTE: “Kore wa nan desu ka” is “what is this?” or “what is it?”)

I’m still in the early days of my “Learning Japanese” adventure but I’m hoping to stay committed to this quest and I’d like to be able to converse in the language some day.

Heck, maybe I could do a vlog while speaking in Japanese 😉