Just wanted to leave my two bits — as a lot of people have said, the pattern of improvement-frustration-improvement is definitely the case for language learning. I’ve often wondered why. I find that often when I’m studying Japanese the hardest my ability actually seems to go *down* a bit. I think that our minds need some time to integrate new knowledge and that, in fact, that integration takes energy too. Perhaps that’s why there’s that time-lag between the work and the improvement; there’s an invisible stage we all go through where it all sinks in. If that’s the case then that feeling of “magical” improvement is just the slightly delayed result of hard work.

hey mathias can you link the program by any chance?

Seems the most of you have an upper advantage though; Japanese Classes/Courses.

Unfortunately in this northern abandoned part of Norway there’s no such thing.
Another problem is I don’t have any education so most of those programs, if there were any available, I would not be eligible for them. The last 6 months I’ve been contacting different schools in both Norway and Japan, as well as the friggin’ Embassy of Japan over here :) Trying to figure out what my chances are to actually move to Japan to learn the language and then see where that might take me. However the information received has been sparse and I feel kinda lost in the dark not knowing who to talk to/contact now… I would think though if I manage to find some “cheap” international Japanese Language School in Japan the State Educational Loan Fund might chip in and thar be hope!

Anyways… Self-studdy isn’t impossible I guess but I imagine it takes way longer than actually being around Japanese/Japanese speaking people like you say and especially taking a class where you have a plan to follow. Figuring out what books to get for self-study is pretty hard (and expensive) since each one has their own learning style and recommendations rarerly help then unfortunately.

Blargh, enough self-pity… Loving the site and your vids, Koichi, keep on keepin’ on!

@ Kim Ruben: [In Norwegian]
UiO har et språkkurs for japansk, om du er interessert. Selvsagt, om du bor i fuckings Finnmark eller på Svalbard skjønner jeg at du er frustrert. Google “talk now japanese” for språkkurs til PC/Mac. De finnes i mange forskjellige nivåer, så det går an å komme ganske langt på bare det. Om du i tillegg laster ned Skype, og henger på steder som dette (samtidig som du får adressene til folk) kan du komme enda lenger, nesten gratis..

[In English]
University of Oslo has a Japanese course, if youre interested. Of course, if you live in fucking Finnmark (way way north) or on Svalbard (…Its an island… In the ocean…), I understand your frustration. Google “talk now Japanese” for language trainers for PC/Mac. They’re available in many different levels, so you can get pretty far on them alone. If you also download Skype, and hang around places like this (while getting the adresses of people) you can go even further, almost for free..

I only know a few scattered words in Japanese, as I’ve only picked up a few things via anime and hentai, surprisingly. BUT! I intend on going there for education later on, be it on my own, or with some course, i dont know.

Step thingie sounds plausible, and i adore the illustration with the ninja illustrating japanese, killing the student with a grammar shuriken of 運命.

Åh, bare språkkurs alene? Høres jo greit ut, men så er jeg litt skeptisk til sånt (her i Norge) siden man ikke får brukt det så mye ellers, om man ikke såklart, som du nevner, ordner seg en god del japansktalende kontakter via Skype eller noe lignende. Skal sjekke ut det programmet selv om jeg har hatt litt dårlig erfaring med slikt tidligere. Takker for tipsene. Thanks. ありがとうございます

I’m going to go against the grain here and disagree with you. For me, there was no point in time where I noticed a substantial increase in ability. It’s been much more consistent and gradual. The way I learn Japanese doesn’t even make sense to myself. I don’t really have a particular method or style of remembering things. No association, not huge repetition saga’s, no massive study sessions. I used to try these things but they are really inefficient time wise. Now I’ve just given up and decided to just learn things on instinct. Which I believe is the best way to learn any language because think of the way you use your first language.
Do you first construct the sentence in your head? Do you look for associated items to help you remember words? No, you just say it because it’s instinct and you know what to do from habit. You’re so familiar with things you don’t even need to think in order to construct sentences.
I once asked an international student from Laos how he learned the English language and whether he thought about what he was going to say in his first language first then translate it or just say it right out in English. He said originally he’d translate it, but after a while he went straight to English.
I don’t know if any of this will make sense to you but immersion is the best way to learn a language. If you don’t have an environment to throw yourself into, just use the language at every opportunity you get. Stop thinking in English and start to think in Japanese, it helps you turn things that you used to have to track down from your memory into readily available words and phrases that can be used on instinct.

omg some off you guyx are really lucky that you learn jap at school i need to learn it with own strength, btw anybody has a good succetion how and where i must learn jap on the web offcourse well that would be a great help, btw i want to learn jap because i’m going to study there in 2012-13 hehe so it’ll be handy if i could learn much in these years ^^ all help is welcome!:D

omg some off you guyx are really lucky that you learn jap at school i need to learn it with own strength, btw anybody has a good succetion how and where i must learn jap on the web offcourse well that would be a great help, btw i want to learn jap because i’m going to study there in 2012-13 hehe so it’ll be handy if i could learn much in these years ^^ all help is welcome!:D

I’ve only just begun learning Japanese. Unfortunately, I can’t take Japanese lessons, because they’re too expensive. The ‘only’ languages we can (and have to) learn at school are English, French, German, Dutch (I live in the Netherlands), and if you’re on a really high level when it comes to school, Latin and Greek.
I’m trying to learn Japanese from a CD, but it’s not really working. And I can’t find a (free) way to learn the Japanese ‘alfabets’.
I agree about your theory.
It was the same for me learning English.
Not getting anywhere, and then, all of a sudden, another leap forward.

Kelly,

Japanese alphabet would first be Hiragana, then Katakana, then if you’re brave, dive into Kanji. There are plenty of places to learn these for free. Just memorize the characters and what sound is attached to them. The kanji learning may not be easy to find for free, but you may find something. For audio learning, try Japanesepod101.com’s podcast which I believe is free, and you can download their lessons (over 500) and listen any time. Good luck with your study.

Thanks a lot.
I’ll check right a way.

Ah! I completely understand where your going with this. It’s funny too because this happened to me today. (not on a large scale mind you but it was still an accomplishment in my book)

This semester I began to take Japanese in college and I’m about a good 3 months ish into it…and because my teacher is evil >:D *but in a good way* We’ve memorized all of the Hiragana and Katakana now we’re focusing mostly on kanji, vocab and sentence structure….Well after all this studying I felt as if I wasn’t getting better at all infact I felt all the japanese that I could muster was the sentence that my teacher required me to translate during class when he would call on me…or so I thought >.>

So today I was hanging up my clothes after school and was going over Japanese in my mind and then I started rattling off long sentences about my day, what I did yesterday what I want to do today, eat, what I saw etc etc etc. But it was strange, as if I just climbed up one of those miniscule steps.

Thats just a bit of my experience…now I have to go study some more so I can climb that next step :P

Happy Learning!

Wow you are so right about that! It’s the same with drawing. There are these long periods where nothing seems to come out right, then just one day my drawing ability comes back and always better! It’s a really weird phenomenon but it defiantly happens in languages too! The main thing is, is just sticking it out!

Hey, Koichi, I love the blog and youtube channel!

I don’t study Japanese yet, but I plan to in the future. This “level-up” phenomenon is quite true, I’ve noticed, with most languages. It’s been happnening to me with Spanish. I study nearly every day, but it is only every other week or so that I notice even the slightest improvements. Friends of mine have talked about the same thing with French and Chinese.

Keep up the good work!

Hey,
I’m having trouble with kanjii and sentence structure.Along time ago I found this really cool site that helped me understand kanjii and how it makes meanings.Now I forget what the site is and of what I learned.

Immelmann, thanks a ton for the post. That’s some legit advice from an experienced learner. Although this taking steps post is inspiring and all, it really hasn’t directly helped me figure out how to learn Japanese more easily. Your post, however, has some really great tips. This Koichi guy did have one piece of advice though, and you agreed with him on it: study. That’s definitely something I’ve got to work on.

I’m actually 1 month into Japan right now. I studied at college for about 8 months before I came over. My number 1 difficulty the whole time I’ve been here is vocab. I feel like when it comes to speaking I’ve got the grammar down decently well but vocab just completely limits me from understanding anything. When I’m talking with co-workers we are constantly bringing out our phones to translate words. I love this word association idea, and I’m going to give it a shot. I think if I just get some kind of practice going every day though I’ll be in much better shape.

I love this site, it's so helpful. =] And wow, Immelmann, thanks for your post. I'm a self-taught high schooler (nobody offers Japanese in New Hampshire!! T_T) so it can get really discouraging.

Funny stuff. I never really thought of it as a staircase with a ninja on top (although a few of my friends have).

We'll call this falling down the stairs to realize what you know –
I had 4 semesters of Japanese in college, which is just enough time to squeeze in the two Genki books. However, my Japanese has fallen out of use, and I find myself restudying things to get back into the swing of it. What's frustrating about this is that there are little things that I forgot without practice amidst a wealth of what I already know, which means 70% of what I reviews is stuff I remember. The encouraging thing is realizing how much I know, however, and I can verify the steps thing in this regard because I recognize things from when I took my first steps towards learning the language. I remember grammar points and tests largely. Things I struggled with ages ago when I learned it is easy to recover now in review. So even as someone who has fallen down some stairs lately, I can guarantee there is a magnificent thing that happens every so often — my personal favorite being conjugating short forms without having to think about it, very satisfying.

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Very good article; this is exatly how learning Japanese works. In fact, this is how learning any skill works.

There's a book I read a long time ago called Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fullfillment by George Leonard that outlines exactly what you said. Namely, that your ability in a given skill will rise quickly at first, then you plateau for a long time before it happens again. The best thing to do about this is to simply know that it's coming and accept it as part of the process. “The Master's learning curve rises quickly, plateaus for a while, and with consistent practice, rises again with some regression and plateaus again for a while and so on. The Master knows that Mastery is a lifetime path. The Master enjoys living on the plateau. The Master knows that while he is on the plateau, learning is happening and practice will inevitably raise him to a higher level.”

So enjoy pushing through the tough times! Once you push through your couple of plateaus, you're probably doing better than 95% of the people who have tried to learn that skill (in my experience). Feels good man.

I just stumbled across your blog, this post is so old… 4 years. >.> Oops… I’ve been studying Japanese for almost 3 years on my own. This is totally how it is, at least for me. I started with the basics, ひらがな、and カタカナ。After learning those, I bought a ton of books that had quite a bit of variety for teaching, and had different learning tools. I picked it all up faster than I expected really… I did take 4 years of Mandarin in high school so that helped a little bit with knowing the meaning of some of the kanji. At least the more basic ones. Then I hit a plateau… I felt like it was a dead end, like I won’t ever get any better. I tried to do everything I could in Japanese, I even wrote my shopping lists in Japanese. I went to Japan and was able to say some things, but I was too shy to use anything I had learned, and was scared to DEATH of offending someone by saying the wrong thing, not being humble enough, or something like that. 

Fast Forward two years. I picked up studying again (with getting married, having surgery, and then getting pregnant it was a long couple of years and Japanese just fell by the wayside…) and re-introduced myself to everything I had already learned, just so I didn’t forget it all. This time around, I found some new resources which I will give my honest opinion about. I’ll go ahead and give my opinion about my older resource(s) too since no one will likely read this anyway, since the post is 4 years old. 

Japanese: Demystified  - Book : 
I found this at Barnes and Nobles (US bookstore). I LOVE this book. The way it explains things, and starts throwing kanji right at you from the very beginning so I didn’t get dependent on reading hiragana alone. Now when I read Japanese, if it’s all in hiragana, I’m kind of screwed. Hahaha… I would rather have the kanji in there than not. It has quizzes, written practices, exams, oral practices, and examples. All of which I believe are excellent learning tools. I love this book, and would recommend it to anyone seriously interested in learning Japanese. 

Japanese-English/English-Japanese Dictionary:This is good to have, but to be perfectly honest, I barely EVER use it. Would still recommend having one, just to have it for reference. I would NOT however recommend using it as a crutch of any kind. If you tried to learn english by relying on a dictionary I think you would be discouraged pretty quickly. Hesig’s Method:I do not approve. I tried this for a month. At first I thought it was fantastic, because it helped me remember kanji. But then I ran across a comment in a forum about some of his “definitions” aren’t at all accurate. So I contacted two of my native Japanese friends who do indeed live IN Japan, and I wrote out the Kanji, and the meaning he gave, and asked it was accurate. One was completely appalled at this method of learning, and insisted that repetition is best. (That didn’t shock me in the least). But even with that said, she said after doing a bit of research on it herself, she found there were too many mistakes to really trust it. So I abandoned it. Pimsleur’s Approach: I love this man. I have every single lesson in my phone and in other devices and listen to them whenever I get a free moment. One lesson a day, and then the next day I review the old lesson, and then start the newer one. Never more than two in a day though. But that’s just what I found works best for me. It definitely helps with pronunciation. But not so much for picking apart sentences and learning grammar. If you can’t get a native Japanese to talk to, this is a good practice tool too. Although it’s just repetition, and not creating your own sentences. Rosetta Stone PC Program:I. Hate. Rosetta. Stone. Some people swear by it, and that’s fine. But I find it almost insulting to the Japanese language. The first time I opened it, I found it incredibly overwhelming, and scary. The first part isn’t so bad, just repeating simple words like “ball”, “car”, “cat”, “man”, “woman”, “girl”, “boy”, etc. etc. But then the next segment started getting really complicated, and if you aren’t knowledgeable in Japanese at ALL, 「男の子と男の人」sounds like a tongue twister. It’s good for learning to say things, and sentences, but I don’t think you can “learn a language” solely using this program. It doesn’t break things apart at all, or dive into particle usage, or particle meaning, or proper verb conjugations and how to do them. My friend went to Japan using only the knowledge from this and she had a very hard time. (this same friend claimed to be fluent in Japanese and at the time only knew how to say “you are a witch” and “cute”…>.<)  Sure she could ask 「トイレはどこですか。」but if someone started giving her directions how to get there, she was royally screwed. Once I learned the words, could read them, and understand the grammar, this tool was easier to use, and made more sense. Again though, that is just my opinion. As far as your little illustration goes (genius, by the way) that is totally how it is. After my hiatus, I got back into it and felt like "OH now I get it… how could I have been so confused…" I'm starting to get to that point with simple verb conjugation but that's a WHOLE section of study unto it self. :)