Practicing Japanese In Your Dreams. Can It Work?

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For the last few weeks I’ve been pretty fascinated by the idea of “lucid dreaming.” Basically, this is the ability to know when you’re dreaming, then being able to take control of it to do whatever you want. Of course, after being able to fly and performing dentristry on monkeys, my thoughts drifted to studying Japanese… in my dreams. The more I thought about this, the more I thought it could be possible. So, over the next two or three months, I’m going to run an experiment on myself. I’m going to find out if it’s possible to study Japanese in your sleep and then share how I did it (or how I failed at it) with all of you. I think it’s more than possible, though. Here’s why:

Solving Problems With Dreams

There has been a lot documented on dreaming when it comes to solving tough problems or coming up with great, world changing ideas. Einstein came up with the theory of relativity becaues of a dream. Jack Nicklaus came up with a new golf swing in a dream. Elias Howe came up with the invention for the sewing machine via a dream and figured out how the needle would work. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that dreams can be useful. There are two really important things, though:

  1. You have to be able to remember your dreams (that’s a given, and you can train yourself to remember your dreams more vividly)
  2. You have to dream about the right things

I feel that with a lot of “world changing” dreams, the person dreaming the dream was so obsessed with somethign that it got injected into their dreams. Luckily, they were able to remember it, and then use it to their advantage when they woke up.

But what if you could choose the kinds of things you dream about and control what goes on in the dreams? That’s where the “lucid” part comes in.

Lucid Dreaming Your Way Into Japanese Study

My theory is that it’s totally possible to make yourself dream in such a way that either you’re A) studying Japanese and getting better at it, or B) practicing conversational Japanese. I think that in a dream state, one can do a lot more than they can in real life. For some reason, in dreams, anything really seems possible. In order to do this, though, you have to be able to lucid dream, and lucid dreaming takes quite a bit of practice.

[box]If you seriously want to learn to learn to Lucid Dream, I recommend you check out Lucidipedia.com – this is the resource I’m using, and it seems really great so far. I’ll just be summarizing below, so if you want all the itty bitty specifics, I recommend you check it out[/box]

There are multiple steps to being able to lucid dream, and all of them actually take practice. Believe it or not, lucid dreaming is a skill you devleop over time, and like anything, if you don’t practice you won’t get better at it (or won’t be able to do it at all). Now, I’ve done a lot of reading on lucid dreaming for pleasure (i.e. you can do whatever you want in your dreams… like fly… or hang out with famous people… etc), but I haven’t seen anything on lucid dreaming for educational purposes (i.e. practicing a new language). There’s a bit out there in regards to problem solving, which is great, but Tofugu is a blog about Japanese language learning, so I feel like we should stick with that.

So, my plan is to go through the steps to learn lucid dreaming and then experiment with ways to study Japanese within those lucid dreams. I’ll try different things and report back to you with articles / videos talking about what worked and what didn’t (at least for me). Then, we can figure out a step by step method that will (hopefully) help anyone who wants to lucid dream for educational purposes to do just that.

How To Lucid Dream

There are a few steps achieve lucid dreaming and get good at it. Like I said earlier, if you want the nitty gritty, go check out Lucidipedia.com, they’re great. Down below I’ve injected a few other recommendations people have told me about learning to lucid dream to add to the basic steps that I’m hoping will help. Here’s basically what I’ll be doing (and what I already am doing).

  1. Develop the ability to clearly remember my dreams. I couldn’t do this before, but I can pretty well now. Basically, I had to trick my mind into thinking it was important to remember my dreams. I did this by spending a few minutes every morning when I woke up going through my dreams as thoroughly as possible before moving or getting up. I’d also jot down notes on the dreams I had so that later on in the day I could come back to them and re-read them, to see if I still remembered. By doing this every day for the last few weeks, I’ve gotten way better at remembering dreams. I still have a ways to go, but this is the first step. If you don’t remember your lucid dreams, then lucid dreaming is useless.
  2. Remember To Always Question. During the day, I’m trying to get into the habit of asking myself if I’m dreaming. When you’re in a dream, you don’t realize you’re dreaming until you wake up. You never question it. So, if I can get used to questioning whether or not I’m dreaming all the time, hopefully that will carry over to my dreams.
  3. Wake up and Go back to sleep method. Lucidipedia talks about a method that apparently fast-tracks you to lucid dreaming, which involves waking up for an hour, going over what you dreamt about before waking up, then coming up with a “dream plan” on how you want that dream to continue. When you fall back asleep an hour later, the idea is that this planning and thinking of the dream will help you to get back into the dream, but this time you’ll be in control (or at least know you’re dreaming). Within this, I’ll have to learn to recognize dream signs and a bit more. This is where the magic happens.

There’s quite a bit more to this, of course, and a lot of that can be found on Lucidipedia, but those are the basic “big three” steps that I’ll be taking to get there. In theory, if I’m able to lucid dream (and on top of that, plan what I’m going to do in those lucid dreams) I should be able to plan to study Japanese as well. Of course, I can’t lucid dream quite yet, so I’m going to save that for another article when it finally starts to work.

That’s All For Now, Folks…

This is actually a lot more legitimate than it seems at first glance, I think. I’m not saying it will work, for sure, but I feel like it has a lot of potential. 30 minutes of extra study every night along with the power of dreams seems pretty nifty to me (or, at the very least, like a lot of fun). If you’re interested, here’s a video (basically a less specific recap of this article) you can watch.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06ez8Sv5EYo']

I know a bunch of you have some experience in lucid dreaming, and I’d love to hear from you. What advice do you have? What has worked / hasn’t worked for you? Share them below to help myself and all the other folks who are interested in lucid dreaming. It should be a fun ride, at the very least.

P.S. I’ve planted the idea into your subconscious that you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

P.P.S. Inception.

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  • http://twitter.com/Fortaleza115 Leda Vicki Sanchez

    Koichi! Even though I haven’t been trying to dream of studying Japanese, I crammed in so much study time yesterday that some of my review sentences did show up in my dreams. It was like a Japanese voiceover in the background of my dream saying them over and over. I thought it was hilarious and the first thing I remembered was this post.

  • Anonymous

    I’m not sure that speaking a foreign language in your dreams marks the same progress for everyone. Since a few years back, every now and then some Japanese will appear in my dreams. Sometimes I can understand it, but sometimes when I wake up and remember, it will just be gibberish that my mind interpreted in the dream as Japanese. Like sometimes I won’t know what people are saying, but in the dream I’ll know “Ah, that’s Japanese.” But if I don’t understand it, chances are it’s just nonsense.

    I dunno…maybe it works differently for lucid dreaming, though.

  • NexStamina

    The best method for lucid dreaming [Nearly 100% of the time once mastered] as tested by a close-knit community around 8 years is the “Dream Exit Initiated Lucid Dream” (DEILD). The one in this article sounds like Mnemonic Initiated lucid Dreaming (MILD) first suggested by Stephen Laberge. I’ve found it to be ineffective and not conducive to getting sufficient sleep. Google up DEILD and be amazed as I first was on seeing how easy getting 4+ lucid dreams in a single night could be.

    This is Chigun from Textfugu and have been a member of a lucid dreaming site since 2003, although I’ve given it up more or less now.

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  • chewbooker

    I agree with listening while you sleep. I’ve played music while I sleep and it greatly influences the way I dream, and even helps me remember what I was dreaming about!

  • canjpcomment

    Just want to let you know that this idea isn’t ridiculous at all. I have never used lucid dreaming to do it. But I have had Japanese lessons in my sleep. I’ve also had Japanese words explained to me in my sleep that I didn’t know and had to look up in a dictionary when I woke up.

  • Val

    My boyfriend’s dreams are all lucid, he never practiced, it’s been like that all his life, anything he wants he can make it appear in his dreams.

  • http://twitter.com/cuivreaka Emi

    After watching HOURS of NHK covering the earthquake and tsunami, I fell asleep. I had a short lucid dream with the kanji 一語（いちご) on a blank board. At first I thought it said one language and then I thought one word. I basically had a dream about japanese and was able to somewhat translate; then abruptly woke-up.

    I slept 5 1/2 hours, pretty good for an insomniac, and I was watching NHK with multiple kanji running across the screen right before sleep.

    maybe it is really possible…

  • Sholch

    mmmm Tips:
    When you go to sleep and dream. You might notice you are but. you forget EVERYTHING about the “real world” so. Practice remembering stuff from the real world too in dreams
    ~avoid blinking or closing eyes in the dream, or you will wake up .~ dont get hurt or you react and.. wake up. (again) . dont roll your eyes. That wakes you up too.
    also remember, the dream has to keep goin on, it cant just pause. so you have no control mmm really on what happens AT THE MOMENT.
    once youve gain “control” so you are concious and you not waking up. you must say to yourself “okay..so what do I wanna do?”, then wish it really hard.. (well with practice you get better, and No , not exactly that, but you get the idea)

    Try.. Asking for glances of the future like, of The next day,
    So when you wake up, and write it down, Maybe youll get a dejaboo along the day~ that might proof Future visions exist ~

  • bigrob1

    i have achieved lucid dreaming on many occasions, it wasnt on purpose or anything it just kind of happens. the thing is most dream i weird and you tend to do things that dont make since all you have to do is stop and think. for example say you having a dream about something trying to kill you. the person is behind you and your trying your best to run from him but it seems you are barely moving most of the time the place your are in is not very clear. also what i tend to notice is a lot of times my dreams change from first person to third person a lot, i think that its from the fact i play videogames so my mind is mimicking it. but back to what i was saying when you take time to notice those weird things thats happening the rest of your mind starts to work so you began to test your theory(this all happens so fast) one i stay very still and wait for the person to attack me. most of the time what happens is your mind changes up the dream because what i think happens is your will kicks in and you dont wanna die so you just erase that person from existence thus changing your dream. Or you can do what i like to do, phase through walls, which seems to be quit easy, and one i do that i know im dreaming. when that happens you should be able to manipulate your dreams. you should be able to fly, but the thing is sometimes you realize you should be able to do these things so your brain trys to ground you but you just got to force it( i fly really weird in my dreams, i have to hold my arms like a t-rex, but anyways) once you do this a few time it starts becoming easy.

  • Andy_Megara

    I dont know if you know about this, but I think you may find it interesting: http://www.scn.org/cmp/aural.htm There you can find a method to get fluent in a new language just 3 months after you started to learn that language. ¿What do you think of this method?

  • Geil Rugner

    I don’t have too much experience with lucid dreams, it’s just that every few months I have a “Oh come on! Really!?” moment during a dream, resulting in me waking up immediately. This happens when something takes place during the dream that strikes me as suspicious. Obviously everything in a dream is suspicious but most of the time you don’t notice it.
    So it’s all about having established a set of rules that clarify what can happen in real life and what cannot. I’m all for being open-minded, but being open-minded will hurt your chances of getting awareness in dreams. For instance, for those of you who have played Heavy Rain on the PS3 this will be a nice example.

    There’s a scene where Madison, a journalist, is alone in her apartment and suddenly gets assaulted by a robber. When you fend him off and try to run, a second guy stops you. At that point I already thought “Okay, didn’t see him before, I’m pretty sure there’s only one in the room…”. You fend them both off and escape to the bathroom. Madison locks the door and… out of nowhere a third (!!) guy grabs her from behind in an attempt to slit her throat. You are supposed to fight him but as soon as the third guy appeared I stopped doing anything. My friend asked me what the hell I was doing, so I just replied that that’s obviously a dream sequence. Not a chance that there’s a third guy in the bathroom.

    The lesson learned here is that instead of considering the possibility that the robber did indeed bring two others with him and that one of them was hiding in the bathroom for some reason, I never gave that train of thought a chance. The second one was already strange, but the third one just too much.

    This is really all I can offer. There’s all this advice about checking your hands, feet and watches constantly to train your awareness. Just don’t believe.
    You are being chased by a pink elephant? It’s a dream.
    You fly? It’s a dream.
    Zombie Acopalypse? Dream.
    Three robbers break into your house? It’s real. Better dismiss a chance to have a lucid dream in favor of saving your life.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NTZ77ZRITSZCL4UFPHCXWZ6VSE Sam Markel

     Lucid dreaming is the best!  I’ve been practicing it on and off for over a year now, but just recently has my dream recall been stellar enough that I can lucid dream almost every night.  I started doing the typical flying, spending time with people you’ve always wanted to meet, going to Japan ;), etc., but since I’ve used it for studying for tests, haha.  I still have not had a dream in Japanese, though, but I’ll try again tonight!

  • Blanca

    There are a few tricks to start lucid dreaming.  First you have to remember your dreams, and I think actually trying to figure out what they mean may help your brain start to notice your dreams. Also writing them down while your still in the same position while sleeping really helps. Another thing, like at the time/sign/ any kind of words or even what someone said to you, and look at it again, or ask them to say it again. Its really weird, but when you look back the sign will say something completely different. Like if I was looking at a clock, I’d look at it and its 7:15, then I look at it again and its 12:45q3 or something like that. So thats one way to realize your dreaming. After that don’t try to change your dreams too much when you realize your dreaming. If you do, your prone to waking up sooner. So usually you can realize what your dreaming and then just enjoy the show, and if it starts to turn into a nightmare, you can turn on your lucid dreaming skillz and tell the looming dark figure to turn into a field of poppies or something.
    As for learning japanese while dreaming, its definitely possible. You will remember a lot more in your dream, and if you write down what you dreamed about, without looking, often times you’ll be writing in japanese without even noticing. Though what you talk about with others will be comletely strange. Like dancing the polka with carrots. It really helps! Often times I’ll wake up, and wonder what the heck I was talking about then look it up and realize I was actually making sense! I think watching videos before you go to sleep that are in japanese, or reading especially will help with this process.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t think your sleep would be affected at all. You sleep to rest your body, not your mind. You can rest your mind at any point in the day. When you sleep your muscles relax, and your breathing and heartbeat slows down. In a dream, even if you are in control, your body is still resting. I think lucid dreaming would actually rest you more. The only period of time during sleep where it is actually doing you good is REM sleep, and this is the period where you dream. Dreams usually last a few seconds each, but if you could lengthen the period of time you are dreaming by controlling it, you might be able actually shorten the amount of time you need to sleep and increase the quality of your sleep.

    This is all just my personal speculation and opinion. I don’t claim that what I say has any merit, this is just my general understanding of the sleeping state, and my opinion on Lucid dreaming. 

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