That’s right, FOR THE NEXT 12 WEEKS WE’LL BE WRITING AND ILLUSTRATING A NEW MANGA SERIES FOR SHONEN JUMP, and it will be all about the back story of our beloved character: Kumaman.

Although it’s only a 12 week contract we’re hoping it will turn into a longer term thing, though I guess that just depends on numbers. Ever since I was a kid it was my dream to write my own manga. It’s pretty much all I thought about. With Aya as the illustrator, and with SHONEN JUMP’s publishing power, that dream is finally going to become a reality, so we’ll be focusing most of our time on the manga side of the business, because, frankly, we were given a lot of money to do this.

The manga will be in all Japanese, but I know how you internet pirates work! Guess what? We’ve scanned and translated our own manga into English, and will be making it available to everyone for download (see bottom of the post). So don’t even bother, MangaStream! We just beat you at your own game.

Download “Kumaman: The Bear Bang Theory” Early

The first chapter, “Kumaman: The Bear Bang Theory” is a history of Kumaman and how he got to where he is in the present timeline of the manga. I won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say Kumaman has had a rough life! Even though the chapter isn’t out in Japan until May 2014, we’re releasing the first chapter early, because we can, and because we love you. The contracts are signed and nothing says we can’t do this (I think! That contract was super long and in these weird Chinese characters), so hopefully it doesn’t get us in trouble. Plus, we’ve already cashed the check. I’m writing this post from Vegas, after all! Hit! Hit! Hit!

If you’d like to download it and read it in it’s full glory, it’s all yours. Note: you will need some kind of PDF viewer like Preview (OSX), Adobe Reader, or even most modern web browsers. Also note that since this is a manga made for Japanese customers first, the panels should be read from right to left. It will be very confusing otherwise. We did translate everything to English though, so at least that part won’t be confusing.

Okay! Get to downloading! Chapter 1 is here! I can “bearly” wait! ha ha.

I’m super excited for this Tofugu business pivot and I hope you are too. Let’s all forget about Japanese language education and all think about manga and the hot tubs full of money that come with manga publishing. Thank you, and please enjoy!

P.S. This was an April Fools joke (sorry!), but maybe someday it will become real. You never know. Thanks everyone for enjoying the comic!

Things To Know

There are a few important things to know about how I’m laying out this guide / post:

The Route

As I mentioned before, it’s much harder to come up with an itinerary for someone visiting for the second time. This particular route is one that I personally like because it gets you to some places that the regular Japan tourist probably wouldn’t venture. It gets you outside of the regular Tokyo-Osaka-Kyoto circuit, and you have a chance to see a big change in weather / temperature.

There is one problem with this route, though: You’re missing out on all of Western Japan in favor of the North / Northeast. So, keep that in mind when you’re deciding your second trip. Personally I like the North over the West, though, so that’s the whole reason why we’re focusing our time there during round two!

JR Pass

Just like with your first trip to Japan, you’re going to want to get a JR Pass. I’ve always used JRpass.com in the past, but I’m sure any of the JR Pass websites should get you what you need at a reasonable rate. For this trip, getting a JR Pass is 100% necessary. It may seem like a lot to spend ~$500 on a two-week ticket, but it’s going to save you so much in the long run. We’re going to be covering more distance via Japan Rail compared to last time, so don’t forget to order one of these!

Finding Places To Stay

Also like last time, I’m not going to go into much detail on where to stay. That’s going to be up to you. I’ll give you information on the general area, you find a hotel / ryokan / hostel inside that area.

Packing

I’d recommend packing a small rolling suitcase or backpacking it. You’ll be on the train a lot, so big luggage is just going to cause trouble. Pack light, wash your clothes often, and enjoy the ease of smaller luggage. If you have anything that you want to take back with you (and you will), I’d recommend sending it to yourself via postage, or just waiting until you’re in Tokyo / the airport to do your shopping.

Day 1: Fly Into Narita, Transfer And Fly To Sapporo

This time around, we’re just going to fly into Narita and then leave right after to go to Sapporo. Due to potential delays and all that, there are a couple of options here.

1. You could just do a direct flight to Sapporo, if that’s something you’re able to do.
2. You could schedule a transfer for soon after you get in.
3. You could schedule a transfer for later in the evening (if you arrive in the morning) or the early next morning.

I like “the next morning” personally, but it’s up to you. Point is, we’re flying into Narita (because I’m assuming that most people fly into Narita – if you’re not, then adjust accordingly) then getting on another plane to Sapporo. Note that this flight to Sapporo should be ONE-WAY.

Sidenote: If you have the time, and you should, be sure to go pick up your JR Pass at the airport station. You can get them in Sapporo too, but it’s easier if you just get it out of the way.

Days 2-4: Sapporo, Otaru, Nikka Whiskey

Welcome to Sapporo! I hope you found a nice place to stay. Depending on when you visit, it may be very cold and snowy or it may be moderately warm and sunny. Whichever it is, there’s fun things to do in both situations! I’d recommend spending your days doing something like this:

1. Explore Sapporo: There’s a lot to see and do in Sapporo, though most of them have to do with food. Be sure to eat some Jingisu Khan, go to the fish market and have some of the best seafood / seafood donburi you’ve ever tasted, go up the TV tower, visit Ramen Republic AND Ramen Alley, go to the Sapporo brewery, eat some melon, some soft serve, and some melon soft serve, and see the “Boys, Be Ambitious” statue (there are sheep and stuff too).
2. Otaru: Once you’ve gotten Sapporo out of your system, be sure to go to Otaru. It’s a moderately short train ride to the North and you get some awesome ocean views as your train rides right along the coast. If it’s winter and stormy out… the waves crash up against a wall just feet from the train. It’s awesome. In Otaru, at least in the summer, there are tons of shops. The place is pretty famous for its seafood, its various sweets companies (like, ridiculously famous and crowded), and canal. There’s plenty to do here and you can easily spend most of a day walking around.
3. Nikka Whiskey: If you don’t spend your whole day at Otaru, or you have priorities more in line with mine, you’ll want to keep riding the train to Nikka Whiskey Distillery in Yoichi. You will be able to taste some of the best whiskey you’ve ever had, and the tour/story of the place is pretty interesting too. Be sure to go to the bar and sample everything in the book. Don’t be tempted to buy any alcohol-related souvenirs (unless you’re planning to drink it while in Japan), though. You can’t mail alcohol in Japan, and carrying these bottles around will be a pain. You can buy pretty much everything Nikka at the duty free stores in the airport, and they’re often cheaper too.

There’s more to do in and around Hokkaido, depending on when you’re visiting. If you’re there during the winter, things like skiing and snowboarding will be options. If you’re there during the summer you might want to explore the outer reaches of this Northern Island, or go to Showa Shinzan for some hot spring time.

Days 5-6: Travel Day / Hakodate / Aomori / Sendai

Since we’re taking the train from Sapporo, you’ll have a lot of time to stop, look around, and then get back on (thank you JR Pass!). Do keep in mind that during the winter trains are often delayed, so make sure you’re flexible! Whatever you do, I’d recommend stopping and staying in one of these places for one or two of the nights, otherwise you’re in for a 12ish hour train ride back to Tokyo.

1. Hakodate: This city was the first in Japan to open its ports to foreign trade back in 1854 so it has some interesting architecture and influences going on. That being said, there was a huge fire in 1934 that wiped out a lot of it, so keep that in mind. It also has the Goryoukaku Fort, which is an awesome star-shaped fort (hard to see from the ground, though). The history of this fort is pretty interesting too, but I’ll leave that to your own curiosity should you choose to follow it.
2. Aomori: Probably my favorite place of the three, this city is at the Northern edge of Honshu (the main island) and also where the shinkansen starts and ends, depending on which direction you’re going. If you can get to Aomori, the rest of the ride back towards Tokyo should be pretty fast and easy. I don’t think you could spend several days here (at least on a 2-week trip), but if you do be sure to check out the Modern Art Museum, the Jomon Museum, and anything you can find that’s apple related. Basically, Aomori = Apples, so if you’re here during apple season then… good for you! Also be sure to try the vinegar, black garlic, and whatever other foods you can get your hands on. Aomori food is pretty awesome, and will be a nice refresher after all the Jingis Khan, beer, and seafood that you ate in Sapporo.
3. Sendai: Of course there’s Sendai as well, which is very close to where the Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 hit. The city itself is pretty much business as usual, though if you go outside the city to try to visit places like Ishinomaki (to go to Cat Island?) you’ll still see a lot of cleared land from where the tsunami hit. There’s plenty to do in Sendai, though when I’m there it’s usually to go to Cat Island, so… there you go. Sendai is also a good spot to stop for the night if it’s getting late and trains are running out.

Days 7-10: Travel, Tokyo, Mt. Fuji

Days 7-10 are going to depend on how long you spent in Northeast Japan. First you should spend some of it traveling to Tokyo. If it’s early enough, keep going to Mt. Fuji. If not, stay the night and then leave again in the morning. Don’t worry, we’ll be back.

In terms of “Mt. Fuji”, though, there are a lot of options. There are so many places on and around Mt. Fuji that are worth visiting that I’d need an entire other article or two to go through them. So, you’ll need to do the research for that on your own. It’s going to depend on things like whether or not you want onsen, whether or not you want to climb it, or whether or not you want to ride roller coasters. If it’s the last option, then be sure to go to Fuji-Q highland. There’s onsen there as well. Two of my favorite roller coasters are at Fuji-Q, and I don’t say that lightly.

Anyways, spend a couple days in and around Fuji. If you run out of things to do here you can always move on to the next section early and then go back to Tokyo a little early too.

Days 10-12: Things You Missed

These days are for things that you missed last time. What did you want to do that you couldn’t? Snow monkeys? Nikko? What else? There had to have been something, even if it’s just going back to Tokyo to sit in an arcade all day to play Gundam Extreme.

Alternatively, you could also head West for a day or two. I wouldn’t go too far (as that will be another trip… let’s say your third one), but feel free to look around and see the things you want. These are free days after all, and Mt. Fuji provides a nice “middle ground” between Tokyo and the West.

Days 13-14: Tokyo, Shopping, Going Home

Once again there has to be some time for shopping / Tokyo touristing. There’s always a lot to do in Tokyo, though I tend to avoid the city as much as possible. Come back, get your omiyage done, and head on out. Don’t forget to pick up your Nikka Whiskey at the duty free shop in Narita (and leave some space in your suitcase as well).

For A 1-Week Trip

To turn this into a 1-week trip instead of a two, you’ll want to cut out the Fuji part, the “things you missed” part, and then shorten up your time during days 5-6 to just one day if you can. Of course, you can now adjust more appropriately on your own since you’ve been to Japan before and know what you like and don’t like, but that’s where I’d use the ol’ trip razor.

I hope this helps some of you to plan your second trips to Japan! Let me know in the comments what kind of second trips you’d plan if it were you. Surely it will help out some other people planning second trips who don’t have the same tastes as me :)

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Not all that different from Fight Club, there’s an underground movement of people who just memorize things. Cards, words, stats, and… uh… sorry, I can’t quite remember the last thing I was going to say.

When you look at memory experts, though, there is one man I’d immediately put at the top of that memorization pedestal, and that man is Akira Haraguchi, a retired Japanese engineer born in 1946. As you can probably guess from the title of this article, he also happens to be the person who recited pi to a cool 100,000 digits. Considering that I can recite pi to around… oh I’d say two digits (3.14)… 100,000 is no small feat. Is he some kind of super genius? Is there something special about him? Perhaps, but he says he was not a child prodigy or anything of that nature. He even has a memory of being forced out into the hall at school as a punishment because he couldn’t memorize the multiplication tables of one-digit numbers properly. That must be a fun memory for Haraguchi to look back on now.

So what made him undertake this (crazy) task? These two paragraphs from the Japan Times sum it up better than I could:

Interestingly, Haraguchi says his interest in pi has a lot to do with his lifelong quest for eternal truth. Since childhood, he has always wondered why some people — especially those with physical and mental disabilities — suffer. He consulted religion and philosophy books for answers, but in vain. Then he turned to nature, and realized, he said, that nothing in nature — be it leaves, trees or mountain scenery — is linear or square. “I realized that nature is not made of straight lines. . . . And I realized that all things in the universe . . . rotate. Rotation became a key concept for me.”

So when he learned that pi is an endless series of numbers with no pattern or repetition, it made perfect sense to him to take it as a symbol of life, he says — adding that he now calls pi memorization “the religion of the universe.”

From there he started memorizing. Between 2004 and 2006 he had four main “events” in his memorization life:

• September 2004: Recited Pi up to 54,000 digits.
• December 2004: Recited Pi up to 68,000 digits.
• July 2005: Recited Pi up to 83,431 digits.
• October 2006: Recited Pi up to 100,000 digits.

The 100,000 digit record was the height of his career and done at a Tokyo event where he spent 16.5 hours reciting number after number after number (stopping every few hours to eat delicious onigiri to keep his mind and body in shape). Despite the fact that three out of four of these recitations were done for witnesses, according to the “Pi Ranking List” Haraguchi doesn’t even exist. They’ve sent tapes too, but for some reason Guinness World Records have yet to accept any of them. Maybe they just forgot?

Here’s what the “official” Pi Ranking List looks like:

1. Lu, Chao (China) – 67,890 Digits
2. Chahal, Krishan (India) – 43,000
3. Goto, Hiroyuki (Japan) – 42,195
4. Tomoyori, Hideaki (Japan) – 40,000
5. Mahadevan, Rajan (India) – 31,8111
6. Tammet, Daniel (Great Britain) – 22,514
7. Thomas, David (Great Britain) – 22,500
8. Robinson, William (Great Britain) – 20,220
9. Carvello, Creigthon (Great Britain) – 20,013
10. Umile, Marc (USA) – 15,314

Like Pi itself, the list goes on and on, and if you’d like to see it you can do so here.

As you can see, nobody is even close to the 100,000 mark that Haraguchi achieved in 2006. Even his other three “unofficial” attempts either come in second or first place on this international list (54,000 digits in September 2004 is the only one that doesn’t lay the smackdown on everyone). Whether it shows up on this list or not, there’s something remarkable going on here.

Visual Mnemonics

Although the Japanese are known for their rote memorization in schools, memorizing 100,000 digits of pi probably isn’t the kind of thing a fairly “normal” guy like Haraguchi should be able to do. It turns out, as one might expect, that he’s using a mnemonic method that he developed in order to remember all these digits of pi. This is good news for you and me. It means that with practice we could memorize 100,000 digits of pi too. Well, maybe not 100,000, but 100 digits of pi wouldn’t take that much effort if you did it right. The word “right” is the key, though. We memorize things very inefficiently, most of the time. Our brains are pretty bad at remembering digits, times, lists, etc., On the flip side, our brains happen to be really good at memorization when it comes to something visual or sensory affecting. Ever notice how occasionally a random smell will be soooo nostalgic?

When it comes to memorization (and memorizing a lot of things), memory experts tend to focus on the visual. There’s a reason why people say “take a trip down memory lane,” after all. Here’s an example: Say you walk into an unfamiliar room. Maybe it’s your friend’s bedroom. You’re in there for only thirty seconds then leave. Three months later you come back. Chances are, you’ll remember a whole lot about that room. You’ll remember where the video game controllers are at, where the books are, where the chairs are, so on and so forth. You may not know every detail if you’re not looking super carefully, but I bet you would remember 100+ things about that room if you had to quantify what you remembered. If you think about it, that’s pretty incredible. It takes how many hours to memorize 50 Japanese vocabulary words? Yet, when you walk into a room you instantly memorize hundreds of details about it? That’s just how our brains work. We’re very visual about our memories.

There’s some data that shows the visual nature of our brains, too. In one experiment in the 1970s, researchers showed participants ten thousand different images in quick succession. Then, they were shown two pictures: One they had seen, and one they hadn’t seen. Their job was to point out the one they had seen. Amazingly, they were able to recognize 80% of the photos they had seen. In another study with only 2,500 photos, researchers tested participants by putting two very similar pictures next to each other. With this one they saw a 90% correct rate. If they gathered the participants up again a year later they would probably still have a pretty good recall rate, too.

So as you can see, mnemonics tend to be visual for a reason. On top of this, you’re also encouraged to use other senses as well. You’re supposed to smell the things in your stories. Touch them. Taste them. It’s a multi-sensory experience, and the more you get involved the more likely you’ll be able to remember something. That’s why there are various kanji learning methods that use stories to help you to remember the kanji’s meaning and reading. There’s a reason why people who use mnemonics tend to learn kanji a whole lot faster than those who do not. It gives you more triggers to pull the memory out of your head, because as we see with the picture experiment, we don’t have trouble putting things into our brain, we just have trouble pulling things out.

The Major Mnemonic System

Photo by Janet Ramsden

So Akira Haraguchi uses a mnemonic method to memorize pi. What could he possibly use that lets him memorize 100,000 digits?

First we have to understand that there are different mnemonic methods for different things. Haraguchi used a modified version of the “Major Method,” which Wikipedia explains the following way:

The system works by converting numbers into consonant sounds, then into words by adding vowels. The system works on the principle that images can be remembered more easily than numbers.

Just going down the numbers 0 through 9 we can see what consonants are associated with what number.

0 = s, z
1 = t, d
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = l
6 = j, sh, soft g, soft ch
7 = k, g
8 = f, v
9 = p, b
unassigned = vowels, w, h, y, x

The idea is that you take the number you want to learn (for example 701) and then apply the correct letters to it, spelling out a word. They don’t have to be the correct spelling, but they do have to have the correct pronunciation. With the example 701, you can use g + s + t. Put some vowels and other unassigned consonants in there and you have “ghost.” So instead of having to remember the numbers 701 you can just remember the idea, or even the image, of a “ghost” which is a whole lot easier to recall later on. Some more examples:

15 = TaiL
927 = PiNK

There are other more complicated mnemonic methods for learning numbers, but this is probably one of the most simple. For example, if you can associate two numbers at a time to something, you’re going to be able to learn digits twice as fast. Some people have expanded that up to three or four numbers (or more) at a time too. Alternatively, you can associate images (starfishes, beer, frogs, etc.) to numbers as well, then combine them to make stories. The ways in which you can memorize numbers goes on and on.

Akira Haraguchi’s Mnemonic Method

Of course, Akira Haraguchi had his own method for memorizing so many digits of Pi and it has a very Japanese spin. In fact, you’ll need to know hiragana to use his method and know quite a bit of Japanese as well, should you want to utilize it. I’d like to even think that the Japanese language is more suitable to learn digits just because the way it’s set up. With the major system, you have to add in vowels and other unassigned letters. With this Japanese version, pretty much all the “letters” have vowels already attached. That takes out a lot of the guess work and makes things much more straightforward.

For example:

０　→　 お、ら、り、る、れ、ろ、を、おん
１　→　あ、い、う、え、ひ、び、ぴ、あん、ひゃ、ひゃん、びゃ、びゃん

etc…

The list keeps going like this, and each number has a set of kana associated with it. In the beginning, I’m sure he had to just spend time memorizing what is associated with what, but that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to what he ended up doing with it. With practice, he was able to come to a point where he “simultaneously interprets” these sounds into numbers, so what do the sounds do?

Remember how we talked about images and stories earlier? He takes each digit of pi and turns it into a story. Basically, he just has to choose sounds that will come together to make words that make sense. Then these words have to come together again to make a story. Our mind is much better at remembering stories compared to numbers, so by remembering the story (much easier) he is able to translate that into the digits of pi. One example on a Japan Times article revealed what the first 15 digits of pi were (3.14159265358979), aka…

妻子異国に婿さん怖くなかった。(_saishi ikokuni mukosan kowakunaku_)
“The wife and children have gone abroad; the husband is not scared.”

If you can memorize that sentence you can memorize the first 15 digits of pi. Of course, you have to put the work in to get your associations going, but with practice anyone could do it, even you.

Bonus Wallpapers!

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Sources:

• Akira Haraguchi (Wikipedia)
• Japan Times: How can anyone remember 100,000 numbers?
• Pi World Ranking List
• BBC News: Japanese Breaks Pi Memory Record
• Moonwalking With Einstein, by Joshua Foer
• Akira Haraguchi’s Website
• Mnemonic Major System (Wikipedia)

• Content Assistant (1 position available)
• Summer Intern (1-2 positions available)
• Trial Writer (1-5 positions available)

Although it’s probably best if you just head on over to our Tofugu Jobs Page to learn more, here is a quick summary of the three positions:

Content Assistant

This is the biggest position available right now. Essentially it comes down to content and being able to produce a lot of it… without sacrificing quality. The content you will be assisting with includes but is not limited to: video, articles, guides, reviews, and social media. This means we are looking for someone who has experience in both writing and film, with an emphasis on writing.

We are currently looking for someone to fill this position on a part time basis with potential for full time down the road, should the shoe fit. Please take a look at the Content Assistant section on our jobs page for more information.

Application Due Date: March 23, 2014

Summer Intern(s)

Every summer Tofugu runs an internship with the sole purpose of giving all you poor Japanese Studies majors hope (just a little bit). A couple bits of good news for this summer in particular. First, we’re posting this announcement up nice and early. This time we’ll be catching all you early-summer colleges in time. Second, it’s going to be the first summer where we pay our interns hourly (in the past it was either a living/education stipend or nothing at all). So, you know, you might be able to eat food and get off the streets.

The internship will have a set curriculum to it with several goals from our end, but we’ll also be attempting to focus part of the internship on your own interests and future dreams as well. If you’re interested in learning the “Ways of the Fugu” in a mostly educational sort of way, please consider applying for the Tofugu Internship.

Application Due Date: May 1, 2014

Trial Blog Writer(s)

Occasionally we are looking for new writers to bring into the fold. But, there’s a trial period to find out whether or not you’re reliable and consistent enough. This position is that trial.

If you consider yourself a writer and would be interested in writing articles for Tofugu, please take a look at the Trial Writers section of our jobs page.

Application Due Date: March 23, 2014

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If you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments below and I’ll try to get back to them. Good luck to everyone who applies!

Now, I’m not saying that the Japanese education system is perfect (in fact, it has a whole bunch of other problems, though math doesn’t seem to be one of them), but I thought it would be interesting to talk about it while we were on the subject. In fact, if you’re a parent you might see things that you can utilize with your child as well. As we’ll learn, the parent-child relationship is a very important aspect of how Japanese children become good learners.

Japan’s Love Affair With Stress

When I think of the Japanese education system, I personally think about the college examination tests that most high schoolers end up taking, probably because I saw what it did to my friends the year or two before they had to take it. At the end of high school this single test decides your future. You get to choose one college you want to go to. That college has a certain score requirement. If you don’t reach that score you probably don’t go to college, and what college you go to decides your future fate and salary as well, much more than it does in America. So, you want to shoot for the best college possible that you think you can get into… but if you overshoot it and fail the test, you spend a year as a ronin; basically, that’s one year where you study and get ready for the test next year, because you didn’t get into college. Talk about stress.

But, the stress doesn’t only come from the test itself. The preparation for the test is much worse. Often starting from elementary school a child will begin going to juku, or “cram school.” This is school after school with the goal of getting you into a better middle school. If you can get into a better middle school, then you go to more juku so that you can get into a better high school. A better high school means a better opportunity to get a higher score on the college entrance examination. Still though, you go to even more juku in high school to prepare yourself for the test. It’s no wonder it’s lovingly nicknamed the “hell test.” And, if you fall behind and don’t get into a good school? Well, extra juku for you then, kiddo.

It’s no wonder that Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

Despite this, Japanese students (and Japanese society on a whole) are able to handle extreme amounts of stress. The stress a Japanese person deals with on a day-to-day basis is even infamous throughout the first world. I think that this extreme stress is our first clue, though. It hints at why the Japanese education system is successful, though in a very indirect way. In the end, I believe that it comes down to a concept known as amae.

Amae and Indulgence

One of the most obnoxious things about Japanese children, in my opinion, is how dependent they seem to be on their mothers. You see this over and over again, and this dependence is even encouraged by society! “You’re creating a society of spoiled brats!” I used to think. Recently I’ve changed my mind, though.

The word amae comes from the word amaeru, which, according to Japanese psychoanalyst Takeo Doi (he’s the guy who basically made this term a thing), can be defined as “to wish to be loved.” On top of this, it has connotations of a need for dependency and a request for indulgence of one’s perceived needs. This amae type of relationship is the ideal for all close relationships in Japan. It starts with child and mother, but expands out to student and teacher, student and upperclassmen, salaryman and boss, husband and wife, etc. It’s the senpai-kohai relationship in a nutshell. If everyone is able to indulge their needs into everyone else then everything will work out, or so Japanese society has been saying for quite a while now. Turns out they’re onto something.

Let’s go back to everyone’s first amae relationship: mother-child. Most mothers indulge their children to some degree – feeding them, changing them, calming them when they cry… etc. But Japanese moms are supposed to take these indulgences to another degree. It’s so prevalent in Japanese society that they have come up with extra ways to describe and talk about this type of relationship. You certainly don’t see that in too many other cultures. It’s kind of like how Eskimos have a ton more words of snow. The Japanese have more ways to talk about it because it’s that much more important in their society.

Here’s what I’m trying to get at, though. This dependence… this indulgence… this amae… it’s what keeps Japanese society together. It’s the root cause of the successes you see in the Japanese education system. It’s also why society is so orderly and safe (at least for now), I think, and it all comes back to how much a mother indulges their child. Let’s find out why this is so important.

Non-Cognitive Versus Cognitive

Most people think that IQ, the ability to memorize, etc., are the key metrics for determining the future of a child. These are what economists call “cognitive skills” and it turns out they are not very good predictors of future success. What are good predictors are what’s known as “non-cognitive skills.” These are things like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence (there are a lot more, too). Think about it this way: The kid who has the persistence to practice math for 10 hours a week will do better than the cognitively smart kid who doesn’t bother doing their homework because they’re lazy and everyone’s told them they’re “soooo smart.”

The importance of cognitive versus non-cognitive skills is really highlighted in a study done by James Heckman on the GED program. He compared students who graduated from high school with those who passed the GED exam, which is a way for those who didn’t graduate from high school to get something that substitutes for a high school diploma. The thing is, though, this tests cognitive skills as a way to see if a person “knows enough stuff” to have passed high school. It’s closely linked to an IQ test (another test of cognitive ability) in many regards. That’s the problem, though. It’s assuming that high school exists to teach students cognitive skills and nothing else. With that in mind, let’s look at how these students did later in life. It’s not a pretty sight.

When Heckman looked at 22 year olds from both groups, the difference was huge. Only 3 percent of GED recipients were enrolled in a four-year university or had completed some kind of post-secondary degree. Compare that to 46 percent of high-school graduates. On top of this, GED recipients had nearly the exact same future outcome as high school dropouts. Higher unemployment, higher divorce rate, lower annual income, and a higher chance of using illegal drugs to name a few. Even though they are supposedly equal on a cognitive level to their fellow high school graduates (and considerably smarter than those who dropped out of high school but didn’t take the GED), their future successes (or lack thereof) was exactly the same.

What I’m trying to say is this: non-cognitive abilities end up being a much better predictor of success than cognitive ones. Your ability to persevere, to have self-control, and so on are the things that decide the future of almost every student, not how “smart” someone is… though non-cognitive strengths do happen to make for a higher cognitive potential later on in life.

To illustrate this, We only need to look as far as the famous “Marshmallow Test”. In the late 1960s a professor at Stanford (Mischel) decided to test the willpower of four-year-olds. Researchers brought each child into a small room and offered them a treat (like a marshmallow). They were told that the researcher was going to leave the room and the child could eat the marshmallow when they returned. But, if they wanted to eat the marshmallow right away they could ring a bell, at which point the researcher would return right away and the child could eat it. The twist here is that if the child waited for the researcher to return on their own, no bell, they would get two marshmallows! In this way, they tested the child’s self-control, a very important “non-cognitive” skill.

It turns out, the correlation between how long a child could wait and their future success was very tightly woven together. When they checked on the students a little over twenty years later, they found that children who were able to wait 15 minutes for their marshmallow had, on average, a 210 point higher score on the SAT than those who rang the bell after a mere thirty seconds.

Think about it, the kids with stronger non-cognitive skills were able to work harder, had more willpower, self control (“should I study or watch TV tonight?”), and grit, and because of this scored higher on their SAT tests, which just so happens to have a correlation with future income and other success indicators. Over and over again, studies have shown that non-cognitive skills are the things that are worth developing in your children.

Amae and The Development Of Non-Cognitive Skills

Now we know that non-cognitive skills are an excellent way to predict a child’s future, but how does all this relate to amae? It turns out amae and the amount of it that is received by a baby/child directly correlates with how well someone can develop these special skills.

One researcher (Meaney) has been looking at the effect of rat-moms doting on child-rats. When a rat-mom licks and grooms one of her pups, it (amazingly) actually alters their gene expression! Certain chemicals are affixed to certain sequences on a pup’s DNA and when a rat-mom licks and comforts her child-rat, this gene sequence gets “turned on”. By turning on this particular gene sequence (through enough love and attention), the rat babies grow up to be far more courageous, curious, and less nervous. When a rat-baby lives a healthy, not-stressful life, this may not cause much of a difference. But, when scientists pick up and stress out the baby rats over and over again for an experiment, it makes all the difference.

Scientists found that the rat babies with a strong attachment to their mothers (the mother would give them licks to relieve the stress) grew up with that DNA sequence turned on. The mothers that were less attentive created rat babies that were considerably more neurotic, shy, and less courageous. This “attachment” (which I should note is very often associated with amae) made all the difference in the development of these rat-baby’s non-cognitive skills and future lives.

Unsurprisingly, this is the same with humans as well. In the 1960s, Ainsworth, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, ran a test to study just this. He had a young 1-year-old child and its mother sit in a room and play for a while. Then, the mother left the room, sometimes leaving the baby alone or with a stranger. After a while, the mother would come back. Then they categorized the reactions by the baby:

1. Child greets mother happily, running to reconnect with her with joy and/or tears (Securely attached)

1. Children who pretended to ignore the mother when she returned. Children who lashed out at the mother. Children who fell to the floor in a heap. (Anxiously attached)

Although Ainsworth theorized that this lack of attachment (#2) could “create psychological effects that could last a lifetime” (he was right, by the way) it wasn’t until 1972 when Everett Waters took this test even further. He found 267 pregnant women who all had incomes below the poverty line. When the babies were age one, they were all given the attachment test that Ainsworth did in the ‘60s. Then in preschool, he followed up again. Two-thirds of the “securely attached” children were categorized by their teachers as “effective” in terms of behavior. Compare that to only one in eight (12.5%) children who were anxiously attached got the “effective” label. Skip ahead to 10 years old. Forty eight of the students were invited to a summer camp where they were unknowingly studied. Those who were anxiously attached during baby-times spent more time alone, were less confident, and had more trouble socially. Now skip ahead to high school to see the real kicker. Using data from when the children were just four years old, they found that they could have predicted with 77 percent accuracy which children would drop out of high school… and we all know how dropping out of high school tends to turn out, GED or no GED.

The interesting thing about “attachment” is how differently the Japanese and American societies think of it. In Japan, this “attachment” is highly encouraged, even in non mother-child relationships. In America, independence is more encouraged. Though America’s stance has softened since the Spock Baby Book days, you still see this going on to a certain extent.

This is just a guess, but I wonder if this has anything to do with the prevalence of ADHD in our society. The reason I say this is because of the difference between the number of boys and girls that suffer from it. Boys in America have ADHD at a 13.2% rate. Girls are only 5.6%. If you think about the difference in how boys and girls are raised, it’s hard to ignore this discrepancy. Girls in America are doted on more, given more attention, and more likely to be taught to be “dependent.” Compare that to boys who are supposed to be raised as more independent and tough. Is it possible that the way we raise boys versus girls is what’s causing more boys to have trouble paying attention? Self control, willpower, and the ability to pay attention are all non-cognitive skills. If “attachment” and “dependency” are the things that develop a child’s non-cognitive skills… could this be why more boys have ADHD than girls? Could the “Spock’s Baby & Child Care” book craze (which encourages parents to be cold to children and not indulge them) be part of the reason why the US has such high rates of ADHD, thanks to the lack of amae? It certainly seems possible, though I’ll have to submit to the experts on this one, as it’s just a guess.

Back to attachment, indulgence, and how they negate stress, though. What’s really interesting about this (which we found out from the rat mothers) is that as long as a mother is attentive and indulges in their child’s needs, the harms of stress can be negated. It’s been shown over and over again that a stressful life is very harmful to babies and children growing up. During childhood, this stress mainly attacks the prefrontal cortex, a part of your brain that is “critical in self-regulatory activities of all kinds, both emotional and cognitive. As a result, children who grow up in stressful environments generally find it harder to concentrate, harder to sit still, harder to rebound from disappointments, and harder to follow directions” (Tough).

In fact, there are direct correlations between childhood stress and your future life. Using something called the “ACE score” (which is a way to quantify levels of childhood stress), one Burke Harris sent out a questionnaire to 700 patients of her clinic. She then turned the answers into an ACE score and found something startling. Those with 0-3 ACE score (low stress in childhood), only 3 percent had learning or behavioral problems. Compare that to 51% of those with an ACE score of 4+. Stress during childhood has an effect on your ability to pay attention, control your temper, follow directions, so on and so forth… things that are directly related to the non-cognitive skills that happen to predict your future success.

“Wait, Koichi!” you suddenly say. “I thought you said the Japanese childhood was a particularly stressful one!”

“What a focused point!” I’d reply. “I see your rat mother doted on you well as a child!”

That’s right, remember the rat mothers and rat babies? Stress can be negated by indulging rat moms. With a strong enough attachment all the stresses of home and life are negated, meaning the child can learn from the stress without all the long term issues that the stress can cause.

One study at NYU shows this perfectly. Clancy Blair followed 1,200 infants from birth, measuring their reactions to stress via cortisol level spikes. Family turmoil and other problems at home really affected a child’s cortisol levels, which is to be expected. But, Blair found that if the mother was responsive and attentive to their child, and there was that attachment, this would negate the stress and keep the child’s cortisol levels in check. This prevents the prefrontal cortex from getting messed up, which in turn allows a child’s non-cognitive skills to blossom (not to mention the cognitive ones, too!). It all comes down to the amae.

This is partly why I think that a Japanese child is able to grow up in such a stressful and difficult school system. Despite the stress it usually ends up okay! The amount of pressure a mother has to indulge her children is what’s keeping these kids afloat and (in general) healthy. I’m not saying there’s no bad eggs, because there are, but it’s hard to ignore how well so many kids cope with stress, which allows them to learn important lessons about failure, dealing with it, and becoming a stronger person. Their mothers (and all the other people they have amae-based relationships with) are there to keep them from falling apart.

Let’s Pile On The Stress And Ganbare!

So now we know that amae is allowing kids to deal with stress without the negative effects it tries to bestow. And we also know that amae is creating children with stronger non-cognitive skills, the best predictor of future success. But, this is fairly focused on very early childhood (though there are plenty of older Japanese school kids who are super dependent on okaa-san still). What about elementary, middle, and high school times? What’s going on here to develop soldiers of the non-cognitive (and therefore cognitive) type?

To me it comes down to word 頑張れ (ganbare), which means “persevere.” It’s so prevalent in Japanese society, in fact, that people will yell it out for just about any reason. If you’re playing tennis, your supporters will yell “ganbare” instead of “you can do it!” If you’re going to take a difficult exam, you’ll hear “ganbare” as well… as if trying harder will help you to get a better score right before you take the test. The difference is a stark one, though. “You can do it!” is all about hope. “Ganbare” is open to the possibility that you may not do it, but it does ask you to try your best. The possibility of failure isn’t ignored.

Actually though, it turns out that just trying harder will get you better test scores, no matter how you prepared for it. This is what psychologists call “conscientiousness,” and it is an incredibly important non-cognitive skill. I believe with the prevalence of “ganbare” (persevere!) oozing out of every Japanese orifice, they are simply reminding people to be more conscientious. They are reminding people to sweat the small stuff, concentrate, and try hard even when you don’t actually have to.

In one study during the 1960s, Calvin Edlund gave seventy-nine children an IQ test. All of them had similar socio-economic backgrounds. Then, he split the group into two and had them take the test. Seven weeks later they took the test again, except this time one of the groups were told that they’d get an M&M for each correct answer. On the first test the two groups had a fairly even average IQ. On the second test the M&M group went up an average of 12 points. Taking this experiment further at the University of Florida, two researchers split the two groups up further. The interesting part is that the “low-IQ” children, who scored an average of 79 on the IQ test, now scored a 97, which is average. In this case, what is their true IQ? Is it the 79, when they weren’t really “trying as hard,” or is it the 97 which they got because they tried?

I feel like this happens in all things. This “conscientiousness” will help a child (or adult!) to do better in all categories, not just IQ tests. Paying attention and trying harder even when you don’t have to is a sign that you have grit, self-control, and some other non-cognitive skills. Just by “trying harder” you become smarter, in a way, and this push to “try harder” comes packaged up into one word, (I bet you can guess what it is), ganbare. How important it is in Japanese society is hard to ignore, and I think it’s one thing that really shows how much focus is placed on character and non-cognitive skills in the Japanese education system (and society).

Learning Disabilities and Stereotyping

Another big difference I see between Japanese and American kids is how they’re segregated. That’s right, even after racial segregation has come to an end, we still see cognitive segregation in America. In Japan, if you’re falling behind in class, you don’t get held back a grade and you don’t get put into a “special class” (that being said, a lot of people do get institutionalized, unfortunately). No, you stay with your class and graduate with your class, and that’s final.

The thing is, “group identity” is a powerful force. If you identify yourself as being stupid, you’re going to do worse in school. If you identify yourself as “different” you are going to act differently.

In one study in the 1990s, students at Princeton were tested on how well they could complete a 10-hole mini golf course. With white students who were told that this was a test of their “natural ability at sports” they scored 4 strokes lower than similar (also white) students who were told that this was a test of their ability to think strategically. Alternatively for black students, when they were told that this was a test of strategic intelligence they were four strokes worse. When told that it was a test of natural athletic ability they did better. As you can see, stereotyping yourself can have an effect on how you perform. In American classrooms those with ADHD are stereotyped as being less able to pay attention in school. In extreme cases they may be put into special classes where that stereotype becomes stronger. In Japanese classrooms you’re in your class whether you like it or not and everyone’s expected to perform to be the same, for better or worse.

I’d like to think that this expectation to be a part of the group unit of the classroom is part of the reason why students in Japan score better than the US. That’s not to say that this focus on the group isn’t a bad thing as well. When you are different you are often ostracized or bullied more than in US classrooms, which has the same sort of effect as segregating a classroom (though possibly worse). So, while there’s some good things about this there is some bad as well. Japan’s education system is far from perfect, after all.

A Careful Balance

So we’ve seen how a mother’s attentiveness gives her child the tools to be able to take on the world. We’ve also seen how non-cognitive skills, such as perseverance, seeps through every nook and cranny of Japanese society. Then, we took a look at stereotyping and how it’s less encouraged, at least in terms of “who’s smart and who’s not,” giving everyone a more even playing field.

Japan is without doubt creating a lot of children with a lot of grit, I would say. After seeing what affect amae can have on a child growing up (anywhere in the world), it makes me wonder if this is a big part of the reason why Japanese children can take on so much stress and hardship during their education (and beyond… that salaryman life!). I also wonder if this is why they put so much stress upon their children. Do they do it because they can? I think they probably do.

While indulging your child and letting them depend on you are important for negating the harmful outcomes of stress at a young age, stress is important as well. Recently a lot of psychologists have been looking at the lives of the wealthy and their kids, and they are surprised to find that these children seem to have more issues than poor inner city ones. When you look at the rich parents of children who go to a fancy school, you start to see two “problem type parents.”

The first of these is the parents who become emotionally detached (where’s the amae?) while still expecting high levels of achievement (stress). After all, you’re going to a fancy private school so you better do well, no buts about it! These kids, who end up having attachment issues with their parents, end up with all kinds of problems later on:

To Luthar’s surprise, she found the affluent teenagers used alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, and harder illegal drugs more than the low-income teens. Thirty-five percent of the suburban girls had tried all four substances, compared with just 15 percent of the inner-city girls. The wealthy girls in Luthar’s survey also suffered from elevated rates of depression; 22 percent of them reported clinically significant symptoms. (“How Children Succeed”)

The second type of parent is the opposite of the first one. These are the parents who OVER indulge. One study shows how people who make a million or more dollars a year tend to be “less strict than their own parents.” Basically, they make life too easy on their children. This makes for a lot of indulgence and very little stress, and as we learned from parent type number one, you shouldn’t have one without the other. These parents would call teachers to try and raise their child’s grades on papers, or try to get time extensions for things, or even ask if their child can retake a test. Without ever having to deal with their own stresses and failures, these kids grow up helpless and unable to deal with the challenges of real life.

Too much amae is not good. Too much stress is not good. But, an equal amount of both… that works out well. So in a society with so much amae it only makes sense to heap on an equal amount of stress. When these two things are imbalanced you run into problems in education and society.

How Japanese Children Succeed

So here’s how I see things happening in Japanese society… at least the stuff they got right. There’s a lot that’s going wrong as well, but with America’s recent obsession with “making our school system more like Japan’s” I thought it would be good to go through all of this step-by-step so you can see why it works, rather than looking skin deep and trying to throw more money at math and science.

First, a baby is born. I could possibly go into how Japanese mothers tend to choose natural births over C-sections, and how this creates a stronger attachment between baby and mother, but I don’t know much about that, so let’s leave that part there. Then, the child and mother grow close. Through all the amae the mother gives, there is a sense of dependency from the child. Attachment is formed, and that grows through childhood. This dependency is really obnoxious to anyone who didn’t grow up in Japan.

This extreme amount of amae is what lays the foundation for their future. By the time they reach school age, they are more courageous, curious, have more self control, etc. All those non-cognitive skills are more developed. I think this is why you see three year olds riding the train by themselves, going on errands for the parents., so on and so forth. You’d never see that in America, though I think this is mostly due to all the bad people out there (maybe they didn’t get enough amae too?).

When they get into school these non-cognitive skills help them to socialize better and deal with disappointment. Kids are pretty wild and random and often do what they want. Being able to deal with other kids and control your temper is what is going to carry you through the younger school years. Right about here you really start to see a lot of ganbare too, one of the non-cognitive skills that is thought of as very important to teach every person in Japanese society. This gets beaten into you for all aspects of life, and we see a lot of middle schoolers and high schoolers who value perseverance over natural ability. In fact, have you ever seen a Japanese anime that isn’t about some kid overcoming difficult odds by just trying harder? Okay, maybe sometimes, but this is a recurring theme for a reason.

All of this personal growth crescendos at the end of high school, when they have to take their college entrance examination test. The only reason all the stress up to this point hasn’t destroyed them is thanks to the way relationships are set up: It all comes down to amae. Teachers, other students, siblings… etc. If everyone important to you indulges you, and you do the same for them, it all works out. Replicating this amae relationship beyond mother and child is the only way to balance and negate out the stress, which is stronger than most other places in the world.

What I don’t know is what came first. Did the stresses of society cause Japan to evolve in away that let them cope with it? Or, did it just so happen that the amae in their society is what allowed them to deal with the extra stress, so they add more and more on, which allows their students to learn and grow stronger. It’s the chicken and the egg problem, basically.

Whatever it is, I think we’ll see things change. In fact, I think it’s already happening as the Japanese school system becomes less and less “Japanese.” Maybe it will be a good thing, and maybe we’ll see more creativity come out of it (something that Americans do tend to do better). I have a feeling that there’s a happy compromise somewhere, though. I don’t think it’s in the middle, as I think science has spoken when it comes to a lot of these ideas. But, I do think it’s somewhere a little less stressful than where the Japanese have their dial set right now. Still, we can learn a lot from it, and they can learn a lot from us. As long as education keeps getting better with each passing generation we’ll see some good things happen, though until we can change our whole society (which is near impossible in a short period of time, I think) it’s probably going to be a while.

P.S. A lot of the American-related education stuff came from the book “How Children Succeed” by Paul Tough. If you’re interested in education I highly recommend it. As I read through it I couldn’t help but see similarities between the success stories and how a lot of Japanese society already works, which is what inspired me to write this article. There’s a lot more in Tough’s book, though, so please take a look if you find this kind of thing interesting! The more people to read about education the better prepared our future children will be!

Bonus Wallpapers!

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Sources

• “How Children Succeed” by Paul Tough
• The Anatomy Of Independence (Wikipedia)
• Is Amae the Key To Understanding Japanese Culture? by Herman W Smith and Takako Nomi
• US Students Slide In Global Ranking on Math, Reading, Science

While my “you can’t learn Japanese from anime” words were meant for those people, there is a way to watch anime where you do actually learn something. In fact, you can learn quite a bit if you try really hard. That’s what language learning is, isn’t it? Whoever tries the hardest is the winner, and the method (while important) doesn’t dictate whether or not you make it to the end. So, in order to help those of you who are learning Japanese and just happen to have an anime addiction, this article is for you.

Step 1: Ditching (Then Unditching) The Subtitles

First thing is first. You gotta get rid of the subtitles. If there’s English (or any language you’re proficient in) anywhere on the video screen then you’re doing yourself a disservice. The human brain takes the easy way out 99.9% of the time. If the option is there and it doesn’t hurt all that much it will take that option. If the subtitles are there it will process the subtitles – the Japanese audio in the background will not be processed.

A lot of anime, whether it’s on Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, or *ahem* some other source, will have the option to remove the subtitles. With the first few sources, that ability is in the video options. With the “other” source, that option is usually under “video” in VLC (if that’s what you’re using to play these video files). If the option isn’t there, then you’re not going to be able to study using that video so I’d suggest trying something else.

After that, it’s time to get some subtitles.

“What?” asks the person living inside this article. “But I thought you told me to get rid of them!”

Well, good citizen, this time we’re adding in Japanese subtitles. Sometimes you’ll be able to turn on Japanese subtitles. Other times you’ll have to download them. There are various sites out there (Google it), but this is one of them. One way to go about it is to look through this list and find things you either like or are interested in. That will help you out in the future, because studying with anime actually takes most of the joy out of anime (warning you now). It is hard work, after all.

You’ll want to download the subtitles and add them to your video. Usually this just involves putting the subtitle file in the same folder as the video it belongs to. Other times you can load the subtitle file via the media player you use. If you’re not familiar, you may have to do some searching around to get it working. It will also depend on the subtitle file type too.

Step 2: Laying The Groundwork

This is where things get… study-y. Certain subtitle types will have trouble with this. Others will work a-ok. Using a text editor (or often cases an application you’d use to program with, like Sublime Text) open up the subtitle file. You may need to change the encoding of the file to Japanese as well. Just something else to look out for.

If you’re on the intermediate-to-advanced side of your Japanese learning journey, you can stop right here. If you’re on the more-like-a-beginner side, keep reading this section.

For you, this is going to be really hard. It’s not going to help you to just look at things and read them, as it will probably take forever and you could be using your time much more effectively somewhere else (like by learning kanji, or really most anything). If you’re at a more intermediate level, but perhaps a lower one, it might be helpful to download the English subtitles of the same anime and episode as well. You can open them like the Japanese ones and then use the timestamps to compare the Japanese with the English meaning. Don’t use this as a crutch, but use it to make sure you’re not completely off with any translations (and to help you when you get stuck). In addition to intermediate level learners, this can be helpful for advanced learners as well. Just use this crutch less and less the less you need it. Remember, our brains just take the easy way out whenever they are able so don’t trust it!

Step 3: Break Out The Vocab

Go through each word and make sure you know the meaning of it. If you’re having trouble figuring out what word something is, plop it into the search field in beta Jisho (or regular Jisho if you’re reading this in the future), which will take words in sentences then break them down into usable, more easily definable pieces. I’d recommend writing down all the words you don’t know or putting them in a spreadsheet. This isn’t so much for study but for keeping track of what you’re learning. The more you treat learning like a science with data the faster you’ll be learning in the long run. Plus, it’s nice to come back and see what you know and don’t know later on when you’ve been doing this a while. It will also make it easier to make sure you’re not doubling up words.

After you have them in a spreadsheet, put them into your SRS of choice. Some of these applications will let you import via a spreadsheet (how convenient!). You’ll want to use your own vocab studying method here, as there are many (and people like doing their own thing). The most important thing is you learn all these items before moving on to the “watch the episode” step.

Continue pulling out vocab and learning them until you’ve finished a “scene” in the anime. This is going to depend on the anime. This might take a long time for you or it might be fairly quick. Just know that the more you do this the faster it will go. Each time will be better than the last but the first 10-20 times is really, really painful.

When you know all the words in a scene, it’s time to take a look at the scene itself.

Step 4: Can You Read It?

Make sure you can read everything on the Japanese subtitles. Read it out loud, because this is a lot more telling than reading it in your head. You don’t have to be able to read it at the speed of the anime (yet), but you do need to be able to read it at a moderate speed. Once you are able to read it it’s time to fire up the video file.

Step 5: Shadowing

Now we’re going to do something called “language shadowing.” This involves reading the text along with the speaker, in this case the anime character, narrator, or whatever. This is a lot like singing along with a song. You learn the tones and intonation of a song when you do this, until you can sing the song somewhat in tune (your friends will disagree). Shadowing and reading along with someone speaking is a lot like this and will help you develop pronunciation abilities. That being said, be careful to not mimic people who don’t sound like people… In anime this is much more prevalent, so if you don’t know what you’re doing you could be training yourself to sound like a weirdo.

Various video players will have various options, but VLC has a “jump back X seconds” shortcut. Look it up for your operating system and use that to jump back over and over to the same sentence or two until you’ve perfected it and can speak up to speed. Once you’re able, move on to the next one until you’ve finished the whole section. Now go back to the beginning of the section for one big hurrah of a speak through. Do you feel like you’ve learned something?

Improving Over Time

The good things about this method of study are that it teaches you a lot of vocab over a long period of time, it helps with pronunciation, and is hopefully fun for you. The bad things? It’s hard. Damn hard. Especially if you’re not an advanced learner. That being said, I’d recommend this for advanced learners and maybe some motivated upper-intermediate ones. After doing this for a while (months, probably) you’ll start to really see an improvement. It will feel like you’re beating your head against a wall for a long time and then suddenly *bam!* you get better. That’s because getting better at a language is more like climbing up a giant set of stairs. You can’t see where you’re going until you reach the top of the step you’re working on.

I hope this article helps you to turn your anime addiction into something a little more studious. If not, well, at least you’re having a good time I suppose.

Since studying this way involves a lot of kanji knowledge, one way to make this type of study more effective and time-efficient would be to learn more kanji. Of course, we do WaniKani for doing that, but there are of course other methods as well.

Bonus Wallpapers!

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