An Adjective by Any Other Name

Adjectives describe nouns, right? My favorite Kobun scholar, Vovin, actually calls Kobun adjectives “quality verbs.” The “quality” part points at how these gems ascribe quality in a sentence (“the stupid jellyfish), not action (”The jellyfish cooked). In “quality verb,” then, the “verb” part describes Kobun adjectives in form; unlike nouns (私) or particles (は), adjectives are dynamic and flexible in shape.

Modern Japanese adjectives aren’t all so dynamic. Na-adjectives, like しずか, come in one form that only changes in what particles it attaches to. But i-adjectives are dynamic with interior changes similar to Kobun ones.

The Two Adjective Types

Again, like Modern, there are two Kobun adjective types, which isn’t bad compared to the nine verb categories. These two types, ku- and shiku-adjectives, only really appear in three forms: Renyoukei, Shuushikei, and Rentaikei.

Ku-Adjectives (く活用形容詞)

Renyou: __く (赤く, “red”)

Shuushi: __し (赤し)

Rentai: __き (赤き)

Izen＊: __け (赤け)

Kobun: 「白き鳥の嘴(はし)と脚(あし)とあかき」(From Ise Monogatari)
Modern: 白い鳥であって、くしばしと脚とが赤い（鳥）。
English: It was a white bird with a red beak and red feet. (My translation)

＊Occasionally adjectives appear in the Izenkei as well. For more adjectival enlightenment, see Kafka-fuura’s in-depth page or this page (Japanese, but more examples), and like all Kobun elements, it can’t hurt to peek in a dictionary.

Shiku Adjectives (しく活用形容詞)

Renyou: __しく (を＊＊かしく, “strange”, “interesting”, “awesome”)

Shuushi: __し(をかし)

Rentai: __ しき(をかしき)

Izen: __ しき(をかしき)

＊＊Yes, spellings like this are abound in Kobun. There are guides, like Kafka’s page, which describe the crazy writing conventions and spelling in Kobun. Pay attention to the existence of two characters/sounds Modern lacks: ゐ (wi) and ゑ (we). If any of your teachers ever cautioned you against getting creative when scrawling “る”, now you can see why.

The “Verbal Adjectives”

Alas, Kobun is not simple. There are two other adjective types lumped into a category of Keiyou-doushi (形容動詞). Unlike ku- and shiku-adjectives, these overachievers appear in all the forms verbs can except the Meireikei (command form). I think of these as similar to Modern na-adjectives because the base part of the word doesn’t change – there’s nari and tari at the end, and those are kind of jodoushi already.

Vovin, in fact, posits the nari, tari, and occasional kari that follow the base of adjectives like 静か (shidzuka, “quiet”) are definitely just adjective + jodoushi and thus naturally end like jodoushi. The traditional dictionaries call 静けし a ku-adjective and 静かなり a nari-adjective, but 静かなり just looks like 静けし in an altered form (ka) to connect to -nari. However it helps you to look at them, here are those nari and tari endings for you:

Nari Conjugation (ナリ活用)

Mizen: __なら (静かなら, “quiet”)

Renyou: __に・なり (静かなり・に)

Shuushi: __なり (静かなり)

Rentai: __なる (静かなる)

Izen: __なれ (静かなれ)

Tari Conjugation (タリ活用)

Mizen: __たら (堂々たら, だうだうたら “austere”, “magnificent”, or “elegant”)

Renyou: __たり or と (堂々たり・と)

Shuushi: __たり (堂々たり)

Rentai: __たる (堂々たる)

Izen: __たれ (堂々たれ)

Believe it or not, it’s actually kind of hard to find examples of adjectives in text, at least flipping through the poetry of the Kokin Wakashuu. There are experts that write about this stuff, but I’m personally wondering if it might have been an aesthetic or rhetorical technique to use noun phrases and verbs more than the Keiyoushi or Keiyoudoushi above. Or perhaps it just worked better for the rhyme scheme to use “noun + の”. For example:

Kobun: Haru no yo no/ yami wa ayanashi/ ume no hana/ iro koso miene/ ka ya wa kakururu. (From Kokin Wakashuu)
English: “How foolish is the darkness on this spring night – though it conceals the plum blossoms’ charm and color it cannot hide their perfume” (Rodd & Henkenius 60).

Kakari-Musubi

1) “Cheetahs run very fast.” Good!
2) “Cheetahs runs very fast.” Not grammatical!

1 and 2 above demonstrate a language feature of English called subject-verb agreement. Classical Japanese had its own “agreement” parameters to be met, which writers were more or less second nature to Classical writers. Unfortunately, this means some unexpected sentence or clause endings. Instead of agreement being based on plurality, it was based on particles. These four make up the kakari-musubi set:

• ぞ (emphatic, anxiety)
• なむ (emphatic)
• や (doubt, question)
• か (doubt, question)

Motoori Norinaga first described this phenomenon in 1779. He was determined Japan had the best old language, that there was something divine and magical in the old words, and that only by getting away from the Chinese style of literature and all that on-yomi could Japan become stronger. If you’re thinking this sounds like the seedling of the empire-building nationalism of the late 1800’s, you’d be right. It happened around the world, actually.

Norinaga called the Kobun particle-verb agreement 係り結び – kakari-musubi, using the characters for “connect” and “tie/bind”.

There is one other type of musubi, but I’ll get to that after illuminating the kakari-musubi.

The Rentai-Bully Particles

Look here, sentence. We’re ending on an attributive note, today, and there’s nothing you can do to change that

Musubi would be like ball lightning if the phenomena was more common. That is, musubi have scientifically observable patterns, but they still skew our view of the sentence. Musubi are also like bullies. We’ve actually seen them before; I included this example in Kobun Part 3:

Kobun: 「雪降れば木毎（ごと）に花ぞ咲きにけるいづれを梅と分きて折らまし」
English: “After the snowfall, flowers have burst into bloom on every tree. How am I to find the plum and break off a laden bough?” (Kokin Wakashu 81).

The presence of the particle ぞ forces ける into the Rentai (attributive) form. Since I personally wouldn’t question the attributive being in that spot in the sentence (though the Renyoukei might make more sense), I’ll explain through a clearer example:

何事をかは中納言にはつたへならはすべき
“[W]hat thing should [we] entrust to the Chunagon?” (Vovin 209)

Normally, sentences end with the Shuushikei, right? But the Shuushikei of that final jodoushi is actually べし, while what we see above is べき, the Rentaikei (attributive). This is a case where the sentence ends in the rentaikei because of the presence of a musubi. So when you’re checking charts to see if the ending verb or jodoushi is what you think it is, take this into account.

That said, there are some non-musubi occasions for the sentence to end in the rentaikei, which I’ve cautioned about in the past Kobun articles. According to Vovin, this trend was, at first, only in 11th century recorded dialogue; the narratives of Kobun texts avoided Rentaikei-ended sentences. Over time, however, the trend was adopted into narratives, as well.

Pay attention to what you’re reading. If you’re reading something on the earlier scale of Classical texts, you’ll be okay just keeping an eye out for musubi. If you’re reading, say, the lyrics to a folk song from the Edo period or maybe even the Tsuresuregusa (14th century), there might not be a musubi around when a sentence ends in the rentaikei.

The Koso Musubi

First of all, you’re doing zazen meditation wrong. Second of all, I said Izen, not zazen, which you would know if you’d open up your ears for once

One other musubi should be noted, and it forces the Izenkei. If you don’t remember, the Izenkei indicates started or even completed actions (not “past tense” or “end of sentence”) and usually pairs up with ～ば for “since” or “when”.

When こそ is used, the Izenkei form seems out of place in the middle of the sentence with no ～ば. In this example of the koso-musubi, what Shirane calls a “concessive” (49) is what the rest of us would translate as “though” or “but”. For example:

Kobun: こまかにこそあらねどときどきものいひをこせけり (From Ise Monogatari)
English: “[he] sometimes sent [her] messages, although [they] were not cordial” (Vovin 214)

The あらね is 有り (to be) + ず (neg.) in the Izenkei. After that, the ど you see is a particle of contradiction (“although” or “despite…”).

In other instances, こそ will force the last verb or jodoushi into the Izenkei as a word of emphasis.

Kobun: 折節（を理節）の移（うつ）りかはるこそ、ものごとに哀（あはれ）なれ.(From Tsurezuregusa)
English: “It is precisely the changing of the seasons that makes everything so moving” (Shirane 49, italics his).

You should know koso from the modern, but if you need a refresher, Vovin remarks that, “koso seems to place especially strong emphasis on a preceding word or phrase, much stronger than the [Kobun] particles zo and namu” (430).

If you’re wondering, “What on earth do I do if I see koso and zo, etc. in the same sentence?”, then Vovin’s got you fixed there, too, for almost every instance: “the form of the final predicate is defined by the particle that comes closest to the final predicate” (214).

The End of the Road?

That might not have been quite as easy breezy as jodoushi were, but then, I just taught you how to disarm Kobun bombs that would otherwise destroy your attempts at translation. Plus, Classical Japanese adjectives look so similar to modern ones, don’t they? You’ll probably understand them as you see them in texts without needing to look them up. Plus, when you think about the “core” meanings in the musubi gang, the only new particles are namu and ya.

So yes, that’s it: four adjective types, which mostly overlap in the ending sounds, and five agressive particles. If you’ve got questions, the comments section has an empty text box with your name on it. Ask away! Otherwise, get ready for the next and probably last Kobun post: Classical Japanese Honorifics.

Bonus Wallpapers

[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

Sources

• Kokin Wakashu: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry : with Tosa Nikki and Shinsen Waka. Trans. Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford Univ. Press, 1985. p. 81.
• Rodd, Laura Rasplica, and Mary Cathy Henkenius. Kokinshu: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern. Princeton University Press, 1984. p. 60.
• Shirane, Haruo. Classical Japanese: A Grammar. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. p. 49.
• Vovin, Alexander. A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. p. 187-188, 208-209, 214, 430.

Quick Tip: How To Say “You’re Welcome”

どういたしまして (do-i-ta-shi-ma-shi-te) You’re Welcome

Greetings and general pleasantries are typically some of the first vocabulary words one learns when studying a foreign language. With Japanese we learn “hello” as konnichiwa, “goodbye” as sayonara, “good morning” as ohayo, and “thank you” as arigatou, to name a few. Here’s a quick tip: when trying to remember how to say “Good Morning” in Japanese, it may help to recall Ohio, like the state. And if you ever find yourself forgetting how to say “You’re Welcome”, all you have to remember is “Don’t Touch My Mustache”.

The exact origin of the use of the phrase “don’t touch my mustache” is unclear, though some personal accounts date it back to being commonly used in World War II, and some speculate that perhaps it started with Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan. However it first came about, the idea behind it is that the English phrase “don’t touch my mustache” is thought to sound very similar to the Japanese word for “you’re welcome”, which is どういたしまして (doitashimashite).

You may have to try to say it a few times. Or say it rapidly all together so it sounds like the phrase is slurred, but it does seem to replicate a similarity in its sound.

Don’t Touch My Mustache in Pop Culture

Extending past the confines of the Japanese language classroom, the idea that the phrase “don’t touch my mustache” sounds similar to どいたしまして in Japanese has been alluded to in a couple of instances in American pop culture.

“A Majority of One”

A first example is from a 1961 movie titled “A Majority of One” starring Alec Guinness and Rosalind Russell, and directed by Mervyn Leroy. Alec Guinness stars as Mr. Koichi Asano, a Japanese businessman. Rosalind Russell stars as Bertha Jacoby, a Jewish widow from Brooklyn who ends up moving to Japan when her son-in-law Jerome, who works for the government, has been promoted to a position stationed at the American Embassy in Yokohama. Although in the beginning things between Mr. Asano and Bertha are rocky, eventually Bertha is able to warm up to him. This film is a love story which explores lessons learned in tolerance and prejudice in a time after the war. There is a scene in the film where Guinness and Russell are having a conversation and she asserts that she knows a little Japanese including “you’re welcome, which sounds like ‘don’t touch my mustache’”. You can listen to the conversation here.

“Toy Story 2”

What might be the most popular reference to “don’t touch my mustache” appeared in Pixar’s Toy Story 2. In Toy Story 2, the sequel to Pixar’s original Toy Story, the hero Woody is stolen by a toy collector who wants to sell Woody and other toys he has collected from the same “Woody’s Roundup” franchise to a museum in Tokyo, Japan. This sound clip is from a scene where Al, the Toy collector, is finishing up a phone call with the Japanese investor from Tokyo. They have just accepted his offer for Woody and feeling ecstatic, Al hangs up the phone call with “Don’t touch my mustache”.

Interestingly enough, Toy Story 2 was not Pixar’s last phonetic reference to a Japanese vocabulary word. They included another one in 2001’s Monsters Inc. In Japan, store employees to greet their customers by saying いらっしゃいませ (irasshaimase) when they enter the store or restaurant. In Monsters Inc, whenever somebody entered Harryhausen’s Sushi Restaurant, its employees shouted “Get a paper bag!” which was intended to be a phonetic reference to Irasshaimase. What do you guys think? Do they sound similar?

Don’t Touch Dug Up Potatoes

Transitioning from don’t touch my mustache to don’t touch dug up potatoes, another fun fact about mnemonic gag expressions is that sometimes they can go both ways! A popular Japanese memorization aid is the expression 「掘った芋いじるな」(hotta imo ijiru na), which is a way of studying how to say “What time is it now?” in English. Translated literally to “don’t touch dug up potatoes”, it was first recorded to have appeared in a language study textbook written by Nakahama Manjiro, also known as John Manjiro.

Manjiro was a fisherman who hailed from an area now knows as the Kochi Prefecture of Japan. He and his four brothers were shipwrecked and rescued and taken to Honolulu. He decided to stay on board his rescuer’s ship and was consequently one of the first Japanese people to visit the United States. He studied English for a year in Massachusetts and in 1850 made way for San Francisco before returning to Japan in 1851. Upon his return to Japan, Manjiro worked as an interpreter and translator for the Shogunate, advising on foreign matters. He wrote a book called 「英語練習帳」which can be roughly translated to English Learning Workbook in which the “hotta imo ijiruna” approach is referenced for transliterating English into Japanese.

Other “This Sounds Like…” Expressions

In order to complement some of the phrases brought up in the article today, I thought it would be fun to look into some other “sounds like” phrases that could be used for increasing one’s Japanese language vocabulary. So, here is a short list of a couple other expressions I’ve been introduced to from friends and discovered on the internet that I thought were worth sharing:

ありがとうございます [ arigatou gozaimasu / thank you ] = Arigatou Godzilla-Mouse

危ない [ abunai / dangerous] = Have an Eye!

いただきます [itadakimasu / about to receive [this food] or let’s eat] = Eat the yucky mess

As you can see they kind of somewhat barely resemble the original thing word. Which brings me to my next question:

Is it Passable for Japanese?

While many such expressions including the ones mentioned above may be useful in creating memorable associations with Japanese phrases and vocabulary which in turn could assist with language learning, could they actually be useful as passing for spoken Japanese? They are clever, many are humorous, but for the most part I feel as though they only vaguely resemble the Japanese phrases they are trying to reproduce. Perhaps if spoken with a swift tongue, “don’t touch my mustache” could be recognized as “doitashimashite”, but assuming that the universal association between “don’t touch my mustache” and “you’re welcome” in Japanese does not exist, if it’s enunciated too clearly, it might be missed. And similarly, if a Japanese person were to ask me about the time using “hotta imo ijiruna” I would almost certainly have to ask them to please repeat the question. But regardless of whether you have heard the mnemonic before, or it’s something new for you, or if it happens to be a personal principle that you live by, now you know that if you ever need to say“you’re welcome” in Japanese, all you have to do is remember “don’t touch my mustache”.

So, what do you guys think? Are these helpful devices for language learning? Are they passable as substitutes for Japanese? Or are they going to end up hurting you in the end?

References

• http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1277/what-are-the-origins-of-掘った芋いじるな-hotta-imo-ijiru-na
• http://movie-sounds.org/action-movie-sound-clips/toy-story-2-1999/sputtering-dont-touch-my-moustache
• http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2004/09/dont_touch_my_m.html
• http://www.yam-mag.com/reviews/film-reviews/a-majority-of-one/
• http://smt.blogs.com/mari_diary/2005/12/a_majority_of_o.html
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0198781/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055124/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Lack of progress is not always due to lack of effort or desire to learn, but often students simply don’t know how to make the best use of their time abroad. So, let’s take a look at some things you can do before and after arriving in Japan to up your chances of becoming Nihong perapera (fluent in Japanese).

Strategy #1: Formal Study

Being in Japan will bring lots of opportunities to work on your speaking and listening skills, but if you don’t hit the books before departing chances are you’ll be spending precious hours that could have been used for socializing locked up in your room, regretting that you didn’t study before you left.

If you don’t already know them, get your hiragana and katakana down before you go, and being able to read kanji to a reasonable extent will make your life a lot easier (can I suggest Wanikani?). Then I would suggest focusing on vocabulary and grammar for conversational purposes, as it seems most logical to have improving your spoken Japanese as your primary goal while you are in the country. As with most languages Japanese has lots of words that are often printed but rarely used when speaking and vice versa, so what you want to do is concentrate on the spoken stuff.

In my experience, studying with Japanese drama is an incredibly effective way to do this for vocabulary, as you’re hearing “natural” (okay, I know it’s staged, but you get what I mean) Japanese and getting an idea of the contexts in which it’s used. As for grammar, though I do not take the JLPT as a good measure of language ability, I would suggest familiarizing yourself with the grammar required up to N3 – that would equip you with most of the structures you need to communicate to a reasonable level.

Finally, don’t forget to keep the formal study up while you’re in Japan. Having the chance to put what you’ve studied into practical use straight away will help you to retain the information better, and you’ll start noticing what you’ve studied pop up around you in real life, helping to fix it in your memory.

Strategy #2: Make Friends Before You Go!

If your study abroad program is organized by your university, then it probably has a reciprocal exchange agreement with the university you are going to in Japan. This means that not only do students from your university go to your chosen school in Japan, but students from that school also come to your university. Presuming you choose your study abroad destination at least a few months in advance, this gives you the perfect opportunity to meet Japanese students who will return to their home university just as you set off to study there!

Even if your university only sends students to Japan without taking any in, the existence of a magic little thing called the internet means that you don’t have to despair just yet. You could ask students at your university who have studied at your destination school to put you in contact with people over Facebook or Line. Alternatively, you could e-mail the study abroad office at your host university and ask them to hook you up (maybe don’t use that phrase exactly!) with contact information for clubs and circles involved with study abroad students, or even search on Lang-8 to see if anyone from your future Japanese school is keeping a journal there. Just make sure to go about contacting people in a way that doesn’t make you seem like an creepy internet stalker…

Strategy #3: Arrange to live with Japanese Speakers

I’m sure you’ve heard over and over and over and over again that immersion in an all-Japanese environment is one of the most efficient and effective ways to learn, and I for one certainly subscribe to this mode of thought. If you’re lucky, your school will provide accommodation in a dorm where there are Japanese speakers a’plenty, or arrange for you to do a home-stay. If that’s the case, then great, but for those who have not been so lucky I suggest you keep reading!

So, what do you do if it turns out your school is offering you a dorm with 60 study abroad students and 2 Japanese speakers living there? The first thing you can do is contact your school in Japan and ask them if they have any alternative accommodation, or if they can help you arrange a homestay with a Japanese-speaking family. If that’s a no-go then you’re going to have to take matters into your own hands.

As long as you have a connection to the interwebs then finding a place to live during your time in Japan shouldn’t be all that difficult. If a homestay appeals to you, you can search for a site that helps people find host families in the area you’re going to (Homestay in Japan is one I can recommend), or perhaps very nicely ask the Japanese friends you’ve made (as instructed above) if they know anyone who would like to host a student. If a home-stay doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, you could check out to see if there are any share-houses in the area where you can share with Japanese speakers, or ask your school to see if there would be any students interested in sharing a room with you.

Strategy #4: Take A Class That Isn’t About Japanese Or Japan

I’m not saying don’t take Japanese classes – chances are that you’ll be required to, but if you take nothing but Japanese language and culture classes then you probably won’t be being exposed to much real Japanese, will be more inclined to let the class set the pace of your learning, and will have less interaction with Japanese students. Koichi has already written about the pros and cons of Japanese classes, so I won’t go into too much detail, but the thing about classroom-based language learning is that it can only do so much for you.

I suggest that alongside your Nihongo lessons you also sign up for at least one undergraduate class, preferably connected to a topic or subject you’re interested in. One of the best ways to improve your spoken language is to listen to and imitate native speakers, so taking a class in Japanese about a topic you love and want to talk about seems like a pretty solid plan – not necessarily easy, but a solid plan. Furthermore, if you’re listening to someone speak about a topic you like, you’re probably going to have enough background knowledge to help you infer the meanings of words that you don’t already know.

Taking a class intended for native Japanese speakers might sound a bit… okay, very intimidating, especially if you’re worried about things like grades and credits. Fortunately, most lecturers will allow you to participate as a kyōkōsei – a student who attends classes, but is not required to submit assignments or take exams. Sure, you won’t get any official recognition for taking it, but hopefully you’ll be able to learn a lot in exchange for your time.

I will end this section with a word of warning: just because the title of a class sounds interesting doesn’t mean it will be interesting. Before signing up, be sure to check out the details of what exactly is on the syllabus, and ask around to see if any of your Japanese friends have taken the course or classes with the same teacher.

Strategy #5: Join a club/circle (that isn’t related to English!)

Lenna has already written about her experiences joining a club during study abroad, and while she emphasizes that it’s no walk in the park I would strongly urge anyone looking to improve their Japanese communication ability to join one.

As with taking a class you’re interested in, you’re going to be learning language related to something you enjoy and want to talk about, which is a great incentive to learn. Moreover – particularly if you’re doing something that requires a lot of teamwork – you are going to to need to communicate, and nothing helps you learn language faster than being in a situation where you’re forced to use it.

Hopefully you’ll have noticed the bit in the brackets above: “that isn’t related to English”. While ‘international clubs’, ‘cultural exchange clubs’, etc. can seem very appealing and welcoming to study abroad students, they’re usually full other English-speaking study students, and it’s more than likely there’s going to be a lot of Japanese students looking to ‘practice’ their English with (or should I say on?) you.

It’s also a good idea to check out what clubs and circles are on offer in the university and contact them before you arrive, so that they know you are coming and you can secure you place amongst their number

Strategy #6: Do A Part-Time Job (That Is Not Teaching English!)

Source: http://photozou.jp/photo/show/124201/78405736

You’ll notice we have brackets again! Yes, it’s easy to find part-time work teaching English, it’s not too difficult, and it’s well-paid, BUT it’s not going to help you improve your Japanese much. Looking at the bigger picture, you’re much better off getting a regular part-time job using Japanese, even if it means a slightly lower salary.

Obviously, your level of Japanese will part-determine the range of jobs you will qualify to do, but having a basic command of the language should at least enable you to pack shelves in a supermarket. No, not particularly glamorous, but it’s going to put you in an all-Japanese environment, and as your Japanese ability improves throughout the year you’ll hopefully be able to progress to a better position.

Part-time jobs are abundant in Japan, and you won’t have trouble finding a shop with an arubaito bosyū (part-time staff wanted) sign stuck in the window. There are also plenty of websites such as Town Work where you can search for local jobs online (you can always ask a Japanese friends to help you navigate these sites). When applying, you’ll need to submit a Japanese resume, which is always written to a standard format. Check out this very useful page at Japan Career for the details!

Study abroad students are not automatically entitled to engage in part-time work; to do this, you’ll need to fill out a “permission to engage in activity other than that permitted under the visa status previously granted” form (how’s that for a title?) and will then be able to work a maximum of 28 hours a week, or 8 hours a day during long holidays.

Have you been on study abroad to Japan? Is there anything that you think really helped you improve your Japanese while away, or anything you regret doing/not doing? Let me know in the comments below.

Follow Japanese Profiles On Social Media

#Japanese

Usually social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are the sworn enemies of productive study time, gently beckoning you from your browser’s corner tab, but using this trick you can turn their addictiveness to your advantage: Follow a few Japanese celebrities or news outlets so that Japanese writing appears on websites that you visit often.

The extent you take this is totally up to you, add one or two profiles for an unintrusive sprinkling of kanji, or go crazy and make half of your entire newsfeed Japanese. Just make sure each one is something you’re actually interested in, and don’t add so many that using your account is no longer fun/useful. If you do you’ll end up irritatedly scrolling through and only reading your native language.

Here’s a few suggestions to get you started: @asahi (the Asahi Shimbun), @matomenaver (news aggregator Naver Matome), @pamyurin (the weird and wonderful Kyary Pamyu Pamyu) and @55_Kumamon (Japan’s mascot king, Kumamon).

Take it further: If you don’t need to trick yourself into studying, you can set up a separate account specifically for this purpose.

Listen to Japanese Music

There’s more to Japanese music than this, I promise

Japanese music is available anywhere in the world, and even things like Spotify, Last.fm, and iTunes Radio will let you listen to it for free, so there’s no excuses not to try this one.

Studies have shown that listening to music performed in your target language can help facilitate learning by subconsciously training you to recognise patterns of speech and boundaries between words. In basic terms, this means music teaches your mind to break down chunks of syllables and learn where separate words begin and end. This happens to some extent when listening to regular speech, but if words are attached to notes our brains can compartmentalise them more effectively.

Of course, the more engaged you are, the more you’ll learn from listening to Japanese music, but even having it on in the background as you do something else is beneficial. Notch it up to Hardcore Mode by listening to Japanese radio while practicing writing kanji.

Take it further: Expand on this approach by repeating segments of songs and trying to note down the lyrics (the sounds alone if you’re a beginner, the actual kanji and meaning for more advanced levels), then performing an online search afterwards to check your accuracy. If you’re confident enough you could even break out a microphone and give it a shot at karaoke. Or, quietly, into a shampoo bottle, alone in the shower.

Set Your Phone to Japanese

I take no responsibility for phones flung at walls in kanji-induced frustration

Urgh. I know, this one’s tough. There’ll be moments when you’re so frustrated you’ll want to set your phone ablaze in a sacrificial ceremony to the almighty gods of Kanji. But it does pay off.

When I lived in China I used this method to learn the different characters associated with actions on my phone. This resulted in situations where I embarrassed myself by repeatedly failing to put a new contact’s details in my phone, as well as mornings when my alarm would go off and I was unable to differentiate between “snooze” and “off,” forcing me to get out of bed in a fit of snoozeless rage (the most furious of all types of rage). After a while, though, I began to recognise those characters not only on my phone, but elsewhere. I’d use my office computer and understand commands that I’d never noticed before; I didn’t know how to pronounce them at this point, but I’d already done the (arguably) most difficult part of learning the characters.

This is an incredibly frustrating thing to try but if you persevere the spaced repetition involved in regularly seeing the same characters really helps you to retain the information.

Take it further: If you’re a real masochist, you can also go about setting your other devices and software in Japanese. Just remember to write down where the language settings section is…

Label Items With Kanji Sticky Notes

If you’re struggling with vocabulary get yourself some sticky notes and begin labeling things in your home like a family-friendly version of the movie Memento. Either include the kanji and furigana to help you memorize both, or just the kanji in order to test yourself on the pronunciation each time.

Color-coding can be a useful way of organising the information, either by categorising types of words (e.g. on the shower you could have the noun “shower”, シャワー, in one colour and the verb “wash”, 洗う, in another) or the stage of your learning (e.g. green for words you usually remember, orange for words you can sometimes recall and red for those ones that just won’t stick).

Take it further: You could take the Memento comparison more literally and have those “code red” stickers tattooed all over your silly, forgetful face… But I’d suggest just air-writing the kanji with your finger each time you see them instead.

Think In Japanese

Next time you find yourself with nothing to do, be it in a car, a doctor’s waiting room or while attempting to look busy at the office, think to yourself in Japanese. Not having your textbook is no longer a valid excuse for not studying!

An “in-head” review of the last thing you learned is probably the most efficient use of this method but anything from simple sentences about the location of things in the room to complex monologues about current events will do.

Take it further: Memorize dialogues from your textbook, then later try to go through them word-for-word in your head.

Use the Japanese Menu at Japanese Restaurants

You have to earn this

I have to admit that when I used to eat out in Japan I would rely on other people to do the ordering, or simply go off the pictures provided. Even when I’d selected something I wouldn’t bother to read the name most of the time, not when a quick point and “Kore okudasai” (this please) would suffice.

This is a huge missed opportunity though, as food words are amongst the most important vocabulary you can learn. And the brilliant thing about studying by reading menus is that it works for all levels of Japanese, beginners can practice reading hiragana and katakana, while even the most fluent Japanese speaker is bound to get tripped up by dish names every once in a while (I’m occasionally baffled by dish names in English).

Take it further: Ask for a copy of the menu (or take a picture) and take it away with you. Translate the dishes at home then test yourself next time you’re eating there. Who knows, maybe you’ll even discover a new favourite dish.

BONUS TIPS FOR READERS LIVING IN JAPAN

I’ve also included two extra tips to help people living in Japan take advantage of their surroundings and sponge up all that Japanese overflowing everywhere.

Eavesdrop On Conversations

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to listen in on the Japanese conversations around you. If you’re in Japan, you’re literally surrounded by listening exercises far more authentic than in any textbook. Whether in a coffee shop, on public transport or even in the office, stop tuning out other people’s conversations as background noise and start trying to decipher them.

Listening to other people’s conversations even has a few advantages over holding your own. For example, people often talk slower with more simple language when talking to non-native speakers, but by listening to others you get to feel the rhythm of a more natural conversation. And that doesn’t necessarily make it more difficult: negating a need for a response means you can focus solely on listening rather than simultaneously piecing together a reply.

As well as improving your listening ability you’ll pick up new vocabulary and, perhaps most importantly, there’s a good chance you’ll hear things you’ve been saying wrong but people have been too polite to correct you on.

By listening to various age groups and types of people you’ll also put yourself out of your Japanese comfort zone and hear how different people talk. If you work with kids for your day job or the majority of your conversations are with the opposite gender it’s important to do this in order to avoid sounding like them. Because, if nobody else has told you this yet, you almost certainly do. Sorry.

I’m not saying that you should be breaking out a newspaper with eyeholes and making everybody around you feel uncomfortable, though. Be discreet about it. Take a note from Japanese culture and “observe without watching,” or in this case “listen without gaping.” Also, if somebody is talking loudly enough to be heard by the general public it’s unlikely to concern anything they’d be troubled by a stranger hearing.

Plus, your heart is true and your motives pure. Go forth and eavesdrop.

Take it further: You probably shouldn’t take this one further, even if your motives are pure.

Translate Advertisements On The Train

Log out of Facebook, switch off Candy Crush, Farmville or whatever this month’s trashy yet surprisingly addictive game is, and start using your time on the train productively. If you can’t get a seat you may not be able to take out your textbook and study the way you’d like to, but you can get some real-world reading practice in.

Step one: Look up and select an advert. If you’re a beginner make sure it doesn’t have a huge block of text and, whatever level you are, choose one that looks at least remotely interesting.

Step two: Read. When you come across a phrase or kanji you don’t understand, use your dictionary to translate. And don’t say you don’t have one, because you were just playing Candy Crush a minute ago and if you’ve paid for that but not a dictionary we’ll have to have a serious talk.

If something comes up that your translation tools can’t make sense of, don’t give up or spend an inordinate amount of time on it, make a note and move on. You can ask a friend later.

Like setting your phone to Japanese and the sticky note method, this is especially effective because of spaced repetition. Whether you’re intending to study or not, each time you get on the train and see the same adverts you’ll be reminded of the kanji and vocabulary you learnt when you translated them.

Take it further: Before you get off at your stop, snap a picture of the advertisement. This will allow you finish translating at home or, if you’d already done, check your work and review it.

Did I miss anything? No doubt many of you have picked up a few small tricks of your own to improve your Japanese outside of the classroom.

[hr /]

Bonus Wallpapers!

[1280x800] ∙[2560x1600] ∙ [1280x800 Animated] ∙ [700x438 Animated]

Chances are, you’ve probably met a few non-native English speakers in some of your classes who were learning Japanese or Spanish or Swahili alongside you. You probably thought, “Rad. I don’t think I could learn Spanish or Swahili if the teacher was instructing in Japanese.” I’m here to tell you that you definitely could do such a thing, that it will help your Japanese abilities if you try, and then I’ll outline an easy way for you to get started.

This post will be helpful for intermediate and advanced learners, but beginners who are reading this should still find useful information here. This also might be one of the strangest Tofugu posts yet because I’m talking about how to learn a language that isn’t Japanese: Japanese Sign Language (JSL / shuwa 手話). While there are generally awesome things to be gained from learning a language through another language, shuwa makes the task easier because of 1) an abundance of learning materials with subtitles and 2) grammatical similarities to spoken Japanese.

Agar Mode: Learning A Language Through Another Language

In microbiology, agar is the jelly-like algae medium used to hold bacteria in petri dishes so they can be observed (without destroying the world). It’s also used in Japanese confections, like yōkan. So, as a way to shorten the phrase “Learning a language through another language”, let’s just call that “Agar Mode.” While there isn’t a lot of research on the added benefits of this mode of learning, there is research that suggests foreign language learning is easier the second time around.

Why is that? How does that even work when you’ve been stuffing the jōyō-kanji plus hundreds (thousands?) of vocabulary words and shadowing dramas and news programs for pronunciation? How can you learn a third language more easily, with a still-in-progress Nihongo squeezing up against whatever English knowledge, physics equations, quilt patterns, and “that one story that makes everyone I’m drinking with do a spit-take”?

It comes down to practice… kind of. Second language learning is one area of research that has a lot of conflicting evidence. Some of the surer things are “We don’t know what kind of motivation works best for everyone, but we know there has to be some of it somewhere for people to get anywhere in language learning.” Similarly, it’s been concluded that people who do okay at picking up one foreign language do okay a little more easily at the second because they’ve already learned and practiced successful study habits. The reason it goes smoother the second time around is because you already know that you need: vocabulary lists, listening practice, writing practice, websites and apps to feed you new challenges, and maybe small increments work best, etc. Believe it or not, the specifics of these study habits, and which ones work best for you, are the non-language things you’re learning while learning Japanese.

Okay. So you can get started with another language easily. Now you might be thinking, “Why should I?”

There are some people out there (again, the research is hard to find, but this guy backs me up) who find that the Agar Mode makes you practice Japanese in a new and impressive way. While immersive experiences are great (e.g., taking photography in Japanese, or taking Japanese in Japanese), the immersive language-learning experience specifically draws on vocabulary and expressions you’re already familiar with in Japanese: verbs, adjectives, modifying phrases, て-form, formality, etc. In the end, your head isn’t translating Japanese > English, English > Japanese, it’s translating Japanese > Language-X, Language-X > Japanese. Other posts on Tofugu mention passive learning, translating all the time, and thinking in Japanese. Sounds similar. Sounds like an integrated way to get better at Nihongo.

Exhibit A: Japanese Sign Language

Obviously, any language would work as the specimen in the Nihongo agar. But I’m going to outline resources for use with Japanese Sign Language in this article. In addition to working well with Agar Mode (so many subtitled materials!), Shuwa is as much a part of Japan as Shinto shrines and Kansai-ben. The people who use it daily read and often speak Japanese regardless of whether they can hear or not. Some Shuwa users went to schools for the deaf, but many such schools have been closed down over the years (see Karen Nakamura’s Deaf in Japan for more background on this), and now many have gone to the same schools as any other Japanese person you might meet.

For those interested in going to or living in Kyoto or Tokyo, you’ll run into a few more people using shuwa; the first Japanese school for the deaf was established in Kyoto, while Tokyo boasts the headquarters of the Japan Federation for the Deaf, as well as a number of active college circles and even academic programs (Tsukuba University, for example) for shuwa users. Furthermore, you’ll see shuwa lessons on Japanese TV and on the railways, not to mention in the popular 2004 drama Orange Days.

Again, the best part about trying this Agar Mode out with Japanese Sign Language is what kind of materials you’ll have available. Also, the grammar is going to be similar.

It should be noted that at the beginner level, most of what you’ll run into is a pidgin between shuwa and spoken Japanese called Nihongo Taiou Shuwa (日本語対応手話), which is more like Signed Japanese than Japanese Sign Language. But for getting started and practicing Japanese, this will do just fine.

Getting Started

Just like you start Japanese by learning hiragana and basic vocabulary, most people start learning shuwa with yubi-moji (‘finger-spelling’, 指文字) and vocabulary in categories like colors, food, places, relationships, etc. Here’s a chart for the yubi-moji; illustrations depict someone facing you directly with these hand shapes. Right or left-handedness doesn’t matter.

When you’ve learned all the hand shapes for the hiragana and have properly associated them, try spelling out some words that you know. By hand-spelling out たべます, for example, you’re not only cementing the hand shapes into your mind, but the concept and idea of たべます as well. When you do this, たべます isn’t “to eat” in English, it’s the idea of “to eat” without the “to eat.” You’re helping your brain to really know the word and idea, rather than telling it to recall the information based off some other information that’s in your brain. It’s Agar Mode in action.

This can help you to learn words you are having trouble memorizing too. For example, when I was having trouble remembering 都/みやこ, I found that when I started signing the word I could suddenly memorize it. So, this concept can have benefits even when used in small doses as well.

Continuing Your JSL Education

There isn’t going to be one single way to learn JSL along with your Japanese, especially if you’re looking to supplement it in this Agar Mode way. It really depends on how you’re learning Japanese. Luckily, Agar Mode is flexible and can mold (ha ha!) to just about any Japanese learning method that you do.

If you’re looking to move beyond the yubi-moji hand shapes, there are a number of resources I’ve found to help you out:

Youtube:

• Shuwa songs: Search for these with 「手話ソング」 or 「手話歌」. My favorite so far is this.
• HeartfulPowerHideo channel: This couple is funny, adorable, and effective at teaching Shuwa through subbed skits.
• Clark Chiba: You won’t be alone in the crowd of foreigners seeking to learn JSL. This person, American, has done some lessons, in Japanese, for people wanting to learn, along with some Shuwa Songs.
• jslvideodayo: this Japanese woman knows Shuwa and learned ASL after coming to the U.S. Her videos feature translations between each (JSL/ASL) with English subs

Drama:

Orange Days: In the words of most Japanese people I talk to about this show, it’s filled with all the great and also difficult things about college life in Japan, especially when facing the dreaded job hunting, but adds in the dilemma a semi-pro musician faces now that she’s deaf.

Shuwa Jiten

Like any other language, there are dialects and regional differences, and the list of words isn’t exhaustive, but this is helpful for looking up illustrations and videos of Shuwa words you want to learn. Try learning the JSL version of a word as you learn the Japanese version of a word at the same time. Or, as you make sentences in Japanese, throw in JSL words as you’re speaking it out loud. Even one or two per sentence will surely help! [Shuwa Jiten]

Academics:

• How about the Wikipedia page on Shuwa?
• Ichida Yasuhiro is a sign linguistics researcher who lectures at places like Todai and Osaka University. His website features a glossary of terms relating to sign language and the linguistics of it. Try out your reading comprehension! For advanced Japanese learners / linguistics students, check out his reference section.

Your Experiment

JSL would help you learn more about Japanese culture while practicing Nihongo, but at the end of the day, it’s your experiment. If you aren’t interested in JSL, have you ever wanted to learn French? Korean? Chinese? Consider using the Agar Mode as a way to start thinking in Japanese more. Crawl the internet with Japanese search terms, and you’ll be taking a dynamic new approach to your studies as you pick through the results.

Or maybe you’re reading this and are yawning because you’ve been here, done this. If so, tell us about your ‘learning a language through Japanese medium’ experiences in the comments!
We want to know: Was this approach effective? What kind of challenges did you face, and how did you navigate them?

[hr /]

Bonus JSL Hiragana Chart!

[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

My own experience has been between the two. Search the internet (and even this blog!) and you’d probably get tons of articles written by foreigners in Japan. But very few of them come from people who actually can blend in, and this in itself brings an entirely new and different set of issues.

The Good Stuff

Not standing out can be a very good thing sometimes. Many foreigners complain about the constant staring that they receive – if they speak English in public they get stared at. If they speak Japanese in public they get stared at. In the toilet doing their own business they get stared at. Some people embrace the attention – some do not.

In addition to this, seemingly harmless and often well-meaning Japanese remarks such as “oh you are so good at using chopsticks!” or “oh you can write kanji!” are perfectly fine – at first. After a few months in Japan however, these start grating on many people because it just signals to them how “foreign” they are in Japanese society.

For us however, we never do receive that kind of attention unless perhaps we open our mouths and speak a different language. And while I do get “do you use chopsticks where you come from?” or “oh you can write Kanji” (my race invented it dammit!), I most certainly do not get it as much as the majority of the other foreigners in Japan.

Another very true thing is that many Japanese get very self-conscious around foreigners because, quite simply, they simply do not know how to act around someone from a different cultural background. This is partly because the Japanese are very keen to avoid offending other people – however, when placed in a situation with someone visibly different and probably from a different country,  their offense-avoiding radar goes into overdrive. As East-Asians we don’t naturally put the Japanese “on guard” by default, sometimes because they think you’re Japanese, but also perhaps because you don’t look that different from them. Therefore, perhaps on a subconscious level I am not recognized as being that “different” too.

Furthermore, if you register yourself as a resident of Japan, you are even allowed to create a Japanese common name (tsuumei), or basically a Japanese alias for yourself. Nothing stops you from using it to apply for jobs, use at school or printing it on your name-card. Basically, if you make a tsuumei for yourself and can speak an at least near-native level of Japanese, there is nothing stopping you (except for the “nationality” box on forms… and grammar mistakes) from passing off as and living life as a typical Japanese person. This is in fact what many ethnic Koreans, especially those descended from families who came to Japan before the end of World War II, do in real life. Japan’s original peoples, the Ainu, had to do it too.

The Not-So-Good Stuff

Unfortunately, not standing out has its drawbacks too.

Take for example something which is utterly obvious to most foreigners in Japan – being a foreigner you get to take many liberties that the Japanese cannot themselves take. For example, you will be allowed to be much more direct, honest and critical about issues in a way that would invite bullying if you were Japanese. Can’t really understand how to divide the rubbish? It’s okay, after all you’re a gaijin. Some people do take this to an extreme though – there are some who, for example, buy the cheapest train ticket available and pretend to be lost when they get to the station they wanted to go to. The station staff often apparently just let them exit – after all, they are just a bunch of lost gaijin.

To give an extreme example, can you imagine three East Asians doing the same thing (not that they should)? It is clear that they would have much less success doing so than if they were visibly foreign. Similarly, in terms of being able to speak freely and other things, we don’t get that many “gaijin liberties” living in Japan.

There are many different reasons to this. As said earlier, because you look the same, people will subconsciously assume that you are the same. Secondly, one strand of logic, which isn’t actually wrong, goes: Hey you’re Asian. Shouldn’t you know how Asia works with all the rules and politeness?

Exoticism

There’s a subtler dimension to this though. This appeared on one of my friend’s Facebook wall one day.

“Was with a group of white friends last night. Japanese guy approaches, introduces himself, talks to all the white guys, looks at me, ignores, walks away. Maybe it’s time I put on makeup to make my eyes bigger and nose taller…”

Perhaps said Japanese guy mistook him for another Japanese person but the point is clear: There are actually lots of Japanese people who want to make friends with foreigners. Often, this is because they really do want to know more about the outside world or really just because they want to be friends. However, sometimes it’s just because foreigners are “exotic.” Thus, it’s no surprise then that they gravitate towards the more “exotic” looking ones over the Asian ones.

This is also expressed in other ways. For example, many of my friends who are looking to teach English say that private English schools and people looking for private English tutors prefer to hire non-Asians over visibly Asian people – even if said Asian person is a native speaker of English.

How To Deal With It

The above does not mean that Asians cannot make themselves stand out though. As said earlier, get a weird haircut or a tattoo or speak loudly in a different language (especially English) and voila – you’ve announced to anyone that you’re different. Likewise, be extremely extroverted, frank and/or rude in a stereotypically gaijin way and you’d be treated like a full-fledged gaijin at least by the people who have known you for a while.

The extremely odd thing, and the counter to the point said above about how being Asian allows you to lower the guard of the Japanese that you first meet, is that sometimes, you have to go through this “gaijin coming out” process. If you can’t speak fluent Japanese, this is often after the Japanese person realizes that your Japanese is a bit off and asks you where you are from. If you can speak fluent Japanese, this is often after the Japanese person has had a perfectly normal conversation with you and asks where in Japan you are from, your name or about your high school.

You then tell them that you’re from this-and-this country and the conversation usually simply continues, after the customary 日本語上手ですね (Your Japanese is so good!). Occasionally there is this sense of awkwardness – then you know that the offense-avoidance radar is getting scrambled. And very occasionally, as described by a friend of a friend: “you feel that a wall comes up and that the conversation stops.”

As you can see, very coming out-ish.

It’s Not About Which Is Easier

It really is not. Neither is it about who has the advantage or who has the disadvantage – because we all have our different advantages and disadvantages. Some people would much rather have the freedom that comes with being obviously different but then to some people being stared at by nearly everyone wherever one goes is extremely stressful.

What is true is that each situation has its different challenges and they often require different approaches to handle them. Some use the opportunity to lie low and under the radar; others make the extra effort to stand out.

But then again, everything has its own challenges. Being Japanese in Japan definitely has its challenges too. So, all else being said, all there is to do is to recognize your own situation, and choose your method of life.