10. Focus On Your Ability To Recall, Not Memorize

Memorization is the focus of most Japanese classes. Memorize words! Memorize kanji! Memorization is so Japanese, too. But, all that sucks, and it’s not at all how our brain learns anything. While memorization has its place in learning, it’s not the memorization that’s important, it’s the recall. So, instead of focusing on getting things into your head… focus on getting things out. It’s not as simple as you might think, too. In terms of pure recall ability, there are a lot of things you can do to make your learning much more effective.

1. Try learning five different things at the same time (as in, one right after another). Although “different,” they should be related things as well. For example, learn a vocab word, a kanji, a grammar term, and practice with a bit of audio, all as one “set” then rinse and repeat. This is more effective than, say, learning 10 vocab words at a time, then repeating. The progress will feel slower than if you do a single subject group all at once, but your recall is going to be better if you do it this other way. Why? Because each time you rotate back around to vocab, you’re practicing recalling vocab. Each time you rotate back to learning a kanji, you’re forced to practice recalling the previous kanji. It’s forcing recall over memorization. Doing the same thing over and over just puts you into auto-pilot.
2. After you take or read a lesson, take notes. Note the word “after,” it’s very important. Writing notes while you’re listening or reading something is pretty useless. You can use it later to memorize, I suppose, but in the end you’re not learning as much. If you take notes afterwards, your focus is on recall, not memorization, and guess what? You end up recalling more the first time.
3. The more you struggle to recall something, the more easy it is to recall next time. So, you should actually try to make it hard to recall an item. The trick, though, is to not forget something so much that you can’t recall it at all. If you can’t recall something, you can’t make the memory and recall of that thing better either. The harder it is to recall this thing, the more effort your brain will put into recalling it better. So, try to wait as long as possible before you practice recalling an item. Try to catch it right before you’re about to forget it (this is why srs and mnemonics are so good, we’ll talk about that in a moment).

So, the next time you catch yourself trying to memorize something, remember recall that what you really need to do is practice recalling these things, because that’s what will help you out in the long run. It’s like a hard drive. You can store as much information as you want inside… but if you have no way of recalling that information, it’s pretty much useless.

9. You Ought To Focus On Weak Points

You're only as strong as your weakest point

Nobody likes to do things they aren’t  good at, but that’s what separates the pros from the not-really-good-at-anything people. The snow-ball fighting team that wins the championship didn’t ignore the things they were bad at. Olympic gold medalists don’t ignore what they aren’t good at… no, they focused on their weak points. Why? Because it makes everything else so much better.

With Japanese, I’ve learned that you have to focus on your weak points too. Weak points will only get weaker, and they will constantly hold you back. For example, if your weak point is kanji, it’s not just kanji that’s poor. Your grammar is poor too. Why? Because when you’re reading, you constantly have to stop and see what each kanji means, which means you read less stuff, which means your grammar isn’t as good. What happens when your grammar isn’t as good? Your speaking and listening don’t get better either. All this could be fixed by focusing on your weak point (in our made up world, that’s kanji). Even though working on something you aren’t good at sucks, it’ll make everything so much better in the long run. If you want to get better, it’s an absolute must.

So, what’s something you’re bad at in Japanese? You should spend most of your time working on that, until it’s no longer a weak point then choose something new that’s the new weak point (and repeat).

8. You Should Learn More Kanji, Earlier

Kanji’s one of those things that most people take forever to learn. But, just like in the example for #9, it affects a lot of other things. More than any other part of learning Japanese, kanji can help or hurt you, and I’d rather it help you. The more kanji you learn, the more effectively you can study. That’s all there is to it.

I’m not going to go into how to learn kanji more quickly right now, that’s for points farther down in this list. I will say, however, that it’s a long-term mistake to not learn as much kanji as you can now. Keep reading to figure out better ways to do that, though, because the “traditional” approach won’t let you learn very much kanji very fast.

7. Existence of SRS Learning

One thing I had no idea that existed back in the day is SRS (that’s a spaced repetition system). The SRS of choice around here tends to be Anki, but there’s plenty others as well. The idea behind it is pretty simple: SRS programs show you things based on how well you could recall them the time before (see, recall is good!). For example, if you could recall the kanji 中 very easily, it might not show you that card again for a couple months (if you’ve recalled it several times easily, anyways). But, if you had trouble recalling it or couldn’t recall it at all, it might show you 中 later that session or the next day. Basically, it’s just flashcards, but it tries to stretch out that recall time so you better memorize things. Right before you’re about to forget it something a proper SRS should show that thing to you and make you recall it, making that memory stronger every single time.

SRS might be pretty commonplace in today’s world, but when I was in school I just sat there trying to memorize one thing after another like some kind of chump. It was terrible, and most of the time I’d barely be able to get anything in my short term memory long enough to pass the test (then promptly forget everything I just “learned”). SRS solves all that. If you’re not using an SRS program, you should. It does a lot of the recall / memorization work for you (though you still gotta work a little).

6. The Existence Of The “Other” Kanji Radicals

Yep, a lot of these radical's meanings are made up, but that's because "traditional" radicals are so useless

In high school, I learned about kanji radicals in a way that would allow me to look up kanji in dictionaries. These are the radicals most Japanese teachers know about and use, but these radicals aren’t that helpful. Of course, because of this, I had to learn kanji stroke by stroke by stroke. 18-stroke kanji? That’s eighteen different things I had to remember, making learning one kanji really, really difficult.

These “other” radicals, however, are different. Every kanji (and I mean every kanji) should really only be made up of three parts (aka three radicals). Basically, these radicals are parts that make up a kanji. They’re like smaller kanji (or pieces of kanji) that you can piece together to make a bigger kanji. Although there are around 200 radicals (depending on who’s list you use), learning these 200 radicals can be pretty easy if you use mnemonics and SRS to learn them. Once you know these 200-ish radicals (I know, sounds like a lot, but it’s not), all kanji can be created with three or fewer radicals. It’s sort of like the difference between putting together a puzzle with three pieces (EZPZ Lemon Squeezy), or putting together a puzzle with 20 pieces (while memorizing where each piece goes for the next time you have to put it together). Over time, this really, really adds up.

If I had known about these kinds of radicals a lot earlier, I would have known a lot more kanji a lot earlier too. Japanese school kids spend around 6 years learning their Joyo kanji. Japanese language learners spend an upwards of 10+ years learning kanji. All this can be cut down to a fraction of both of those time frames if you use radicals (and mnemonics). Learning kanji faster than a Japanese school kid? Strangely enough, it’s no problem at all. There’s various methods for learning with radicals, including Heisig’s, TextFugu, and Kanjidamage. All have their good points and bad points – I’d just recommend using the one that seems to work best for you.

5. Classrooms & Teachers Can Slow You Down (But Also Can Help A Lot Too)

A lot of my Japanese learning has been in classrooms, and I’ve learned a lot from that experience. Classes are great, because you have a teacher there to tell you what you’re doing wrong. But, classes can also slow you down. Unless you’re the slowest person in the class, the class is always going to prevent you from learning things as quickly as you actually can.

If you’re in a class, I’d always recommend studying outside the class. You could focus on your weak points (aka point #9). You could study kanji separately from everyone (because kanji helps with everything). There’s any number of things you can do. Even grabbing another resources and studying with it is good (because either it’ll fill in the gaps of things that you’re not learning in your class, or it will reinforce things you’ve learned and explain it in a different way).

Whatever you do, though, study outside the classroom is great. You shouldn’t be tricked into thinking that a classroom is all you need. Think of a classroom as just a supplement to your learning, because there’s really so much more that you can do.

4. Don’t Learn Kanji In The Order They Tell You

They’re liars! All of them! Perhaps I sound like a heretic, but I think kanji ordering is important, and the ordering they tell you is a false God ordering. There’s two ways to do ordering. One is traditional, and one is my way (and I’m sure other people have other ways that are just as good).

The traditional way has you learn like a Japanese school kid learns, aka in order of easy meaning to difficult meaning (which has nothing to do with how complicated the kanji itself is). So, for example, you’d learn 食 way before you learn 又. Although the meaning of 食 is way easier than 又 (which is why little kids with small brains learn them in this order), the kanji is not. And, I’m guessing you’re kind of old now, so the meanings aren’t really that difficult for you (but the kanji part is). So, why would you learn them in this order when meaning has nothing to do with anything?

Now, for me, I think it makes more sense to learn in order of simple to difficult kanji (not the meaning). There is a problem with this, though I think it’s a problem only short-term thinkers will worry about. The problem is that you don’t learn the most useful kanji first (which means you can’t use the kanji in real life as quickly either). You’re missing a lot of really basic kanji for a long time (like 食), and people don’t like that.

I understand why that’s rough, but the goal for me is long term, not short term. By learning in this order, you can use previous kanji to learn future kanji. You also get better at learning kanji, and you struggle less on a per kanji basis than you do the traditional approach, because you slowly get more and more difficult as you get better.

If the goal is to learn all the Joyo kanji (and I’d say this is the goal), then going in order of difficulty of the kanji itself is the way to go. You won’t be able to use the kanji as quickly (which is a bummer), but you’ll learn all the kanji way faster. So, short term you miss out on being able to apply the kanji, long term you just end up knowing all the kanji. I’ll take the long-term approach any day. Learning Japanese is a long-term thing, anyways. You have time.

3. Learning To Write Isn’t All That Useful

I'm not saying it's not beautiful, I'm just saying it's a waste of your time (right now)

I’ve written about this on Tofugu before, and I even have people take this (somewhat controversial) approach on TextFugu. Many people say this is crazy, but those people can keep their pagers and hand-pens and join the Pen15 club. Writing isn’t as important as it used to be. In fact, it’s hardly important at all (especially when we start talking kanji). Now, don’t get confused. When I say “writing,” I mean hand-writing, not typing. Typing is great. Think about it – when was the last time you wrote anything with your hand. For me, I think it was when I signed a restaurant bill (and Japanese tend to use cash anyways, so no problem there).

But I know, I know. Writing helps you to remember kanji, blah blah blah. Maybe it does help you, but I don’t think it’s necessary to learn kanji, and I think it takes up more time than it gives you. Think of it this way. You could spend an extra 5 minutes practicing writing the kanji 食. Or… you could spend that 5 minutes learning to read the next kanji on your list. What does that achieve? That makes your kanji learning twice as fast, probably faster than that if you consider how much you end up practicing writing of previous kanji later on. So, the question you have to ask yourself is “do I want to be able to write this kanji, or do I want to learn another kanji?” Over time, this adds up.

That being said, I’m not saying you absolutely shouldn’t learn to hand write. I am saying, however, that you shouldn’t learn it right now. Learn it after you learn everything else. Learn it when it isn’t keeping you from studying more important (and useful) things. I don’t know how many hours I wasted trying to write kanji back in school. The moment I realized it didn’t matter if I learned to write or not, I suddenly learned so much more. It’s amazing how much time you gain by cutting this out of your routine. Most people tell you that you should learn it because “that’s how its always been done.” I say you should think about why you’re doing something and come up with your own conclusions.

2. Mnemonics Aren’t Cheating

I didn’t know about mnemonics for a long time (which sucks). I also thought mnemonics were nothing more than parlor tricks when I first learned about them (another mistake). Now, I can’t believe I ever lived without them. Mnemonics are boss, and if you’re not using mnemonics, you’re probably hanging out in the dust.

I’m not going to go into a huge thing about mnemonics here, but here’s the quick and skinny.

Mnemonics are basically techniques that allow you to associate one thing already in your brain with something that’s outside of your brain (and needs to get in). To do this, you create hooks in your brain or you use stories that are more memorable, and add the new knowledge you want to remember to those. The goal of a mnemonic is to help you to recall an item, not necessarily to make you memorize something perfectly the first time.

Think of it this way. Your brain is full of memories. Each of those memories have little arms that can grab onto things. If you use a mnemonic, the thing you’re trying to memorize will latch on to one of those hands. To remember the new memory, you just have to remember the thing already in your brain (which is way easier to do), and then use that to get to the new memory you want to recall. Do this enough and you’ll eventually be able to recall that new memory without using the old one (and then it’s memorized).

Now, if you try to memorize something without a mnemonic, it’s like you’re throwing that item into a dark hole in your brain. It tries to catch on to something, but there’s no hands to clasp on to. It keeps sliding off the side of your brain, falling out. Eventually, it might stick, but there’ll be nothing connected to it. When you try to retrieve it, your brain doesn’t have any good way of getting there, so you just can’t recall it very easily. If you do this enough, sure, it’ll end up working… but how much time have you wasted?

Connecting a new memory to an old one is essentially what mnemonics do for you. It’s how your brain works, and it will help you to remember a lot. Most commonly in Japanese, people use mnemonics to memorize kanji, though I think there’s other ways to use mnemonics as well that haven’t been explored as much. Just last week we started adding mnemonics to vocab on TextFugu, which I’m pretty excited about. Vocab is a really abstract thing to learn, and mnemonics help a ton.

1. I Should Have made More Mistakes

See? Won't be making this mistake, again.

The number one thing I wish I had known about a long, long time ago, was mistakes. Seems simple enough, but when you think about it, we’re wired to try to avoid making mistakes. It’s embarrassing. It’s painful. Yadah yadah yadah. Mistakes aren’t things that we as humans like to make, probably mistakes usually meant death for us, but what if I told you that mistakes made you learn way, way faster (and you won’t die, too, because saber tooth cats don’t exist anymore)?

There’s a few reasons for this.

1. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not pushing boundaries. If you’re not pushing boundaries, you’re going to end up learning at a slower pace.
2. If you’re afraid of making mistakes, you won’t try to learn new things. To learn new things, you have to make a lot of mistakes.
3. If you make a mistake, you can learn what you did wrong. Going back and learning why you did something wrong gives you better insight into the thing you’re learning. If you’re not doing this, you’re just skimming the surface.
4. If you’re not willing to make mistakes, you’re probably not willing to practice conversation with people. Practicing conversation is really important. It helps you to practice recalling things you’ve learned in new and different situations. Remember how important recalling information is for learning?
5. Mistakes mean you’re trying. If you’re trying… well, that means you’re trying. You should try more.

The list actually goes on and on. No matter who you are, you can strive to make more mistakes. The important thing, however, is learning from them. That’s why I wrote this post in fact, so you can learn from my own mistakes. Just remember, though, if you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’re wasting time by making the same mistakes over and over again.

So, the question is (and this is going to be gold mine of info), what mistakes did you make? What would you change about your Japanese learning past if you could? Let the younglings know what they ought to be doing in the comments below.

Hope at least one of these things have helped you, too!

P.S. Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ if you have any questions (or post them in the comments below)!

To fling poo, or not to fling poo. That is the question.

In previous “Obvious” posts, we’ve gone over both the idea of achieving and noticing more epiphanies (because all people need to have X number of epiphanies to level up your Japanese) as well as striving for confusion (because people who are confused are actually learning more than those who aren’t confused). We’re going to build on both of those in this “Making Japanese Obvious” article by taking a look at the idea of “Conscious Competence.” Don’t worry, it only sounds boring. It’s really quite interesting, I think, and something all Japanese language learners will (and need to) run into. It’s much better if you know about it.

What Is “Conscious Competence”?

When you’re learning something new (especially something like Japanese) you go through various stages. One of them happens to be Conscious Competence. Conscious Competence is a great place to be, which is why we’re talking about it. Let’s break up the two words:

Conscious: When you’re aware something’s happening

Competence: When you’re good / decent at something (i.e. you’re competent in it).

“Conscious Competence” is when you know you’re good at something. In the case of this particular article, you are aware that you are good at Japanese. Or, at least, you know what you need to do to get better. That’s good, because you can always move forward, one step at a time.

In order to get to this point, though, there are other steps everyone has to take, whether you’re learning Japanese or you’re learning underwater basket weaving. Conscious Competence just happens to be a really important step in the big picture of things. To help you understand this, we need to take a look at “the stages of learning.”

The Stages Of Learning

You go through several stages when you’re learning. They are the following:

Unconscious Incompetence: This is when you first start out. You have no idea what you’re doing, and everything is fun and exciting. You are unconscious of your incompetence (i.e. you have no idea you’re bad, and everything you do seems great).

Conscious Incompetence: This is when you’ve studied a bit, and you’ve learned enough to know that you’re not very good at Japanese. You finally have enough knowledge to look at yourself and say “omg, I don’t know this this this this and that. Crap.” This is where most people quit, because they think they’re “bad” or “terrible at learning Japanese.” The problem isn’t that you’re bad at Japanese, the problem is that you’ve learned enough (you’re learning, that means you’re winning, really!) to know what you’re not good at, so it only seems like you’ve gotten worse. Actually, you’ve gotten better.

Conscious Competence: This is what we’re talking about in this chapter. Conscious Competence occurs when you know enough to know what to do. When you don’t understand something, you know where to go in order to understand it. You know what to do, and you can solve any problems. Doesn’t mean it’s easy, but you’ve fought through the incompetence to get to the other side.

Unconscious Competence: This is when you’re so good you don’t even know you’re good. The Japanese language (and learning it) has become second nature, and learning has become easy and fluid. This is awesome-sauce stage. You really want to get here, though it will take hard work and persistence.

So why, out of these four, is Conscious Competence so important? Let’s find out.

Conscious Competence

Conscious Competence isn’t the end goal but it is the goal, I think. Unconscious Competence happens when you’ve gone through enough Conscience Competence. Conscious Incompetence happens when you haven’t built up enough competence to reach a conscious state of competence.

People generally quit before they get to Conscious Competence as well. If you reach Conscious Competence, then you’ve learned all you need to learn in order to get what you need when you need it.

Let’s take another look at the graph thingy.

Conscious Incompetence is the lowest of the low. You don’t have that initial excitement, and you don’t have the knowledge to be better at studying Japanese. If you’re going to quit at learning Japanese, you’re going to do it here, most likely. This, I’d say, is week two or three, sometime after learning hiragana, for most people.

Next Week: How To Reach Conscious and Unconscious Competence

So, I think the big question now is how do you reach Conscious Competence? There’s no one way to do it, but there are some great ways to help get you there. A lot of it comes down to consistency, perseverance, and a hard head, but there are certain ways to speed things up for yourself as well. It’s not easy, that’s for sure, but if it was everyone would know Japanese like the back of their hands.

Right now I’m putting together strategies that I’ll share with you next week on reaching these states of competence. Not everyone will get there, and not everyone is meant to get there, but we can do quite a few things to make your odds better as well :)

Have any of you seen yourself going through these phases? Where are you right now (or, where do you think you are…?).

Have no idea where you are because you’ve never started learning Japanese before? You should try TextFugu, where you get guided through the whole competence process. Want to know more about conscious competence, the above graph, and more? The Dip by Seth Godin covers all this and is a really interesting (and inspiring) book that covers this sort of thing.

See you next week!

P.S. We try to be consciously competent on Twitter

P.S.S. Our Facebook skills, however, are somewhat consciously incompetent.

5. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

黄金の太陽：漆黒なる夜明け

Dark Dawn is the third title in the Golden Sun series, and is set 30 years after the events of the first two games. The story is more or less just another tale where the heroes band together to fight the forces of evil and save the world. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is a good RPG. You think of a standard and solid RPG, and this is it. It’s got some interesting mechanics, and the Djinn system spices things up a bit, but overall it’s very traditional. The story is interesting and I enjoyed playing it. It’s not really a stand out game though, so don’t expect to be wowed by anything.

If you’ve played a Japanese RPG before, you’ll know what to expect here. It certainly won’t let you down though. Golden Sun is a very solid choice, especially if you’ve enjoyed the previous entries in the series.

Check out the video review of the English version from Gametrailers here.

4. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

ドラゴンクエストIX星空の守り人

I’ve always really enjoyed the Dragon Quest games. The story is pretty thick in them though, so if your Japanese isn’t all that great, you may find yourself getting lost or confused quite a bit, but that’s what online guides are for. I recommend making good use of Gamefaqs.com. Some guides are based on the Japanese versions and will even give you translations of the dialogue or the menus. At the very least, you can use it as a reference to make sure you stay on track and don’t get too frustrated with your journey. In Dragon Quest IX you play as a guardian angel who has become human and travels around from town to town fixing everything for everyone.

The streamlined multiplayer support is also very nicely implemented, but you’ll need some friends who own a copy. Regretfully I’m not sure if American versions are compatible with the Japanese versions of the game, but as the Pokemon games work just fine together, I would assume that’s the case for Dragon Quest as well. Game on!

Check out the video review of the English version from Gametrailers here.

3. Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madōshi

二ノ国 漆黒の魔導士

In Ni No Kuni, Studio Ghibli teams up with Level-5 to create a magical role-playing game that stars a young boy named Oliver who receives a magical book that takes him into another world.

Ni No Kuni is a beautiful game. The cut scenes and voice acting both are superb and really make for an enjoyable experience. It’s half like watching an anime, and half like playing a great game. If story is important to you, you can’t go wrong with this one. This is also the only game on this list that hasn’t been localized yet. Ni No Kuni will becoming to American shores early 2012. At least that’s the plan, anyway.

The girl from these CMs is also one half of the phenomenon responsible for bringing us this ridiculously adorable song.

Check out a trailer for the Japanese version here. Sorry, no review for this one :(

2. The Legend of Zelda Games

ゼルダの伝説夢幻の砂時計 (Phantom Hourglass)
ゼルダの伝説大地の汽笛 (Spirit Tracks)

We all know what to expect as far as story goes with the Zelda games. You play as Link, and your job is to save the princess. Phantom Hourglass has impressive visuals, beautiful music, and a huge world packed with plenty of things to experience. What it was missing, however, was some of the hardcore difficulty and classic dungeon puzzles that longtime Zelda fans had come to expect from the series.

Spirit Tracks is pretty similar, but improved upon in nearly every way. Spirit Tracks delivers amazing boss battles, stunning dungeons, and a substantially longer adventure overall. Both Zelda titles are great and equally helpful to the Japanese learner.

Check out the video review of the English version of Spirit Tracks from Gametrailers here.

1. Professor Layton Games (Friendly Versions)

レイトン教授と不思議な町（フレンドリー版）(Curious Village)
レイトン教授と悪魔の箱（フレンドリー版）(Diabolical Box)

The stories in Professor Layton games revolve around puzzles. Pretty much everyone you interact with has a puzzle for you to solve to advance the story and in every game there is some overarching mystery for you to solve. The games are extremely enjoyable laid back experiences with some pretty challenging and clever puzzles to boot. Once you play one Professor Layton game, you’ll know what to expect from the rest of the series. Greatness.

What makes this the best DS game for Japanese learning is the wonderful voice acting, clever puzzles, and relatively linear story. Make sure you check out the “Friendly Versions” though. The non-friendly versions do not have kana readings above the kanji which makes for a much more difficult reading experience if you don’t know that many kanji yet.

In the Japanese versions of Professor Layton games, the puzzle aspect is nearly doubled when you first have to decode the instructions from Japanese, and then once you actually understand what is being asked of you, you get to work on a clever and engaging puzzle. And like I said, the games are very linear, so even if you miss a few lines of dialogue here and there, you don’t have to worry about getting lost. The Professor Layton games are great fun and very beneficial to the Japanese learner. If you only check out one game from this list, make it Professor Layton.

Check out the video review of the English version of Diabolical Box from Gametrailers here.

How to Study With Japanese Video Games

The way I study with Japanese video games is pretty simple. I play the game, look up words and phrases I don’t know, then add those to an Anki deck. (If you haven’t heard of Anki before, check out our review of it here.) I usually play the game until I get to a certain number of new things, usually about a page full, and then I’ll stop playing and add those into an Anki deck. Before I play the game again, I’ll review the Anki deck I created and then start the whole process over again.

Once you get a bit better at Japanese, you can start playing the game and just inferring from the context what the new words and phrases mean and only make cards out of the things that totally stump you.

Like I’ve said in previous posts, it’s important to not get frustrated with your studies, especially when you’re playing a game and trying to have fun. Even though you’re playing a video game, it’s still in a foreign language, and things could get frustrating and discouraging if you’re not careful. So set yourself some sort of limit for how long you’ll play or study with a game and quit while you’re still having fun so you’ll be looking forward to coming back to it.

And also, please try to avoid just mashing the A button through all of the dialogue so you can get back to the gameplay. It’s an understandable temptation (heck, I’ve done it before), but you’re really not doing yourself any favors. You might as well just be playing the game in English. But in most cases this can be avoided as long as you quit while you’re still having fun with it and before you get frustrated.

Even though you’re already playing a game, it’s still important to still keep fun in mind. You’re not going to like every game you play, so if you’re playing something in Japanese, don’t tough it out if you don’t actually enjoy the game itself. Find a game you know you would enjoy regardless of the language.

As your skills progress, you’ll be able to graduate on to imported games that don’t provide kana readings for all the kanji. Think of all the games you’ll be able to play and enjoy before all your friends! It’s totally worth it, so stick with it and don’t give up!

P.S. このゲームをやってみるかい? Facebookで「いいね」をしてください。
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Listen to as Much Japanese as You Can

Think about it – as a baby you listened to the English language constantly before you ever spoke a single word. By listening to Japanese all the time (TV, music, podcasts, etc) you prepare your brain for the great adventure ahead of you. It also helps out a lot with pronunciation. The more authentic Japanese you hear, the easier it will be for you to produce Japanese with little to no accent.

I listened to a lot of Japanese before I ever started seriously studying the language (TV, movies, music) and as a result I had a much more native sounding accent when I started taking classes. It really works!

As far as TV shows – dramas and talk shows are definitely the way to go. Watch them without subtitles, or just have it playing in the background while you do something else. Even passive listening can be a great help.

Anime can be good too, but for the beginner I’d say listening to real people talk in dramas and talk shows is best. The style of speech in anime is not always parallel with how people speak in the real world, and if you’re still just a beginner you might not always know if the styles and phrases used are practical. Wouldn’t want to develop any bad habits!

Don’t Use Romaji

Speaking of bad habits, let’s talk about romaji. Romaji is an unfortunate, unsightly crutch. Using English characters to represent the Japanese language will encourage you to speak with an English accent. And that’s bad. Very bad. There are even different “forms” of romaji (arigato, arigatou, arigatō), and that’s just confusing. Either don’t use romaji at all, or get yourself off it as soon as you can.

One of the first steps you should take in learning Japanese is getting katakana and hiragana down pat. If you can do that, you’ll never need to touch romaji ever again. And that’s a good thing.

One of my biggest gripes with the textbook we used in college was that it was chock full of romaji. Even in the third volume, everything was still in romaji. This really slowed down my reading speed and it wasn’t until I actually started reading real Japanese media on my own that I started to see great improvement. Check out the Tofugu Japanese Language Resources Guide for textbooks that don’t suck.

Sticking with romaji will really slow down your reading ability. If you get used to reading Japanese strictly in romaji, you will be very slow at reading Japanese in hiragana/katakana. The quicker you get used to reading in real Japanese, the better.

Use an SRS

SRS stands for Spaced Repetition System. They’re basically smart flashcards that track your progress for you. My favorites are Anki and iKnow. I use Anki for making my own flashcard decks, and I use iKnow for general vocabulary. SRS is really helpful because it automatically pays attention to which cards you get wrong and which ones you get right.

For example, if you keep missing one card, then the SRS will bring it up more frequently to give you more practice with it. And then if there’s a card you consistently get right all the time, the SRS will place it on the back burner and bring it back when it is ripe for review.

I use Anki when I want to make my own flashcard decks. I use video games, manga, and TV shows as material for getting new vocab words and phrases. As I’m going along, I make note of the words or phrases that I don’t understand and then later I put them into an Anki deck. That way, I can review the words and phrases that were difficult for me and speed up my comprehension. It really helps me focus and make the best use of my time.

Programs like Anki and websites like iKnow are very helpful for setting up a systematic schedule of study. They keep track of what you need to focus on studying first, and what you can save for another day. Anki also has a great community and a lot of premade decks you can download and check out before delving into the adventure of making your own. Using regular old flashcards is fine, but you’re really wasting a lot of time by not using an SRS.

Make Japanese Friends

While not as important as the other tips on this list (in the very beginning, at least), having real life Japanese people to talk to is very helpful, especially if you are self taught. And besides, what fun is learning a language if you have no one to talk to?

Having someone to send emails back and forth with, call, or webcam with can be a great learning asset. It prepares you for the real world of speaking Japanese, and you’ll have a native to immediately correct any mistakes you’re making. One of the online services that Koichi really likes is Lang-8. You can check out his review of it here.

Just make sure to let your new-found Japanese friends know that you actually want them to tell you when you mess up. A good amount of Japanese people are very shy and hesitant when it comes to correcting people and telling them they are wrong. This of course depends on the person. Our language partners in Japan had no problem telling us when we screwed up.

I made a lot of good friends when I studied abroad though, and I talk to most of them weekly. I still email with my home-stay sisters on a regular basis and talk to my other Japanese friends on Facebook. They help keep my Japanese skills sharp as well as improve my writing and reading comprehension. The Firefox plug-in Rikaichan can be a very useful tool for deciphering cryptic Japanese on the internet. Check it out!

Be Consistent

Don’t study Japanese for five hours on Monday, not touch it again for a week, and try to make up for it by studying ten hours next Tuesday. You need to be consistent. Study Japanese every day if you can. Figure out how much time you can set aside each day and develop a schedule. Studying a little bit each day is way better than studying for long periods erratically. Keeping a consistent schedule will help you learn faster and retain information better.

Out of everything on the list, this is what I personally have the most trouble with. There’s just too many video games to play and people to hang out with for me to stay focused all the time. Don’t be like me! Set up a schedule for yourself and stick to it!

Have Fun While You Learn

Most important of all, just have fun with it! You’re not going to want to do something if you’re not enjoying yourself and you’ll retain a lot more information if you’re having a good time. And once you find a study method that works for you, stick with it, but don’t overdo it.

For example, if you’re really enjoying a study session with your favorite manga, stop a little early. Quit while you’re still having fun. That way, you’ll be looking forward to getting back into it. Don’t study until you’re completely stressed out and frustrated – who would want to come back to that?

Study with your friends and learn with manga, TV shows, and video games you actually enjoy. As you start to have fun with it, you’ll actually start to look forward to studying. Suddenly studying seems less like a chore and more like an adventure! (Whee!)

Put It All Together

On days when I’m not slacking off, I try to get a solid 2-3 hours of real study time in. I really like the Core Japanese decks on iKnow, so I make use of those quite often.

Lately, I’ve been reading the manga Yotsuba&! and making Anki cards out of the words and phrases that are new to me. I usually start from the beginning of the manga every session just to practice reading with the new phrases I’ve learned because it’s good review.

When I’m not actively studying, I like to have Japanese TV playing in the background. I have a two monitor set up on my computer, so when I’m surfing the web, I’ll have my browser up on one and a Japanese playlist up on the other. My playlist is comprised of some of my favorite dramas and a handful of variety shows.

When I’m not at home, I try to listen to Japanese music. I’ve been listening to a lot of Imaginary Flying Machine lately, but it’s always good to listen to music where the lyrics are audible and easy to understand.

Listening to Japanese all day really gets your brain into “Japanese mode.” On days when I really immerse myself in Japanese media I’ll often find myself thinking and even dreaming in Japanese. Fun!

There’s also a lot of mobile apps that you can use to study Japanese on the road. Some of my favorites include Kotoba! (awesome free Japanese dictionary), Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese (super awesome for grammar and structure), and Kanji Study (great for studying kanji on the go).

With Japanese, anything is possible

And there you have it. Just keep these simple tips in mind and you’ll have no problem overcoming the obstacle of conquering the Japanese language. I’ve been studying for 3+ years now and I still make good use of these basic tips each and every day. Now get out there and JFDI.

So tell me, what are your best tips for someone starting to learn the Japanese language?

P.S. Does the Japanese language give you the ability to fly? Like us on Facebook.

P.P.S. Want to learn more ways to become a Japanese expert? Follow us on Twitter.

If you’re super cool and observant, you may have noticed that the menu bar at the top of the site has changed. That’s because we’ve cleaned up the site a bit, updated the ancient About page, cut down on categories for articles and most importantly, added a new page to the site – Japanese Resources!

Ever since last year when Koichi wrote a post about the 100 Best Japanese Learning Resources, it’s been one of our most popular posts. There are tons of people out there who are looking to teach themselves Japanese, and we’ve always tried to help out by coming up with a list of our very favorite textbooks, websites and apps.

However, there were a few problems with that post. 100 is a lot of resources to look through and because of that, we weren’t really able to review each one in-depth. That’s why we’re proud to announce the launch of our Japanese Resources page.

We’ve taken the best of the best of our 100 best resources and added better reviews for each resource. Each review has lists of pros and cons, a summary, some opinions, pictures, and a final word on the resources itself. This page is (as the techy people would put it) a minimum viable product, meaning we want to get it out there, get a response, and figure out how to make it better. We’ll be adding new resources to it (hopefully) on a weekly-ish basis, making edits and things change, and trying to get it to be a super useful place for Japanese beginners to figure out what it is they want to use to start learning Japanese (choice is tough, brosef).

So what are you waiting for? Check it out! We’ve also set it up so you can “Like” the resources you personally like the best – We’re hoping it’s a good way to indicate what resources make people happy (without anyone taking advantage of some kind of polling features, since most people don’t have a hundred Facebook accounts). So, show us what resources are your favorite too by hitting “Like.”

Visit the Japanese Resources Page →

As mentioned before, we’ll be adding probably one or two new resources to the page each week (we know that as is this page doesn’t cover every good/popular Japanese resource out there). We’re making a huge list of future Japanese Resources, so if you have suggestions on what to add, too, let us know.

Want to know about updates to the page? You should follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Money!? Money!? This is teh internets! Information is free! Sure, there are a ton of resources out there to help you learn Japanese… web pages… apps… etc., that will do a pretty good job. You don’t necessarily have to spend any money to learn some Japanese. If you’re a serious learner, though, and want to speed things up, it might be worth your while to put down $5 or $10 on a few things that could potentially help you out quite a bit. I’m not talking entire Japanese textbooks (like TextFugu!). I’m talking about smaller things you can pay for to supplement your learning. Some of these things are subscription based. Some of these things just require a one time payment whenever you need to use the service. All of these things, however, will help you to learn Japanese faster and more effectively than normal, all for under $5 or $10.

Why Pay?

To sum it up in one word: efficiency. You can’t pay to inject Japanese into your brain with a syringe, but you can pay for things that will help to make the things you already have to do easier (and more importantly, more efficient). Most Japanese learners go through the same kinds of things, and the same kinds of hardships. Why not flash a Jefferson or two to not have to go through some of the more unnecessary ones?

The following are a few of my favorite paid resources for helping you to learn Japanese faster. A couple I use a ton, and one of them is new (to me). The thing that makes these resources unique, I think, is that they definitely aren’t good for learning Japanese if they are the only thing you’re using. These will all help you to supplement your Japanese learning along with something else (or some other things) – they won’t be able to single handedly teach you Japanese, unfortunately.

1. MyGengo Translation Service

MyGengo is the “new” resource. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it before, though I haven’t (in the past) thought of it as much of a way to help with Japanese learning (and only thought of it as purely a translation service… which is pretty much what they are).

There are times in Japanese study where you either 1) can’t for the life of you figure out what something means and 2) can’t for the life of you figure out how to say something in Japanese.

Now, I do think struggling and working really hard to figure out translations is a super important part of learning Japanese. If you, for example, just put every Japanese sentence you come across into MyGengo, you’d never learn a thing. 99% of time you should persevere and figure it out yourself. Only the other 1% of the time should you pay for translation. Here’s how it works:

First, you’ll have to create an account (I tried putting my test translation in first, then submitting it, and when I created an account it deleted the thing I put in to get translated and I had to re-submit, dang!).

Then, you choose what language you want to translate from and to. Japanese to English is 3 cents per character. English to Japanese is 5 cents per character (at least for the standard level translation, which should be all you need). If you stick an essay in there, then it might get pretty expensive, but I’m thinking this could be useful for single sentences or short paragraphs, mostly for when you’re really really stuck.

After you put what you want translated into the system, you just wait a bit (mine took a couple hours to be completed, pretty quick if you ask me), and then get your translation. I translated four of Shinnosuke’s Tweets (he’s the other guy in Cat Island, Part 1) just to try it out and it worked well. Gotta say, I was a bit impressed.

So, if you’re having trouble with one sentence … or if you need to translate something really bad (and can’t figure out how to), give MyGengo a try. The four tweets consisted of 125 characters (and around 8 sentences, I’d say) and cost $3.75 to translate. If those were 8 sentences I couldn’t translate on my own, that’s $3.75 of well spent money, I’d say. Afterwards, you can compare the translation and the original, and try to figure out what you couldn’t figure out before (and hopefully learn something from it). The worst thing you can do when studying is get stuck. This will help so you don’t ever have that problem.

2. Lang-8 Premium

Lang-8 is one of those sites that I just can’t stop loving. You can (and should) use it for free. It allows you to write journal entries in the language you’re learning, and get them corrected by native speakers (for this article, let’s assume that’s Japanese). In theory, you’d help out by correcting people’s English too (or whatever your native language is). It’s all about helping each other and language exchange. If you’re upper beginner / intermediate or above, you should be using this site every day. It’s seriously awesome.

There’s also a premium version of Lang-8 you can pay $5 a month for (or $45 for the year). When this first came out, there weren’t too many features. Now, though, I think it’s definitely worth that tiny monthly payment. $5 is barely enough to buy lunch, after all.

There are many other features you get with premium, but I have a few favorites (that make it worth while on their own, I think).

1. Emphasize / Prioritize Your Entries

By paying $5 per month, your entries get a special background color and show up higher in people’s feeds, meaning they get more corrections and get corrected faster. Time is worth paying for, I think, and this is something that will give you more time to study Japanese. You’ll be able to write more entries in the same amount of time (and get them corrected faster) and you’ll get higher quality corrections (in theory) because more people will correct your entries. This is my favorite feature of premium Lang-8, I think. It just saves you time and helps you to learn Japanese more quickly.

2. Personal Journal Search

If you take #1 to heart and write a ton of entries, you’ll start finding that it’s hard to find them all. With language learning, being able to go back is pretty important, I think. This just makes that easier. If you need to take a look at a specific correction that you learned something from (but apparently don’t remember it), this feature is awesome and helps a ton.

3. Journal and Correction Data Download as a PDF

If you’re the type of person who likes things on paper, this feature is great. It lets you get your journal entries and corrections in PDF format, allowing you to print them out and study with them. It also just makes it easier to study what you’ve done on Lang-8. Whether you like studying on paper or not, I’m a big fan of this one. Things suddenly become easier when you print them out in the special Lang-8 PDF version of your journal entries.

If you’re really serious about your Japanese studies, and want to learn way, way faster, use Lang-8. If you want to be faster than fast at learning Japanese, pay for Lang-8 Premium. Totally worth it.

3. Evernote Premium

If there’s one service I use more than any other on my computer/iPhone/iPad … it’s Evernote. It’s one of those applications you don’t think you’ll need even if you start using it for a while. But then, if you keep using it, you’ll start realizing what you’ve been missing all this time. I use it to keep track of photos, articles, parking spaces, apps to try, and everything else in between. Ways you can use Evernote are literally just limited only by your imagination.

I wrote an article a while back about how to use Evernote to learn Japanese. You can use Evernote to keep track of vocab words, sentences, and so much more. The premium version of Evernote ($5 per month or $45 per year) takes Evernote and supercharges it for you. Here are the premium features I use for Japanese studies (though I use it for so many other things too, making it an incredible value for me).

1. Local Storage On Your Mobile Device

This is the most useful thing on Evernote Premium (especially when it comes to Japanese). You can put PDFs, text, and whatever else you want into Evernote on your computer and then sync it with your phone. With local storage (regular Evernote stores everything in the cloud and makes you pull it from there on your phone) you’ll have everything ready to go. I’m working on a post about “Japanese on the go” and this plays a huge role in what you can and can’t do. This is especially helpful when you have an AT&T iPhone, and can’t rely on having any reception anywhere away from wifi.

2. Allows different file formats

Standard Evernote allows for images, audio, ink, and PDF, which is pretty much all you need (I love saving Japanese audio files and Lang-8 PDFs), but sometimes it’s nice to have other file formats as well. It doesn’t come into play too often (most of your Japanese studying stuff is going to be in one of those formats), but if you need to put Word files, or something like that, you’ll wish you had it.

3. Access To Note History

Also nice is the ability to see your note history. If you’re using Evernote to study Japanese, you’re probably changing things, moving things around, and taking notes on things. With note history, you can see those changes. I don’t use this all the time, but I’ve found it really helpful quite a few times.

What Premium Services Do You Use?

I’ve only listed three things, and I’m sure there’s plenty more out there. What pay services do you use to supplement your Japanese study? Try to keep it down to below $10 payments – We’re looking for things that just help you to get an advantage over everyone else, and no more. I’m curious what you’ll come up with! You folks are pretty smart that way ; )

P.S. It doesn’t cost any money to Follow Tofugu On Twitter!

P.P.S. Then again, perhaps you’re the Facebook type….

If you’re thinking of learning Japanese, or if you’re just starting to learn Japanese, learning hiragana is probably one of the first steps you’re going to want to make. The problem, though, is that there are a ton of different ways to do it and not enough guidance along the way. So many resources makes learning hiragana overwhelming for beginners, and since it’s one of the first things that they’re supposed to do, it’s a bad experience and people end up quitting.

On TextFugu, I recently rewrote and improved the “reading and writing hiragana” chapter (feel free to check it out, it’s free), improving it a lot. The idea was to create a step by step process that anybody could use to learn hiragana so that they could move on to the “good stuff.” There were a few goals with this:

1. Make learning hiragana simpler.
2. Create a step-by-step process that anybody could follow.
3. Take the “mystery” out of learning hiragana (especially hard for self-learners).

After coming up with everything and writing it down, I thought it would be useful for readers of Tofugu as well, so I’m posting up a slightly modified hiragana how-to guide for all of you to enjoy as well. If you’re just starting to learn Japanese, or haven’t started yet, this is one of the first things you want to do. There’s no better time than now, right?

Before You Get Started

For this guide, I’ll be combining several resources. The idea is to take from the best and ignore the rest, organizing for you a great set of resources that will help you to learn how to read and write hiragana (and ultimately allow you to learn Japanese). Before you get started, there are a few preliminary steps I think you should take. They’re optional, technically, but they’ll really help you learn hiragana a lot more effectively and quickly, in the long run.

1. Read about the various Japanese alphabets.

If you knew there was more than one Japanese “alphabet” (okay, fine, they aren’t technically alphabets, but that doesn’t matter much), then maybe you can skip this step. If you didn’t know this, then you should do some reading so that you understand more about what it is you’re about to learn. If you don’t do this, it would be like learning the English alphabet without knowing the letters spell words. With so many Japanese “alphabets” this reading is pretty important.

There’s two ways you can do this:

1. Read some really in depth articles about hiragana, katakana, kanji, and romaji on wikipedia (this is the more complicated option).
2. Read about the Japanese “alphabets” on TextFugu (simpler, quicker, but not as in depth).

I don’t know which one you want to do, but to be honest either is probably fine. Personally, I’d go with the simpler one (#2), just because you only need to know some background info, not become a PhD in Japanese linguistics.

After you’ve gotten the background info on the various Japanese writing systems, you can move on to the next step.

2. Learn The Pronunciation

For me, I think learning pronunciation and understanding how the “patterns” of hiragana work are important to do before you learn to read and write. If you spend some time on this first, you can then associate this with the reading and writing that you learn a little later. Learning the pronunciation of hiragana before you learn hiragana will help you build a foundation of better Japanese pronunciation, help you to understand how the Japanese language works, and ultimately speed up your hiragana learning in the long run (I think it will, anyways).

1. Hiragana pronunciation can be looked at on TextFugu as well (another free chapter)

After you’ve gone through this, you’ll be ready to start learning the reading and writing parts of hiragana.

The Hiragana How-To Guide

Before you start, I want you to think back to your days of when you learned how to read/write own native language. This will help you to readjust any unrealistic expectations. Most likely, it took you years to get comfortable with English (or whatever you grew up with). Despite this, you’re going to be able to learn hiragana much faster. It’s going to be hard, and you should expect to be perfect in one, two, or even three weeks. It’s a process, and the more you practice the better you’ll end up getting at it, just like anything (as long as you practice the right things, whoops).

1. Download A Hiragana Chart

I’ve actually made a hiragana chart that you can download right here. I think it’s pretty simple, printable, and easy to use. Feel free to use it, give it away, or whatever else you want to do with it. It’s a totally free hiragana chart.

Download Hiragana Chart

You’re going to be using this a lot, so print it out (if you have a printer) and make it handy.

2. Let’s Take A Look At Some Words You Know Already

Despite what you might think, reading and writing Japanese (at least when it comes to kana) is actually really easy. In order to illustrate that, I thought we could look at some words you already know, starting with the word “sushi.”

For the most part, all hiragana characters (or kana) consist of a consonant (a letter that’s not a vowel) and a vowel. If you look at your hiragana chart, you’ll see that there are things like “ka, chi, mu, ra, hu, ji” etc. Although there are some “weird” ones, like “shi, chi, tsu” etc., that are two consonants plus a vowel, you can probably see the basic pattern emerge. Other than this, the only exceptions are “n” (a single consonant) and “a, i, u, e, o” (which are just vowels on their own).

So, knowing that kana pretty much consists of a consonant sound and a vowel sound, let’s figure out how to spell “sushi” in hiragana. It’s quite easy.

The word “sushi” consists of two separate kana: SU + SHI. Take a look at your hiragana chart and see if you can find the kana for both of these (su & shi). What are they? Just for the sake of letting things sink it, go ahead and copy the characters “su” and “shi” in order to write the word “sushi” out. All you have to do is copy them off the chart, we’ll be really learning them in a bit.

This image is taken from the hiragana chart we’re using, and I’ve circled the correct characters. Now, on the sheet they aren’t in the correct order, but when you write out す (su) and し (shi) together, you get すし (sushi). Writing in hiragana really is that simple. It’s amazing, right?

Now, unfortunately, there is a kanji for this word as well (寿司 = すし = sushi), but you don’t need to worry about that at all right now. We’re focusing on hiragana for the time being. Let’s take a look at another word, karate.

This word is often mispronounced as “karadee,” but if you use your knew found knowledge of hiragana pronunciation you’ll realize how karate is actually pronounced. Let’s write it out in kana.

Take the word “karate” and break it up into its individual kana parts (I’ll give you a hint, there’s three parts). Find those three kana on your hiragana chart and write the word out. Pronounce the three individual kana to find out the correct pronunciation of the word karate. Did you get it right?

When you write “karate” out in hiragana, it comes out to からて. This is the hiragana for KA + RA + TE. Totally different from “karadee” that most people end up saying everywhere else.

After taking a look at these, are you starting to understand how hiragana is used to write things in Japanese? Do you also understand how kana in hiragana are pronounced (consonant + vowel, etc)? Good, let’s move on to the actual process of learning to read and write hiragana.

3. Learning to Read & Write

Before you get started, you should make sure that you have a Smart.fm account. This is what we’re going to use to drill the individual kana to help you learn them. We’ll be using it quite a bit in this guide, so it’s best you get an account now so you’re ready.

First 10 Hiragana: あいうえ、おかきくけこ

1. Study your first ten hiragana using Smart.fm – あ、い、う、え、お、か、き、く、け、こ. You’ll have an option of studying these either 5 at a time or 10 at at time. I’d recommend choosing 5 for now, until you get better. Here’s a quick screencast going over how you should use Smart.fm to study your hiragana.

Essentially, you want to…

1. Write the kana down every time you get it right (or wrong)
2. Use the pronunciation audio that’s available to you on Smart.fm
3. Only study 5 at a time
4. Let Smart.fm tell you when you’ve learned something (usually it’s pretty good at that)

2. Go to Drag n’ Drop Hiragana, and only drag the first ten hiragana (a-column and ka-column) into the right spaces. By only doing these ones, you’ll have to find the right hiragana amongst all the other hirgana (helping you differentiate them) and secondly force you to remember what they look like. Try this twice (refresh to restart) and see if you can do it faster the second time!

3. After you feel good about the first 10 kana on Smart.fm, it’s time to put some of that into practice. Complete this worksheet and try to cheat as little as possible.

First 10 Hiragana Practice

Hiragana 11-20: さしすせそ、たちつてと

Of course, it’s important that you review the kana you just studied while you’re learning your new kana, so we’ll make sure to do that here.

1. Start by writing out the ten kana that you know and try to do it from memory (starting with あ and ending with こ). If you had to peek it’s not the end of the world. Write out the romaji next to / below / above them for reference.

2. Now write out the ten new kana (sa-column and ta-column) along with the romaji. These are the kana you’re about to study.

3. Go ahead and open the Smart.fm Master Hiragana list again. Since you finished the first 10 kana on there, you should be able to do the next ten now. Do them in groups of five, just like before until you’ve completed up until と (to). Remember to follow the steps from before where you write out the kana each time you get it right or wrong.

4. Visit RealKana and check the four columns of hiragana that you know already. Click on the katakana tab and uncheck anything that’s checked (you don’t want to learn katakana yet). Now, hit the practice tab and go through the practice a few times, until you feel good about reading the kana.

5. After you feel fairly decent about the first twenty kana (especially the new stuff) complete this worksheet to really solidify that knowledge.

First 20 Hiragana Practice

Hiragana 21-30: なにぬねの、はひふへほ

You’re actually past the halfway point for the “main” hiragana now! Just keep going, you’re making good progress!

1. Write down your ten new hiragana on your piece of paper with the other hiragana, so you can have them for reference.

2. Log on to Smart.fm, and complete the next ten hiragana (na-column and ha-column). As always, be sure to write down the individual kana every time you get it right or wrong, so you can practice writing. If you need help with stroke order, you can always use the stroke order guide on the hiragana chart page.

3. After feeling okay about the next ten, complete this work sheet, which helps you practice reading and writing the individual kana.

First 30 Hiragana Practice

4. Visit RealKana and check the four columns of hiragana that you know already. Click on the katakana tab and uncheck anything that’s checked (you don’t want to learn katakana yet). Now, hit the practice tab and go through the practice a few times, until you feel good about reading this kana (you should be pretty good, actually!).

Hiragana 31-46: まみむめも、やゆよ、らりるれろ、わを、ん

You’re almost there! In terms of the “main” hiragana, this is the last of it. After this, you’re just learning things you already kind of know (like dakuten and combo hiragana), which means you’re pretty much all the way there. Just a few loose ends to tie up after this.

1. Write down your new hiragana on your piece of paper, along with the romaji, for reference.

2. Log on to Smart.fm and finish out the hiragana until ん (n). There’s more than this on Smart.fm, but that’ll come soon enough. Make sure you’re writing down the hiragana you get both right and wrong. Once you’ve finished it up until ん, move on to the next step.

3. Go to RealKana, and this time only check columns な, は, ま, や, ら, & ん. You’re learning more this round, so I want you to focus it a little more on recent kana. Here’s an image to show you what to check (make sure you uncheck the katakana columns in the katakana tab too, if you need to).

Go through these a couple of times until you feel comfortable with them.

4. Complete this worksheet, which focuses on ま through ん columns.

Hiragana ま – ん

5. Head on back to Drag n’ Drop Hiragana. In theory, you should be able to complete the puzzle now (rather than just little bits of it). How fast can you get it done? Record your times and see if you can get done in under three minutes.

Dakuten: がぎぐげご、ざじずぜぞ、だぢづでど、ばびぶべぼ、ぱぴぷぺぽ

In theory, these should be easier than what we’ve been doing so far. You already know the main characters (which dakuten use) and all you have to do is know what little symbol to put next to them (hint: usually it’s a quotation mark). That being said, I’m going to give you more things than normal to study in this section. You should be better at studying hiragana by now, and you should also know the symbols above (minus the dakuten part). I won’t say this section is easy, but it should be easier.

1. Start up Smart.fm and work through the dakuten hiragana. You should finish on ぽ (po). As always, keep writing these things out as you do them whether you get a card right or wrong.

2. Complete this worksheet. This worksheet’s goal is to help you remember what a column will change to when dakuten are added to it. Focus more on remembering that “S” goes to “Z” or “T” goes to “D” rather than focusing on individual kana.

Dakuten Practice

3. On RealKana, let’s practice dakuten hiragana as well as the original kana from which the dakuten came. Check the か, さ, た, は, が, ざ, だ, ば, & ぱ columns. Here’s an image to illustrate:

Make sure you uncheck any katakana columns that might be checked as well. Go through the drills like this until you feel pretty comfortable telling them apart. Can you write them out on your own now? If I said things like…

What do “K-sounds” turn into?

Answer: “G-Sounds”

What do “H-sounds” turn into (two answers here)

Answer: “B & P Sounds”

What do “D-sounds” turn back into?

Answer: “T-Sounds”

What do “Z-sounds” turn back into?

Answer: “S-Sounds”

Could you answer all these questions? If not, be sure to drill RealKana a little bit more so you can learn the differences. Really, just learning these differences is the secret to learning dakuten, so if you can do that, you can do dakuten :)

Combination Hiragana: きゃ、しゃ、ちゃ、にゃ、ひゃ、みゃ、りゃ、ぎゃ、じゃ、ぢゃ、びゃ、&　ぴゃ Columns

Sometimes, certain kana can be written smaller. When placed next to another kana, it can modify the way it sounds. Don’t worry, though, because the modifications actually make a lot of sense. For example:

き + small ゃ = きゃ (which sounds like kya). It’s almost like saying KIYA, but you drop the “i” sound. KYA!

There are other “combo-hiragana,” but these are the main ones, and the most important for you to know right now. Combo-kana will get a little crazier once we hit katakana, but for now it should be fairly straight forward, especially after you drill them for a bit.

1. Fire up your good buddy Smart.fm again. By now, you should be through the dakuten, and ready to study the combo-hiragana, starting with きゃ, きゅ, and きょ. Since you already know all the characters being used (you just have to remember that the y-column kana are “small”) feel free to study ten at a time. The goal is to get to the end of this list, actually and finish out everything that Smart.fm has to offer. Like I said, though, these should be one of the easiest sets (even though its the longest) for you, and drilling through it should be more about reviewing kana you already know.

2. Let’s practice writing them. Remember, the やゆよ for these are small ゃゅょ. If you don’t write them small, they are just regular sized, and pronounced normally. It’s the difference between:

きや (kiya)　vs　きゃ (kya)

Those are two different sounds and you can’t switch them out with each other. The difference is important! Use this worksheet to practice:

Combination Hiragana

At this point, you should feel fairly good about almost all the hiragana. You don’t need to be perfect, nor do you need to be at 100%. That’s definitely not expected at this point. It’ll take a while before you read hiragana nice and fluidly, but luckily there’s going to be plenty of opportunity to practice as you continue to study Japanese (now in hiragana!). Well done!

Where To Go From Here?

Well, there’s plenty of things to do, but I’d round out your hiragana reading & writing career with some lessons on hiragana’s long vowels and the small tsu. That right there will make sure you know just about everything you need to know about hiragana, then all that’s left is more practice.

By learning hiragana, though, you’ve opened up a ton of new resources from which you can study Japanese. If you don’t know hiragana, you’re really limited in what you can do. If you do learn it (like you just did, in theory), there’s so much more available to you now, whether it’s various Japanese textbooks, blogs, websites, or whatever. Hiragana will open doors for you.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and I hope you found it useful as well. If you’re thinking of learning Japanese, this isn’t a bad place to start, and I think this guide lays everything out pretty simply and easily. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

P.S. If you wish this tutorial was 140 characters or less, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

P.P.S. If you want to read a more in depth guide to learning hiragana, you’ll want to check out the first six chapters of TextFugu (all are free).

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When I started making the “Little Victories” lessons switch on TextFugu, I realized that even though I’m just changing things over on TextFugu, the entire concept of “little victories” can be used by anyone learning Japanese no matter how they’re doing it. Because, when it comes to learning anything, especially Japanese, it’s all about the little victories. Find out why.

What Are The “Little Victories”?

The idea of little victories is really simple, though quite difficult to achieve… especially if you’re learning on your own. A little victory is basically one of these things:

1. A sense of accomplishment after you’ve done something.
2. The act of finishing something… anything really.
3. Understanding something (i.e. a concept, remembering a word, kanji, etc).

Now, little victories may seem simple, but that’s only when you’re really thinking about them. If you’re using most textbooks, resources, etc., there’s almost no focus on little victories. Instead, your “victories” are spread thin, take more effort to complete, and are generally forgotten about. Sure, there are “chapters” set up, and you (in theory) learn something (or often, somethings) by the end of it, but you rarely realize that you’re making an achievement.

So, to sum it up, most resources either don’t pay attention to victories at all, or their victories are too big / too spread apart.

Why Are The “Little Victories” So Important?

When you “complete” something or “get something done,” you get an energizing boost from it. The funny thing is, “big victories” and “little victories” are nearly equal when put side by side. Little victories, however, can happen with so much more frequency and this is is what makes them so powerful.

When you create “little victories” with you Japanese learning, the “energizing” effect starts to snowball, and you’ll want to study more and more and more. The long your go without a victory, the more your energy to study depletes, and eventually you start running on empty. When you run on empty, you start associating bad feelings with Japanese studies, which means you end up quitting altogether.

How Do You Create “Little Victories” For Yourself

Basically, here’s what it comes down to: Set your goals small

I know this seems kind of lame. “But I want to set big goals to achieve!” … “But I want to be a go getter!” etc. Small goals, however, are the key.

Basically, here’s all you have to do. Basically, there’s a kind of hierarchy to everything you use to study with, and I’ll map out some of them.

Traditional Textbook “Victories”

Level 1: Finishing the entire book

Level 2: Finishing a “section” (usually 1/2 or 1/3 of a textbook)

Level 3: Finishing a chapter

Level 4: Finishing a segment of a chapter

Level 5: Finishing one grammar point / one area of a segment.

Now, most people / resources will have you focus on Levels 1-3. You want to get rid of that notion, and focus entirely on levels 4 and 5. Sure, have a bigger goal that you’re working towards, but when you sit down to study, you should take your textbook, and break it up into small, almost laughable pieces. Things that will take you 5-10 minutes to complete.

Vocab / Kanji Lists

Level 1: All the vocab words in a stack. This could be 100+ plus items!

Level 2: Half of the words in the stack.

Level 3: Set of 10 words (this is where things start to get little, though I’d break it down further)

Level 4: Set of 5 words to learn.

Level 5: One word to learn.

You want to focus on 4 & 5 again. Each time you get one of those things done, remind yourself that you’re getting closer to your ultimate goal of learning Japanese. Also remind yourself that each time you do one of these little things, you’re accomplishing something and moving forward. Basically, we’ve turned something that would normally be one big achievement (let’s say 100 words learned) into 20-100 little victories. Each one of these victories will motivate you to keep studying, and make learning Japanese a lot more enjoyable.

One last thing I should mention is that before you start on a “little victory” section, you should spend a minute or two planning out what you’re actually going to learn during that period. Whether it’s a set of five kanji, a grammar concept, or whatever, the important thing is that you know what it is you’re setting out to accomplish. I know this may seem like a lot of extra work (going in and planning each little victory) but it will really help you out a lot in the end.

Really, though, the most important thing is to just know the (little) goals you’re working towards. If you don’t know where the little victory finish lines are at it’ll be pretty hard to feel any sense of accomplishment when you end up getting to them. The power is in your hands – you choose what counts as a little victory.

What Are Your Little Victories Methods?

The more you think about little victories, the more you can see them in the real world. What resources are you using, and how can you break them down into smaller, bite-sized pieces?

P.S. Achieve a “little victory” right now by following Tofugu on Twitter.

P.P.S. I’m currently working on converting all the lessons on TextFugu over to this concept, too, so if you like the idea of “Little Victories” you should take a look!

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Kid’s songs are a wonderful resource to help you learn Japanese better. They are often overlooked because… well, they are a bit silly, but I think they are worth a second look. I’m going to cover a bit of theory here (I promise not too much), and then look at 6 kid’s songs you might use in your studies.

The How

Now I can see you scratching your heads. How can stupid kid’s songs help me learn Japanese? Right? Hold that thought. Let me ask you a question: Can you remember any of the children’s songs you learned when you were a kid? I’m guessing yes.

The basic problems with learning Japanese are pretty well known at this point. If you are a regular Tofugu reader, you probably know many of them. Two of the biggest ones, I think, are that we make our study too hard and we don’t have fun. These are actually two parts of the same problem.

The effects of these two problems are so common they almost go without saying: 1) loss of motivation and 2) burn-out. Kid’s songs help combat this by adding a bit of fun back into your study routine, and also by secretly working on your listening, recognition and (if you are brave and sing out loud with them) your pronunciation and speaking.

How’s that work, huh? Have you heard of a fella by the name of Alexander Arguelles. He’s a professor of languages, a polyglot who can speak some 30+ languages to varying levels of mastery (including some Japanese) . His primary method for learning is the shadow method. I’m sure you all have heard of this, right? This is where someone says something and we attempt to repeat it back at nearly the same moment, maybe only a second or two behind. Now the shadow method is common enough in language learning these days, but he recommends starting with a very strict version of it where all you do is shadow. No looking at text (reading), no looking at the translation to figure out what you are saying, just shadowing.

Crazy you say? How will I know what I’m saying/learning? That’s the point. By only shadowing you are narrowing your learning focus to just a couple things: listening, that is focusing on the actual sounds, and speaking. Interestingly, these are often the hardest areas for language learners to master. You can memorize as many words/sentences, as much grammar as you want, but if you have trouble understanding when someone talks to you or if you have trouble finding the right words when you speak, all that knowledge is for waste.

(If you want to know more about Prof Arguelles and his theories, start with this video on youtube, where he discusses his shadowing approach)

Still awake? Apologizes for all that boring theory. I think it’s useful to consider this stuff. At any rate, on to the list of songs. Most or all of these are very well known by the Japanese, so you will be sure to pleasantly surprise people if you manage to memorize any.

6 great Japanese kid’s songs

First, Mary had a little lamb.

This is about as easy as you are going to get. Unfortunately, the video has English in it. Remember, at this point we really aren’t concerned with what the Japanese actually means. Concentrate on the sounds, both hearing them and reproducing them as best you can.

The acorn song!

This is a fun song. Can you clearly understand the kids’ singing? Listen a few times before you try to shadow it.

Pushing the difficulty up a little, here is The Dog Policeman.

This one is one of those everyone loves. I hear kids singing it all the time in the stores. The video is funny, too. The kana is on the video, but remember, we are working our listening not reading. Try to use your ears to figure out what sounds they are making.

Both the songs from My Neighbor Totoro are fun and easy to learn. Here’s a video with both of them.

As an added bonus, the kids in this video are adorable.

Ah, the Taikaki Song. This song is long and a little challenging, but he sings slowly and you should be able to follow along after a few trys. Unfortunately the one I want to embed here has embedding disabled. Go watch that version at youtube for some animation that will help you understand the song. Here’s another version with the guy who sings it. Awesome hair!

Do you know what Taiyaki is? It’s kind of a hotcake with anko inside in the shape of a fish. This is quite an old song, but mention it or hum a few bars and you’ll bring a smile to the face of anyone over 30 .

Finally, the Japanese dub of one we probably all know. Challenge yourself and learn this version.

Want more?

Follow any of these videos to youtube and you should find a great many video links to other kid’s songs. Find some you like and learn them. You’ll enjoy yourself and it really will help your Japanese.

This post was written by Dave of JapanDave.com who Tweets and has a great newsletter full of amazing pictures of Japan.

Sometimes, I think, it’s important to think different. Sometimes, when everyone is doing one thing, you should try the exact opposite.  It doesn’t mean it will work, but it’s almost always worth the try. Perhaps you’ll run into something nobody has ever thought of.

This idea is one of those things. I think it works pretty well… sometimes, and it probably won’t work for everyone. The idea is simple: When studying Japanese (or doing anything else), you should stop when you least want to (i.e. when you want to keep studying). Sounds counter intuitive, right? Here’s why it works.

Where It Came From

I learned this idea from Haruki Murakami’s non-fiction book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” which is the only book of his that I’ve read. I liked it. It was inspiring and fun to peer into his mind a bit (and even got me to consider running… hasn’t really worked that well though, I’m more into sitting). In his book, he said that he stops writing when he most wants to continue writing. What!? That’s crazy. Shouldn’t you take advantage of that motivation to keep going and keep writing? Murakami didn’t think so, and I think he’s on to something.

I’m paraphrasing, but he said that the reason he stops writing when he’s most motivated to continue writing is because that means he knows he’s going to be excited to write some more the next day. Since he stopped when he didn’t want to stop, he’s going to look forward to starting up again the next day and won’t waste any time doing so.

That’s genius.

For the last week, I’ve been trying that with work. When I feel like I want to keep going, I stop. Because I want to keep going, I wake up earlier the next day than I normally would, and am able to jump right back into work, whereas normally it might take some time to get settled in and figure out what I want to do. That right there is wasted time, and this solves it.

Why It Works

The reason this works is because of the way our brains deal with motivation. When it comes down to it, we don’t want to do the things we’re supposed to and we want to do the things we’re not supposed to. By using this “stop when you’re motivated” method, you can flip this on its head. By telling yourself and making yourself not do something, it becomes more desirable, and you’ll want to do it even more.

On top of this, we’re also canceling out the most difficult part of doing any type of work or study (Japanese, of course)… Getting started. How many times have you said “I have to study my Japanese,” and then you just sat there putting it off or doing something else. Once you get started, though, it’s easy to get in the zone and zero in your concentration. The hard part, as you all know, is getting to that point. There’s something about “getting started” that’s daunting, but by stopping right in the middle of something, you know exactly where to start, and you’re even excited to start.

It’s kind of like when your parents used to read you books. They’d stop somewhere exciting, and the next night, you’d know exactly where to start up again (and you looked forward to it all day long).

Applying This To Your Japanese Studies

I’m going to talk about applying this to your Japanese studies, but of course you can apply this almost anywhere else in your life as well. Give it a try for at least a little while, and if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t work.

When you’re studying Japanese, get yourself a timer and have it go off every five minutes. At each five minute interval, write down on a piece of paper how much you want to continue. You can even come up with some kind of ranking scale (three out of six batwings?) to help you gauge things. As you go through, keep track of your excitement / motivation levels. Once your ranking scale gets up to somewhere between 80-100%, immediately stop what you’re doing, whether it’s in the middle of a kanji deck or in the middle of writing a sentence. All that’s important is that you’re honest with yourself in terms of how motivated you are to continue, and that you stop when you’re supposed to stop.

It won’t feel good to stop, sure, but that’s the point. You’re giving yourself something to really look forward to, which ends up leading to much more consistent Japanese studies, which is way way better in the long run.

So, give it a shot! Tell me how it works for you in the comments (or why you think this is totally bogus).

I’m continuing to experiment with this even as