Instead of seeing this level of learning as a flat expanse, barren with barely formed grammar to the horizon, picture instead that you’re on the 3rd floor landing up an infinite staircase. Your options for study-focus are endless.

This article isn’t just for advanced learners. I’m going to talk about why cooking is one really good way to open up doors to new vocabulary, grammar, and even to more confidence when using Japanese, and I’ll outline some ways you can get started. But, these techniques aren’t only limited to cooking either. Convert them over to other activities as well. Drawing, martial arts, whatever it is you’re interested in! Just make sure it’s a Japanese activity with plenty of Japanese vocabulary to get the most out of it.

Private Speech

If you’ve ever taken a Japanese class or tried to use your Textfugu-polished skills with a Japanese friend, you’re probably familiar with how nerve-racking it can be to have a Japanese conversation. You try to keep up with the facts of what you know they said while filling in the gaps of missing vocabulary. You conjugate verbs and structure the sentence pattern in your head for what you’ll say when it’s your turn to speak. On a daily basis – if you live in Japan or work in a Japanese company – this can be outright exhausting.

There are all kinds of reasons to keep up that practice (for starters: it does get easier and less nerve-racking). But today I want to focus on something a little more basic: talking to yourself (with a focus on cooking). You probably do it in your main language all the time, but how often do you do it in Japanese? Second-language researchers have a special word for “talking to yourself”. They call it “private speech”, and “it emerges most often in the face of some challenge” (Ortega 220). One researcher, Tomlinson, conducted and compiled studies where EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students were given time to compose their thoughts before needing to present them. He suggests that “without an effective inner voice, we cannot produce meaningful public speech” (Tomlinson).

“Meaningful” in this sense means that you’ve had a chance to process the topic or issue at hand before speaking. That said, private speech in our native language seems less complex and more reflex, like the “Crap!” you hiss when you spill your coffee. Nothing meaningful there? Well, what would you say in Japanese for the exact same scenario? What other things could you say in this context in both English and Japanese? There are lots of these situations where not knowing what to say at such a basic level might remind you of how limited your Japanese is, and that could lead to some pretty negative feelings with the whole experience. Not good – generally and specifically when you’re trying to get better at the language.

If you’re facing the plateau and thinking “What next?”, private speech is a good place to get started. It is so daily and basic and personal, yet it is mostly untaught in language learning. So setting up situations where you could talk to yourself (or your cat) is a good stepping stone towards a more complete fluency.

Cooking Vocabulary

I talk to myself a lot. I also talk to my cat, which is almost the same thing as talking to myself. This “private speech” happens mostly when I’m cooking. We all love food, so how about we spend a little time upping our kitchen-ready vocabulary?

• ingredients: 材料（ざいりょう）・具財（ぐざい）
• pot: 鍋（なべ）
• pan: フライパン
• boil:　茹でる（ゆでる）
• bake: 焼く（やく）
• stir-fry or sautee:　炒める（いためる）
• fry: 揚げる（あげる）
• steam (verb): 蒸らす（むらす）
• steam (noun): 蒸気（じょうき）
• to chop finely: みじん切り（ぎり）
• number of portions: 分量（ぶんりょう）
• to prepare (ahead of time): 整える（ととのえる）・用意する（よういする）
• left-over: 余った（あまった）
• in-season ingredients: 旬（しゅん）の食材（しょくざい）
• to peel: 皮（かわ）をむく
• to whisk: 泡立てる （あわだてる）
• sour: 酸っぱい（すっぱい）
• salty: 塩辛い（しおからい）
• savory/umami: うま味（み）
• mouth-watering: よだれが出そう（だそう）
• watery: 水っぽい（みずっぽい）
• bland/thinly flavored: 味が薄い（あじがうすい）
• healthy: 体に良い（からだによい）・健康に良い（けんこうによい）
• crumbs: パンくず・断片（だんぺん）
• to stir or to mix: 混ぜる（まぜる）
• to soak, put in marinade: ～に浸す（ひたす）

Obviously, before being able to talk to yourself in Japanese while cooking, you’ll need to know the relevant words pretty well, so consider making some flashcards or an Anki deck. The idea is to become familiar enough with them that you are able to recall them while doing the related task (in this case, cooking) so that way we can use them later during private speech, ingraining them into our minds.

The Grocery List

Now that you know words to use while you’re cooking, I’ll give you some to use while you’re making your grocery list. As you can see, we’re going through and learning vocabulary for various activities revolving around the main activity, which you know is cooking.

• leafy greens: 菜っ葉（なっぱ）
• rice flour: 米粉（こめこ）
• wheat flour: 小麦粉（こむぎこ）
• ground (pork, etc.): 挽き肉（ひきにく）
• cuts of meat: there are so many, so take your pick
  
• oil: 油（あぶら）
• seafood: シーフード or 魚介（ぎょかい）
• spinach: ほうれん草（そう）
• sake used for cooking: 料理酒（りょうりしゅ）
• herbs/spices: 香辛料（こうしんりょう）
• black pepper: 胡椒（コショウ）
• frozen: 冷凍（れいとう）
• soy/soy milk: 豆乳（とうにゅう）
• fermented: 発酵させた（はっこう）・　発酵食品（はっこうしょくひん）
• the bacteria in yogurt: 乳酸菌（にゅうさんきん）
• gyoza wrap: 餃子の皮（ぎょうざのかわ）

In theory, you could come up with some other word lists as well. What about words for cleaning up? What about words for various kinds of (completed) dishes? The list goes on and on. Start out simple and work outwards. You’ll start to see some overlap between lists, which is good, because that will help you pinpoint more common words. Then you’ll start to find words from your lists becoming useful in other situations as well. The more you branch out the more you’ll be able to talk about. Sure, talking about cooking isn’t all that useful in most situations, but after a while the important stuff floats to the top, kind of like the scummy bubbly stuff that you scrape away when making sukiyaki.

One Approach

Knowing all those words is just half the process. To practice using them and setting up situations where you’re talking to yourself, here’s my procedure:

Step 1: Find a recipe written in Japanese. I used to watch an NHK show called 今日の料理（きょうのりょうり, Today’s Cooking) and found the recipes online after each episode so I could try making the food myself. But it’s easier to just go to Cookpad, one of the largest recipe sites out there. There is a wide variety of recipes, so finding something that you have the means to make should be no trouble. Finally, for recipes that use hard-to-come-by Japanese ingredients (like na no hana), there are usually appropriate substitutions to accommodate what’s available to you, which some English sites describe, such as Makiko Itoh’s Just Hungry.

Step 2: Once you have a Japanese recipe picked out, read through it once to test your reading comprehension. Diagram step-by-step what you understand from the first read-through. Even with English recipes, I diagram what has to happen at each step because otherwise, I mess the dish up.

Step 3: Highlight the words you don’t know, look them up, and do what you feel is necessary to remember them. Otherwise, the next step will probably solidify your memory of those words.

Step 4: Go through your kitchen and name the ingredients you do or don’t have for the recipe. Obviously, do this in Japanese. This could be where you start talking to yourself! Write up a grocery list for the items you don’t have. Use quantities and counters.

Step 5: Then, go to the store, shop around with your grocery list that’s written in Japanese, bring the stuff home and start cooking delicious food.

Cooking with Cat: A Case Study

For example, I love nikujaga, and stumbled upon a recipe for nikujaga croquettes.

Looking through the ingredients, I highlight the words I can’t read:

I look those up, (ついかの, “additional”, and てきりょう, “appropriate amount”), and put them into Anki to memorize. I look through the steps, draw my diagram (realized when I was done that I drew regular ねぎ, while the recipe calls for 玉ねぎ):

And then I went on to find out the readings and meanings for ざら、お勧め、and じっくり, and add them to my list to memorize.

The recipe calls for nikujaga leftovers, but I have none. So I’ll need the ingredients for nikujaga, plus a few things for the croquettes. My shopping list:

• ジャガイモ、４個
• 牛肉薄切り（ぎゅうにくうすぎり）３００ｇ.
• ショウガ、１かけ
• 玉ねぎ、１個

I tell myself what I need:「ショウガ切らしてるよー。肉も買わなきゃ。」 “I’m out of ginger. I need to buy meat, too.” And I tell my cat:「モモちゃん、買い物行ってくるね。晩ご飯に必要なの。」 “Momo, I’ve got to go get some things from the store. It’s needed for dinner.”

When I return, it’s time to make food. I start cooking the Nikujaga, make croquettes with it, and talk to myself. In Japanese!

「あっち（ゃ）！！、舌やけどしちゃったよー。うん、大丈夫、生きてるよ私ー。スープの味がなくなっておかゆみたいだけどね、ははー。“Ah! I burned my tongue. Yeah, Momo, I’m okay. Just lost my taste buds and now the soup tastes like mush.”

「準備（じゅんび）おっけー、あぶらあぶら～、油をいれて・・・軽く（かるく）炒める・・・と、２分ね。ももー、マイバッグいじらないでー！」“Ok, that’s ready. Now…oil. Put the oil in (the frying pan) and sautee for… two minutes. Momo, stop messing with the shopping bags!”

「あー、コンロに飛（と）んでる油拭（ふ）かなきゃ～。どーせ沸騰（ふっとう）するの待たなきゃだし、お皿も洗いつつ古くなった冷蔵庫（れいぞうこ）でも片付（かたづ）けますかー。タッパーも洗わなきゃだしね」“Now I have to clean up all that splattered oil around the stove… I’ve got to wait for it to boil, so I may as well wash some of these dishes and get rid of the old leftovers in the fridge. I need some clean tupperware, anyhow.”

「うわっ、鍋にこびりついちゃった、しかも焦（こ）げてるし！」“Crap! It stuck to the pan. And it burnt!”

If the grammar in these sentences is new, maybe the whole phrases are things to repeat and practice, the way you might practice some lines from a J-Drama. The above lines come off as neutral to slightly girly (bold-text is more feminine). So if you’re looking for Japanese that is more boyish or more samurai-ish or whatever, look into Japanese gendered language.

Conclusion

That picture up there- scary? Hundreds of feet above ground with nowhere to go but down? Sure. But that’s not what “The Plateau” has to look like. Cooking and talking to yourself is, I hope, a new and exciting trail for those who are independently studying Japanese.

Start out simple. You don’t have to be making complete sentences from the get-go. When you need negi, just grab the negi and say “negi” to yourself. Or, when you’re eating some of your nikujaga, say “nikujaga wo tabeteiru.” Simple things like that will start getting you in the habit of speaking to yourself in Japanese. As you need to learn new things you will learn them, allowing your vocabulary blossom and grow like some kind of weird tree that feeds off of knowledge.

And like I mentioned before, you don’t have to do this with cooking either. Choose your own activities, talk to yourself about them, and allow this habit to infect other things after you feel pretty comfortable with one. Don’t kill yourself doing this and just let it grow naturally. Human nature will take over and you will become curious about how to say this or that and you will get better, so long as you’re having fun with it.

Sources

• Hashi. “Why Japanese Food Tastes So Good—Umami“, Tofugu. Jan. 18, 2012
• Itoh, Makiko. “About Japanese Ingredients and Substitutions“, Just Hungry. Aug. 15, 2008.
• Itoh, Makiko. “Ready for spring’s fresh bounty“, Japan Times. Feb. 22, 2013.
• Koichi. “Japanese Gendered Language“, Tofugu.
• Koichi. “Studying With Japanese Drama: The Step-By-Step Guide”, Tofugu. Jun. 10, 2010
• Ortega, Lourdes. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Hodder Education, London: 2009.
• Tomlinson, Brian. The Inner Voice: A Critical Factor in L2 Learning. 2001.

Reaching the Intermediate Plateau

Reaching this plateau when learning Japanese occurs most frequently after you’ve learned most if not all things related to sentence structure, grammar, and conjugation rules. It is usually at this point where kanji and vocab become more of a focus than ever before. And who likes learning kanji? That stuff is complicated and difficult and gross. Ew.

At the beginning of learning the language, everything is new and fresh and you feel like you’re learning so much at such a rapid pace that you’re just tearing through the knowledge like some sort of Japanese genius. But eventually, you’ll probably find yourself feeling like you just aren’t learning as much anymore once you’ve covered all the basic stuff. When you feel like you just aren’t learning as much as you used to, it can become very discouraging.

This plateau level will usually creep up on you after a few years of self study or classroom education. For me it happened once I graduated from college and stopped getting classroom style Japanese lessons and had to take matters into my own hands more than I had in the past. I had to start teaching myself the language, deciding what to learn next, what to focus, and what to put off until later.

Undoubtedly, you too will reach a similar plateau somewhere in your Japanese studies where you will believe yourself to be “good enough” or “competent” in the language, but definitely not where you’d prefer to be ultimately. Here I hope to share with you some tips I’ve used (and still use) to get off this plateau and start climbing the mountain once again.

Focus on Vocab Now More Than Ever

Like I said before, once you cover the basic groundwork of the language, kanji and vocab become more important than ever. But where should you get all these crazy new words from? Find something you enjoy. Find something you know you’d already enjoy in English (or your native language) and take it on in Japanese. Even if you’re watching a Japanese dub of Star Trek, a healthy amount of the language used will be regular Japanese that you can make use of in everyday conversation. And if you want to learn how to babble on about space nonsense in Japanese, hey, that’s okay too.

So get your favorite Japanese book, manga, TV show, movie, drama, video game, or whatever, and take the time to experience it slowly, with a dictionary in hand so you can learn all the new words it has to offer. Once you learn all the new words from the material, you can go back through it again and understand everything. Can you imagine how rewarding that feels? Experiencing something you love in Japanese and totally understanding everything that’s going on? Believe me, it’s awesome.

Undoubtedly, the best way to go about learning and keeping up with vocabulary is to use spaced repitition system (SRS) programs such as Anki, and keep a schedule with them. You can (and should) check out Anki and our review of it here, and while you’re at it you should check out our posts on how to study and learn with Japanese dramas and Japanese video games.

Identify and Focus on Your Goal

Do you want to be better at the spoken language? The written language? Both? Ultimately you should be going for excellence in both, but there’s no harm in focusing on one a bit more than the other at first, but of course there’s nothing wrong with giving them both an equal amount of attention if that’s your bag. Remember, different people have different ideas on what fluency really is.

Some of you may be better speakers than writers, and some of you may be better writers than speakers. I’ve always felt about the same with each, but my immediate goals of using Japanese in the “real world” are to be able to read manga and play video games. Manga is all written language, but some video games have voice acting which helps out with focusing on the spoken language. It works for me, but you need to find out what works best for you.

If you want to get better at the written language first, read all the manga, short stories, and newspapers you can get your hands on. Children’s stories and younger age group manga are great places to start. If you want to get better at the spoken language, listen to Japanese whenever possible. Watch movies, TV, dramas, and yes, even anime can be beneficial. The more exposure you get, the better.

Most important, though, is sticking to it. Do you want to be able to play your favorite RPG all the way through in Japanese? Spend at least 30 minutes each day working on it. It doesn’t matter how slow you feel you’re going, eventually it will all pay off and you’ll be amazed what you’ve accomplished by the end of it. And 30 minutes a day is much better than no minutes a day, but feel free to study for longer if you have the time and are still enjoying yourself. Remember, studying should be fun. The more fun you have, the more you’ll learn and the more you’ll remember.

Be “Yourself” In Japanese

One thing that I’ve noticed through my Japanese learning adventures is that I used to have a really tough time expressing myself fully in Japanese. Having a limited working knowledge of the language, I felt like my personality was being limited as well. I felt like people weren’t getting to know the real me because of this. I feel this is true for most languages and not just Japanese because the less words you know, the less eloquently you can express thoughts and ideas.

The goal here should be achieving the ability to express anything you could in your native language, but in Japanese. If you feel like you could express your thoughts and ideas about a certain topic better in your native language, you know you have an area you need to work on.

Once you start to learn how to express yourself better in Japanese, you’ll no doubt start to feel closer to your Japanese acquaintances and friends and you’ll start to enjoy your time with them even more than ever before. Being able to talk naturally and without frustration for lack of phrasing eloquence is always a good thing. Be yourself. Become yourself in Japanese.

Hone Your Native Japanese Accent

I don’t know how many of you have had this experience before, but it is always much more impressive when a learner of English knows how to pronounce things correctly. Even if two foreign learners of the language have the exact same vocabulary and speaking ability, if one of them has a more natural English accent, they are instantly more impressive in the eye of an observer. We want to become this impressive.

At this point in our learning, we’ve most likely ironed out most of the common pronunciation mistakes that Japanese learners come across. Now, it is time to focus on the fine points and really become awesome at speaking the language. It’s always a good idea to study and imitate the speaking patterns and intonations of native speakers.

One thing you can focus on (if you haven’t already) is how to act and respond when be spoken to in Japanese. Hashi touches on it quite a bit in his post here, but the main thing is – there’s a lot more confirming sounds and nodding in Japanese than there is in English conversations. But once you master this skill, you’ll look much more awesome in the eyes of a Japanese native.

Don’t Give Up!

Conquering this intermediate plateau is likely one of the hardest things you’ll have to do in your quest to learn the Japanese language. In the beginning, the results were immediate and frequent, but now that you’ve learned all the easy basic stuff, your gains are much less noticeable and can seem sluggish and slow. But you must not become discouraged.

And if you haven’t quite reached this level or the intermediate plateau just yet, you can always improve your Japanese abilities in other ways like with these great tips from Koichi that can improve your Japanese skills in as little as two hours. You can always keep the tips from this post in mind and be confident that you can tackle the plateau once it arrives. Just don’t get discouraged and keep at it. Remember, you don’t have to be a genius to learn Japanese.

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