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

Strategy #1: Formal Study

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

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

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

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

Strategy #2: Make Friends Before You Go!

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

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

Strategy #3: Arrange to live with Japanese Speakers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make a Schedule and Stick to It

One big advantage of being in actual Japanese classes is that you have to be in class and learning for a certain amount of time each week at set blocks of time on a consistent schedule. This makes it easy to get yourself into a routine and not fall behind with your learning. When you’re on your own, you have to impose these guidelines on yourself.

The best way to do this is to decide how much you want to study each week and what time of the day you want to do it. Maybe you want to study every other day for an hour before bed. Perhaps you want to study thirty minutes each day after work. Whatever your preference may be, it’s important that you stick to it, make it a habit, and fall into that routine. If worse comes to worst and you miss a day, make it up. You’d have to make up a Japanese class if you missed one, so do the same thing here.

Even better would be if you could model your schedule after what you’re already used to from the Japanese classes. If you had them every day at a certain time, try and keep doing it at that same time after you graduate. If you have a job that gets in the way, that’s too bad but you can just move the lessons around. The important part is that you don’t fall out of your classroom routine. The longer you wait to make the switch from classroom routine to self-study routine, the more difficult it’ll be getting back into it.

Ideally you’d want to move right from classroom to self-study with no downtime. Take the motivation from your classroom learning and apply it to self-study. Don’t get lazy. The longer you wait to make the transition the more difficult it will be.

Make it Fun

Most likely your Japanese classes weren’t all that fun. Maybe they were. I’m sure part of the fun was actually getting to interact with other students in class and talking in Japanese with the teacher. Well, now you’re on your own. How to make fun?

There are tons of ways to make it fun and we’ve already written about a lot of them. You can study with dramas, variety shows, video games, even anime. There is a lot of media out there and I’m sure you can find something out there to really sink your teeth into and motivate yourself with.

Start up something like Textfugu, Wanikani, or just anything that works for you. Having some sort of guidelines and plan for your learning is always good. Structure is very useful. Some people do better without much structure but I’d think after having classroom learning classes you have a pretty good idea of what study and learning methods work best for you. Find something you enjoy and stick with it. The best method is the method that works for you.

Study and Speak with Others

Like I said, you’re not in the classroom anymore so your human interactions in Japanese are now zero. Probably. Maybe you’re lucky and have a real life Japanese friend to practice with. Unfortunately not all of us can be that lucky. If you want to improve your conversational Japanese abilities, you need to practice conversation (duh).

To do this, you can either get together with old friends from your Japanese classes and talk together in Japanese or discuss the finer points of the language if you’re into that sort of thing. Make use of your friends and ask them questions and help each other out!

Another great option is to find yourself a real life Japanese practice partner. You’ll probably have better luck finding one online and most likely they’ll want to practice their English in exchange for helping you with your Japanese. This seems like a pretty fair trade and you’ll make a new friend out of it so it’s a good deal.

Depending on if you want to improve your written or spoken Japanese (or both) you can find a Japanese pal and exchange emails, messages, or Skype. There are lots of options and plenty of language learners out there who would be happy to help you out. All you gotta do it look for them.

Remember Why You Started This Journey

You started learning Japanese for a reason and there’s a reason you’re continuing to learn even after the classroom. Whatever that reason is, keep it in mind. Set a goal for yourself and don’t give up until you get there. And then once you reach that goal, set another, more lofty goal for yourself and don’t stop until you achieve that as well.

It’s much easier to stay motivated when you realize how what you are currently doing is helping you move towards your goal. If you want to be able to read the text in video games and manga, realize that struggling through Manga for Illiterate Babies Vol. 1, no matter how frustratingly embarrassing, is helping you move towards your end goal. Eventually all your hand work will pay off and you’ll come back to Manga for Illiterate Babies Vol. 1 and be amazed at how much progress you’ve made.

Keep track of where you are, where you want to be, and what you need to do to get yourself there. If you find yourself struggling or at a plateau, switch things up a bit, ask friends for advice, something, anything! Just don’t give up. You are capable of achieving your goals and the only one standing in your way is you.

So tell me, do you have any other tips for making the transition from classroom study to self-study? Anything in particular you struggled with yourself? How did you overcome it? Share your thoughts in the comments!

You have a finite amount and you have to use it right. That’s why I spend so much time (hurr hurrr) on TextFugu going over ways you can study more efficiently and gain more time. It’s also why we cut out unnecessary readings, vocab, and even handwriting from WaniKani, because your time should be spent learning things that will give you the most impact first (and then you can come back around when you have more of that “time” thing). This is also why I wrote the “30 Days To Becoming A Better Japanese Student” ebook. You can definitely save a ridiculous amount of study time just by changing a few small things. You’re trading time for more time. What a nice deal!

The thing is, though, learning Japanese requires a lot of time. Like, a ton. Learning Japanese is measured in years, not days or months. Time, along with “motivation,” are perhaps the two biggest factors for people when learning Japanese. They are also the two things that come up time and time again as you study, so they never really leave you once you start. There will be days where you feel like time is your best friend. There will be others where it’s your mortal enemy. I’m here to help you, though. I’ve put together two lists. One is “I don’t have enough time” and the other is “I want to spend my time efficiently.” For your sake and the sake of time, I’ll put everything into bullet points.

I don’t have enough time

This is for those of you who are using this excuse to avoid starting studying Japanese (or continuing). If you feel overwhelmed and feel like you never have enough time you should probably stop reading things on the Internet like this article, but only after you’ve finished reading this article. Okay? Good.

• Start a “ritual.” This is something you just “do” instead of “have to do.” This is like, “when I get home, I do my WaniKani reviews.” It’s not an option, it’s just what you do. Rituals don’t feel like they take time but chores do. What part of your Japanese studies can you change into a ritual?
• Do you walk places? Do you ride things? Do you take showers? If so, you should be using those opportunities to try out some passive learning. Also, consider talking to yourself like a crazy person.
• Remember that it’s about the small, consistent chunks. Don’t study 8 hours all at once, one time a week. Study 30 minutes a day or 15 minutes a day twice, or something along those lines. The time between study sessions is important for that giant brain of yours to process things. Plus, smaller chunks are easier to manage, time-wise. Do you have 15 minutes today?
• Consider your current responsibilities. Humans have a hard time quitting. But, sometimes quitting something is the best thing to do. Even though it hurts to quit, take a look at the things that take up your time. What wouldn’t kill you to stop doing? What could you pay someone else to do? Imagine how nice it would be if you had that time for Japanese. No seriously, imagine it!
• Do you have “repetitive responsibilities?” Things like Facebook, Twitter, and email? Those things take up a ton of time, especially if you are viewing them all the time / in real time. Compress these things into very strict batches. For example, 12:30-1:00pm is generally my email time. I don’t get it all done during that time, but I get a lot more of it done than if I just check it constantly. Also, I’ve only spent 30 minutes on it and I don’t feel stressed out about “whether or not I have any email to check” the rest of the day.
• Don’t let yourself get interrupted. I read somewhere that each time you’re interrupted it takes around 30 minutes to get focused back into what you were doing before you got interrupted. Do things like close the door, put on headphones, or hide/close social media and email (previous bullet point will help). Interruptions are your enemy, and they destroy huge time chunks every time they occur. Take this very seriously and you’ll find yourself with a lot more time.
• Give yourself less time. This may seem unintuitive, but the less time you give yourself the more focused you become. Also, forcing yourself to cut off what you’re doing makes you want to do it more.
• Plan a little bit. Although I’m personally not a huge planner, planning helps a ton. Deciding what you’re going to do before you do it then turning it into actionable tasks is a great way to give yourself more time. Most people spend all their time deciding what they want to do and never do what they should be doing. You should decide what you want to do and then do it.
• If you haven’t yet, learn hiragana. It makes it so you have access to all the best Japanese language resources. If you can only study with crap, you’ll only poop out slightly more digested crap, and that’s a waste of time.
• Did you read this article? Okay, you have some time then, no excuses.

Hopefully some of these were helpful. So now how about efficiency?

I want to spend my time efficiently

This is if you’re studying Japanese, but think / know you’re spending way too much time studying it. I mean, you should spend a lot of time studying Japanese, but the more efficient you are the more you’ll learn and be able to use, which will help you to get better faster. Suffice to say, efficiency is helpful for time in the long run.

• A good SRS is going to be key. If studied with on a daily basis, this will make sure that you study what you need to when you need to, and make sure you don’t see things too often (thus wasting time). We recommend Anki / Memrise for general SRS systems, and our very own WaniKani for the radicals/kanji/vocab system. Over a long period, an SRS will save you many months, possibly years of study time.
• Learning in the correct order is important, though this is hard for a beginner to figure out on their own because they have no idea what is used and what is not. There are “order” vocab / kanji lists out there, though. iKnow has a “Core 2000″ list which seems like it’s based on the most common words from newspapers (you can get this on Anki as well). There are also other lists out there that do similar things. Doing this for kanji is important too (what we do on WaniKani / TextFugu). The idea here is to study the words that will give you the most impact right away so that you understand more, earlier, allowing you to study with more advanced and realistic resources earlier as well.
• Early on, study kanji more than you think (or more than anyone tells you). The fact is, the more kanji you know the easier and everything else will become. Literally every part of Japanese has some reliance on your ability to read kanji. You should absolutely be learning this as quickly as possible, even if it’s the only thing you focus on for a while. Try WaniKani, Remembering The Kanji, or KanjiDamage for this.
• Sometimes spending some money will make things more efficient. While there are plenty of free resources out there that will get the job done, one drawback is that they are very disorganized and require you to do a lot of the footwork. While this is fine for some people it is very inefficient for others. Time ain’t free, as they say.
• Really focus on “why” something works the way it does. Even if you have to spend extra time doing this, the time it will save you in the long run is incalculable.
• Focus on the things you’re bad at. The things that you’re bad at are holding you back and slowing you down. People who are really good at something aren’t good because they ignored what they’re bad at, obviously. Figure out what these are and tackle them head on. Then, everything moving forward will go quicker, saving you more time.
• Fix the things that slow most people down. They eat away at your study speed over a long period of time but they really shouldn’t.
• Spend some time learning how memory works. For example, learning that “recall” (pulling something out of your head) is what builds memory was a big breakthrough for me. It’s not about what you put in (or how many times you put it in… I’m looking at you people who write kanji over and over again), it’s what you pull out.
• Forget about writing Japanese. Although a little bit helpful (people type these days anyways), it doubles or triples the amount of time you have to study. Instead, focus on reading because this is something you can use right away. With all the time saved from not writing things, you can learn twice as much Japanese.
• Also don’t forget, there is no speed limit.

As the venerable Douglas Adams once said, “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” While time can be dicey at times, all of you have some time to study Japanese if that’s what you want to do. Don’t let time be an excuse. In fact, you’ll make time for anything you want time for, so the question is, do you really want it? Maybe you should JFDI.

What is Passive Learning

When it comes to Japanese, passive learning (or at least the kind I’ll be talking about here) most often comes from listening to and consuming Japanese audio-visual media. The passive bit is that you’re not actively doing anything other than just listening to the Japanese language. You’re not taking any notes, you’re not stopping the video/audio/game to review what you heard or anything – you’re just listening to it and taking in the language as it is.

This can be done both with and without English subtitles, depending on your current level of Japanese ability, but I’d say that the more Japanese you already know, the more you’ll get out of passive learning in this sense. It’s all about consuming Japanese media and not worrying over vocabulary or anything yucky like that. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

For more about passive learning (and Japanese), you can check out this article and this article from TIME, as well as How Many Hours You Should Study Japanese A Day.

How Passive Learning Helps the Beginner

But how can passive learning benefit you if you don’t know any Japanese at all? Even before you’ve started learning the Japanese language, there are lots of easy things you can do to help you for the future. Just hearing Japanese being used gets you more comfortable with the language. Even if you don’t know what they’re saying, hearing the language over and over causes it to become less strange to you. The more you hear it, the less foreign sounding it is to your ears.

Maybe you’ll hear someone out in public and you’ll be able to realize they’re speaking Japanese (even though you might not be sure exactly what they’re saying). It might not seem like that big of a deal, but it’s definitely one of the first steps in learning the language. You just have to get comfortable with how it sounds. You gotta get used to it.

One of the biggest advantages to listening to lots of Japanese before you actually learn how to speak it is getting nice and familiar with how Japanese should sound. You get a much better handle for pronunciation, accent, and tone than if you just went into it without any prior listening experience. Whether you realize it or not, your brain is subconsciously paying attention to how Japanese sounds. This makes it much easier for you to reproduce these sounds correctly when the time comes. Well, usually at least.

This really helps out, especially by keeping you from getting into any bad pronunciation habits. If you already know how it should sound, you’ll be much less likely to get used to pronouncing things incorrectly or ingraining your personal Japanese with a bad accent because you and your brain already know what a proper accent should sound like. This is a good thing.

Before I started actually learning Japanese at college, I listened to a lot of movies, anime, and music, and I’m very confident that all this passive listening really helped me out a lot with my pronunciation and accent once I started to learn and speak the language. It might not work for everyone like this, but it sure helped me.

The Tools of Passive Learning

So what’s the best way to do this passive learning? What are the best materials to make use of? Well there are tons. We have anime, dramas, movies, music, podcasts, games, and even audio books. Do you have a favorite Japanese show or movie? Watch it in Japanese with the subtitles turned off.

You’ll still be able to follow along with it since you know the story already, and your brain might even start to pick up on some common words and phrases just by watching and listening. Or, you might learn some words you heard in the show at a later date and you’ll remember when you heard them in the show which will help you to retain that information.

This also goes for video games that have a Japanese audio option. If it has that option, you should always make good use of it. It might not be as effective as shows and movies since you’ll still have to read along with that pesky English dialogue, (unless of course you can understand without it, in which case, well done) but listening to the Japanese audio is way better than listening to the English audio. Some Japanese is always better than none at all, I say.

But what about when you’re on the go? Maybe you don’t have time to sit down and play a game or watch a show. Maybe you’re in your car, on the subway, or going for a run or a bike ride. This is the perfect opportunity to make use of audio only media like podcasts, music, and audio books. For those interested, Koichi did a post about Japanese podcasts and how to make good use of them which you can check out here.

Listening to music is also good for pronunciation if you find yourself singing along with the words, even if you don’t know what they mean. Of course, it also helps out a lot if you can make out the words they’re singing. Listening to Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas, for example, isn’t going to help you out much.

Audio books are another option I think most people forget about. Do you love Harry Potter? Get it on audio book. In Japanese. Even if you don’t know much Japanese, you’ll still be able to pick out the words you do know like Hogwarts, Dumbledore, and Voldemort. Plus you’ll be hearing them like how they’d be said in Japanese which also helps with your pronunciation, especially loan words and other things written in katakana.

Believe me, it’s more useful than you’d think. Listen to bits and pieces on your daily commute. It’ll be much more useful than top 40 tunes, I assure you. Plus it’s much less stressful than trying to follow along with some audio language lesson while you’re dealing with rush hour traffic or something. With these materials you just sit back and listen.

Best When Paired With Active Learning

Unfortunately, passive learning alone won’t get you very far. The only times I’d really recommend passive learning by itself is if you’re a complete beginner, or starting to near that elusive master level. When you’re a complete beginner, passive learning helps a lot with getting comfortable with the sounds of the language and hearing proper pronunciation and accent like I mentioned above. Then once you’re comfortable with how the language sounds, you can actually start to learn and pronounce it with confidence.

And then when you’re nearing master level, you can get away with passive learning because you already know so much of the language already. Most of the new stuff you’re just picking up in your head and making new associations that way. Your brain is automatically doing most of the work for you. Maybe every once in a while you’ll hear a new word that you need to write down and look up later, but most of the time you’ll probably be picking up things through context and intuition.

It’s really during the middle part (and it’s a very big middle, by the way) that you’ll be best off pairing your passive learning with some good old fashioned active learning. This is also the period of learning that requires the most work on your part. Some of the best ways to do this are to pick out one of your favorite shows, like a drama or an anime, and then make an Anki flashcard deck (or find one somebody else made) with all the vocabulary from the show that you want to learn or focus on.

Once you have these cards, you can actively study them, and break up your active studies by passively watching the show and hearing your hard work pay off through the words and phrases you recognize. This also reinforces your learning experience, and makes the words and phrases easier to remember since they’re linked with the show in your brain, with both the audio and the visual aspects. For more information on this, you can check out the post by Koichi that explains how to study with Japanese dramas.

Results May Vary

Okay, you got me. So you really can’t learn Japanese without doing anything, but it is true that there are a handful of easy things that can be done with little to no extra effort that are certainly helpful. Most of them help more when you include some active learning along with them, but it’s always nice to break up your active studies with some passive ones (passive ones are a lot less stressful and more fun anyway).

There’s lots of conversation online in forums and such about the potential benefits and the pros and cons of the passive approach to learning languages like this, but I think all would agree that it certainly doesn’t hurt, and some people will get more out of it than others.

One thing that is true, though, is that the more hours you put into Japanese, the more you’ll get out of it. Even if you aren’t actively studying, and you feel bad about slacking on your studies because of how much anime you’re watching, don’t beat yourself up too much. Watching anime is helping your Japanese a lot more than doing something that doesn’t involve Japanese at all (like basket weaving).

But don’t let passive learning become all that you do either. It’s nice to break up your active studies with passive Japanese exposure, but don’t let it become your only means of study. You don’t want to get yourself into a slump. If you’re at the intermediate level and feel like you’re getting into a slump or losing motivation, check out my other post on How To Conquer the Intermediate Plateau of Japanese. Maybe it can help you out.

I don’t believe that passive learning alone will learn you a language, but like I said, it’s a great way to break up chunks of active study, it’s easy to do, and it’s fun. Having fun while you learn is one of the most important things you can do. Plus, some Japanese is better than no Japanese at all. So get out there and watch an anime or something!

So tell me, what are your thoughts on passive learning and its relationship with active learning? Have you ever had any instances where you realized how much (or how little) passive learning was helping you with your Japanese studies? Share your story in the comments!

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The Speedy Speech Of Japanese

In this study (A Cross-Language Perspective on Speech Information Rate) the authors spend a lot of time comparing and going over eight different languages (one of course is Japanese). They took a look at translations of the same text in all of the languages and compared their syllabic rate (number of syllables per second), their information density (how much information is packed into said syllables), and then the rate at which information is communicated. The Vietnamese language was used as the “outside” reference language, which is why it’s “1.00″ in the table below. You can use that to compare the speeds and rates of everything else.

I’ll mostly be comparing English and Japanese, since those are the two languages being used on Tofugu, but you can do the same with any of the languages above, I’m sure.

Information Density: The Japanese language has the lowest information density (0.49). This means you have to say more in Japanese to say the same thing in English, which has a very high information density. In fact, English’s information density is nearly twice that of Japanese!

Syllabic Rate: This refers to the number of syllables per second. Japanese is the highest here, just beating out the fast-talking Spanish. The hypothesis of the study is that languages with a lower information density (like Japanese) will make up for it by speaking faster. Looks like that’s one of the things that Japanese does in fact do, though we’ll see that it doesn’t quite equal up to the rest.

Information Rate: Now let’s combine Information Density and Syllabic Rate to get the “Information Rate.” Compared to all the other languages in this study, the Japanese language actually communicates information more slowly than everyone else. It is four standard deviations away from the norm which is quite a bit considering that the second slowest, German, is only 1.5 standard deviations out.

So, basically we can see that even though the Japanese language is faster than everyone else, it still doesn’t get as much information across in the same amount of time. So why is this? Is the study missing some information? Are there other reasons for the lack of information in Japanese speech?

Is Japanese Really The Slowest Language?

Let’s start with possible reasons why the data could be inaccurate. For starters, one could say that it doesn’t go into the way spoken Japanese has a lot of omissions based on context. One example is the phrase 私は (わたしは). A lot of beginners constantly use わたしは because in English we usually do refer to ourselves when talking about ourselves. In Japanese, though, this can be omitted if it’s already apparent. There’s a lot of things like this in Japanese, and it’s possible the study didn’t take this into account.

Even if the study did run thousands and thousands more sentences, I don’t think it would make a huge difference. All languages have this sort of things, especially when you start talking about casual speech. Although running more sentences through would probably increase Japanese’s Information Rate, I don’t think it would make a huge difference. Whatever the case, it’d be hard to prove either way, especially considering how all languages lose syllables when becoming more casual.

What’s more interesting, I think, is looking at reasons why Japanese does have a low Information Rate. Possibly a slower one than the study itself presents. Here’s some things I came up with, though I’m sure there are more reasons.

• At least in neutral and formal Japanese, every verb has a lot of syllables, and most sentences have verbs in them. At minimum, each verb has three syllables (でます[3], みます[3]), though often times it has more (あそびます[5], はたらきます[6]). In English, most verbs are two syllables, and that’s including the “to” (to eat, to see, to work). That right there jacks up the syllable count quite a bit, especially over time.
• The Japanese language is very indirect. As you learn more Japanese, you’ll start seeing that the less direct you are the more polite you’re being. The less direct you are, the more words you have to use to get around the point (aka more syllables).
• The Japanese language also has fewer available syllables. In fact, on that list, it has by far the fewest with 416. The next lowest? That would be Mandarin, with 1,191 (nearly triple what’s available in Japanese). Guess what English has? A whopping 7,931 available syllables. No wonder English is considered one of the most complicated languages in the world (seriously, Japanese is easy). Fewer syllables means you run out of words. This is probably why Japanese has so many homonyms, but it’s also why Japanese words tend to be longer and have more syllables in them. When vocab words themselves have more syllables, no grammar in the world, no matter how casual, can increase your information rate enough to compete with other languages. Sorry Japan, you’re slow.

So, I for one think the findings of the study are probably correct. If anything, they’re giving the Japanese language a little too much credit in terms of its Information Rate. But overall I don’t have any problems with the findings. Everything there makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

So Should You Care?

Other than just being interesting information, I think it should also affect your studies as well. Although I suppose I’ve always noticed that Japanese tends to be faster than English, I never really thought much about it until reading this study. With this information in mind, it makes you realize that you should probably focus a little more on talking speed than you may have originally thought. You need to talk 21% faster than you talk in English if you want to sound fluent.

When you’re studying, spend a little extra time getting your speed up. If you’re reading a sentence, don’t stop when you’re able to read it at an adequate rate. Stop when you can read it faster than you think it should be. If you learn to speak faster… well… you can always slow down. It’s very hard to go from slow to fast, though.

So, to sum things up, the Japanese language is fast. But, in terms of information conveyed, it’s kinda slow. In those regards, Japanese is both easier and more difficult to learn than you probably thought before reading this article, which hopefully means it all evens out nicely (but you come away with some valuable information).

And don’t worry, Walter is fighting for you.

So did anyone else think that the Japanese language seemed a little too fast for its own good? Let me know in the comments.

Using a Japanese newspaper for kids, like Mainichi Shogakusei Shinbun above, I developed a 5 step study method designed to increase vocabulary and kanji identification, reading comprehension, and confidence for taking the JLPT!  Reading at the appropriate level makes it possible to practice reading similar paragraphs that will appear in the test and gives you the chance to identify vocabulary and kanji that are likely to appear in the JLPT.

1. Read the article without any helpful hiragana

2. Identify and list unknown words

3. Identify and list unknown kanji

4. Study the new lists

5. Re-read the article

Paired with Evernote and Jisho.org, this 5 step method should give you a good head start in your studying!

Step 1:  Read the article without any helpful hiragana

I know it’s frustrating, sad, and hard, but reading the article first without any help will help you out in a lot of ways in the long run so stick with it and don’t cry!  The first thing that will result from reading the article without any hiragana is helping you to honestly assess your reading ability.  It will show you the words you know and the ones you don’t in black and white.  The other important thing this step accomplishes is simulating the actual test.  There will be no helpful hiragana in the real test, so why practice with it?  If you are really serious about taking the test, you might also want to time yourself to see how long it takes to read a short article.

Using Evernote, I selected and added this text from an article on Mainichi Shogakusei Shinbun resulting in the above picture.  The rockin thing about Evernote in this example is that it automatically makes a title and takes note of the original page you visited so you wont forget later!  I then removed the pesky hiragana and gave reading the article my best shot.

Step 2:  Identify and list unknown words

Crap…as you can see I’ve got a LONG way to go!  In this step, highlight the words you don’t know in red and hope you don’t get an atomic red ink bomb like I did!  It is important to be HONEST with yourself here.  If you can’t read it without any help from hiragana, or if you look it up in the dictionary and say “Oh, right, duh!  I know this one!” mark it red Donny, because you are OUT OF YOUR ELEMENT! lol.  More seriously, just be conservative, if you don’t guess right the first time, it won’t hurt you to practice those borderline words a few times.  In the end, it is really good practice to identify difficult words as they are used in a paragraph.  When you are finished, your list should look something like this:

Step 3:  Identify and list unknown kanji

In the vocabulary list, find and highlight kanji in red that you can’t recognize right away as demonstrated in the example above.  Once identified, use a Japanese dictionary to make a list of kanji for future reference.  I found the website jisho.org VERY useful in completing this step.  Copy and paste the unknown kanji from the vocab list to the kanji list and as long as you don’t cut and paste anything else, you can simply paste it again into the kanji search page of jisho.org.  Once you look up the kanji, the website spits out more information than anyone can dream about that specific kanji.  I recommend at least taking note of all the different readings for the kanji and the definition in English.  One extra step I took was to include other words that that kanji appears in to practice recognition in general.  Jisho.org has a great feature to do this by pressing on the link in the “Kanji” page called “Words Containing” and usually zillions of words will come up that use this kanji, which can then be paired down to common words if desired.  Here is an example of a finished kanji list made from an article:

Step 4: Study the new lists

Now we get to the hard part: you have to remember all the stuff you just wrote down!  Making lots of lists is a waste of time if you don’t actually go back through them to learn the material.  Try to use the words in a sentence, look up more kanji combination, use them in a diary or homework assignment, or use Textfugu to learn about remembering radicals to help you retain the lists you just wrote.  Whatever you decide to do, be proactive and do something…anything!  It will pay off for the text and for the next step in this method.

Step 5: Re-read the article

Now that you are the master of all the vocabulary and kanji that stumped you in the article you read, go back and rock it!  Of course leave out the hiragana, and see how much you retained.  If there are still words and kanji that you miss, go back to the lists you made and study them for a while and re-read the article again.  Hopefully by the end of this process you will understand the meaning of the article, which will be a critical part in the new test.  Practicing reading full paragraphs will make life a lot easier for you when you actually sit down for the JLPT.  Good luck passing the JLPT!

LINKS

Newspapers for Kids:

• http://mainichi.jp/life/edu/maishou/index.html
• http://yomoyomo.jp/index.php
• http://kids.goo.ne.jp/index.html?SY=0&MD=2

Dictionaries:

• http://www.jisho.org
• http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C

Other Resources:

• http://www.textfugu.com
• http://www.tofugu.com/2010/04/06/tofugu-100-best-japanese-learning-resources/
• http://www.tofugu.com/2010/03/09/how-to-use-evernote-to-study-japanese-or-any-other-language/

This post was written by Nick W., who has traveled throughout many regions of Japan in search of unique cultural gems.  He is currently earning his MBA and has researched topics like folk music in WWII Japan and Ainu cultural revival through music.  His favorite Japanese musician is the late Nujabes.  Currently, he is studying for the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Level 2.