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

Step 1: Ditching (Then Unditching) The Subtitles

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 2: Laying The Groundwork

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

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

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

Step 3: Break Out The Vocab

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

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

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

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

Step 4: Can You Read It?

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

Step 5: Shadowing

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

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

Improving Over Time

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

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

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

Bonus Wallpapers!

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Japanese Dorama (drama)? Check. Studying Japanese? Also check. One of the most addicting things in the world is Japanese drama. If I needed to quit cocaine or something like that, this is what I’d use to kick it. Oh, and Japanese drama is a pretty excellent way to study Japanese. Watching it is one thing… but actually actively studying it is another. I will tell you exactly how to do that and get a ton of benefit compared to the time spent.

Kind Of Not For Beginners

Beginners of Japanese, I’m sorry, this method isn’t amazing for you. It’s better than the “Learning Japanese With Subtitles” article I did a few weeks ago, but it’s still not amazing. That being said, if you watch a lot of jdorama anyways, it wouldn’t hurt for beginners to try this out. I’m just saying there’s probably some things you could spend your time on that would be better for you at your current level … I’m not saying this method won’t be beneficial to all levels (just much more beneficial to intermediate / advanced students of Japanese). There are a few reasons for this:

1. Intermediate+ students will have an easier time with the kanji (an important part of this process)
2. Intermediate+ students will have the grammar foundation that will allow them to look up things they don’t know (and then make sense of them).
3. Intermediate+ students should be able to recognize and avoid gendered language / things they shouldn’t actually need to learn (as well as avoid learning how to talk like a girl / boy or something).
4. Intermediate+ students will know when someone is speaking unrealistically in the drama so they won’t end up speaking like that when they try what they’ve learned out in the real world.

Anyways, are you ready? I’m going to start at the beginning and work my way through how you might use a single episode of some Japanese drama to learn a lot of Japanese… and a whole ton of it, too. I’m kind of baffled by how well this works. Thank you internets for making it possible.

Step 1: Choose The Right Drama

I can’t really go into a whole lot of detail on how to acquire the drama… but I can tell you what drama to watch. It’s actually kind of important for this, because not all drama will allow you to follow the steps I’m laying out here. Why is that? Because we’re starting with a (Japanese) transcript of the drama first, and not all dramas have this readily available to the world.

There’s a pretty incredible website called どらま・のーと (Drama Note) where someone (or some people?) are transcribing Japanese drama episodes. The site’s all in Japanese (I’ll help make some sense of it in a moment) and it’s even doing current drama series (like right now Jin 2 and BOSS 2 are the ones getting the most attention, it seems).

There’s also a list of previous drama that have been transcribed over here, but the most current stuff is on the main DramaNote website.

Things aren’t particularly well organized, I’d say, so I’m going to keep it pretty simple. I’d use the search feature to try and find what you’re looking for, or take a look at the どらま・のーと(旧) page and see if what you want is on the list. Not every drama is up there, of course, but there’s enough to keep any Japanese student busy for a really really long time. Here’s a list of some of the more popular dramas, at least in my mind (though this guide will mostly focus on BOSS, to keep things simple).

BOSS: http://www.dramanote.com/category/7359462-1.html

Jin: http://www.dramanote.com/category/7359471-1.html

Buzzer Beat: http://www.dramanote.com/category/7359468-1.html

Rookies: http://www.dramanote.com/category/7359431-1.html

Hana Yori Dango: http://www.dramanote.com/category/7359277-1.html

Hana Yori Dango 2: http://www.dramanote.com/category/7359431-1.html

Densha Otoko: http://www.dramanote.com/category/7359260-1.html

Gokusen: http://www.dramanote.com/category/7359231-1.html

Pretty nice list, I’d say. One thing that might be confusing is how it lists out episodes. I spent a long time trying to figure out why Boss Episode 1 wasn’t doing what was written in the transcript. Then I realized I was on the wrong season. For example, if you go to the BOSS posts page, you’ll need to go back to the first page to get to Season 1 episode 1 – the ones on the most recent page are from Season 2.

The rest of this guide is going to pretend like you’re watching BOSS, though you can follow along pretty much the same way with any of the other dramas listed above too.

So, if you want to follow along on the live site, you’ll want to go to the BOSS Season 1 Episode 1 page on どらま・のーと.

BOSS Season 1 Episode 1

If you take a look at the Season 1 Episode 1 Page, you’ll see the transcript for that episodes. There’s little notes in there from time to time, but as long as you’re not a total beginner in Japanese you can find where the talking starts. Before getting started, though, I’d recommend downloading Evernote (it’s where I keep all my drama notes, so I can access them anywhere). You can see my Evernote has a 日本語 section where I put these (and other study stuff).

Right now all you can see is Jin and BOSS, because I copied over a ton of the どらま・のーと pages so I’d have access to them for later. Above is my notes for BOSS Season 1 Episode 1 (which is what we’re talking about here). For this guide, all you need to do is copy over the first episode’s content, though.

どらま・のーと doesn’t have the English translation (the image above has my own notes in it), and it doesn’t have times or anything else. All that is up to you (and I think it’s good practice).

Now, once you have the notes copied over, the next step involves some of the actually studying stuff, though how you do it differs depending on if you have English subtitles or not in the version of BOSS you downloaded, er, purchased.

Subtitles Vs. No Subtitles

I’m not going to say one is better than the other, necessarily. I think they both have their benefits and drawbacks. Let me list them out for you:

Subtitles

• Allows you to get through a lot more content more quickly (so you can study more content, but not as intensely)
• Doesn’t give you the opportunity to translate and figure stuff out on your own (which can be a great way to learn)
• Most subtitles, especially fansubs have a good number of mistakes in them, so you should be aware of that possibility.

No Subtitles

• Probably won’t be able to study as much in one sitting (though this depends on your level).
• Will have things you just won’t understand the meaning of (and will have to get someone to help you, which slows you down a bit).
• Overall probably a higher level, so +1 for advanced students and maybe +0 or -1 for intermediate students. Like I said, though, totally depends on you.

I don’t really care which one you choose, I think both can be good. The key, as always, is consistent study over a long period of time, so no matter which one you end up working with, as long as you do it every day you’ll make lots of progress, and that progress will grow exponentially over time.

Step 2: Notes + Dorama

The next step requires you to set your computer up so you can see both the notes and the video (in this guide’s case, BOSS Season 1 Episode 1). Here’s a look at an example setup. Pretty standard. Click on it to make it bigger.

On one side I have my notes (in Evernote) and the other side I have the drama playing. This version of the video happens to have subtitles, so we’ll go through that way. If your video doesn’t have subtitles (or you want to cover them, which is totally good too) you can follow pretty much the same steps, except you’ll have to look up grammar you don’t understand.

As the episode plays, you just follow along, writing the translations in. I’d recommend doing around 10 pieces of dialog at a time. Once you have the translations for all the sentences written down, move on to the next step (don’t worry, the speaking part comes after!).

Step 3: Vocab

Most likely, there’s going to be some vocab that you don’t understand or know yet (if there wasn’t any, then maybe you don’t need to study so much!). My favorite way to study vocabulary is Anki, though you can use whatever you’d like. After you’ve gotten your 10 dialog translations written down, go through and pick out the words you don’t know / don’t know really well, then put them into your flashcard program of choice. Just the act of putting your own words in is good study on its own, and of course you’ll use the flashcard program to study them over time, as well.

After you’ve put the words you don’t know into your flash card program, go through them once to help learn them a bit before moving on to the next step (which will also help you to learn them).

Step 4: Practicing Then Shadowing

The next step is actually two steps. First, you’ll want to go through your Japanese notes and make sure you can read everything. Maybe you won’t be able to (as in, going through your flashcard deck once wasn’t enough… that’s normal), so you’ll have to make sure that you can. Go through line by line and learn how to read everything – once you can read your 10 lines at a decent speed, then you can move on to shadowing, which involves using the video too.

For watching the dramas in this part, I’d recommend VLC. It plays pretty much anything, and it also has a neat little feature that helps a lot with this part. I’m sure it’s something similar on the PC / Linux, but if you hit ALT + COMMAND + ←, it’ll jump back in the video by 10 seconds. That’s perfect for studying a short bit of the video over and over again (until you can do it naturally right along with the video).

Anyways, for this step, you’ll play the video, and just try to speak along with the speaking characters. You’ll try to mimic their accent, and you’ll try to keep up with them in speed (this is why you do a little pre-study beforehand, so it’s easier to get up to their speed more quickly). Approximately ten seconds at a time, you’ll shadow the same bit over and over again, until you feel like you’re really really similar (or exactly the same) as what’s going on in your drama.

Now, this is where a little bit of knowledge comes in handy… people don’t always talk like normal people, so knowing a little bit of Japanese beforehand will help you to avoid studying terrible speech in such detail. Drama’s going to be a little better about this than anime, but that doesn’t mean you won’t run into a weirdo or two on whatever you’re watching. You’ve been warned!

After you’ve gotten the first ten seconds down pat, move on to the next ten seconds, and so on, until you’ve finished your first ten (or so) lines of dialog. Then, it’s repeat and review time!

Step 5: Repeat & Review

There has to be a bit of a mix between repeating and reviewing to make this study method really powerful. If you only study and never review, you won’t learn new words and you just won’t get as much out of it. Sure, review takes up some of your time you could be studying new things, but overall I think it’s definitely way worth it.

Here’s kind of what I’d recommend:

1. Make sure you study your vocab deck every day (Anki will tell you what you need to study and what you don’t need to study, so this is easy).
2. Go through everything you’ve done in the past once via your Evernote notes (read everything there, you don’t necessarily have to do it with the video every time, because that will get really long after a while.
3. Since you’re studying in blocks (as in 10 dialog points) you can mark sections off as “memorized” after a while. Once you’ve come to the point where you’ve memorized a block of dialog, you can probably skip that one and not review it anymore (or as much).
4. Color code things giving you trouble so you know to either look them up or study them more (i.e. use them in your Lang-8 journal entries for practice, or something). Review and work on these things more than things not giving you trouble (the point is to learn new things, after all).
5. Always try to mix in some new stuff too (as in, add 10 lines of dialog every day… or 20 lines, or 30 lines, or whatever you think you can handle while still doing your reviews).
6. Spend some time with each line of dialog and try to replace certain parts of it to make your own (different) sentences. This will help you to not get stuck on only what is said in the dramas you’re watching.

The main thing, though, is to study consistently. I’m always harping on this, but it’s the most important thing of all. Do this everyday (or do something else every day) and you’ll get good, no problem. It’s the consistency that counts, not the 12 hour cram-fests one day a week.

I hope you enjoyed this guide, and I hope it helps a lot of you too! I think it’s a pretty good strategy, and a pretty good way to practice and learn a lot, while still enjoying yourself! So… what drama will you start with?

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Just Added! Using Microphones

One thing I find particularly good for this is my microphone (there’s a less expensive version of this microphone that should do the same thing as what I’m about to describe below, though). These USB Yeti Microphones (and I’m sure plenty of other microphones I don’t know about) have an audio jack in them that lets you hook your headphones in and get zero latency headphone output. That means when you speak into the microphone, you can hear what the microphone is picking up (i.e. your voice) without any lag or delay. There’s just something great (and helpful) about listening to yourself as you’re speaking. It’s much different than just hearing yourself normally (which I think is pretty skewed, in general).

By plugging in a microphone like this while you do the shadowing portion of this guide, you can hear yourself, hear the audio from the video, and then really be able to compare and fix your accent more effectively. You’re speaking, but it’s like you’re hearing someone else. Totally different experience, in my opinion, and will help you to get your pitch, accent, and so on a lot better.

If you do this, you’ll just need to get a microphone with a good audio output. You’ll also want to make sure they’re zero-latency (because latency will throw you off, big time). I like Blue’s microphones, though to be honest that’s all I’ve ever used, so I’m sure there are others just as good out there. Starting to get super tech savvy, aye?

Like this? You should see Tofugu’s “Studying Japanese With Drama Guide” – it’s like this post, but bigger (and better!).

Okay, so I’ve been known to say that people should get off the couch and stop claiming they were learning Japanese from watching anime with subtitles. I think 99% of the time this is still true, because most people aren’t actively studying with the subtitles (and instead just watching as much TV as possible catching a few things here or there, then using “learning” as an excuse for consuming so much media). Today I’m going to sort of take the opposite stance from where I usually am and tell you how I think you can use Japanese TV/movies/anime to learn Japanese, and subtitles actually play a big part in this, surprisingly!

Who This Is For

I don’t think everyone can use subtitles to learn Japanese. I’d say that someone who’s at more of an intermediate/advanced level will get way more out of this than someone who’s a beginner at Japanese (if you’re a beginner at Japanese, I recommend TextFugu to get started, especially if you’re self-teaching yourself). This is because it takes a while to be knowledgeable enough to actually be able to look things up, figure things out, and know what to search for when you need to find / learn something. If you don’t have this experience, learning from Japanese TV/Movies/Anime will most likely just be plain discouraging (and if it’s not, you’re probably not trying hard enough).

Update: Some good points made in the comments! Also good to be intermediate / advanced level before doing this because then you know about gendered language, how to avoid copying cartoony weird voices, and so on. You basically will have to knowledge to know what not to do while using this method!

Also, in terms of time spent, beginners will get a lot more out of other resources in the same amount of time (versus spending time watching video). Intermediate / advanced level Japanese students will get a lot more out of that same amount of time, making it a lot more worth while.

Where To Find Japanese Media

There are a bunch of ways to get your hands on Japanese television, movies, or anime, most of which I can’t really talk much about. A lot of Japanese movies can be bought on Amazon, in local video stores, and so on. There are even a good number of Japanese movies on Netflix. Of course, being the netizens that you are, I’m guessing you’re finding these things elsewhere. Point is, the Internet is a great place to find something interesting that you can study with. I’m sure a lot of you have many gigs of Japanese content on your computers already… all legal of course… ahem.

Now, I’d say there’s two kinds of content (at least in terms of this article), and that is hard subbed and soft subbed. We’re talking subtitles here, so we’ll ignore RAW (totally in Japanese, no subtitles) and save it for another day.

Soft subtitles are subtitles you can add and remove, whenever you want. They are sometimes separate files and sometimes part of the video file. You can use a player like VLC to play videos with subtitles (subtitles are under “video” in the menu).

Hard subtitles, on the other hand, are stuck on the video no matter what. You can’t remove them, and they’re part of the video itself. These are a little harder to work with, but do okay if that’s all you can find. If you can, though, seek out the soft subs as they tend to be better (but are a bit more rare, I’d say).

Either way, I think finding something will (hopefully) be the easiest part for you – using it to study is where things get difficult.

Studying With Subtitles

I’m sure there’s a billion ways to study with subtitles, but I think it comes down to a few important things.

1. Being active in your learning (versus being passive)
2. Watching the same thing multiple times
3. Being at a high enough level to be able to use your content as a Japanese learning resource

Here’s the step by step of how I’d recommend using Japanese subtitles to study Japanese:

1. Break Things Up Into Chunks

Depending on your level, I’d make the chunks smaller rather than bigger. I’d say if you’re “intermediate” level, keep the chunks at 30 seconds to a minute. If you’re advanced, 2 minutes to 5 minutes. If you’re better than advanced, then you probably don’t need to read this article. Go enjoy some TV subtitle free.

I know that breaking things up into smaller pieces makes it hard to enjoy the content, but the goal is to get to the point where you can enjoy it without subtitles, so it’s important to take it a piece at a time. The less Japanese you know, the smaller the chunks (and goals) should be, so that way you don’t get discouraged (and ultimately just end up quitting or taking the easy way out).

2. Listen, Compare (To The Subs), And Write Down

This is where “being active” comes in. When using subtitles to study, it’s uber-important that you’re actively comparing and thinking about the subtitles versus what is actually spoken. When you’ve listened to it enough times, it’ll be time to write down the Japanese. I’d recommend using Evernote (read about Evernote and Japanese here and here) to write out the conversations.

If you’re at too low of a level, this becomes tough to do as well. Being able to listen, remember, then write down something gets easier the better you are at Japanese, so if you’re having trouble just know that it’ll get better the more you practice. It might be really tough at first, but things will start slowing down as you listen to more of it. Pains me to say this, but anime tends to do a better job enunciating and speaking slowly, so this may be a way to start out.

3. Shadow

Now that you have the Japanese written down, it’s time to shadow. Language shadowing is a pretty great way to practice, and if you do enough of it you will really start seeing it pay off. The idea is that you have both the audio and text of something (in the language that you’re learning). As you listen to the audio, you “shadow” by speaking along with it. The text is just there to help you along (until you don’t need it). You’re basically just learning to speak like the person who is speaking on screen.

4. Repeat Chunk After Chunk

Then, when you’ve mastered one chunk, you move on to the next chunk. Before you know it, you’ve finished an episode.

5. Watch It Raw (And Understand It!)

The last step, after you’ve gone through all of the chunks, is to go back and watch it raw (without subs). In theory, you should understand everything (and it should be a really good feeling of accomplishment too, I imagine!). You should also be able to speak along with the conversations, as well, if you want! If you have something that’s hard-subbed, you’ll just want to take another window on your computer and cover up the subtitles. If you’re watching on your television, then just tape some paper / cardboard over the screen to cover most of it up. Not the best viewing experience (why I recommend soft subs) but will totally work and get you the same results.

Then, Be Consistant

If there’s anything I talk about time and time again, it’s consistency. You’ll learn so much more by studying every day (versus studying ALL day Saturday, or something like that). It’s just how your brain works. Little accomplishments made over a long period of time equals huge results. If you do this every day, you’ll surely get better at Japanese. For Intermediate / Advanced students, it definitely would have the potential of taking you from intermediate→advanced or advanced→fluent.

Good luck, and please be active when you’re watching Japanese shows! :D

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