A no-bullshit way to learn Japanese from beginner to advanced based on my own experiences.
更新日：2024年12月26日
Go to your local book store and buy a coursebook on Japanese I recommend.
Assimil
Living language
Pimsleur
Go online and get a hiragana chart and a Katakana chart.
Study the hiragana chart and katakana chart by writing each character out one by one doing a full page or more until you have memorized the characters. This will be important in learning from your course book because you will be introduced into romaji first then hiragana and katakana then finally kanji. It is fairly easy to find a hiragana and Katakana chart online. Just search on google images and more than 100 samples should appear.
What you should be focusing on with the coursebook is really getting the foundations down.
But the most important thing you should be doing is making sure you have good confirmation.
What I mean by that is that you need confirmation on whatever you’ve learned to believe that you are actually making progress in your coursebook. The only way to do that is getting actual references from Japanese media. Some people watch anime but I strongly advise you to watch Japanese dramas because it will give you better insight of how Japanese people speak and mannerism along with when or why you should respond in the context of every given scenario.
When you’ve studied your first lesson in your course book you need to go over it enough times when you’ve finally gotten fed up of reading it because you’ve figured it out. For me I’d do 1hr a lesson and if I felt that I didn’t completely understand it fully I’d start it again all over the next day at the same hour. Along with doing the coursebook for an hour I made sure to watch at least an hour of Japanese drama’s for an hour as well.
Now something good happens when you do this. You start to get confirmation by seeing and hearing the context of the words you’ve learned from your coursebook from the drama’s you were watching. The more you do this the more your level of curiosity should grow to wanting to study more in the coursebook. Do not forget that feeling this is the feeling precisely what language learning is all about. If you don’t feel this never ending sense of curiosity maybe learning Japanese is not for you.
The Japanese dramas that you watch should be in the taste of the genre you like to begin with. You should be learning the language through your interests that you would already have in your own language.
The next form of confirmation you need is from actual natives. You can do this by meeting natives online to do a language exchange or meeting them in person. This part is important because the relationships you make with the natives will give you a reason to study more for the sake of communication. Your strategy should be studying at home, being curious about a word or a segment in your coursebook about culture or why they say the things they say or simply from the Japanese dramas that you’ve been watching. That's where your sense of curiosity should be in full gear asking unique questions that show interest in them just as much as they have interest in you. When you finally get home you can research and fact check what they said at the language exchange was right or wrong. Because natives won't always be right it’s all about having confirmation that this exists. This should give you more confidence in speaking just as much as the confidence you have with your developing knowledge base of the language.
Now do this system over and over again. And I can guarantee you will rapidly understand Japanese and the culture more thoroughly and in the right context.
Buy the 3 Heisig's books for Kanji (Remembering the Kanji by James W. Heisig's)
Once you feel like it's time to learn kanji. If you follow exactly what the Heisig's books instructs you on about remembering the Kanji and learn the story of each Kanji you will have a better shot at remembering and retaining those stories for each kanji when you need to write.
The first book from Heisig's has a lot of vocabulary for understanding the Kanji and stroke order through learning stories and creating mnemonics. What you should do learning the first book is focus on going over that Kanji enough times where you feel you are fed up seeing it. A lot of people need enough reps in order to know if they’ve truly understood and learned the lesson. If you don’t know when you’ve actually learned the Kanji yet. Based on how many times I’ve gone over that book. I’ve made sure I’ve tallied the amount of times I’ve done one character and my tally for when I’ve finally understood it is over 15 times. So if that is a good benchmark for you feel free to set that as your goal too.
The 2nd book will focus a lot on vocabulary with the kunyomi and the onyomi. These readings are important to understanding Japanese comprehension. If you do not understand the 2200 characters onyomi and kunyomi you will struggle to understand new Kanji.
The best way to master onyomi and kunyomi is using flashcards for each character along with the character of it being in use. Like a sentence. So what your task would be doing is making a flash card with the.
Kanji characters on one side with the onyomi and kunyomi on it.
The 2nd side with the definition and sentence use of the kanji.
Use the 2nd book from heisig's and create your flash cards instead of drilling them individually and condense them into flashcards whether you do this with the popular Anki app or the brainscape app you can download online. That or manually making those flashcards it's up to you.
The third book is advanced and you may not need to do it but repeat what you should do as I already said with the first 2 books.
Grammar
Since you’ve already understood the basics of Japanese grammar already at this point you should buy a grammar book that is intermediate to advanced.
I recommend the Japan Times book intermediate to advanced book. At this point you should know enough to read at a competent level. Your task now is to take each lesson or sentence in grammar. And making another form of flash cards again after you’ve learned the why and the use of the grammar. After that do as you’ve done before but this time.
Add the grammar on one side
Take the definition and example sentence using the grammar on the other side.
Last thing to reach an advanced level in Japanese and that is reading Japanese literature novels or books in your own interest again.
I’ve already explained this step before so I’ll leave a video as well. Here are the steps.
Read the book until you find a word you don’t understand then go online research that word with sites like jisho.org or weblio to find the definition and meaning of it to make flashcards with it.
Continue the process of collecting words you don’t know and making flash cards.
Finish the book then review the words in the flashcards.
Start a new book with the same method.
If you do this your Japanese will get better because just like you were already doing you are learning the language in the right context. Every book in itself is relatively a space repetition. You will see the same words more often than not by just reading another book within your genre that you are interested in. Are you starting to see how easy learning any language will become if you use this method?
If you want to, you don’t need to but if you do and have interest in doing the JLPT I recommend you use Matome book’s or the Kanzen master books according to the JLPT level you wish to pass. And just like I’ve said about reading Japanese books before, use the same method utilizing the flashcard system to learn words you don’t know. And to review them with accuracy. I used the Kanzen master series before so I can say that it is very thorough and it made a very huge difference in my understanding of Japanese idioms. I highly recommend someone taking N1 or N2 for the JLPT to use those books.
If you’ve read this far you must be serious about learning this language and I hope I can help you in a few things. As I mentioned before with idioms my entire site consists of Japanese and English expressions/idioms. I also run a language exchange every week online on Saturdays at 8pm est. I also have a book going into more details on how to study Japanese that I've already covered some in this blog already. If you are looking to bolster your Japanese grammar studies you can check my blog type in Taisaku in the search bar and you can find at least 167+ intermediate level grammar lessons. For free I’ve learned this stuff years ago and I decided to consolidate it for learners. If you do not want to have to search for each grammar one by one consider buying my flashcard deck that already has 167+ with the use and explanation of each grammar. The blog will give you more examples but it will take longer to learn.
The blog alone if you were to learn from it would take you typically 5-6 months, the flashcards would take you less than 1-2 months. It's completely up to you on what you choose but at the end of the day I gave you free information and a way for you to save time. Do with that information as you will.
My book a comprehensive guide on how to study Japanese effectively
The weekly Japanese/English language exchange
The 167+ Japanese grammar flashcards
If you have questions and want to be part of a community of people studying Japanese and English check out the new forum.
For anyone interested here are videos of me using Japanese.
Ken and Kazu
Me teaching Japanese expressions.
Me translating English into Japanese for Japanese natives learning English expressions.
Thank you for reading. I wish the best for your Japanese learning adventure.
Comments