Genki Japan Blog はじめまして。

When starting off on your language-learning journey, and even long after it's ended, it's easy to get caught up in methods and what methods work the best. Now, on this site I endorse every method, whether you're a university student or a self-learner; whether you eat, drink, and sleep textbooks, immerse yourself into the language, or speak your way to fluency. I don't care because I know that everyone learns differently. That's why I hate it when people out there try and make it sound like there's only one good way to learn. I've come across people who look at input methods and say, "Whatever happened to hard work! Is this some new age cult of language learning!" and I've come across people who bash on the output method saying, "You know you're still not good at it!" These people are ignorant, and I don't use that word often or take it lightly. You see, there's a lot of ways to learn a language, and I myself use different ...

Yesterday and this morning, I found myself helplessly struggling to watch a really odd Japanese movie called パコダテ人, when I got distracted by the Japanese video sharing website, Nico Nico Douga (ニコニコ動画) and typed in "My Little Pony" in English. Why did I do such an odd thing? Someone on the Reviewing the Kanji forums (review coming soon) said that the Japanese were fansubbing the show, which has now become an internet phenomenon. I got myself acquainted with the show and the memes associated with it (be careful, as it's suprisingly addicting) and decided to check it out next time I was bored. All I can say is that if you're at least an intermediate learner, you should be using Nico Nico Douga, and if you're a brony , this is a great way to indulge your love of the ponies while learning Japanese at the same time. Learning is supposed to be fun, and if it's fun for you, then excellent! So, how do you learn Japanese from fansubs of My Little Pony ? First of all, ...

Learning anything, let alone a foreign language, is like boiling water. To boil water, you simply set a pot of cold water on something hot and wait until it begins to bubble rapidly. That’s it. It’s not hard at all, and that boiling water can used for cooking a variety of things once it boils, much like how you can use your language acquisition for any number of things once you have it. There’s only one catch: you can’t turn the heat off at any point in time or the water will grow cold and you’ll have to start all over again regardless of how far along you were in the boiling process. So, if the water is foreign language, then what is the heat? It’s study material and native material you watch, listen to, or read. I’m not going to focus on the study material, as I’ve reviewed all kinds of that on this website, but rather on native material. By native material I mean anything that’s intended for native audiences. Since this particular blog is about Japanese, it means things like anime, ...

ICO will always hold a special place in my heart, and is one of the best games that came out for the PlayStation 2. It’s a beautiful game in every sense of the word, and I dare anyone who says that video games aren’t real art to play this game and its prequel Shadow of the Colossus . These games are really art games, in the same sense that some films are art films. ICO is simplistic, minimalist in nature, and manages to accomplish its goal to make the player feel a real connection to the characters, not in the role-play sense, but in the sense that Yorda is someone you actually care about, the castle really picks at your brain, and you feel the burden of Ico himself. Unfortunately, the NTSC version of the game leaves much to be desired, seeing as how it’s unfinished. You can beat the game, but the AI isn’t as good as other versions of the game, some of the puzzles are different, and some of the extras are missing. That doesn’t make the game bad, but it certainly isn’t that great. Luc...

When I reviewed TextFugu for a second time , I mentioned Gakuu and how TextFugu members could get 80% off. Well, I decided to give it a go and see what to make of it. What I discovered is a goldmine for sentence mining, and a great way to understand the way the Japanese talk, especially when things aren't nice and clear like they are in textbooks. My first impression was that it was TextFugu for intermediate and advanced students, and what I found was something different, and almost better. It won't overshadow TextFugu, which will continue to grow into its own advanced material, but is excellent as a suppliment for a textbook, or an amazing find if you're an input person. Output people, I'm afraid this might not be your cup of tea. Apparently the Gakuranman, as he studied Japanese through textbooks, discovered that they just weren't doing it for him the way they were when he was a beginner. Basically, they didn't seem to be teaching "real world" Japan...

Yes, I know it's Monday, but I was busy Friday working on my second part of Anki. Anyway, Today I'm reviewing The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Plot Overview: Cynical Kyon finds himself going to high school surrounded by aliens, espers, time travelers, and one very, very powerful teenage girl, Haruhi Suzumiya. I'm sure everyone has heard of this anime before, as it seems to have taken the otaku subculture by storm, thanks to it's witty characters, excellent script, and that one dance . Basically, Kyon meets Haruhi, an eccentric girl who wishes to meet aliens, espers, time travelers, and basically anyone who isn't "normal" since that bores her. Dragging our poor protagonist into making an unofficial club, the SOS Brigade, of which its sole mission is to find these abnormal characters and have fun with them, she then manages to kidnap (I think Koizumi came willingly, and she apparently inherited Yuki along with the room) a few other students to complete th...

In my last post , I reviewed Anki, a flashcard srs (spaced repition system) program that is almost essential for language learning. Now, I'm going to talk about the most common ways to use this flashcard program, as people have come up with ingenious ways to use this program to help them learn that I for one wouldn't have thought of by myself, but I'm a bit slow I think. The most obvious way to use flashcards is to memorize facts. When I was in second grade, our teacher was obsessed with using flashcards to teach us math. We would have contests and competitions over these flashcards and who could get the most right or recall the answer fast enough. To share a little secret with you, math and I still don't get along, despite the flashcards. When learning a language and being told to make flashcards, most people try to make flashcards in the same way that they use them for mathematics or science, or any other subject. You write out the Japanese word on one side and the En...

Okay, so today's topic is a bit different than I originally intended. I was going to do a post about how studying is supposed to be fun, not taxing, and then I realized that I have a ton of reviews to do for anime, games, movies, learning tools, etc. As such, today's review is for Anki , my favorite flash card program. Back in the day when I was first thinking of reviewing flashcard programs, it was going to be iKnow/Smart.fm vs. Anki , but since iKnow is no longer free, it therefore is no longer worth my time to use and Anki wins the day just for being free. Flashcards can make life much, much easier for anyone learning Japanese, regardless of what method you go about using. If you study via the academic method, vocab lists are king, and flashcards can be pain to buy or make and quiz yourself on. The input method usually has the most flashcard users, as they rely on repition rather than instruction to give them the bulk of their knowledge, and even output people use them often...

When most people think of success, they tend to think of the past and present tense; what they have accomplished and what benefits are they reaping right now. For me, success isn't something tangible, nor is an accomplishment I've already made or a reward I'm enjoying at this very moment. For me, success is a mindset, and it's taken a lot of hard failures for me to realize this. Success in a language, or in anything for that matter, starts with your mind. You can't get anything accomplished if you don't put your all into it, and you won't put your all into it if you don't think it'll be worth it. It's more important than your method you use (as you can see, on this site I advocate them all, so long as they work for you), and it's more important than what book you use, what blog you read, or what website you're engrossed in. Growing up, the people around me and my own experiences taught me the greatest false lesson ever: never get your hop...

I'll be doing my Friday review at some point, since I was too busy last Friday talking about the poopcycle . Anyway, today I wanted to make a brief point about language-learning software, specifically, products like Rocket Japanese that have affiliate marketers clinging to them and putting up false "reviews". I'd been considering trying this software and reviewing it myself, but I decided to Google "Rocket Japanese review" first, as I like to get a gist of what the software does before delving in, and the company's website, while looking promising, yet overpriced and hyped up, isn't exactly unbiased. Unfortunately, every single review I clicked on was basically the same thing! Here's my problem with language-learning software: it's so easy to get scammed. Most of the good reviews that come from an independent website are made by people who either didn't use the software themselves or who are relatively unknowledgable about language learni...

I have no intention stealing Tofugu's content, but I'm going to redirect you to this blog entry on there. All I have to ask is, "Why?" Whenever I tell people I speak Japanese, or whenever they see me "studying", they ask me why I would want to learn a language like that. "Japan is a messed up place," they sometimes say, and I usually just shrug my shoulders and assume that they were either veterans of WWII, or had relatives who were. Otherwise I just assume their a bit ignorant. And then Japan comes and does something like this and everyone else's suspicions are affirmed! Why would they do that? I mean, energy conservation is a good thing, but a motorcycle powered by poop? That's pretty gross, and it's from the company Toto that makes those funny little toilets that spray water at your rear to help clean you off after you've done your business. This isn't a long entry; I just wanted to draw everyone's attention to this mons...

I have officially found the solution to Pimsleur's price tag! It's called JapanesePod101.com , and it's full of audio files, .pdfs, and all kinds of stuff that makes Pimsleur look really outdated. Let's face it, the Internet never fails to amaze me, even after all this time. It makes it possible to do so much, and, combined with an iPod, CD Player, or some other portable audio device, it's possible to learn Japanese online and even while on-the-go, and not necessarily in your car, either. It's fun, interesting, and provides a lot more information with just the audio portions alone than anything else I've come across, etiher online or the old-fashioned CD player or cassett tape. Now, I've known about this site for quite a while now, and I actually signed up for it a couple months ago. It took me a while because I would see their ads over all these sites, and seeing ads makes me think, " Another Rosetta Stone ! Yikes!" However, I'm happy to ...

Regardless of how you choose to do the bulk of your learning, whether through speaking and using the language, Japanizing (my new word) your environment, or by memorizing textbooks, you're going to have to delve into some native literature. Why? Because it'll get you ready for how the Japanese actually speak and write, and it can be quite a bit different from your sanitized textbook. Granted, you'll have to watch actual Japanese shows, too, in order to familiarize yourself with how the Japanese speak, namely, with how fast they speak, but that's for the next post. No, this one concerns reading, which is easily the most difficult thing to do in Japanese. Now, I recommend you use Heisig for learning the kanji, so how do you learn the readings? Memorizing them from your textbook, dictionary, or any other reference tool just won't work. Been there, tried that, failed hard. You want to learn the kanji in context, and since the Kanji in Context book is boring for a lot of...

This site is Tofugu/TextFugu's biggest rival, yet it promotes an entirely different school of thought . AJATT is like the bible of input language learning, which is also promoted heavily by the creator of LingQ, Steve Kauffman . It's creator, Khatzumoto, discovered that language learning doesn't have to be a time-consuming task required hundreds of hours of homework (he hates classes), and that it's a process, not a science. I really admire this website and recommend it to everyone. AJATT started out as a blog in which Khatzumoto chronicled the methods he used for learning Japanese while he was still a busy college student and not taking classes in the language. He realized that all one really has to do is to try and do as much as you can in the language. Instead of memorizing grammar rules, reading books, and "studying", you just grow familiar with the language naturally. Here's what I mean by that. When you're busy working, cleaning, doing homework...

Disclaimer: I still stand by what I said in my post about TextFugu vs. AJATT, that these two things cannot be compared, and this second look doesn't change that. TextFugu is a product of the academic method; namely, it is more step-by-step and focused than anything from the other methods. That said, if you're doing things the AJATT way and are looking for a good textbook to supplement or solidify your learnings, please look elsewhere are TextFugu is too large a commitment financially speaking to use as a suppliment for AJATT or any other input or output method. So, some time has gone by and TextFugu has grown bigger and better, and I think it warrants a second look. Last time I reviewed it , TextFugu was a smaller site with infrequent and, seemingly, inconsistent updates; now it is a sprawling site full of good information and I can fully endorse it. Anyone who wishes to learn primarily by textbook ( input and output people , this is probably not for you), TextFugu is a great...