Just found out I’m moving to Tokyo, and starting to panic a bit!
Like many people (at least based off the reddit posts I’ve seen) I’ve done a mix of anki and wanikani (now 100% wanikani, about to hit level 20) and still struggle with basic conversation and listening. Though I have over 2k vocab my grammar is only slightly better than N5 (I’ve read most of Tae Kim and Genki I but really don’t like textbooks). I basically grind wanikani and watch jdramas and listen to jpop as my semi-active or passive immersion, probably 2-3 hours of Japanese daily exposure. I can read basic texts and understand a few words here and there, but since my major vocab source is wanikani there’s a lot of really common everyday words I don’t know.
I’ve recently learned that I’ve been approved for an internal transfer to the Tokyo office of my company, probably happening late spring/early summer so I only have a few months to get my speaking/basic conversational skills down, meanwhile I’m spending most of my learning time with words like 留守番電話…meanwhile I just learned what まさに means, so I’m really questioning the value of most of my WK vocab, 2k felt like a nice milestone but effectively I think my spoken language vocab is extremely limited. I don’t want to slow down or quit Wanikani, but I think I should re-prioritize speaking ASAP. I’d like to be conversational in basic topics when I’m in Japan, so I really hit the ground running when I’m there!
I have had really basic conversations with Japanese colleagues, but I’m wondering how I should go about quickly leveling up — memorize a bunch of phrases before I learn all the grammar (maybe there’s some good books for that)? Get a tutor over iTalki/some other service? (my company will cover any educational expense related to Japanese).
I should note that my workplace is 100% English, so that I don’t need to produce or even read technical Japanese, it’s purely for casual/social conversation — just want to make sure I’m not the one 外人 making everyone use English at 2am 飲み会!
by stokeforbroke