For foreigners who didn’t grow up speaking Japanese and have lived here for a minute, how long did it take before you got comfortable talking to others in 日本語？
I moved to Tokyo from the US this year for work and have been fortunate enough to get lessons provided by my employer. I’m comfortable enough getting around and can manage any exchanges that have a regular script (コンビニ for example).
My reading and writing have been serviceable, but my speaking/listening is downright awful. Any tips or tricks to pick it up faster other than “study more?”
18 comments
It’s been over a decade and I still don’t feel comfortable. I could maybe pass N4 if I studied but when you’re close to 40 with a full time job and kids, you don’t really have the time and brain power to study much
I will never be comfortable speaking Japanese so long as hierarchy is so central to the language. What I say cannot reflect my values and be natural Japanese speech.
After I passed n2 I felt I could allow myself to be more confident. Def didn’t feel comfortable until then. Even now I’m still not anywhere close to a native speaker. N2 is like some kinda elementary school level.
Depends on what you mean by comfortable speaking. I’ve been here 4 years and was comfortable speaking with people within 6 months, even though I was a low level. I’ve passed N1 now and use Japanese for work and I would say most situations I have no trouble with, if that’s your definition.
Unfortunately the only advice that’s real *is* study more. You can change how that study looks (textbooks, consuming native content, speaking with people, work) but any consumption of Japanese should be treated as study if you’re trying to learn as fast as possible.
4 years in my 20’s. Though I feel like I’ve regressed at 40s. Being young and going out with a pen and pocket sized family mart notebook really helped back in the day. Family and kids really changed all that. Get out and explore and keep trying to communicate. If you are writing shit down, it’s not uncommon for Japanese to write additional kanji and words in your book for you.
7 months here, often mistaken as japanese during conversation (mask ftw).
I train by reading VN, and actually read the protagonist’s line instead of silently reading.
I felt really comfortable in a business setting when I noticed I could follow a several hours long business meeting and still get 70-80% of what what discussed and share my opinion.
Working in a Japanese company where everything was done in Japanese really helped me to improve. I was N4 when I got hired, and the first year was a nightmare. I spent most of my evenings dissecting emails and meetings minutes, checking grammar patterns and new vocabulary. I passed n3 after six months then I stopped bothering with JLPT. Now I’m handling calls and meetings without too much difficulties. I think the next level would be dealing with legal documents/proofreading but I’m not interested I to that a all.
It took me a good 2-3 years to start speaking more than a few sentences. Although I actually understood pretty much everything being said to me. I’m so glad I actually started to talk more because as soon as I got that confidence my Japanese improved drastically.
My advice is: don’t be shy…put yourself out there and talk as much as you can. It’s the best way to improve.
6 years here. haven’t had the opportunity to learn after I moved here, only had a 4 month crash course (3×2 classes a week) before that.
i came to the realization after the first few yrs that if there’s a will, there’s a way. I know I’m far from fluent, I don’t use Japanese at work and after I started dating 2 years ago all my girlfriends spoke better English than I did Japanese, so I’m building vocabulary very slowly. making a phone call in Japanese is still nightmare inducing, but face to face… again, if there is a will, there is a way. in my experience, most people I interacted with over the years either understood me as I were, or would not have understood me even if I was 100% fluent (or would have pretended they didn’t). this includes typical high anxiety situations like 病院 and 美容院 as well.
I want to get to a point within a year where I can read news without any zealous kanji lookup exercise or call my credit card company with no interpreter without any issues, but I don’t feel uncomfortable speaking even now. unless I would need to do a presentation or a TED talk but that’s a different story.
a year, but immersed myself af during the initial year here – worked in local bars, my partner was Japanese, played sports with Japanese folks and got sales/customer support job in tech that forced me to learn and apply quickly
If you want to feel comfortable speaking, you need to use Japanese as much as possible. I don’t know where you live, but here if you want to survive, you need to use Japanese. That forced me to learn a lot faster.
A few months, but that’s because I already had the passive vocabulary, just had to transform it in active vocabulary.
As others have said, I agree that there is no substitute to simply going out and practicing. I studied for two years in the US but when not forced to use the language, I found myself not applying what I had learned. By (at least trying) to use what I’ve learned it starts to cement the patterns and structures.
Learned how to say “gradually”? Tell your neighbor how winter is coming and it is gradually gettting colder! Learned a new verb conjugation? Think of how you can use it in a casual conversation; ideally pertaining to your current situation, conversation, hobbies, whatever.
I find practicing listening to be more difficult as I can’t prepare anything in my head beforehand, and I’ll admit it’s often embarrassing to proudly proclaim a statement only to give a deer-in-headlights look back when replied to and you didn’t catch a word, but it’s been my experience that people seem genuinely enthusiastic to engage in (brief) exchanges when it’s clear you are learning the language in earnest.
8 months for me. I came here in 2018 for undergrad, after 7 months, i started my first part-time, then my Japanese was skyrocketing. I didn’t really study, but i got N2 (this July) in 2 years of studying, and about to get N1 this coming December.
It depends a lot on what is comfortable to you but if you study a lot you could probably have basic conversation after about a year. If you want to have native level conversation then it might take ten years.
Personally I got N1 after about five years of moderate study and I continue to study but I don’t feel all that comfortable with Japanese. I feel like I’ll never be native level.
5 months into my working holiday. I had a decent grasp of Japanese before but never practiced vocally with anyone. When I first came on my WH I was very conscious about messing up and the “buffering” time it took me to go from
Spoken Japanese -> process to English translation -> create English response -> translate to Japanese -> speak
Was way too long that convos became awkward so I just ended up going with variations of そうですね 90% of the time. Conversations obviously didn’t last long that way.
I remember the turning point for me. On my WH I was traveling like 70% of the time, and almost always to inaka because I like inaka > city. It was during a trip to yakushima. I booked a diving experience with a dive master there.
He only spoke Japanese (which was fine since I understood ~70%, just sucked at replying) but brought an English photo book of all the stuff we’d be seeing. Anyway on the way back after, I must’ve been so tired but excited after the amazing dive that we chattered for the entire 40min drive back.
It only registered to me I didn’t even think about the fact I was speaking (broken) Japanese until we got back. The ‘switch’ was me ditching steps 2 – 4 above. Rather than instinctively thinking of “what’s that in English”, it became just
Spoken to in Japanese -> reply in Japanese
I can’t really explain it more than that lol. I suppose having a decent grasp of Japanese first to at least _understand_ what is being said is key. Then it’s a matter of just YOLO and don’t worry about making mistakes. I always remind myself that even if someone spoke to me in horribly broken English, I’ve never cared as long as I got the gist of it.
I dunno. After 12 years, I’ve kind of been at the same level and don’t feel comfortable nor enjoy using it. I stopped studying around 14 years ago, though. I’m able to do most anything on my own in Japanese. I took the N3 some 7-8 years ago and that was a breeze.
I find most people that come here and work in English speaking environments never go beyond N3-N4. I am still surprised by even the lack of some of my colleague’s cultural unawareness, them having been in the country as long as me or longer. Some people probably couldn’t pass N5. But, nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a difficult language to learn for English L1s and the writing system is almost designed to be a puzzle to prevent foreigners from learning it properly.
Out of the hundreds of foreign acquaintances I know, perhaps only a few of them speak fluent Japanese. And they’re the weirder ones.
I felt way more confident in my Japanese when I passed N3 than when I passed N2 lol.
I feel like you’re asking the wrong question though, because the amount of time you’re here is not related to your ability, for most everyone it’s more about the amount of effort.