I just moved to Japan last month. I’ve been studying Japanese for about a year on my own. I have a lot of friends in Japan who want to teach me Japanese, and I am also starting weekly tutoring next week. The only problem with learning from my friends is that they don’t know English, so we have to rely on Google Translate. It’s not always super effective.
I also started watching Japanese television because I have cable but I don’t have Wi-Fi. I feel like television is one of the most useful things because I have a full immersive experience as there are no subtitles. Because my job doesn’t allow me to speak Japanese at work, I am unable to have a fully immersive experience in Japan 24/7.
If anyone has any tips from their own personal experiences, I’d love to hear it. Life in Japan is really rough when you don’t speak Japanese, so I’m trying to reach fluency as quick as possible. I’m fully prepared to study 1.5+ hours a day if that’s what it takes.
Thanks in advance! 😃
3 comments
Me and my friends have coined the term “Gaijin-smash.” To gaijin-smash your way through a situation is to use whatever broken Japanese you can muster to get your point across or get through a situation. Usually it can get quite embarassing, but keep doing this over and over and over (on top of your normal studying of course) and you’ll get better at it.
Probably not the best advice
Get a Japanese significant other.
Besides keep grinding vocab/kanji, if you live in Japan, I recommend:
1. Find the nearest city hall that offers weekly japanese classes for foreign residents. Usually these places have volunteer teachers (mostly retired japanese), that have interest in culture exchange. Sometimes they organize outings like bbq and hiking where you can meet other people. Most japanese that attends these outings speaks in an easy manner.
2. Prefer reading news over manga/fiction (there are also easy japanese news). The topics you will learn are conversation starters with anyone you meet in Japan + you will learn many premade sentences that you can use while talking.