I am going to japan exactly 1 month from now.
Last year i had studied japanese for a while but kinda dropped it. This was stupid from me since i knew that i was going to japan next year. Nevertheless i set a challenge for myself. I want to learn as much Japanese as i can in 1 month.
I currently know katakana and hiragana and about 25 kanji. My listening skills are around N5 level, i can understand like 60-70% of very basic conversations and can usually make out the meaning of a sentence when watching easy japanese youtube videos.
I have very little but still some familiarity with the grammer and reading hiragana goes quite fluent for me. What i struggle with the most making sentences on my own and talking. The pronunciation isn’t too hard for me its just that my vocabulary is lacking and i dont know how to properly form a sentence on the spot.
What studying advice can you give me for my 1 month of learning? Do you guys know the best way to start and what to keep an eye out for?
Thanks in advance!
6 comments
And how much time **daily** can you spend on learning in the next 4 weeks? That’s the real question here.
If your main goal is to try and be conversational, I guess you should just keep studying vocab+grammar. Maybe Anki with vocab decks or Bunpro for grammar drilling, or just use some textbook.
Then again if you want to understand written stuff, you **really** want to learn some kanjis. Personally I found Wanikani super helpful for kanji learning, and even when living there it was probably the most noticeably helpful method. Everything is written with kanjis, so just knowing your kanas won’t really help much. Just be mindful that WK feels extremely slow at start (and you can’t really speed it up), but it will kick off very fast after like the first 4 levels.
Maybe [this 30 days routine](https://learnjapanese.moe/routine/) might be useful for you.
To be completely honest: at your current level, most of the Japanese you will see and hear is going to go over your head. This is not meant to discourage you, it’s just being realistic. Take every opportunity to learn more while you’re in Japan.
Your speaking is just going to suck until you either A.) start speaking a lot with natives while in japan or wherever you are located, or B.) you have been learning Japanese up to a point where you have gotten a very good grasp on reading/listening. I know a few people who haven’t spoken much japanese before they actually got to japan but did pretty well once here because they had been in school for 3+ years specifically for japanese. Option A is the quicker and easier route, though. I’m currently here in exchange and to be honest with you speaking is haaaaaard at first. Your brain just mashed everything together for the first few weeks you try to string together sentences. It’s like trying to take apart and put back together an engine from memory if you’ve only ever seen a YouTube video on it. After the first time you do it, though, your mind will remember a little more. Then keep doing it over and over and over again until your mind is able to construct and deconstruct things without even thinking about it.
Long story short, don’t even worry a ton about trying to cram things like vocab and grammar in a month, instead just learns a bunch of phrases. If you get around 25 phrases down you are going to be fine. Some of my Japanese friends and I have a joke where you could get by in japan entirely on just the words “大丈夫、マジ！？、and そうそうそう”
Edit: also “お願いします”
Pimsleur with a complete focus spoken Japanese is your best bet.