Background: I work for an investment banking firm that has global branches and clients, and I’ve received an opportunity to travel and work in Tokyo in the beginning of August. I know very little about the Japanese language, but I would like to learn as much as I can before I get there. I know I won’t be anywhere close to proficient, but a solid foundation (mostly speaking) is what I am after. I would appreciate any advice on resources that I can use to help me!
6 comments
Congratulations. There are not so many banking jobs in Tokyo anymore so that is a great opportunity.
You won’t make much progress in the Japanese language in a few months, even if you could study full-time. So my recommendation is that you focus on speaking with a personal language tutor (in person is best but online is easy).
You can also search for free language exchanges, where you speak 50% English and 50% Japanese. Problem is with no skills and an inexperienced partner, this won’t be too efficient.
The Pimsleur Method focuses on speaking so that might be helpful. Your library might have online or CDs available for free.
Maybe your bank can provide some language learning resources (e.g. cash or in-house training for free). Somebody has to pay for that so use discretion.
As Meister said, you aren’t going to be able to do too much in 2 months. Unfortunately it’s hard to learn language and then have it be something you can recall on the fly without quite a bit of practice. A really big thing really is the speaking practice.
Thanks for the advice, I’ll make sure to speak with my robot tutor.
I tried to learn Japanese with the Pimsleur Japanese audio course on the plane ride to Tokyo.
Didn’t do me that much good but the experience did turn me on to studying Japanese as a hobby.
I’d learn the katakana and hiragana alphabets for pronunciation and then maybe the ko-so-a-do grammar so you can point stuff out in a shop. The Genki 1 text book with an iTalki tutor daily and going through the exercises using the audio files is the gold standard. Probably learning through chapter 2 is a good target for 2 months.
Congratulations!
In 2 months it’s not possible to learn enough Japanese for it to be of any practical use, beyond a simple “thank you” or “I’m sorry”. You could of course memorise quite a lot of words and phrases. The problem is that the person you’re talking to will reply using words and grammar you don’t understand.
If you want to increase the ease of communication with the locals in the short term, a much more fruitful approach is to improve your ability to express yourself in English at a modest speed using only common words and the most common grammatical patters.
Since you’re going to spend time in places (banking establishments) that are very formal, you may want to look into Japanese etiquette and behavial norms in business settings. Stuff like how to exchange business cards, when to bow and stuff like that is important.
Obviously we’re not going to advice you to not learn Japanese here at the learnjapanese sureddit. You may find it both interesting and useful later. Your first step could be to look for some information about the language and how to study it, reading webpages and looking at Youtube videos. If still interested, picking up a beginner’s textbook is the logical step for most learners.
Japanesepod101 has some survival lists that may help you recognize situations and some things quickly. I think in your shoes I would learn mannerisms and remain as silent as possible. What a cool “what if”…