I took a couple semesters in college, so I had a decent grasp on sentence structure and basic words. What helped me the most was listening closely to the Japanese English teachers during class, doing my best to have conversations with kids, and then spending a lot of time reading a dictionary.
Getting a Japanese girlfriend, then marrying her, also helped a ton.
Actually listen to the Japanese being spoken around you. It’s easy to sit back and say oh it’s above my level so I’m going to space out, but please just try to listen even if you don’t understand. It’s free, real life input and your brain needs it to learn Japanese
My tldr; is that there’s no one right way to learn. The most important thing is to create a routine that works for you and to keep to it. If you’re not sure where to start and feel you need some structure, a textbook like Genki can be a great place to start.
If youre lucky your placement might have local japanese lessons for free or really cheap.
Depends on what exactly you wanna focus on. After a couple months, I felt my speaking was lacking, so I paid for a weekly tutor on iTalki (super affordable, like $13 USD for a 45 min – 1 hr chat). Then my reading was shit, so I started (and paid for) Wanikani, also really good for mindless rote memory that sticks with you. For vocab building, I’ve always learned best through reading, so I do 多読 (たどく) which are short stories/novels that are level-appropriate and more interesting than kids’ books.
Bonus practice hack is to get a hair cut and chat away with the hair stylist. *Then* go speak Japanese at school and get 日本語上手’ed lol
When you get to your placement, check your city hall or local community centre. Some cities will have classes for newly landed foreigners for next to nothing. My city offers them, 1-2 a week (90mins) for ¥100.
Learning Japanese is going to come down to your motivation. Some people hit the ground running, and others hit a wall. Don’t feel discouraged if your progress is slower than others.
Biggest advice is find an area you’re interested in and study things that are relevant to that. Textbook Japanese is mostly focused towards university and things you’ll likely never use (so you’ll have a harder time remembering it).
Also if you have desk warming is a gamble – so I wouldn’t bank on it. I have full classes every day, while others might have only a few each week.
You are in schools with native Japanese educators and hundreds of students. Almost all of them would be willing to help teach you Japanese for free. So, what was your question?
Talk to your non-JTE coworkers. They’re usually the most fun and interesting people.
Seconding conversing with non JTE co-workers and also students! They can be the best Japanese teachers sometimes, especially for learning slang or sporadically learning vocabulary.
Oh and I found that sometimes asking the students and writing the japanese word equivalent on the board in hiragana or katakana for some of the vocab words in the textbook helped a lot. Cause it showed the students that 1) teachers also make mistakes and 2) they appreciate the effort.
YouTube and your municipality free Japanese classes
I came on JET knowing nothing and now I’m alright. I’d say what you really gotta do is be consistent. Pencil it into your schedule. Study time. Sure you can study at your desk but you might get distracted. Another jet and I started a study group every week at a cafe for two hours. After three years, we still go. I do wanikani every morning and evening. I used to do italki once or even twice a week. You can try to talk to the other teachers but no one really has time and paying a tutor to focus 100% on you is worth it, I think. Write in your calendar “STUDY TIME FROM 10-11” and actually do it.
Everyone has great ideas! I can not wait to put into practice what you have recommended to do.. N1 here I come…
I went the route of getting a Japanese tutor through Kumon’s correspondence program while I was still in Japan. If you’ve done Kumon before, then you know that they teach by repetition and worksheets. If you add on the oral course, then you’re paired with a tutor and you’ll schedule to meet with them on Zoom bi-monthly.
Spend your summer hols at a language school. I did that in Kyoto for two summers. Best summers ever.
I did wanikani and paid a tutor who I met with once a week via zoom. After I reached a certain point, I tried my best to talk with teachers outside of the English sphere who were friendly and keen.
16 comments
I took a couple semesters in college, so I had a decent grasp on sentence structure and basic words. What helped me the most was listening closely to the Japanese English teachers during class, doing my best to have conversations with kids, and then spending a lot of time reading a dictionary.
Getting a Japanese girlfriend, then marrying her, also helped a ton.
Actually listen to the Japanese being spoken around you. It’s easy to sit back and say oh it’s above my level so I’m going to space out, but please just try to listen even if you don’t understand. It’s free, real life input and your brain needs it to learn Japanese
[deleted]
I used to do the Japanese Study 101 presentation for my prefectural orientation. Here’s a [powerpoint](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LztNiH9OTnf6107bpE64umBkhfpuLVE6) on the subject.
My tldr; is that there’s no one right way to learn. The most important thing is to create a routine that works for you and to keep to it. If you’re not sure where to start and feel you need some structure, a textbook like Genki can be a great place to start.
If youre lucky your placement might have local japanese lessons for free or really cheap.
Depends on what exactly you wanna focus on. After a couple months, I felt my speaking was lacking, so I paid for a weekly tutor on iTalki (super affordable, like $13 USD for a 45 min – 1 hr chat). Then my reading was shit, so I started (and paid for) Wanikani, also really good for mindless rote memory that sticks with you. For vocab building, I’ve always learned best through reading, so I do 多読 (たどく) which are short stories/novels that are level-appropriate and more interesting than kids’ books.
Bonus practice hack is to get a hair cut and chat away with the hair stylist. *Then* go speak Japanese at school and get 日本語上手’ed lol
When you get to your placement, check your city hall or local community centre. Some cities will have classes for newly landed foreigners for next to nothing. My city offers them, 1-2 a week (90mins) for ¥100.
Learning Japanese is going to come down to your motivation. Some people hit the ground running, and others hit a wall. Don’t feel discouraged if your progress is slower than others.
Biggest advice is find an area you’re interested in and study things that are relevant to that. Textbook Japanese is mostly focused towards university and things you’ll likely never use (so you’ll have a harder time remembering it).
Also if you have desk warming is a gamble – so I wouldn’t bank on it. I have full classes every day, while others might have only a few each week.
You are in schools with native Japanese educators and hundreds of students. Almost all of them would be willing to help teach you Japanese for free. So, what was your question?
Talk to your non-JTE coworkers. They’re usually the most fun and interesting people.
Seconding conversing with non JTE co-workers and also students! They can be the best Japanese teachers sometimes, especially for learning slang or sporadically learning vocabulary.
Oh and I found that sometimes asking the students and writing the japanese word equivalent on the board in hiragana or katakana for some of the vocab words in the textbook helped a lot. Cause it showed the students that 1) teachers also make mistakes and 2) they appreciate the effort.
YouTube and your municipality free Japanese classes
I came on JET knowing nothing and now I’m alright.
I’d say what you really gotta do is be consistent. Pencil it into your schedule. Study time. Sure you can study at your desk but you might get distracted. Another jet and I started a study group every week at a cafe for two hours. After three years, we still go. I do wanikani every morning and evening. I used to do italki once or even twice a week. You can try to talk to the other teachers but no one really has time and paying a tutor to focus 100% on you is worth it, I think.
Write in your calendar “STUDY TIME FROM 10-11” and actually do it.
Everyone has great ideas! I can not wait to put into practice what you have recommended to do.. N1 here I come…
I went the route of getting a Japanese tutor through Kumon’s correspondence program while I was still in Japan. If you’ve done Kumon before, then you know that they teach by repetition and worksheets. If you add on the oral course, then you’re paired with a tutor and you’ll schedule to meet with them on Zoom bi-monthly.
Spend your summer hols at a language school. I did that in Kyoto for two summers. Best summers ever.
I did wanikani and paid a tutor who I met with once a week via zoom. After I reached a certain point, I tried my best to talk with teachers outside of the English sphere who were friendly and keen.