In terms of raw time, I’ve been studying Japanese for about a year. I passed the N5 in December, but still feel as though my skills are pretty lacking. Most of my time spent studying was using Duolingo, Busuu, Lingodeer, Anki and Wanikani.
Then, recently, I decided to give textbooks a shot and was completely blown away by how quickly I’ve been able to improve my Japanese. I had been avoiding them for so long, as it felt pretty intimidating and I wasn’t sure *how* to use textbooks in the context of independent study. I just wish I’d known so much earlier how beneficial they can be, specifically for learning this language.
What are some things you wish you would’ve known before you invested hundreds of hours into your study?
35 comments
Don’t obsess over basic grammar explanations. You’ll get a feel for nuances over time, and you’ll never fully master grammar from reading about it in english.
Don’t under estimate the value of YouTube tutorial videos. I tried to brute force it with anki and genki. I feel like in only really started to “get it” when I started to watch TokiAndy videos. If you’re having trouble using the textbooks, he does a really good job of guiding you through it
I wish I knew Japanese
but if you want a non-snarky answer, I don’t have any regrets really, no major ones anyway
I might be in the minority here, but while I make a lot of time to study (textbooks, reading the news, etc.) I hardly ever make time for “fun” Japanese. Like, if I’m watching Netflix I just play it in the background while I’m cooking/cleaning, so when it’s in English I can follow along even when I’m not really paying attention to the story. Obviously that’s much harder to do in L2! So I tend to avoid watching shows or reading books/etc. unless I have time to sit down and really focus on the content (and guess what, I never ~~make~~ have the time).
I guess it’s a habit I’ll start working on changing from here on out, but I do wish I had gotten into better habits with using Japanese for fun, instead of only for tests and work (I’ve been living and working in Japan for pretty long term now).
Listen to podcasts or condensed audio for listening practice instead of watching actual shows. More words spoken overall (like no pauses), and less distractions from the show. I end up putting on subs and then I hear nothing. Listen whenever you can, working, cleaning, trying to sleep.
My regret is trying gogonihon. I blew 500$ on their beginner course and didn’t learn shit. It’s terrible, has no explanation, and is certainly not for a beginner level person.
I wish I would have learned more about immersion based learning and started that and anki sooner.
I regretted spending 6 months on Duolingo when I first started studying Japanese. I also forgot to turn off the yearly subscription and found out much later when it renewed and I think I lost 100 dollars on that zzz.
I bought Genki series textbook series (textbook and workbook) and progress was very apparent. I took 6 months to study Genki and then prepared and passed N5 whereas the 6 months of Duolingo didn’t lead anywhere.
This was back in Year 2017 so not sure how well Duolingo has updated since then. I still have fond thoughts of Genki and still root for Mary and Takeshi hahaha.
Which textbook did you use that gave you such massive improvement and *how* are you using it?
I would say I wish I started reading native content earlier (even easy stuff would be better than what I did, which was basically nothing). I’m still a little at odds with this one, because Japanese babies learn to listen and speak before learning to read, and I tried to imitate this by doing tons of passive listening (to content that was way out of my listening league). Now I’m thinking I either need to drop my listening level down to something I understand and/or I need to begin some beginner reading. [Here’s](https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/#l0) what I recommend for you for reading. I also recommend that you don’t listen to stuff that is *too* out of your league.
I also relied almost solely on Anki for far too long (after relying solely on Duolingo, for again, far too long). But I’m only a recent 116/180 N4 mock test passer, so I’m only slightly ahead of you (if at all) and my advice won’t take you to fluency.
There is always more to learn.
The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t understand this country at all.
Get used to thinking of words in terms of kanji. Memorize the most common kanji for each syllable/mora early on. At least 80% of kanji compounds are made up of the top 200/300 most used kanji. That matters, a lot. And it makes remembering words waaaay easier.
Telling people in real life
Spend less time looking up how to study and just study. Also, spend less time here on this sub. Seeing how others succeed is nice and all, but everyone learns differently. Try lots of methods and find works with you. Then, stick with it. Once I stopped worrying about the best way of studying and what people on this sub though is good, my progress skyrocketed.
Don’t skip kanji – because as you’ll find, you literally can’t or you’ll hit a wall you’ll never pass.
I wish I had never done any kanji-focused studies (RTK in particular). It thought it’d be good to “know kanji” before “diving into the real stuff”, but it was just a huge boring time sink. I mindlessly drilled keywords and how to write kanjis for more than 3 months before burning out and giving up Japanese altogether for 2+ years. Looking back, if I had ditched all the kanji and textbook studies and just started reading + mining things I enjoy, I wouldn’t have quit, because I would have had fun. Fun is an amazing motivator; you can have all the self-discipline in the world, but if you’re not having fun then you’ll just burn out and forget why you started learning Japanese in the first place.
Edit: By “Kanji-focused studies” I mean RTK and the likes where you learn kanjis independently before learning words. Nowadays I still “learn” kanjis by learning words using JPDB, but it’s nowhere as tedious as RTK.
What textbooks did you purchase/read through?
Honestly, understanding how long and how difficult of a process learning a language can be.
Language is so nuanced, there’s a ton to memorize, and everything is so different because the people who use it are so different from my people.
I’ve been studying with a Sensei for almost 8 months. I’ve learned a ton from them and Genki, but I also can understand I have a ton to go when I watch Japanese tv.
Other languages are easier for people like me to learn, but I have always wanted to know Japanese, so I just began one day.
I am having fun though, so the money spent has been worth it.
I wish I’d known about the usefulness of anki like way earlier.
On that same note, I wish I started reading ASAP instead of dicking around with anki. Even after finishing Genki and Tobira reading was like hell, but I learned a hell of a lot more Japanese.
I wish I had bothered to learn vocab + the kanji of the vocab simultaneously. I took myself to an advanced level of speaking, being able to navigate my thoughts, feelings, and expand on complicated situations and topics but only knew very rudimentary levels of kanji due to just writing everything down in hiragana and mass memorizing words and then using them in speech.
I wish I had did the flash card route and took the time to write the kanji of every vocabulary so I could have improved my reading ability. Now, I spend 2 – 3 hours a day accumulating the kanji to my expansive vocab that I learned over the years and although my reading has improved dramatically in about 2 months, I still will not be satisfied until I can formulate at least 1200 characters in a variety of ways.
The importance of being able to read is huge as I’ve learned a ton of complex vocab from reading the news and I found that it actually sticks faster than reciting flash cards out loud. I’ve recently taken to playing Final Fantasy V pixel remaster as well.
* It’s good to have goals, but don’t have that goal ‘to be fluent,’ as the more you learn the more your own bar for what ‘fluent’ is will change
* JLPT is good for having concrete goals to aim for, but is in reality a pretty poor indicator of actual Japanese skill, especially speaking
* If you have the means to do an exchange / other immersion, it really is the best way to improve quickly
* There’s a lot in Japanese which is just rote memorization. There’s not really a way around it, but don’t burn yourself out on long sessions. Like going to the gym, it’s better to consistently do a little bit than go ham right away and then burn out and stop doing it
Couple of ones specific towards higher level learners:
* Once you get to ‘critical mass’ level of Japanese, watching Japanese with Japanese subtitles is a good way of reinforcing both spoken and written Japanese. Rewatching content you already have seen, especially stuff aimed at kids, is a good place to start (e.g. VPN to Japan and watch Disney movies/kids shows/etc.) While it can be helpful, watching content in Japanese with English subtitles usually just leads to ignoring the audio and getting the meaning from the subs. The value from this also varies a lot based on the quality of the subtitles
* Again, ‘critical mass’ of knowledge required, but learn how to look things up in J→J, not just E→J/J→E. Took me like 5+ years to learn how to look things up I didn’t know by googling “Xとは,” “X 意味,” “X Y 違い,” “X 例文.” If you just rely on dictionaries, you’ll probably find yourself in a situation where you use some archaic or literary way of saying something that no one really uses.
* If you’re having trouble finding the Japanese for specific jargon (e.g. industry specific vocabulary, disease names, etc.), a trick that has saved me more than once is to find the English wikipedia page for that thing, then see if there’s a Japanese version of that page. Since you can also read the English page, you can confirm that it is the exact thing you are looking for
How to self study, I basically found understanding anything impossible before taking college courses. Now I still struggle with a lot of reading but I could barely even make it through one sentence after my first year of study
Probably wish I had focussed more on the distinction between on’yomi and kun’yomi and how they are generally used when I was starting out, but I was at the mercy of my teacher back then.
The sooner you start talking to people, the better. If you’re shy, it’s scary, but the only way to get over it is to try and speak.
Also: learn how to make your own flashcards efficiently ASAP. I use Yomichan’s Anki integration, but there’s other ways to do it. The initial setup takes some time, but being able to quickly make high-quality cards is really, really useful.
I’m also very, very glad that I previously learned another language before Japanese because it gave me a good BS filter for questionable advice and perspective on the general process of language learning.
I wish I knew how many freaking characters I had to learn. The Hiragana and Katakana have plenty on their own, but throw kanji into the mix and it can become very overwhelming.
Then there’s the fact that, like the Latin alphabet, there are many variations on how characters can look depending on whether it’s typed it handwritten. If it’s stylized in anyvway, it takes me significantly longer to figure out what I’m looking at.
There a shit ton of grammar and words people barely use in conversation.
Being a Japanese translator wasn’t actually going to pan out as a career choice even though I plainly had the language skills to do it.
Go to youtube and search: “Japanese Comprehensible Input”.
Even if the channels don’t have a lot of views, there is probably stuff at your level.
Self learning for a “year” here, N4 (haven’t take real test but about there).
Probably that I should study for the first 6 months and not just duolingo every day, also that beginner podcasts for learners exist, and then – too many apps is demotivating, because you have to keep a streak in all of them.
dualingo is one of the worst ways to learn japanese, don’t waste time. don’t just learn kanji and move on, you can learn kanji with rtk but there is almost no point in learning just kanji unless you learn vocabs.
If you know you need to book lessons (I do weekly italki to keep me consistently learning) that’s not a failure! You can still do some self study outside of that for fun as the main work will be in your lessons.
It’s not a sprint but rather a marathon. You don’t need to pass N1 in six months (and still not be able to hold a basic conversation).
Start using italki right now and start speaking.
You can’t get bogged down by every single reading of a kanji. I was learning that way for a while, like copying down every onyomi and kunyomi for every character but got really exhausted quickly. Easier to study common vocab associated with a kanji, like verb forms and nouns. If it’s an irregular reading often times a book or manga will have furigana with it. Sometimes Wanikani is frustrating in this way but by continuing to use it almost every day I have built up quite a well of kanji knowledge in about a year and a half.
That I just wouldn’t gel with their culture at all.
Don’t study kanji…at least, not in isolation. Study vocabulary. Learning kanji in isolation is like learning the Latin alphabet without any words to refer to. Don’t worry too much about the innumerable readings that 生 has and direct that worry towards the words that those readings use; you’ll at least remember those.
Learn katakana first and then Hiragana
I found that when I had the time, writing Kanji helped me remember them much better than just seeing them on Anki. Sort of like how kids in Japan learn Kanji. Though as time passed I got more and more busy, so writing became a less important skill to master.