Day 20— How I Learned Japanese
Hello, my name is Hinky. I was born and raised in China. I’ve been living in Japan for 6 years. Right after I got my master degree from Hiroshima University, I joined HENNGE for almost 3 years. I’m a sales representative and the only foreigner in Cloud Sales Division.
I started working as a Global Sales member from October 2019, but prior to that I was a sales member for Japanese domestic customers. I’ve been asked more than 100 times how can I speak Japanese in a business level. So, I’d like to share how I learned Japanese.
- For listening: the best method for me was watching Japanese variety shows
My major in university was Japanese. I studied very hard, thus I was able to get a good understanding of basic Japanese grammar. After that, I started consuming many kinds of Japanese media.
At first, I chose to watch One Piece with my brother since he liked One Piece a lot.
I remember that in order to catch up with him, I binge-watched more than 300 episodes during my winter break! As you may know, the dialogue in One Piece is usually very short and easy to understand for a Japanese beginner. But the problem is they often contain rude or violent words like 殺すぞ！(I’ll kill you!) or この野郎 (This bastard)!
Additionally, because my favorite character Ace died, I stopped watching One Piece.
After that, I started watching many Japanese drama and movies. Yet the lines were long and difficult making me unable to watch them without subtitles. In the end, I was too focused on reading the subtitles and forgot to practice my listening skills (lol). However, I wanted to study and enjoy what I studied at the same time. I tried many different ways, but most of them failed until I met my favorite Japanese boy band at the time, Arashi.
I searched for any variety shows featuring Arashi, and just kept watching those every day. Thanks to a large number of Arashi fans in China, I was able to get many free subtitles in Chinese, helping me to understand at the beginning. After about a half year, I began to understand most of the lines without subtitles. And the most important thing was, I was able to do so because I really enjoyed their variety shows. That’s why I could keep doing it everyday.
Maybe you will ask why I think variety shows are better than anime, dramas or something else for learning Japanese.
My answer is BECAUSE THERE ARE NO LINES! That’s why you will be able to learn natural Japanese reactions, useful expressions for certain situations, and follow current trends.
For example, when you think someone’s facial expression is strange, you might be taught in Japanese textbooks as “表情(ひょうじょう)がおかしい”. But what I learned from Arashi TV shows was simply “顔(かお)”.
Though I don’t like Arashi anymore, I really appreciate them for letting me having a good time and for becoming a big motivation for me to improve my Japanese.
Now I use the same method to study English or Korean. Trust me, this method is really good.
Some variety shows I’m watching at the moment are:
- しゃべくり007
- 家、ついて行ってイイですか？
- 月曜から夜更かし
- THIS IS SUPER FUNNY.
英会話伝言ゲーム：いずれてっぺん超えれる？
2. For speaking: Recording your own voice and comparing it with the original voice acting
Speaking is an important part of studying language. Therefore, I put in a lot of effort to improve my speaking skills. However, it is also very difficult, especially when you study Japanese outside of Japan. I, too, encountered this problem before. After a long time of struggling, I found a good way to practice my speaking skill, which was recording your own voice and comparing it with the original voice acting.
This way you can tell the intonation differences between your intonation and the standard Japanese one.
The method is very simple.
Just pick any line you like from any drama, variety shows or movies.
It’s not necessary to pick a long sentence, just any word or short sentence is okay.
And then, listen to the original line, record your voice and play both recordings at the same time.
This way, you would understand at which point you should raise or lower your voice.
3. Using Japanese to do what you are interested in
Many people say it’s hard to set aside some time to learn a foreign language while working full-time.
In my opinion, this is true. If you want to spare a few hours every day to concentrate on learning, it is hard. But for me, only studying but not trying to use it, would make it a little boring. So, I think doing things while using Japanese is very important.
For example, if you like music, you can start listening to Japanese songs.
If your hobby is playing golf, watching golf matches in Japanese is good.
If you like to go out with friends, trying to speak Japanese with your friends is also a good idea.
*I know making friends who can speak Japanese is also hard at the beginning.
In my case, I changed my phone’s language to Japanese, and forced myself to read Japanese news. In this way, you will force yourself to search the meaning of Japanese words you are not familiar with. It’s a way to make yourself get used to thinking in Japanese.
That is it. Thanks for reading till the end :)
(Illustrations are taken from https://www.irasutoya.com/ )
This article is part of the HENNGE Advent Calendar 2019. An Advent calendar is a special calendar used for counting down the days till Christmas. HENNGE Advent Calendar 2019 presents one article by one HENNGE member per day for 25 days until Christmas, 2019
