Supercharge Your Japanese with the Ultralearning Principle of Directness

On an unforgettable April day back in 2008, I found myself sitting across a desk from a travel agent in Nishi-Shinjuku, clutching a pair of freshly minted Narita Express train tickets in my hands.

Awash with mixed feelings of accomplishment and disbelief, I had just managed to complete a relatively high-stakes transaction without using a word of English. At this stage in my life, I was, at best, a novice Japanese speaker. This situation I had thrown myself into was a far cry from ordering food and asking directions-common occurrences during this, my second trip to Japan.

It wasn’t long until a new sensation hit me: disappointment. Successfully obtaining these train tickets to Narita Airport sealed my fate: my vacation would soon end, and I would have to return home.

This was the moment that solidified my resolve to live in Japan. And, sure enough, a mere seven months later, I found myself just a few blocks away from that same Nishi-Shinjuku travel agency, this time as a gainfully employed resident of Japan.

This article, however, isn’t about how I came to live in Japan. There’s actually a language-learning lesson buried within this travel agency adventure. Unbeknownst to me at the time, through this experience, I was deploying an incredibly…