日本語だけ (Just Japanese)

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AllSubNoDub
Orange Belt
Posts: 172
Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2021 10:44 pm
Languages: English (N)
Speaks: Spanish (B1+), German (B2 dormant)
Learns: Japanese (Kanji only)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17191
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Re: 日本語だけ (Just Japanese)

Postby AllSubNoDub » Fri Sep 03, 2021 3:57 am

Xelian wrote:I plan to read news articles for the most part.


So if you look at any of Stevi's other videos, he would read an NHK Easy news article a day and "mine it" for sentences which would go in Anki. Sentence cards usually have one unknown element (grammer, kanji, etc.) you want to learn, meaning they're "i+1" sentences. He was pretty meticulous about his documentation, noting number of unknown words and saving all the read articles in evernote (which was handy, because I think he could retroactively search to see if he's ever come across a particular character, somewhat like Lingq I guess?). He then graduated to regular NHK articles. I've also heard FNN news is really good because they release embedded live broadcasts in the article itself, that are very similar and sometimes identical readings of the spoken broadcast.

Xelian wrote:I like fantasy/sci-fi content but I would assume that the vocab in that genre tends to be more obscure, so I think maybe slice of life would be pretty cool and more easy to read.


So I think I lot of people start off with light novels (ライトノベル), which is kind of its own genre. But it bridges the gap (kind of like the Harry Potter of Japanese teens I guess), no need to jump straight into Natsume Soseki.

I have to admit, I have always had the same issue with finding good sci-fi in any language other than English. Other than translations, I can't help you there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If it makes you feel any better though, Khatzumoto from AJATT says, even if it's like 10% Star Trek words, it's still 90% plain vanilla Japanese, so I would say go for it if you find something (as long as it's by native speakers [including translations] for native speakers).

Lastly, this list may or may not help you depending on your interests, but Adam from JapaneseLevelUp was gracious enough to make this difficulty list, including books and dramas at every level!

Xelian wrote:I've seen great J-Dramas too but because of their strict copyright laws they're often harder to get ahold of and if I do it's typically bad quality.


So, you may or may not know about this trick, but if you have a VPN you can set it to a Japan IP address and it gives you TONS more content. A ton of Japanese content it geo-blocked, especially on Netflix. If you do some searching you'll see this is a pretty common, easy, and worthwhile workaround. Language Reactor, Netflix, and a VPN is an extremely lethal language learning combination. Beyond that, you can use tools like Migaku and others to create sentence Anki SRS cards straight from the shows with audio and video if you so please. Great time to be a language learner.


You're already at an extremely high level of Japanese (basically N2), you might be underestimating your abilities. Also, I should clarify, your Japanese is already way more advanced than mine, but I have come to the same conclusions for my other languages. Basically:

Get rid of the training materials as soon as you're comfortably able, read and listen a LOT using materials by native speakers for native speakers, do regular stuff in your target language when you can (e.g. change your computer/phone settings to Japanese), use an SRS so you don't forget stuff/learn stuff faster, and (for a language like Japanese) make a monolingual transition in your SRS cards at an intermediate/advanced level.

Edited: Formatting and clarity. Also forgot another tenet: You have to be having a good time overall, so try to have fun in the language whenever you can.
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Xelian
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Studying actively:
日本語 (B2)

Studying off and on:
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svenska (B1)
中文 (A1)
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Deutsch (beginner)

On the back burner:
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17163
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Re: 日本語だけ (Just Japanese)

Postby Xelian » Tue Sep 07, 2021 4:37 pm

AllSubNoDub wrote:
Xelian wrote:I plan to read news articles for the most part.


So if you look at any of Stevi's other videos, he would read an NHK Easy news article a day and "mine it" for sentences which would go in Anki. Sentence cards usually have one unknown element (grammer, kanji, etc.) you want to learn, meaning they're "i+1" sentences. He was pretty meticulous about his documentation, noting number of unknown words and saving all the read articles in evernote (which was handy, because I think he could retroactively search to see if he's ever come across a particular character, somewhat like Lingq I guess?). He then graduated to regular NHK articles. I've also heard FNN news is really good because they release embedded live broadcasts in the article itself, that are very similar and sometimes identical readings of the spoken broadcast.


This seems like something I'd attempt, but I don't have Anki, I use Quizlet which is probably less efficient. Maybe it's time I try Anki out for myself.

I have used NHK Easy for the most part, I feel that it would still be a while before I graduated to the regular ones. I'll try FNN news, that might help.

AllSubNoDub wrote:
Xelian wrote:I've seen great J-Dramas too but because of their strict copyright laws they're often harder to get ahold of and if I do it's typically bad quality.


So, you may or may not know about this trick, but if you have a VPN you can set it to a Japan IP address and it gives you TONS more content. A ton of Japanese content it geo-blocked, especially on Netflix. If you do some searching you'll see this is a pretty common, easy, and worthwhile workaround. Language Reactor, Netflix, and a VPN is an extremely lethal language learning combination. Beyond that, you can use tools like Migaku and others to create sentence Anki SRS cards straight from the shows with audio and video if you so please. Great time to be a language learner.


You're already at an extremely high level of Japanese (basically N2), you might be underestimating your abilities. Also, I should clarify, your Japanese is already way more advanced than mine, but I have come to the same conclusions for my other languages. Basically:

Get rid of the training materials as soon as you're comfortably able, read and listen a LOT using materials by native speakers for native speakers, do regular stuff in your target language when you can (e.g. change your computer/phone settings to Japanese), use an SRS so you don't forget stuff/learn stuff faster, and (for a language like Japanese) make a monolingual transition in your SRS cards at an intermediate/advanced level.

Edited: Formatting and clarity. Also forgot another tenet: You have to be having a good time overall, so try to have fun in the language whenever you can.


I have heard of switching the VPN, but I worry that it will be complicated to get one, one of my friends had to buy one so I kind of got discouraged and wondered if it was worth it. I can take another look into it, though I'm not sure how often I can utilize it.

I don't feel that I am basically N2, I think that I overestimated my abilities and the N2 put me in check, because I failed it. But prior to that even I had a lot of doubt about my abilities after attending UW and having a really awful and essentially traumatic experience feeling like I wasn't good enough, and failing to to keep up with the Japanese classes. I'll likely need to fully get past this in order to really start my studies again. It often feels like the way I study (especially once I get to intermediate level stuff) is just totally ineffective and inefficient, and that I'm doing everything wrong. So I really hope something will click for me and I'll get beyond that so that I do enjoy it again. Maybe I just can't enjoy it much anymore. Especially reading books, I can't usually find anything my level, I hardly get through a couple pages without needing to look up a whole lot of words. Which is sad because I think reading fluidly would help me gain some confidence. It gets discouraging, but I'm probably just reading too high level and don't know where to look for books that I can actually read.

Thank you for your suggestions, I'll keep thinking about it and continue to try and piece together what might work for me.
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: 84 / 1000 Japanese Pages Read

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AllSubNoDub
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17191
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Re: 日本語だけ (Just Japanese)

Postby AllSubNoDub » Wed Sep 08, 2021 3:21 pm

Xelian wrote:This seems like something I'd attempt, but I don't have Anki, I use Quizlet which is probably less efficient. Maybe it's time I try Anki out for myself.

Yes. I've used Quizlet in the past for cramming for school, but I would think it would get unwieldy for the amount of sentences you'd need to get good a Japanese.* Also, as I've mentioned, there's a huge community of Japanese learners and programmers who have created amazing Anki add-ons explicitly aimed at helping Japanese learners. There are also a huge assortment of premade decks (if that's your thing).

* Not that you need an SRS system at all to learn Japanese, that's just the fastest, most efficient way to learn it (though, many would argue, less fun).


Xelian wrote:I have heard of switching the VPN, but I worry that it will be complicated to get one, one of my friends had to buy one so I kind of got discouraged and wondered if it was worth it. I can take another look into it, though I'm not sure how often I can utilize it.

It's not complicated at all. NordVPN and ExpressVPN (subscription services) are both good for watching Netflix. Netflix marks IPs associated with VPNs to further enforce geo-blocking, but Nord and Express are both aware that a huge portion of their base are using VPNs for this purpose, so they generate new IPs often. I've never had to switch IPs more than once. They may have free trials, not sure. There are free VPNs out there, but you may run into the issue of Netflix marking the IPs.


Xelian wrote:I don't feel that I am basically N2, I think that I overestimated my abilities and the N2 put me in check, because I failed it. But prior to that even I had a lot of doubt about my abilities after attending UW and having a really awful and essentially traumatic experience feeling like I wasn't good enough, and failing to to keep up with the Japanese classes. I'll likely need to fully get past this in order to really start my studies again. It often feels like the way I study (especially once I get to intermediate level stuff) is just totally ineffective and inefficient, and that I'm doing everything wrong. So I really hope something will click for me and I'll get beyond that so that I do enjoy it again. Maybe I just can't enjoy it much anymore. Especially reading books, I can't usually find anything my level, I hardly get through a couple pages without needing to look up a whole lot of words. Which is sad because I think reading fluidly would help me gain some confidence. It gets discouraging, but I'm probably just reading too high level and don't know where to look for books that I can actually read.

Thank you for your suggestions, I'll keep thinking about it and continue to try and piece together what might work for me.

Most of the people I know who got fluent in Japanese (and the only ones I knew who reached a near native level) did so with minimal to no schooling and heavy immersion with comprehensible input. One of the Mass Immersion community members got a perfect score on the JLPT N1 (he just took it for funzies), which is supposed to be "hard for natives". Matt himself has a larger vocabulary than the majority of native Japanese speakers. No textbook will ever get you to that level.

If you don't want to read through AJATT (can't say I blame you, it's fairly disorganized), this may be more palpable (though I don't necessarily agree with everything and it's still a work in progress).


Anyway, that's just my $0.02. Japanese is a different beast, in my opinion, and needs more specialized tools. There is no wrong way as long as you start consuming native content eventually, in my opinion. Khatzumoto says, "you don't learn a language, you get used to a language," and I think that's especially true for Japanese.
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gsbod
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Re: 日本語だけ (Just Japanese)

Postby gsbod » Wed Sep 08, 2021 6:33 pm

I know what you mean about the gap between what is (relatively) easy to read, and what you actually want to read. Not sure if it's your kind of thing or not, but I remember 魔女の宅急便 being at the easier end of the reading spectrum (this is the book Kiki's Delivery Service was based on). Also, it's not scifi or fantasy, but I found Haruki Murakami's short stories to be surprisingly accessible, at least when my Japanese was more on point than it is nowadays (in contrast, I gave up trying to read his novel 海辺のカフカ in Japanese, I ended up reading it in German instead, and that at a time when my German was, in theory, weaker than my Japanese!)

Also I'm sorry that your confidence in Japanese seems to have taken such a hit following your experiences in class and with the N2 exam. Exams can be such a double edged sword. Maybe it helps to think of the exam being just a record of your performance at one specific set of tasks on one specific day, rather than a measure of your overall ability right now? Anyway, to give the longer view, even though I took N2 and passed it, I doubt I could pass the exam again if I had to sit it tomorrow (reckon I'd need 4-6 months to prepare again), so in the long term even exam success is meaningless anyway ;)
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AllSubNoDub
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Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2021 10:44 pm
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17191
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Re: 日本語だけ (Just Japanese)

Postby AllSubNoDub » Thu Sep 09, 2021 3:24 am

I was looking through my bookmarks. A lot of the sci-fi stuff seems to be at a more advanced level, and you seem like you need a little bit of a warm-up/confidence booster. I've heard ペンギン・ハイウェイ is:

1. Good/entertaining
2. Helpful, because it starts off as slice of life in the beginning (turns sci-fi towards the end)
3. More intermediate level because it's written from the perspective of an elementary school kid

Also, it was turned into a manga and film. There's also an audiobook, so you can probably get some listening comprehension out of it too if you end up liking it, or maybe you can start with the film first or something. Anyway, hope that helps, there's definitely stuff out there if you look hard enough.
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User avatar
Xelian
Orange Belt
Posts: 170
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2016 7:19 pm
Location: Seattle
Languages: English (N)

Studying actively:
日本語 (B2)

Studying off and on:
한국어 (A2)
svenska (B1)
中文 (A1)
Tiếng Việt
Deutsch (beginner)

On the back burner:
Español (A2)
ASL (A1)
العَرَبِيَّة

Maybe some other time:
Български (A1)

Interested in:
Arabic (Egyptian, Yemeni), Hindi, Turkish, Thai, Tibetan, Nepali, Bengali, Urdu, Russian, Armenian, Greek, Kurdish, Farsi
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17163
x 237

Re: 日本語だけ (Just Japanese)

Postby Xelian » Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:11 pm

Thank you both for all of your suggestions.

I initially had planned a more rigorous approach for myself, but it turns out I'm going to have to take it at a slower pace for the time being. A warm-up does sound good, I'll see if I can get access to any of those titles mentioned. Thank you so much for wanting to help!

I've got a few other obligations currently which have gotten in the way of doing much language studying, and thinking about my past experiences with intermediate-advanced Japanese still easily makes me feel negative (to where I'll have to stop for a bit before trying again), but I'll still likely check back here and report if anything changes.

Thanks again for your suggestions and I will update again when I can.
2 x
: 84 / 1000 Japanese Pages Read


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