There is a common saying out there for writers that writing is like breathing. It’s just apart of who you are, it’s something that you have to do… There are many people out there who are like, “oh yeah, I want to write a book.” I don’t get those people. I don’t understand how you can be nonchalant about it. For me, writing is something I HAVE TO DO. I have an urge. It drives me…

Well, it did until about 2007. I’m not sure. Maybe I was burnt out? Maybe I just needed a break. But suddenly the cravings, the drive went away.

This is when I started learning Japanese. Japanese was my new drug. I don’t think I pursued Japanese with the lust and desire that I did with writing, but I kept up at it, and it filled my time.

Lately…. lately I feel the hunger return in me. I am still studying Japanese – although at the moment it is more of a back burner approach – I’m reading books and “studying” new words in Anki. That’s about it. I’m wanting to once again tackle the Nihongo 500 Mon / 日本語５００問 book that I talked about in my Best of 2009 article. It’s going to be school holidays and I think I just want to race through the book and see what holes I have left in my basic understanding of Japanese.

Never the less, in the past couple of days, I’ve been breathing again. I don’t know where this will take me, but I’m in the planning stages of writing a book, and the characters are beginning to really jump out at me. I am still trying to work out some WHYs, trying to add in some conflict, but I’m building a solid beginning and have some ideas about the ending. I hope I will continue to work on this one with hopefully having it finished by the end of the year.

No rush. I’m just enjoying the air. I’m breathing again.

Related posts

• Why books for 10 year olds are easier than books for 5 year olds
• Reading Manga For Japanese Language Learning
• New Anki File
• Learning Japanese Through Hana Kimi
• How Should You Structure Your Flash Card Deck?

Previously I’ve posted about Japanese children’s stories and also websites intended for Japanese children. At the time I was experimenting with children’s books but the experience ultimately left me a bit frustrated. The vocabulary (both content and the fact it was mostly hiragana) was difficult and the content was a bit juvenile (while stories about shrinking and flying on the back of a bug through a forest may sound interesting, for me I want to read more in depth stories where I get to know characters). And of course the fact that these stories are for five to seven year olds is a bit disheartening – they can read it but I can’t?? type feelings.

But don’t worry. There is something better out there! And easier. Yes, easier. Even though the books are intended for older children, I have found stories aimed at around 10 year olds (guessing from the age of the main characters being around 9 to 13 years old) are actually easier.

Why are they easier?

• More kanji, less hiragana. While you may not know many kanji, it is still ten times easier to read a book with kanji than without. The good thing is that all kanji in books for 10 year olds have furigana – the only kanji I’ve seen without furigana are numbers, and if you don’t know your numbers you probably can’t read the book anyway.
• Longer and more complex stories. How is this easier for you? Well, they take more time developing the characters and setting the scene. This is good because if you can only understand the book at a surface level it is easier to follow the story along. I found my books for younger children dove right into the “action”, things happened, and then it was over. Where are books for older children, you get more of an idea of setting, there is more dialogue (which I find easier than prose having been exposed to a lot of dramas) and the story is more enticing.
• More enjoyable. This goes with longer and more complex stories. I have never been one to enjoy short stories, with few exceptions, and I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that the same is true for Japanese stories.

Another great point is the start seems exceptionally easy because it deals with introductions. While the stories for younger children went right into the action, longer stories seem to start of with a self introduction of the main character, and then early on the character meets new characters which means more introductions. I don’t know about you, but self introductions was one of the first things I learnt in Japanese, and now I’m a pro at it. A self introduction scene in a drama is a scene I understand. Same with books. It is very encouraging opening up a book and understanding it at the start. It is better for your moral for something to start easy, giving you confidence to tackle the harder stuff.

Reading improved my English. I am a big reader and I know that I have a better grasp of grammar and punctuation than most (those who don’t read) even if I leave little evidence of that on my blog! I think that lots of reading will improve my Japanese. It’s harder to get into than dramas because with drams you have so much visual guide to help you. However, the advantages over books is you can go slower, look up unknown words and thus actually understand more than you do of the quick spoken dialogues in dramas. I am excited to finally be able to read REAL Japanese and hopefully soon I’ll be able to move up the age groups and into books without furigana, eventually onto books for adults.

Look out on my blog soon for tips and techniques to get into reading real novels so you can get into it faster than what I have. Learn from my mistakes (or at least, be able to evaluate what I went through and get some ideas on how you can adapt them for yourself!)

If you are interested in my other reading adventures, check out my manga reading adventures, and more specifically reading Hana Kimi

Related posts

• Reading Manga For Japanese Language Learning
• Learning Japanese Through Hana Kimi
• Going Gung-ho – November 2009
• Goals of 2010
• Breathing Again

I’ve been keeping a record of my Japanese progress since the end of October 2009. It’s been a very good motivator, and also good to see where I devote my time. Or where I don’t. I may be (am) weird, but I enjoy trying to reach my goals and beat them in this very visual way.

With that said, I want to set some over all goals for the new year. So that I can kick them in the butt! Or fail miserably…

Let’s see…

GoddessCarlie’s Goals of 2010!

• Have a large passive vocabulary in Japanese and be working on turning that into an active vocabulary.

Vocabulary. It feels like my biggest weakness right now. Has been for a while. And there are many problems with learning vocabulary. For instance, it never seems like a fun thing to do. The results can be rewarding, for sure, but the act itself is never fun. Right now I’m using smart.fm and I’ll continue to do that until that method becomes tedious and I’ll find a new way.
Another problem is that there isn’t really a good way that I’ve found for me to get things into my active memory. I have to come across words in several different ways before they really stick. Sometimes words are easier than others, but other times I find myself looking up words that should be easy again and again. The only thing I can do is to just keep exposing myself to the language and when the words stick they stick…
As for a specific number, well I figure as I get closer to that elusive number it wont matter so much – the number is the number I need to understand what I want to understand. However, a specific number gives me something solid to aim for, so right now I’d like to aim for a passive amount of words – 10,000. We’ll see how I go!
As for a starting point – right now I’d guess my number of words known is about 3000.

• Work on my listening skills

My listening skills have definitely improved since moving to Japan. I want to further take advantage of the situation I’m in right now and really work on my listening skills. I plan on working from books/CDs, as well as from “real” Japanese – podcasts, tv, movies, and people. I hope that by increasing my vocab and developing my listening skills I’ll be able to work my way up to understanding 99% of simple dramas like My Girl, and hopefully 75-80% of fast speaking dramas like Tokyo Dogs.
As for something quantifyable – I hope to build my listening skills up so that I can understand JLPT level 2 dialogue. I’m secretly hopeful I can exceed that but at the same time I don’t know if I am asking too much in a year or not…

• To be able to read fantasy novels for adults

It’s my favourite genre in English and I love drams like this too. I want to be able to read novels aimed at Japanese adults, even if they are only light and fluffy (hell, they are the best kinds of books!) I don’t know what else to say about this… this is one of my ultimate goals in learning Japanese and I hope that I can fulfil this wish in 2010!

As for non Japanese related goals:

• Live healthily. Live happily
• Live with no regrets. Most people regret the things they didn’t do rather than the things they did do, so do everything I get the chance to do!!

Talk about your goals in the comments area! Remember, aim high! Expect more and you never know where you may end up!

Related posts

• Going Gung-ho – November 2009
• Why books for 10 year olds are easier than books for 5 year olds
• Some Awesome Websites
• Reading Manga For Japanese Language Learning
• Learning Japanese Through Hana Kimi

After a bit of conversation in my article about my recent study methods I thought it would be good to get into more detail about the books I’ve been reading! Besides some manga, I’ve been reading books intended for Japanese children. There are a few problems I’ve found reading these compared to graded readers that are intended for beginners to the language. For instance, while children might not have a sophisticated vocabulary like an adult, they still have a large pool of vocab to pull from.

Never the less children’s books are obviously going to be a challenge to read, they are going to be easier than adult fiction, and thus can be a nice stepping stone for those of us who want to get to that stage one day.

齋藤孝のイッキによめる！名作選（3年生）

This is the first book I attempted to read. It is a collection of short stories. It really is quite good, I feel, in that the amount of kanji is recognisable at least for someone in the upper beginner stage – not too much kanji but not so little that it is painful to read. Everything has furigana in any case. And some words have a little definition under them as well which is very helpful. There are a few pictures through the book, and at the end of every little story is three quick questions which test comprehension of the story.

Over all I think this is a great book, just not right for me. The more I think about it the more I think it is just ill suited to me – I just didn’t realise it at the time which is why it frustrated me. But when I think about it, I had the same “Is that all? Am I missing something?” feeling I get when I read short stories in English.

Although – it is important also to point out that I was missing things. A co-worker had me translate a line into English, which I did, and I was right, but he then explained some nuances that I missed. I think I’ll continue to miss nuances of course until my Japanese becomes more sophisticated. Never the less, I think this also shows that even if you get the basic story line, with these books you can have room to grow with them, perhaps discovering new things every time you read them.

So yes, I recommend these books to you if you think you’ll like the short stories. After all, my problem isn’t with these books, I think they are fantastic, but rather the realisation that short stories and I don’t really gel in any language.

Get this book from Amazon or scroll up a bit to check out the carousel of more books in the series, all the different grade levels.

10分で読めるお話

This is the next set of books I bought. So far I’ve only read through this grade one book. It was a bit more satisfying in that I understood much more without having to consult the dictionary as much. These are smaller stories than from the other book (although I don’t have the grade 3 one to compare with the grade 3 one I own, so perhaps they are comparable)… There are more pictures in these ones too, and have some poetry which I actually really enjoyed!

The stories do get progressively longer and harder too which is nice. Thumbs are enthusiastically up for these ones as well.

Related posts

• Why books for 10 year olds are easier than books for 5 year olds
• Reading Manga For Japanese Language Learning
• Japanese Children’s Songs and Stories – Online
• Going Gung-ho – November 2009
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Where did the time go? It’s been over a month since I last posted, and I’ll tell you where I’ve been. Right here on the computer! Since the 19th of October 2009, I’ve spent 89 hours studying Japanese.

Some of you may know nanowrimo – an event which takes part in November where you attempt to write 50,000 words in a month. My goal of November was something similar, I wanted to see if I could attempt to study for 100 hours during November. The outcome is I’ll probably just be a little short of 70 hours, but I’m pretty happy with that! Next month I’m aiming for 80 hours – it might be a bit harder because it’s the holiday season but we’ll see how I go!

What follows is a long breakdown of what I’ve been up to during November!

Listening

My listening category includes watching tv/movies as well as other education specific audio. My main source was watching tv, I only include it when I am actively listening and not when I’m multi tasking or have background noise. I think when I have a larger vocabulary I will do more level specific listening to try and improve my listening skills. One TV show I do recommend to beginners is “My Girl” staring Aiba Masaki – the dialogue for the most part is spoken very slowly and simply as the main character is a young girl. Yeah, it’s a bit… but it’s easy study material!

There is one more day left in November, but it’s not like I’m going to drastically increase my study hours… With that in mind, in November I watched/listened to about 15 hours of Japanese.
December’s goal: 20 hours.

Reading

Breakdown:

• Grade 3 (primary school) short story book
• Grade 1 and 2 (primary school) short story book
• Manga
• Novel for 10-11 year old girls

Reading is a skill that I really want to improve. One of my goals of learning Japanese is to be able to understand Japanese books in their native language easily. This month I did more purchasing of books that actual reading. It’s actually a bit strange, but out of all the different types of study activities I do, I find reading the most tireing. It may be the times of day that I read – usually on the bus on the way home from work or in bed before I go to sleep, but I always find after a page I need to close my eyes and go to sleep. This is frustrating!! But I am hoping with time it wont be so taxing on my brain or I will find time to read at different times and I will see a difference.

I started out with a reader for grade 3 (primary school) Japanese children. It is actually a pretty good book for learners because it is full of short stories, all kanji have furigana and at the end of the short stories is a short little quiz on the content of the story to see if everything was understood. There are also little dictionary type meanings under some words that must be knew/unknown to most 3rd graders which was helpful! My method of going through this was to first look up any unknown words and write them down in pencil next to the word. The words in the book are big and have large spaces between the lines, so it was perfect for this. The problem is that my vocab knowledge is so low that it was hard to infer anything and had to look up a lot of words. And I found the first story a bit unsatisfying. My problem is, I think, that I don’t like short stories in English, I like getting to know the Characters and going on a journey with them… So perhaps I shouldn’t expect to like them in Japanese either…

Still, I felt my first foray into reading Japanese literature a bit of a failure, I went and bought some books that are full of short stories for grades one and two (at the time I was thinking my main problem was vocab and perhaps something very simple would fill me with a sense of accomplishment). So far I’ve read a couple of short stories from the grade one book, and I have to say it does make me feel good when I can read through something and understand maybe 70% of it. I can infer meaning from the pictures and sometimes there may be a sentence I don’t undertand but it doesn’t bother me. I haven’t felt the need to use a dictionary yet even if I don’t fully understand something. There is also a cute poem in the grade one book that I liked. But yes, over all the stories are… a little strange and a bit confusing because I guess they are meant for young children – it’s satisfying in that I can read but what I’m reading isn’t satisfying, I hope that makes sense!

Manga. I have been reading a book for young teen girls, a high school relationships manga. Your everyday sort of stuff, nothing remarkable about the story line. I bought this book at the wonderful Book Off when I first got to Japan and started it then but didn’t get far. This time it was nice to open the book and understand more than what I did then. I am improving!! Yay I haven’t finished it yet (reading is slow!) and again, I think I’m getting too old for the school girl stuff, I want to move onto something more my age – damn I feel old sometimes! The problem with moving on is vocab/kanji with a lack of furigana etc. So again with the yay for reading but the story isn’t grabing me type stuff. Yeah, if I was at the stage I am now half a year ago I would have been over joyed but it’s a case of the grass is always greener – but I guess in a way it is motivating me to keep going.

Next: Today I bought some books that as far as I can tell are for girls about 10-12 years old. I’m expecting them to be tough. However, I feel like I’ll be more satisfied with them. Sure, they are still for young girls, but they are fantasy stories about (I hope!) strong female characters – these are my favourite type stories to read in English so I’m hoping that they will be more staisfying. So far I read the prologue of one, it was really easy! It was the main character introducing herself (introductions are about the only thing I’m good at in Japanese!) and about her history. I did it infront of the computer to quickly look up a couple of words in the dictionary (no writing down) but for the most part it was exciting that I was reading a “real” book. We’ll see how I go as I get into the story line more. I’m sure I’ll be complaining about it at the end of next month. It’ll either be too hard to read or the story line is too simplistic or something!!!

November Hours Reading: 5 hours
December Goal: To finish a book!

Grammar

I’ve been using:

• Kanzen Master JPLT 3 Grammar book
• JET program language course – intermediate level
• review book for beginners/JLPT 3 level

I’ve been spending my time learning/reviewing JLPT level 3 grammar, using Kanzen Master JLPT 3 grammar guide. This is a good book, mostly all in Japanese with a little bit of english to explain the grammar point. I would have to say with JLPT level grammar, about 90% I already “knew” – knew in that I had encountered it before. A lot of it, however, still isn’t firmly in my head, like giving and recieving (I don’t know why I have trouble with this!), passive and causatives. Also transitive and intransitives. Much work to be done! There were a small amount of points I hadn’t learnt before but I think these ones will be quite simple to master.

Over all I do recommend Kanzen Master JLPT 3. I have no intention of studying the JLPT at this stage, but I like the way everything has been grouped into like forms, there are example sentences that are going to be at my level and there are quizes to check if you understood. Now, some of the quizes are easy in that “Oh, I just learnt that this grammar point you need the verb to be in the “te” form, so I’ll just choose the only option that is in the “te” form, even if I have no idea what the sentence means.” – I haven’t tried the exercises yet futher in the book so I’m not sure if they get harder than this.

My method of study sofar has been just to copy out the “formula” and then to copy a couple of the example sentences. It hasn’t done much to stick I don’t think, so now and into december I plan on paying a bit more attention into and really nailing down those passive etc forms. I’m hoping to have really got a solid foundation by the end of December – enough to move onto JLPT 2 level, even if I haven’t completely mastered them.

I do have a concern that with the JLPT 2 level, because I am (I imagine) not familiar with the grammar that it will be harder for me to actually understand what the grammar points are trying to address only through example sentences. I am planning on buying Kanzen Master level 2 so I guess I’ll see if it’ll be enough or if I need to supliment it somehow.

I have also been “studying” haha with the JET course. Now, a lot of bad things have been said about the course, and I believe last year they redid it alll. I think it’s not so bad really… but it isn’t really what I want to do with studying, if that makes sense, I would rather prioritise and do other things. Also the first book has been easy in that I am familiar with most of the grammar covered. So what I did is I wrote out all the grammar points and an example sentence, like what I did with Kanzen Master. Then I did the review exercises near the end of the book, compared it to the answers. I did fairly well, so I just went ahead and open book test style did the test. I still have to send it in, but I am satified that the JET course gets me studying and doesn’t seem so bad. I’m scared about the Dec book though – the dreaded transitive and intransitive verbs!

Last but not least, I’ve been doing this quiz book that tests kanji, vocab and grammar for JLPT 3. I did it back in Sept/Oct and scored fairly well. I picked it up again a week ago to see if I’ve improved. Happily I have improved. This time around I’m going to focus afterwards on the things I fail to see if I can really nail my short commings.

November: 15 hours of study
December goals: Finish Kanzen Master JLPT 3.

Kanji/Vocab

Yeah… Smart.fm has turned a bit to shit in my opinion, but I actually finally started using it. They have been upgrading a lot which has been frustraiting (it usually goes down for maintenence when I want to study) and I don’t use the new study program at all, but I have been spending every night studying vocab at smart.fm.

Vocab is a huge weakness for me, so I want to make a mass effort to really get my vocab up there. My goal of November was to study 1000 words, and right now I’m just short of 1500 – I’m hoping to reach that magical number tomorrow. Already I can notice the difference through reading my manga. There are shortcomings to smart.fm but I am enjoying (for the most part!) using the “iknow” interface. Once I master some lists I plan on upping my listening skills and doing the dication – I did a couple already but I think I’ll get the most benifit from that and the brain speed aspects of smart.fm once I have “mastered” the lists.

November: 31 hours, (hopefully!) 1500 words
December goal: to get up to 3500 words studied (+2000 words)

Writing

I get a lot of “writing” practise mainly through copying out my grammar books, but in this case writing corrosponds to when I physically create my own writing. I was planing on writing at 8lang regularly, but then I decided not to. I am going to save focusing on output (writing and speaking) when I am a bit futher into my studies. That being said, the small entries that I’ve done at 8Lang have been most helpful and I think it really is a fantastic resource. In the future I hope to keep a daily type log there.

November: half an hour
Decebmer goal: I don’t really plan to focus on this in December.

What’s Missing?

One noticible aspect missing from my log is speaking. For one, I think it would be hard to measure speaking unless I was to get up and say a monologue of some kind… At any case, right now I don’t feel confident in my speaking. Sure I can give one word responses and I can ask questions at stores if I think about it first, but I am not up to the level where I can have a conversation with people. I may add this to my spreadsheet at a later date, but for now I am not so worried about speaking and have no intention of measuring it in an “hours” format. At any rate, as my vocab and listening skills increase, I have found I have been more confident to speak, in particular to my students, and that has been satisfying/enough of a measurement for me. I can feel I’m inproving and that’s the main thing!

If you can think of something else I’m missing from my studies, feel free to leave a comment! Also if you have any questions or comments on my methods I’d love to hear them from you. I feel like, right now, I’ve never been so determined to get good at Japanese, and I feel like I’ve never gone this gung-ho at studying. Let’s hope I can keep up the momentum! (but still find the time to post… eep!)

Related posts

• How Fluent Am I After 18 Months?
• Is Nihongo Right For You?
• Reading Manga For Japanese Language Learning
• Japanese With Ease with Assimil
• Goals of 2010

March was an OK month in regards to my Japanese progress. Some of the activities I did include:

• An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese

I have gone through chapter three of this but still need to do more review.

• Reading Manga

I have read through two and a half volumes of manga. I finished the first four chapters of Hana Kimi and decided that was a “book” when it wasn’t the extended version From there I read a story called (from memory, it is packed now, more on that later…) “Love, Love..” I think I’m about 5 pages from finishing it but had to put it down. I was a bit over the main girl character crying all the time. Now I’m a chapter and a bit into “pichi pichi pitch” subtitled “Mermaid Melody”. Very cute, for a young audience so it is fairly easy to read.

For the most part study has been disrupted by the fact that I’m moving in a week. So posts may be a bit sporatic until everything is settled down again. Many reasons for moving but the main one is our lease is up so I have to! I’m looking forward to be over packing/unpacking/cleaning etc and settling down into study again! Yes, looking forward to study! That often happens when something is there stopping you from doing so.

Related posts

• Going Gung-ho – November 2009
• Reading Manga For Japanese Language Learning
• Is Nihongo Right For You?
• How Fluent Am I After 18 Months?
• Eep… Must… Japanese… Now

At the moment I’m tackling Hanazakari no Kimitachi e – the manga.

While I was in Japan I bought home.. *ahem* 75 manga. Yes, it was heavy. You can check out a crappy phone photo here. All this manga goodness was thanks to the wonders and delights that is Book Off. It may just be the most wonderful place in the whole world. It sells second hand books at an awesome price. Just don’t go there on Lady’s day and expect to come out empty handed…

Never the less, looking at my wall of manga, I thought I better get started on it properly or else I all the exercise I got carrying the things around Japan would have been for nothing. I have flicked through a few, “read” a few as well, but apart from some frustration, little has been gained. I really need to sit down and “study” these books without trying to make it into too much of a chore.

So I’ve decided to tackle Hana Kimi first.

The Good

Hana Kimi is a wise choice. I’ve read it before, although in translated English. It was also a billion years ago, so I can’t quite remember the little plot points. Of course, also, I’ve watched the TV series. So I know the basic outline of the story which will definitely help.

It’s also a story that I enjoy, which will help a lot! I think that learning to read this will be exciting as I get to finally read it in it’s native language. The book is 99% of the time better than the movie/tv show!

The Bad

Today, when I got up to where Nakatsu is introduced I remembered that in the manga he has an Kansai dialect. Which, I guess, will be good in helping me learn the Kansai dialect, but will also be very tricky! We’ll see how I go…

The length is another bad thing. I got the new super awesome deluxe edition which has three or four books in the one. So while manga are usually short, sweet, and to the point, this one is a whopping 368 pages. I might not come out the other side (if I make it through at all) alive!

Another bad thing is all the casual language. Yes, I know my だ from my です, but I guess I’m talking about more colloquial language that I can’t find in my dictionary. It’s something that will hopefully become easier as I learn through context – from lots of encounters both in manga and in other sources – but the first time I encounter them is always a bit baffling. I do like to read aloud though, and sometimes through reading aloud I realise I do know the word from having heard it in dramas.

The Method

The method is rather simple. I am confident that I will have encountered most grammar points before, so I am hopeful that I will be able to work out most sentences. What I will need to do is learn to recognise new kanji and to learn new words.

I am literally just going through this with a pencil and a dictionary. I am reading through, and when I don’t know a word I will look it up and pencil in an English translation near the Japanese word. Some times I need to look up almost every word in ever bubble. Other times I only have one word a page. I am hoping as I go through more and more I’ll have to rely on the dictionary less and less. But for now I don’t know enough words to gain the meaning most times through context.

I have no plans to add any of this to an SRS program or study it in any other form but to just read read read. I hope I don’t get too bored with it, but if I do, I will no doubt move onto something else and you’ll be able to read about it here! But for now, I am just going through and reading. After I have done a section I go back and read it with excitement. I am breaking down complex sentences, translating it into English to make some meaning from it. I know from past experience so far that the more exposure I have, suddenly I can just read things and understand it in Japanese. I am hoping this too will get easier the more I do!

I have noticed already, only a few pages into it, that words I didn’t know before are being repeated, so it is already acting like a natural SRS program in some sense. I am making no effort to memorize or learn the new words/kanji. I am just reading, checking an English translation, and moving on. I hope to learn them through exposure, both here in this manga and in other contexts.

In the future, if I read through and realise I don’t need my note there any more for a particular word, I will erase my pencil scribbles. I can always look it up again if I forget (kind of like failing a card in SRS!).

This is my study method at the moment and it is a lot of fun

Related posts

• Why books for 10 year olds are easier than books for 5 year olds
• Reading Manga For Japanese Language Learning
• Going Gung-ho – November 2009
• Goals of 2010
• Breathing Again

Rate this book: Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

Assimil is different from other texts in that the bulk of it is dialogues which you listen along to with the provided CDs. While it does have explanations, called “まとめ　－　Revision and Notes”, a grammar enthusiast will be wanting more. The idea is to learn through assimilation. While it doesn’t really provide a totally authentic immersion environment, I am impressed at how much is covered in this beginner’s text.

Assimil has a pretty lengthy introduction which is quite good at introducing Japanese to someone who has only just come to the Japanese language. From pronunciation, how verbs and adjectives work, the writing systems… Then it says:

Ugh! Don’t panic. You don’t have to worry about about all of this right away.

Assimil works in two stages, passive and active. I only have the first book, so can only really comment on the passive stage. This is where you don’t really worry about trying to learn kana, kanji, What you do is just go through the lessons, reading along to the tapes. The idea is learning through assimilation. With enough exposure it will all sink in.

Every lesson is a dialogue. On the left page is the Japanese, the right in English. The Japanese has kanji with furigana, a phonetic guide and romaji. The first thing I did was get a black texta and got rid of all that romaji and pronunciation.

It is important, I guess, to note that I came to this book as something to reinforce what I had already learnt. So I already knew how to read hiragana/katakana. When you are just starting out romaji is good for a guide. But after a couple of lessons I still think you should black out all that information. It gets confusing, and you shouldn’t rely on it. Hell, this book makes it easy, you don’t even have to learn how to write if you follow this method to a t, but rather only recognise them. Any fool can do that!!

The English page is also great. It has an English translation and also a word by word translation so you can work out how sentences are put together. Down the bottom are little notes that help you understand the dialogue better. And every seventh lesson isn’t a dialogue but rather a “revision” lesson which explains all the major things that are happening in the dialogues you just studied.

The audio is good but not great. It provides almost 2 hours worth of audio in Japanese. Each dialogues are fairly short, most are around 2 -3 mins worth. The bad thing is that for the first few dialogues the pace is painfully slow. Perhaps this is good for absolute beginners, but I was not an absolute beginner when I started this. Also, the dialogues never reach a native pace. To a certain extent, this is good for a beginner if you realise it isn’t full speed. It is a good intermediate step. Even myself, sometimes, I find the pace just right when I am trying to read aloud and my tongue gets twisted. I imagine as my reading speeds up, I could modify the audio to also speed it up slightly.

At the end of the dialogues are some exercises which are essentially useless. It consists of reading along with short phrases, and fill in the blanks that are entirely in romaji. I looked over these but largely ignored them. One feature I liked is that it has the page numbers written out in Japanese. Would have preferred them to be in kana, as they are in romaji, but it is still a neat feature for those learning their numbers.

I am quite impressed how far this book actually goes. For just over 300 pages, it covers a lot. I was impressed that the last dialogue starts off with a poem which was a bit tricky to get my head around at first. I haven’t encountered that in any other beginners text and so it was a nice surprise.

I am not sure if I personally would be satisfied to learn from this book, as you may know I like to learn by having things broken apart for me, and then some how I put the pieces back together. In this book you have to work out things for yourself, or perhaps not even work things out, you just go along with the flow and have faith that things will come together in the end.

However, as a revision tool I am quite impressed. In the second book you start the active phase, and I am keen to pick it up and see if it lives up to the first.

Purchase Japanese With Ease: Assimil

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• Some Awesome Websites

OK, here’s some websites that I have visited lately and think are awesome!!!

• Japanese Readers for the Middle Years


An interactive website designed for children (perhaps high school?). The Japanese here is very simple, however it is a bit of interactive fun. If you are new at Japanese it has visuals and audio to help you along. For those who are a bit futher along, it’s just a bit of fun for five minutes.


• News of Japan

Short news stories from Japan. You can chose if they are displayed in romaji, kana or kanji. There is also an audio file you can listen to as you read. Again, it’s all very simple and I think a great resource for those of us who are trying to jump into reading actual Japanese. It also refers to the book 2001 Kanji Odyssey (what numbers the kanji are on the website in the book), for those using that resource.

• Kansai Ben

An awesome reference on the Kansai Ben/Kansai Dialect. This is the best page I’ve seen on it yet! I haven’t even scratched the surface of this site, but it has audio and video examples, and is set out clearly with tables comparing Kansai Ben with standard Japanese.

• Japanese Onomatopoeia – Algorithm March

A post about onomatopoeia in the algorithm march. I was so disappointed when I saw the algorithm march on TV that it had no ninjas in it while I was watching (that I could see, anyway). I love the algorithm march!

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• Goals of 2010

One goal for many learning Japanese is to be able to enjoy manga in it’s original language. It is one of my goals as well. I have quite a few manga in Japanese, collected from many places, such as YesAsia.com, I have mostly used these as motivation tools – “look at these manga, I will read them!!”

After about one year of studying Japanese, I tried. And surprised myself – I could do it!

Two Reasons Why Reading Manga Is Easy

• The Sentences are very short, to fit in the little dialogue bubble. So for the most part, someone with even a small amount of grammar knowledge will be able to read the sentences.
• There are pictures to help with meaning. Even you go through a page without understanding a word, often you can guess what was going on. Or you will later.

  For instance, in Sugar x Life, there was a page where she was watching TV and I thought she was thinking back on the two guys she just met. Well, she was, but it wasn’t til she ran into the boys again that I realised the boys had been on the TV at the time she was thinking about them, and they were singers/idols.

Two Reasons Why It Is Hard To Read Manga (For Me)

Others might not have these problems, but here is what was hard for me when reading manga for the first time.

• Kanji. While knowing kanji isn’t necessary because – at least in the manga I’m reading so far – they have furigana. So I know how to pronounce words, and sometimes I even learn a new kanji from knowing the word before. But often I think “If only I knew just a basic meaning about the kanji – even just an English key word from Heisig – then I would have an idea of the word’s meaning. Building slowly on my previous knowledge I’d be able to get more of an idea of meaning plus I’d probably be more likely to remember the word/kanji next time I encounter it.
• Vocab. I simply don’t know enough words. At the moment I am working on vocab building exercises. The more words I know the easier it will be to infer meaning of unknown words, especially with the aid of pictures.

 

So get reading some manga now! You may be surprised in how much you understand. It’s a huge confidence booster. And if you give it a go and find you can’t understand, do not worry. Just put the book down, and then try again in a month. You’ll have something fun to aim for!





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