One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve been studying Japanese, is that the influence of Buddhism in Japanese culture is massive. Of course, this filters down to the language as well, and any attempt at reading about Japanese history is going to throw you into a world of complex kanji and…
Sometimes you may find yourself learning a new word or grammar point, and then see it nonstop for the next week. No matter what your read, or what Japanese you listen to, you just keep seeing that same point. How is it you never noticed it before? Was this such…
If you want to improve the speed of a second language, you need to stop translating in your head. Sure, you can watch a TV show in Japanese and then pause it every few seconds to take in what people say, but you’re going to be pretty useless in an…
A great channel to test your Japanese skills on is QuizKnock. Their YouTube description is the following: 東大クイズ王・伊沢拓司を中心としたメンバーが、ガチンコクイズや盛り上がるゲーム、激ムズ入試問題など様々な無理難題に対し、頭脳と根性で挑戦していくチャンネルです。勉強動画もあるよ！ ガチンコ means to do something seriously. It comes from Sumo, originally being ガチン which is the onomatopoeia for the sound of two wrestlers slamming together when they go from the 蹲踞 crouch…
You want to get as much input as possible when learning a language. One video that really opened my eyes to how important input is to language learning was this great channel What I’ve Learned: If you don’t spend a lot of time hearing what ACTUAL Japanese sounds like, no…
Te forms are super important in Japanese and I’ve done several videos and blog posts on them. At least a basic understanding of the te form is needed to get any meaningful progress in understanding let alone speaking Japanese well. However much of the focus always seems to be on…
The JLPT is opening up for registrations soon for the December 2021 sitting. You can read about what the JLPT is on their website. The reason I’m talking about it is because it’s a great opportunity to test your Japanese level. Now, the JLPT is not a perfect test. Indeed,…
One thing I wish I had realised earlier is that school and exams are not really that great a measure of your ability in a subject. In the end, tests and exams are an imperfect way to test people. You can be amazing at a subject or area but do…
One of the most common questions that you’ll see about learning Japanese is about what scripts to learn. Do you learn all three at the same time? Should you ignore kanji because we have smartphones? Why bother learning katakana if you can already speak English? As with most questions about…
About half of the students I tutor are doing Japanese in school, generally high school. Despite them learning Japanese for many years, due to how Japanese language programs are structured they have not learnt the basics and therefore struggle with everything to do with Japanese. If they better understood the…