Ace Japanese

Spoken Vs Written Japanese: Worked Examples

Ace Japanese April 11, 2022 April 11, 2022Blog

Although social media is mostly a waste of time, from a language learning point of view, it’s a great way to get involved in conversations with natives and see the back and forth that can result.

Seeing as most journalist’s attempt at research and investigation or original story writing involves getting a single tweet from someone semi-famous (or better) and building a story around it, browsing through news aggregators can be a way to find the more interesting posts, as well as get a learned opinion about it (that last part was sarcastic).

So today let’s look at a common cat activity: being a butthead.

First, the usual ちがう, now while this word technically means ‘different’, it’s a fantastic word to learn if you want to sound like a Japanese person. This word is used a lot, and really means ‘no’, as in, ‘no, you’re wrong’.

Then there is the それは, referring to the dog bed (yes that’s right, it’s a DOG bed), followed by the phrase 犬に買った, which is more advanced usage of the に particle but shows that the dog bed was bought for the dog.

Finally, the addition of んだ adds emphasis, here emphasising that the bed was bought for the DOG, and not for the cat. So get off it cat. Funnily enough, there was another interesting phrase in here to describe the cat: 我が物顔 (わがものがお).

If you found this lesson useful, I’d really appreciate a donation. It goes directly into supporting this website and me to produce more content that will help you improve your Japanese.

If you’d like to have personalised Japanese lessons, be they 1-on-1 or group lessons, contact me today via the website’s contact form. You can checkout my youtube channel for examples of what lessons will look like, and I have a professional home studio setup with microphone, lighting and software so that I can display anything on screen including articles, videos and much more.

クラブ活動

Ace Japanese February 11, 2022 February 11, 2022Blog, Japanese culture

School sports in Japan is an interesting setup, and I was fortunate enough to go to two different schools during my 10 month exchange in Japan, and of course even between schools in Japan there are large differences.

I joined the table tennis club, 卓球部「たっきゅうぶ」, although there were many other interesting choices like 剣道部「けんどうぶ」and 柔道部「じゅうどうぶ」. If I had my time over, I think I would probably choose Judo.

While referred to as 部活 or クラブ活動, the word ‘club’ was often thrown around, especially when fellow students saw me hanging around school after it was over, because my presence meant I must be in one of the clubs. I was asked a few times 何部？on my way to practice.

Almost the entirety of the school’s grounds are used for 部活. Obviously, there are no more classes going on so the classrooms are free to be used, and some clubs will just put mats down to do martial arts, the soccer field and baseball field is occupied by their respective clubs, and we also had a pool and a gym that held volleyball and basketball practice. There were other clubs like photography and likely a whole other range of activities that took place inside the school that I didn’t see. But it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that a few hundred students would stay back everyday to do the club activities.
The setup at my school was 2 hours or so structured technique practice, cardio work, and scratch matches at the end, spanning Monday to Friday. Each club has a 先生 in charge, and the table tennis club was fortunate enough to have 古井先生「ふるいせんせい」, a marathon-running, downhill-skiing, heavily-tanned, table tennis MASTER. He was very kind to me and always made sure I was looked after, although his actual role at the school was a 体育教師, I definitely saw him in the classroom in a suit and tie teaching other subjects. He was great fun, although 体育教師 have a reputation in Japan for being the enforcers and disciplinarians in school life. This meant he was very outgoing, and when he found out I didn’t know my 担任の先生’s name 「たんにんのせんせい」, he would then always ask me my teacher’s names to test if I had gone and found out.

He would often join around 5 or 6pm, near the end of practice, and proceed to whip a few of the senior players in a few games, laughing and mocking them while doing so. In his absence, the 先輩 is in charge. Being a high school student, this will be the 三年生, however a few months into the school year will see them drop out of 部活 because they want to focus on their studies. That means the 先輩 is the 二年生, of which there were two in the club, myself being one of them. School finished at 3:45, and 部活 started at 4. It was a short walk to the 武道場「ぶどうじょう」, which officially was the practice room for the 剣道部, but we shared half of it with them. Being the 先輩, I was expected to get there first and open it up, requiring a 失礼します～ and knock followed by acknowledgement to get the key from the teacher’s room.

There was a quick meeting at the beginning and end of each practice, called by the 先輩 yelling out 集合～ and everyone gathering around. After being dismissed by either 先輩 or in some cases 古井先生, it was time to ride home and get some dinner.

We attended local table tennis tournaments that were held in stadiums or convention centres with hundreds of attendees. I got caught out for the first tournament because I didn’t wake up early enough and also didn’t realise that I needed to wear my school uniform. It was a Saturday after all. One of my fellow club members came to my house on his bike so that we could both ride to the train station, and stood in the doorway in disbelief at me in a t-shirt, having just been woken up by my host mother. After arriving at the tournament, I was presented with a uniform that was about 2 sizes too small, and consisted of a very revealing tight shirt and short shorts. I guess I should also mention it was bright purple. I may have one my first round match but then lost the second, and lost my first round in doubles. From memory only one other member of our team won their first round so I was pretty happy with that.

If you found this lesson useful, I’d really appreciate a donation. It goes directly into supporting this website and me to produce more content that will help you improve your Japanese.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and why you see Japanese everywhere suddenly

Ace Japanese October 12, 2021 October 12, 2021Blog

I’m a reader. I like to read about technology, finance, politics, or anything that is well-written. One of the benefits to reading is you come across some fancy name for something that you figured already had a fancy name but you just didn’t know how to look it up.

That fancy name is Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. This is apparently another one of those cognitive biases that, in my opinion, has its roots in the human mind’s inability to deal with abstract concepts particularly surrounding numbers.

I’m almost certain I’ve read something about that numbers thing but can’t find out what it’s referred to as.

It reminds me of something like the cognitive dissonance experienced when reasoning from certain anthropocentric opinions. I’m not formally trained in any of this, however, I’m not convinced that the experts are much better either (particularly in psychology or psychiatry).

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon

This is that weird feeling of noticing things. The problem comes about because before you knew what something was, or had a name for it, or every put even a modicum of thought into it, that there wasn’t a solid memory of it for your brain to compare to when you see it again.

As something becomes more recognisable, you remember it specifically, which then creates a sort of positive feedback loop and you feel like you’re suddenly seeing the thing everywhere.

This can have some very unfortunate side effects. As the above linked Heathline article points out, if a doctor spends all their time poring over medical journals to learn about new techniques or diseases, the doctor will be more likely to misdiagnose patients with those new conditions as they are fresh in the mind.

The name of the phenomenon actually refers to a terrorist group active in the 1970s. This is because someone noticed a mention of the group somewhere, then suddenly starts seeing references all over to the terrorist group. Part of this is is likely ascribed to just how bad we are at recalling details:

What does the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon have to do with Japanese?

If I’ve done a halfway good job of describing the BMP, then hopefully you realise that this happens all the time with Japanese, especially if you’ve spent time in Japan.

Once you spend some time learning about a kanji, or a grammar point, then you go and have a conversation with someone and that exact thing comes up. Now, if you didn’t know the word, it would just be an almost meaningless sound in a conversation, on top of how many meaningless sounds that you’ve already sat through in trying to learn the language.

So why pay any attention to it? The point is you don’t (or maybe more accurately, can’t). However, once you’ve learnt that word, now it will pop out at you, and you’ll perhaps even have the feeling of deja vu wash over you, making it even more memorable.

This is the way you reinforce things. Reading 1000 words a day and trying to learn is unlikely to work that well. Will you recall any of them even 10 minutes later? That’s why I like to spend time looking over past lists than trying new ones. A word that I want to learn and saved in a list and get tested on is going to stick in my mind much better.

If you found this lesson useful, I’d really appreciate a donation. It goes directly into supporting this website and me to produce more content that will help you improve your Japanese.

Buddhism, Japan, and getting better at Japanese

Ace Japanese September 21, 2021 September 21, 2021Blog

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 Buddhist icons, leaders, concepts and many other facets of Buddhism.

When trying to learn about the 御前座布団・おまえざぶとん, a type of cushion used specifically for Buddhist ceremonies, I came across the following article, let’s have a look at it in more detail.

First, we’ve got a lot of tricky vocabulary, here are some of the few from the beginning:

敷物　しきもの any type of cushion or mat
仏壇　ぶつだん Buddhist altar, traditionally in the house
お参り　おまいり Visit to a religious site like temple, grave etc
中綿　なかわた padding

Some snippets

私たち日本人にとって、とても身近な敷物と言えば座布団です。

This pattern of X にとって、Yと言えば is a good way to introduce something like, “If you consider X, then the Y is”.

A few lines later, the phrase:

使い分けていらっしゃる方も多い

comes up, this is an example of polite Japanese by substituting いる for いらっしゃる。

Next we have the phrase 置いてある, which you can learn about in my video:

If you found this lesson useful, I’d really appreciate a donation. It goes directly into supporting this website and me to produce more content that will help you improve your Japanese.

Linkages and Similarities

Ace Japanese September 13, 2021 September 13, 2021Blog

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 a common grammar point and you just were blind to it?

It’s easy to think that you are the problem, that you just don’t pick up these things, or that you’ll never be any good because you can’t remember things as well as you think others do. But it’s also important to realise that many parts of Japanese have links to another if you look hard enough.

One area of this where I notice it all the time is verbs.

Shifting meanings, shifting readings

I was looking up the word 脅かす・おどかす recently. This is not the most common word, and I’m more familiar with 脅す・おどす. When looking up the word in the Japanese dictionary (always try using a Japanese dictionary than an English one), it pointed out that there are two usages of the word:

While the word means to intimidate, it can also mean to surprise someone. That is clear enough from the number 2 definition via びっくりさせる. But then notice that the second word is 驚かす・おどろかす. I know this word from 驚く・おどろく which means to surprise someone.

So hopefully you can see how close these words are, and how in both instances か is used to show it is acting more as an intransitive verb.

On top of that, it made me realise that there is a difference between おどろかす versus おどかす. Because you can be surprised pleasantly such as if you got a free cake, or because you walked into what you thought was an empty room only to notice someone sitting in the corner, startling you.

Remember words not rules, or how to stop translating in your head

Ace Japanese August 11, 2021 August 11, 2021Blog

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 actual conversation.

I’ll show you some examples of words to use to better understand verbs, nouns and adjectives.

Plain Form Verbs to ます Form

Remembering how to change the plain or dictionary verb form into the masu form is tricky. The rule requires about a paragraph of explanation.

But if you remember 4 words, this will enable you to remember how the rule works.

The four words are

たべる　↔　たべます
いく　↔　いきます

It is also important to remember that the first word pair is our RU verb example, and the second word pair is the U verb example. See here if you don’t understand what RU U verbs are, it’s my playlist on YouTube explaining these concepts.

So how do you use these words to help you?

If you remember that a RU verb like たべる goes to たべます, it’s natural to drop the る and add ます.

However if you think of いく and いきます, you will see that after removing the ます, all you’re left with is いく and いき, and that should prompt you to remember that you jump across the hiragana row from the U sound to the I sound.

So for example, just say you have a verb that you want to put into the ます form but you have it in the plain form. Let’s take よむ as an example.

First you consider whether it is a RU verb or U verb. よむ is clearly an U verb. If you can’t make this determination quickly, you need to practice the concepts I talk about in the video above.

So because よむ is an U Verb, we remember our U verb pairs, いく　いきます. We need to think of going from the U sound to the I sound. く　き as applied to our word,　む　み.

We then have よみ. Then, add ます to get よみます, which is our answer.

Adjectives and Nouns into the negative

With adjectives it is again another 2 pairs of words. This is because nouns follow the same rules as なadjectives.

If you don’t know about the two types of adjectives in Japanese, watch these two videos from my beginner playlist:

さむい　↔　さむくない
だいじょうぶ　↔　だいじょうぶじゃない

So how do you use these words to help you?

If you remember that the い is dropped from いadjectives and replaced with くない, you’ve remembered the rule for every single いadjective. Likewise if you remember that you put じゃない on for なadjectives, and by extension, nouns.

So for example, just say you have a word which you suspect is an adjective that you want to put into the negative form but you have it in the present tense. Let’s take たのしい as an example.

First determine if it is a an いadjective, なadjective or noun. It ends in an い so best candidate is likely いadjective.

Remember that さむい　さむくない means たのしい　たのしくない.

f you found this lesson useful, I’d really appreciate a donation. It goes directly into supporting this website and me to produce more content that will help you improve your Japanese.

Footage of the Japanese mind thinking about KANJI

Ace Japanese August 2, 2021 October 12, 2022Blog

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 to the 立合い. 東大 is an abbreviation for 東京大学, the other similar one being 京大 for 京都大学.

The video they did on kanji is a great insight into how the Japanese look to recognise kanji and use clues to work out what a kanji is. The feats performed in this video are impressive even by native speaker standards, with specific reference being made that 山本さん has 漢検準一級, meaning he has effective command of over 3000 kanji.

The video we’re reviewing involves kanji that are rotated in a kaleidoscope fashion. The video title contains 万華鏡, ばんげきょう (notice the sneaky げ) to reference this.

Practice – “bits are poking out”

The first is 白 rotated 90 degrees. During the discussion, the controversy of ‘font choice’ is going to be brought up and complained about through the rest of the video.

Certain fonts have what are referred to as 高床式　たかゆかしき. This is originally in reference to granaries and buildings built on stilts. 山本さん points out this are particularly noticeable at the bottom, referring to them as a 出っ張り　でっぱり. What this means is, that you’re likely dealing with a kanji that is actually normally square on the bottom but in this stilt font style, meaning the two similar notches on top are just from the flipped version.

Thus the two notches on top can be ignored, leaving the single notch in the middle. A square kanji with a single notch on top and single line in the middle is 白.

Now this shows an incredible ability to rotate 3D shapes in the mind. Most of these participants are not only good at kanji but also at mathematics. These two factors are not a coincidence for these graduates of the top Japanese universities.

Question 1 – “that deppari looks like child!”

Another reliance on deppari, but a different type of it. Deppari just means bits sticking out, and the top part of 子 appears in several kanji but is fairly recognisable. 鶴崎さん points out that this deppari just looks like 子 to him.

Question 2 – “I’m too dependent on font”

須貝さん has a great bit of insight to realise that with this style of font, square shapes are going to have a bit of overlap because of the difference of height on the bottom stroke.

山本さん blames the font and gets called out by 須貝さん.

Question 3 – “That bit that is thrusting out”

Next up is a similar kind of clue to the でっぱり, but is referred to as a 飛び出し　とびだし. You see this word on signs in neighbourhoods to warn drivers that kids may run out from behind alleys or corners.

“Take care and watch for kids that may run onto the road”

須貝さん refers to it as a ‘characteristic bit that is thrusting out’ and 山本さん worked out it was 品.

He makes the remark that once you have worked out how many times its been rotated, you know the orientation you should be looking at it in. This is also the answer for question 4. There is no logic given for the choice of question 5 either.

Question 6 – “Now there’s no stilts!”

This question and question 5 are why I like this channel so much. The producer is really good at coming up with difficult variations on the same problem so while the contestants think they’ve found a trick, it won’t work for everything.

This time the character of 昼 was used but the starting position was that it was upside down, then rotated twice, 130 degrees each time. This means you no longer have the 高床式 stilts on the bottom.

山本さん points out that because he couldn’t see them on the bottom, he figured that it must instead be the top part upside down. He then uses his hands to draw a rectangle and line and run through his memory to consider all kanji which have these radicals.

“with a rectangle on top and a line on the bottom, must be 昼!”

Final Question – “what’s with that perfectly drawn hexagon in the middle?!?”

須貝さん complains about the centre of this last one, looking like a perfect hexagon.

鶴崎さん points out that the two distinctive legs likely means that he can get the correct orientation of the character that at least one example is written that is not flipped (ie it is how it would normally appear).

But then we have an issue that there could be a vertical stick going through, that can be seen amongst all the other lines, but this is an issue as we have an opening in the centre.

“the line’s not piercing all the way through!”

He then does some air drawing of kanji that have a line on top or on bottom, and then the legs. The kanji that pops into his head is 光.

I was able to watch this video and understand the points in detail and all those explanations you read above are my thoughts based on the video.

I can teach you to understand kanji to this degree as well, it’s not impossible!

If you’d like to have personalised Japanese lessons, be they 1-on-1 or group lessons, contact me today via the website’s contact form or book a lesson via Cafetalk below.

You can checkout my youtube channel for examples of what lessons will look like, and I have a professional home studio setup with microphone, lighting and software so that I can display anything on screen including articles, videos and much more.

If you find this blog post useful, I’d appreciate a donation as a means of thanks!

If in doubt, input again

Ace Japanese July 27, 2021 July 28, 2021Blog

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 matter how much you study it won’t be authentic. You won’t speak the same way the natives do, you won’t express yourself the same way and you’ll sound… weird.

All the time when I’m answering questions in my classes to my students, I’ll be able to recall specific phrases or words used in context from conversations I’ve had with Japanese people or TV shows. These phrases stuck in my own mind because when you hear native speakers express something, it will sound so natural.

So how do you get more input?

You have to find something that you enjoy consuming. Making your study less like a chore or duty and more something that you just do is the key to success.

I’ve met many amazing Japanese speakers. I’ve also met many terrible ones. Decide for yourself where I fit into the spectrum (but don’t tell me).

The amazing speakers I’ve met always have something in common: they have constant Japanese input in their life. It could be that they watch their animes. It could be that they listen to music. Maybe they spend time constantly watching the big Japanese youtubers. Whatever it is, you want to be doing consistent input.

I’ve mentioned this math before, but if you’re doing 10 minutes a day, that’s over an hour a week and 52 hours a year. Scale up as desired and you could be looking at hundreds of hours of input a year.

What about you, acejapanese?

What do I like to do for input? Well I have the news on my phone and set the region to Japan. I like to scroll through the news while eating breakfast and read every single Japanese headline. I add words that I don’t know to my dictionary and then spend 5 minutes going through all my saved words.

I also have a few Japanese shows that I re-watch quite a lot. My most common is 攻殻機動隊, or Ghost in the Shell. Because I have seen it all already, I turn the subtitles off and listen to the Japanese voices. Research has shown that constant repetition is one of the most important factors in memory formation.

If you found this lesson useful, I’d really appreciate a donation. It goes directly into supporting this website and me to produce more content that will help you improve your Japanese.

Click on the below picture to book lessons with me via Cafetalk

Te Forms that aren’t verbs

Ace Japanese July 19, 2021 July 19, 2021Blog

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 verb te forms. Of course this is for a good reason, many of the particularly N4+ style grammar points are going to require you to be adept at handing the te form.

However there are other te forms apart from those used with verbs. Adjectives and nouns both have versions of the te form which are also extremely useful.

I-Adjective Te Forms

To make the te forms of i adjectives is pretty straight forward. For the every inflection/tense, you replace the い with くて

おいしい　ー＞　おいしくて
おいしくない　ー＞　おいしくなくて

There are no te forms for past and past negative, おいしかった or おいしくなかった

Nouns and Na Adjectives

As to be expected in Japanese grammar, both nouns and Na adjectives both take で to make the te form for the present tense

がくせい　ー＞　がくせいで
しずか　ー＞　しずかで

For the negatives, you follow the above i adjective rule:

がくせいじゃない　ー＞　がくせいじゃなくて
しずかじゃない　ー＞　しずかじゃなくて

Use case for this grammar: joining adjectives and nouns together in ‘chains’

You can then use these te forms to join adjectives together with nouns to describe things in more detail,

このたべものはおいしくて、やすい
そのひとはがくせいでしずか

If you found this lesson useful, I’d really appreciate a donation. It goes directly into supporting this website and me to produce more content that will help you improve your Japanese.

Use these tips to better your handle on katakana and therefore be better at Japanese!

JLPT Registrations Open Soon!

Ace Japanese July 12, 2021 July 12, 2021Blog

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, it doesn’t even have a speaking section or writing section.

That’s right. It’s all multiple choice!

However it does test your ability to understand Japanese in a variety of settings especially grammar, vocab, reading comprehension and listening comprehension. I have the highest level JLPT N1 but enough about me.

You’ll need to find country-specific information about the details for JLPT in your area. This is all listed on the JLPT’s website.

OK I want to do it… but what level?

Choosing which JLPT level to go for is hard sometimes. Keep in mind that the majority of first time test takers for the JLPT fail. Not me though, I smashed mine first go (and I passed N2 first time as well). However let’s not talk about the times I failed N1.

You can take some sample tests on the JLPT website and I’ve done a lot of blogs on JLPT prep as well as some videos. That’s an old video so don’t judge me too harshly please. My newer videos generally are tagged with an approximate JLPT level so you can watch those and see if you understand or not.

How do I study for the JLPT?

Its important to remember that if your goal is to pass the JLPT, you have to study how to pass the exam. Of course if you speak Japanese or understand Japanese it will help, but specific, targeted study for the JLPT should be a priority.

There are various textbooks made with the JLPT in mind, I really like the Shinkanzen Master series but you don’t need to buy these. You can definitely pass the JLPT just with free materials through a combination of immersion, flashcards and consuming Japanese as much as possible.

I also run JLPT prep classes so contact me via acejapanese@protonmail.com if you want to look into that. Mention this blog post and get a free lesson. Payment is via PayPal and other are also methods accepted, please ask!

If you found this post useful, I’d really appreciate a donation. It goes directly into supporting this website and me to produce more content that will help you improve your Japanese.