If in doubt, input again

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.

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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.

Te Forms that aren’t verbs

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!

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.

JLPT Registrations Open Soon!

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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.

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.

JLPT questions: knowing the format is half the battle

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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 poorly in an exam. Conversely, you can just so happen to know one tiny area of a subject really well and that ends up being a large chunk of an exam. In the former you look like an idiot, and the latter you look like a genius but it doesn’t really say much about what your actual ability is.

I like to use the analogy of a game: the exam or test is like a competition in which you can score points. Points are only awarded for certain actions and not awarded for other actions. So it is important to consider the most effective way to get the most points possible and the best way to avoid making mistakes so you lose as little points as possible (if the exam is such a test that allows minus points).

So the important thing is to be prepared and ready. As the old saying goes, if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail. So let’s look at some specific JLPT questions that can cause some issues for those unfamiliar with the format.

You can take practice JLPT tests on the official website to get a feel of the different types of questions. We’re going to look at two types of questions, one I called the star questions, and the other I don’t have a name for…

Star Questions

These questions really throw people. I’ll show you the example from the JLPT website.

The explanation (in green/yellow) is below the actual question (and you will only get the explanation above the first question in the actual exam). In effect, you are given a sentence with 4 blanks. The star will always be in the same position, the 3rd spot. Your task is to choose what will go in the star position, numbered 1 through 4 in blue.

As always, these questions follow the JLPT philosophy which is, pick the the most appropriate answer. There are some hints to look out for when considering what words go where. One thing is that grammatical rules still have to be followed, so look for obvious particle pairing with verbs, nouns etc.

In this example, you have a の at the beginning which probably means you have a noun coming after it. As this is a N1 question, this doesn’t help much as all the 4 choices can go here. But you may recognise the pairing of やすみのたびに as a possible phrase whereas 休みの片付けようと and 休みの思いながらも don’t really make sense.

The next thing to look at is that we have a と particle at the end of one of the choices and then 思いながらも as one of the other choices. These are very common pairings, especially when you consider you have the plain form volitional before it.

Now that we have the two pairings of 休みのたびに + 片付けようと思いながらも, you just have to consider where 今日こそ will go. I used to like to draw lines placing the words in the empty spots to help visualise these types of problems. In the end, 今日こそ will go between the two pairings and so the correct answer is 1 片付けよう

Picking the appropriate word

I never really liked this section of the exam, it was definitely one of my weak points. The idea is that you are presented with a word and then 4 sentences. Each sentence is using the word but one of the sentences will be the best usage of this word. This section of the exam tests whether you know your definitions and synonyms really well.

労わる is a hard word, and notice that the kanji is not used. This is by design, as if you don’t specifically know the word いたわる but have the kanji, you can have a guess at the word’s meaning just by the kanji. So the JLPT wants to test your vocabulary separately from your kanji ability.

I wasn’t particularly sure on what this word meant myself, but I thought it had the meaning of to exchange something or to hand something over (I was actually thinking of the word 至る). The dictionary definition of いたわる is as follows:

Reading through all 4 sentences, I felt that 2 and 3 were weird. I was left choosing between 1 and 4. Four’s sentence in particular made me think that いたわる must mean protect or maintain and so I chose it. In the end I was wrong, but like I said I hate this part of the exam. I think studying for these types of questions is very difficult as it means you have to do in-depth study of words, rather than just going down a JLPT list and learning as many words as possible.

Use these tips to better your JLPT exam technique and get that N1!

If you found these tips 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 this 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.

Get your katakana as good as your hiragana

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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 what to study in Japanese, often there is an underlying tinge of laziness. Most people don’t like to hear this, but if you understand that there is only a certain amount of time in the day and only so many things to accomplish, it is completely rational to try and look for shortcuts, more effective strategies or skipping certain things. At the same time, if you want to actually get good at Japanese even at the most basic level, you cannot be lazy about katakana.

Indeed, skipping katakana is not one of those options that you can skip. It is such an important part of Japanese that you have to spend time getting good at it. Without it, you’re going to have an extremely hard time understanding almost anything written in Japanese, as so many words (particularly nouns). Not to mention the large sprinkling of such words in everyday speech.

Timing of when to start?

Basically you should be starting katakana as soon as possible. You should prioritise learning hiragana first. I’ve done previous posts on how to study hiragana as well as providing good resources to do so. Once you get to a point where you can write a word in hiragana, for example think of what the word for ‘car’ is, then write it out by hand, くるま, you are at about the point to start looking at katakana.

Then you want to do basically the same process with katakana as you did for hiragana. Spend time looking at a hiragana chart, write each out by hand and then start doing flashcards. Flashcards which have audio files or by using NHK Easy to listen to the correct pronunciation while trying to read the characters is a great way to speed up your learning.

Alright, so just study hiragana like I did katakana…

No! Katakana has an extra element to it which means it is slightly more involved than just rote learning the individual characters. First of all, there are some additional sounds in katakana like smaller versions of ァィェォ as well as ヴ and several others you should look through the above links to find out more about.

Finally, there is a way that katakana is used in Japanese that goes against some basic instincts that certain speakers of other languages, such as English speakers, that need to be understood to properly understand and use katakana in Japanese. You can see the below video for a whole explanation on some of these aspects with myself and my Japanese friend Mio.

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

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.

Struggling with High School Japanese? Learn the Plain Form

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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 plain form, pretty much the whole of the rest of beginner’s Japanese (up to and including JLPT N4) becomes much more logical.

I am going to introduce some tips to you on how to best understand Japanese and learn it in a better way. This all starts with learning about the plain form or dictionary form and how it interacts with the ます・です form.

What’s so important about the plain form in Japanese?

Tae Kim, one of the best Japanese teachers out there (yes I know he’s not perfect nor is he Japanese, but he has lots of great ideas) is one of the first people to introduce this idea to me in a clear way. I would highly recommend you read his introduction to his Japanese course regarding issues with Japanese textbooks and Japanese language programs. It is not a long passage to read and if you truly are serious about getting better at Japanese, you should read it.

His basic point is that Japanese has some features that are quite different from many languages, particularly for our purposes, English. I will focus mainly on the concept of ‘politeness’ and how it makes learning Japanese really hard if you do not understand this concept.

Why does Japanese teaching in school set students up for failure?

I don’t particularly blame anyone for the current state of Japanese learning in schools. Teachers have quite a hard task. Language learning takes many hundreds of hours of study and you’d be lucky to get more than a few contact hours a week at school. There is also an issue of selection bias and ignorance of successful Japanese teaching strategies. Then of course there is class size and all the issues that brings with it.

There are also some hard decisions that have to be made with Japanese teaching. When designing a Japanese program, you have to decide whether you will teach people the basics of grammar or you will teach them how to speak polite Japanese. School Japanese programs around the world have chosen the latter, they want their students to be able to speak politely to people in Japan as a priority. Although this may sound like a good idea, in reality it is setting students up for failure.

The main reason for this is that what you are taught as being “Japanese”, for example たべます, おいしいです and other such examples, is only one facet of Japanese which is in fact building on the plain form of Japanese. So if you do not understand the plain form, you have to do lots of crazy workarounds. One of the worst I see year after year in school, is teaching students to make the てform from the ますform instead of from the plain form. I’d recommend my video on learning 13 words to conquer the てform for verbs. While you’re at it, you should go through my Beginner Playlist on Youtube particularly the ます video to get an idea of what the plain form is.

But teachers or the people that set the syllabus aren’t out to get me, are they?

No, they are not out to get you. A choice was made regarding the order to teach Japanese and my argument (well, the argument I agree with) is that this choice, to focus on ます form first, is not good.

Fundamentally, the goal of a Japanese program should be to teach Japanese so that students can understand and use Japanese properly. Starting from the ます form is like teaching English by making students read academic articles from a peer-reviewed journal (OK not my best analogy but hopefully you get the gist).

You should be starting with the plain form and then adding on the ます form much later. In effect the exact opposite how Japanese is taught all over the world. If you’re wondering how you can learn the plain form, I would recommend Tae Kim’s guide as I linked above, my beginner playlist videos linked in this article and specifically this section, Polite Form and Verb Stems (as well as being across the totality of Nouns and Adjectives and Verbs) from Tae Kim’s guide/website.

Another great website to read about the barriers to effective Japanese learning can be found on imabi’s mission page.

TL;DR

Learning the ます form first is counterproductive. If your sentences always end with です or ます and たべる makes no sense to you, start learning the plain form. The plain form is the ‘true’ base of Japanese and you can learn about the ます form later.

Managing Your Study

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If you are not doing some type of spaced repetition system (SRS) flashcard system to help you memorise words and kanji, you probably should. Language learning does involve learning many words and unless you have some kind of amazing memory, you will need to go over the same words many times until you have truly remembered them and can recall at any moment.

One of the most satisfying feelings I ever get is when a certain situation comes up which uses a specific word and I know the word. Not knowing the word would’ve meant I would’ve been completely unable to work out what I was hearing. It’s even better when I use the word while speaking and get a visible reaction from others like, “now THAT was an appropriate word for that situation!”. AKA よくしってるな！

SRS is a proven system that repeats information to you over certain spaced periods, with wrong guesses meaning the system will show the word again much sooner and a right answer meaning you won’t be ‘tested’ on that word for some time. Generally the collection of words you pick up overtime to do SRS on will be referred to as a ‘deck’.

However adding in new words as cards to your deck means that your study time goes up because you have more cards to review. When your SRS deck starts to become more of a chore than anything, your issue is likely bad cards.

As language learners, we want to grab every kanji, every vocab that we see in our immersion environment, even if it’s mind-numbingly dull, because we think we ‘should’. However my tip to you is to try and forget the perfectionism. Forget what you ‘should’ learn.  Just grab the items that look fun and try to learn them.

So delete cards that do not spark joy. Even fun cards are not immune from deletion. Some cards start out fun and interesting, but we forget the context or we just don’t care about them anymore. Don’t be shy about deleting those. Just because you liked it at one time doesn’t mean you need to commit yourself to it forever.

Setup of Japan: 都道府県

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都道府県, read as とどうふけん is a word used to represent the various top level administrative areas of Japan. The Wikipedia article has some great maps, diagrams and more than enough information you’ll ever need to know about this topic.

In Japanese the breakdown is as follows: 都：東京都の1、道：北海道の1、府：京都府および大阪府の2、県：それら以外の43. So we see that there is one each of 都 and 道, being Tokyo and Hokkaido. Then we have two 府 being Osaka and Kyoto and the rest being 県. I tend to translate 都 as City or Metropolis and 府 as Metropolitan Prefecture with 県 being Prefecture (it can help to think of these as ‘states’).

I like pictures so here’s a map from Wiki:

This means that learning these 4 suffixes is very useful when trying to recognise certain proper nouns in Japanese. While 道 and 都 are not exactly rare kanji, when you see them as a suffix it is probably generally a good guess to at least consider that you could be dealing with 北海道 and 東京都. 府 and 県 don’t get used much outside their meanings of Metropolitan Prefecture and Prefecture respectively, for example 県警 is the Prefectural Police.

Finally it is worth learning 区市町村, read as くしちょうそん, which is the lower level administrative area designations. The Wikipedia article is again very in-depth so worth a read. These are used as suffixes to show what are referred to as “wards” and then “city of X”, “town of Y” and “village of Z”. So let’s look at my old address in Japan and spot these features. There is a whole other discussion on wards, mainly that Tokyo is a type of SAR being made up of 23 wards but wards do exist throughout Japan as well as will see in the below examples.

日本、〒456-0003 愛知県名古屋市熱田区波寄町12－1プチメゾン金山101号

The first thing to note is that Japanese addresses are written from big to small, that is they start with the largest administrative region and then go down to the smallest. So we start off with Japan, then there is the Japanese postcode symbol followed by the 7 digit postcode. Then we see 愛知県, read as あいちけん, and the 県 should be the main thing that draws your attention. You know at least you are dealing with a prefecture and you have narrowed the address down pretty significantly at this point.

Red outline is 愛知県

Next we have 名古屋市, なごやし, or Nagoya City. This is the main city in Aichi (basically where the symbol for 名古屋城 is in the above picture) and next we have 熱田区, あつたく, or Atsuta Ward. These could be thought of roughly as “suburbs” but they’re generally a lot larger than Australian suburbs (my only frame of reference). As can be seen, we have again zoomed in a quite a bit and we are now down to a 8.20km2 area with approximately 66,000 people in it.

getting closer to my old place, I was basically in between 金山駅 and イオンモール熱田 near the northern border of 熱田区.

Then we have 波寄町12-1 which is Namiyose Town (this is a slightly strange reading of this kanji and very few Japanese people used to read it correctly, they would generally say Namiyoru or Namiyori) with the numbers referring to the 丁目 system or basically the block numbering system. A much closer look and you can see the number 12 is designating the block, with 1 showing it is the first in that block. Finding your way around the 丁目 system is tough sometimes as these numbers are not written anywhere on the street/buildings, so you generally want to remember the name of the building, プチメゾン金山 and ask around or go to a 交番. The last numbers, 101号 is room/apartment #101. That wasn’t my actual room number but I’ve forgotten what it was so that will do for now.

Let’s look at a Tokyo address to see the difference. We’ll go with the iconic 交差点前スタバ in 渋谷 (しぶや). The address is 日本、〒150-0042 東京都渋谷区宇田川町21-6 1F. Starts off pretty much the same, we’re in Japan with a Tokyo postcode, 東京都 (Metropolis of Tokyo) in the Shibuya Ward, 宇田川町 (うだがわちょう) Utagawa Town, block 21, building 6, Ground Floor (be careful that Japan uses 1F for the ground floor).

I hope this post has helped you understand how Japanese addresses work and also taught you some useful kanji along the way. Check out my other posts for all other sorts of Japanese learning.

If you found this article useful and would like to contribute to further writings on the subject, please consider a donation using the below service.

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.

Song Review – レミオロメン – 3月9日

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Music is an excellent way to learn Japanese. If you find a song you like, you can listen to it endlessly and the constant rehearing of the same words and grammar structures will help you learn them very effectively. In my personal experience, people who are better than your average JSL guys are the ones who just consume Japanese in their everyday life and don’t see it as ‘study’. You’ll also be exposed to a more poetic/figurative usage of Japanese (in particularly interesting kanji choices) that can really help you think about Japanese in a deeper way.
I used to find Japanese music I liked just generally from theme songs from anime, dramas etc that I would watch. The one we’ll go through today is the song from 1リットルの涙 (テレビドラマ), 3月9日.

流れる季節の真ん中で
ふと日の長さを感じます
せわしく過ぎる日々の中に
私とあなたで夢を描く

The lyrics start off with 流れる季節, a type of grammar that is very common in Japanese in which you use a verb to describe a noun, ‘flowing season’ and then a very common JLPT trick of 真ん中 which is read is まんなか, with 真 often used as a suffix to describe the ‘true’ or ‘pure’ version of something, definition 2:
真 ま (pref) (1) just; right; due (east); (2) pure; genuine; true; (n) (3) truth

ふと means suddenly, 長さ is a grammar point where you take i-adjectives and replace the い with さ to change ‘long’ to ‘length’.

Next we have せわしく過ぎる which is in a way an inverse of 流れる季節, with せわしい being changed to せわしく to act as an adverb. We have a kanji iteration mark which is technically called 同の字点 but generally referred to as a のま and results in this being read as ひび.

3月の風に想いをのせて
桜のつぼみは春へとつづきます
溢れ出す光の粒が
少しずつ朝を暖めます
大きなあくびをした後に
少し照れてるあなたの横で
新たな世界の入口に立ち
気づいたことは 1人じゃないってこと

Nothing too much here, but I will point out the use of transitive verbs in the sentence 少しずつ朝を暖めます, notice the pairing of あたためる with を. I’ve done a video on this grammar topic if you want to check it out here.
There is also the interesting case of おおきなあくび which may confuse some of you as you always thought of 大きい as an i-adjective. Both ちいさい and おおきい can be used in this way, either as an i-adj or na-adj. There are some caveats and generally the な versions are only used with abstract concepts, whereas the other tends to be with concrete concepts. However, in this song ‘a big yawn’ is not exactly abstract although as the above linked article points out, その歌を歌う人それぞれが自分でイメージできる木、時計（つまり、抽象的な存在）となり、余韻のある表現になります。

瞳を閉じればあなたが
まぶたのうらにいることで
どれほど強くなれたでしょう
あなたにとって私もそうでありたい

First line here has a handy construction, とじれば, which helps remember the ば conditional. There are few other handy grammar constructions in here including X ほど Y でしょう, ありたい.

砂ぼこり運ぶつむじ風
洗濯物に絡まりますが
昼前の空の白い月は
なんだかきれいで見とれました
上手くはいかぬこともあるけれど
天を仰げば それさえ小さくて

I can almost be 100% certain I learnt this word 砂ぼこり from this song, and if I didn’t, I certainly remember it because of this song. Ditto for つむじ風 and also for the pairing of 洗濯物 with the particle に and 絡まります.
There is also a smattering of N1, N2 grammar in there with いかぬ (which I can’t seem to find any source on but it’s just classical Japanese version of ない, if someone has a source please let me know!).

青い空は凛と澄んで
羊雲は静かに揺れる
花咲くを待つ喜びを
分かち合えるのであればそれは幸せ
この先も隣でそっと微笑んで

More JLPT N2, N1 vocab and usage, including the incredibly useful 羊雲 ひつじぐも (n) altocumulus cloud, as well as another adverbial usage in 静かに揺れる.

If you would like to go through your favourite Japanese music with me and have them translated, contact me through my website’s contact page, through email or via CafeTalk.


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