Going from ‘nothing’ to getting ~85% in N4 in 9 months

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I didn’t start my 10 month long exchange in Japan back in 2003 with ‘nothing’. At that point I had been through 4 years of primary school Japanese and 3 years of high school Japanese. After 7 years of Japanese study, where did I stand? I could basically read and write all the hiragana, struggled with katakana and knew maybe 20 kanji (as in I could recognise but not write, could guess at a reading that I had already memorised but could not guess variations). My vocabulary would’ve been low, maybe a few hundred words. I knew some basic grammar patterns but probably no more than 5 or 6.

However I of course thought my Japanese was amazing and I was looking forward to getting to Japan and having long conversations with my host family etc. Fast forward to arriving in Japan, and then I very quickly realised I did not understand anything, could not read anything, couldn’t even do a basic self introduction and couldn’t even pick out a single individual word when people spoke to me. That period lasted for at least 6 months, at which point I was able to recognise certain questions and respond, and it wasn’t until about month 8 when I was able to have basic conversations. At about month 10, I was feeling very confident with my Japanese, at which point my exchange was over and I went home.

AFS, the organisation that sent me to Japan, provided me with some textbooks, a translator at school(!), a tutor and lots of emotional support (I was having a hard time because I couldn’t deal with being surrounded by people constantly speaking, listening and having a good time while I sat there totally confused). I’m extremely grateful for how much AFS helped me out. They also suggested that every student go for the JLPT. Back then there were only 4 levels: 4級、3級、2級、１級. The revamp of the test slotted in an extra level between 3級 and 2級 and renamed them. So technically while I took and passed 3級, it’s roughly equivalent to today’s N4.

So what was my study schedule like? Being an exchange student living with a host family gave me a lot of free time to study. At school, I had no idea what was going on except for in Maths and English, so I used to just drill vocabulary by writing out long word lists in my textbook, covering a column and then going from J->E or E->J. I would also try and write out the kanji. I ended up dropping a few classes (Japanese history, Japanese) because these were even a struggle for all my classmates and I was never going to be able to catch up to enough kanji to have a hope of ever understanding what was going on. This meant that I was allowed to go to the library to study by myself. I used this time to go through my grammar textbooks, and when I got bored of that, I would take a book off the shelf and try and read it.

When I got home, I would try and do an hour or so of study in my room and then join my host family to hang out and watch TV. Interacting with native speakers in this environment is obviously what helps to put all the study into practice. You get to hear how Japanese people talk, react to certain questions and how certain words are only used in certain contexts. You get to see how even basic Japanese constructions can be used skillfully to convey information and really see how the Japanese mind works to create sentences. This is why immersion and sentence mining, as opposed to looking up words in a dictionary is so important.

I would constantly bombard my host mother with questions. “Is this kanji right?”, “how would I say X?”, etc. I carried physical flashcards in my pocket with certain phrases like “write that down please” so that I could always ask questions without having to rely on my memory. My host mother could speak decent English but I soon asked her to stop because there is almost no way you can progress quickly if you’re switching between the two languages. It is slightly depressing to put yourself into this type of isolation but it certainly helped my Japanese.

I would study on the weekends, most of the school day, after school and constantly approach people who had learnt to speak English, to get tips on how to get better at language study. I started to notice a common theme, the people who were really good at languages didn’t so much study them, but made it part of their life. They listened to ‘western’ music, watched ‘western’ movies, made friends with native English speakers (many people sought me out once they heard there was a native English speaker living in their neighbourhood) and so on. It taught me that trying to drill grammar, vocab and make sentences like:

SATOU WILL EAT SUSHI
SATOU ATE SUSHI
SATOU DIDN’T EAT SUSHI

… gets boring pretty quickly. It’s a necessary but not sufficient condition. By and large, the eureka moments never came with my nose deep in a textbook. They happened when I was struggling through trying to say the most basic of things, and then getting a correction from a Japanese speaker. They happened when I was watching TV and someone said something and then did an action and then realising that the link between what they said and what they did. They happened when I would listen to how my host family, classmates, whoever interacted with each other.

So yeah, I studied almost every day for 10 months, sometimes up to 6+ hours a day. I also was surrounded by Japanese 24/7. Can I point to a single thing and say: ‘Do this for instant Japanese improvement!’? No. But without a holistic approach, you’re not going to get there. So that means watching a English subbed anime once a week or doing 15 minutes of app study a week is not going to get you to your goals in your lifetime.

Set goals. Work towards them. Here are some non-negotiable ones:

If you find that you are not good at self-directed learning, contact me through the contact tab or via cafetalk below where I am offering several coupons. I have been through every single which way to learn the language, and I’ll be able to tailor make a study plan for you that will help with your weaknesses and improve your strengths.

ようになる・ようにする with verbs

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This is a N4 grammar point that is often one of the trickier ones for people to get their head around. However it is so common in Japanese that you would do well to learn it as it will be used in a wide variety of circumstances, including all the way to the top levels of JLPT and of course in any context which Japanese is used.

TL;DR

This grammar is used to talk about changes in state, either with intention or by circumstance. It gets variously translated as, ‘make an effort to’; ‘it became that’; ‘do things in a way so that’ etc. There are two main drivers of this meaning, the first being the choice of に＋する or に＋なる and the second being the joining to a verb via the よう.

になる vs にする

I’ve discussed this grammar point (as well as the more complete ようになる・ようにする) in a previous post and video. This will be going over much the same ground but focusing on the verb usage with new example sentences.

The difference between になる・にする is of course we are dealing with なる, the verb To Become, and する, the verb To Do. The introduction of the に particle, sometimes referred to as the Target Particle, shows that the ‘target’ of the verb is the part coming before the に.

This means that it is a difference between something ‘becoming’ something, versus something is ‘done’. This is the key point, generally when you are dealing with になる, the situation is coming about without your choice or volition, whereas にする generally connotes that a conscious choice occurred.

Some common usages of these are good to reference. For example, if you were at a restaurant and looking at the menu and then see something you want, the normal way to say this would be

からあげにする
I’ll have karaage

Keep in mind you wouldn’t be saying this when actually ordering the food. As する is a verb, all the regular changes can apply to it.

あしたにしよう
Let’s do it tomorrow

になる however is used to show when things ‘become’ something else. For example

べんごしになる
become a lawyer

勉強になるゲーム
games that become study (a reference to educational games)

Why the よう？

The short answer is that Japanese has a rule against putting two verbs together. So that means when we want to use the meaning of になる・にする with a verb something must go in between. As the whole point of this grammar is to emphasise the change in state/circumstance, よう is used. Some of you may be familiar with よう as in from のような or similar. It is technically the same word, i.e ‘appearance’.

様 よう (n-suf,n)
(1) (uk) appearing …; looking …;
(2) way to …; method of …ing;
(3) form; style; design;
(4) like; similar to; (n)
(5) thing (thought or spoken); (P)

At this stage, I generally make the point that when you talk about change in state using this grammar in Japanese, you are literally describing that it ‘appears’ that that state has come about or you’ve made a choice to make it that way. In this way, the meaning of the word ‘appearance’ is still strong.

Let’s look at some examples to get a feel for how this works in reality. This is a common grammar point in NHK Easy articles so you can look there for more examples. As always, I recommend getting a browser plugin called rikaichan (or similar) to read kanji.

ようになる

観光目的で毎年来るようになります
It became that people come to (somewhere) every year with the purpose of sightseeing.

So this type of sentence is using this grammar to emphasise that people come every year to a place for sightseeing (notice how 毎年来るよう is all together). This means that perhaps people came to someplace (being Japanese, the actual place was mentioned a sentence before so as it is obvious from context it is now dropped) occasionally for some purpose but now are coming every year for sightseeing. This could be perhaps the place has become more developed, the cultural value has increased or any other multitude of reasons.

子供が生まれてからというもの、命の大切さを以前より考えるようになった。
Ever since my child was born, I have started thinking deeply about the importance of life more than before.

考えるようになった is ‘it became that I think’ and is being modified with 命の大切さを以前より ‘more than before [think about the] importance of life’. So here, it is true that this person has changed their thinking, but it’s not due to a conscious choice to do so. It is more because the environment has changed ie the birth of a child, that has lead to a shifting of priorities etc.

体が硬い人でもベターッと開脚できるようになるストレッチ方法
The stretching method to do the splits smoothly even for inflexible people

This sentence brings up a good point, that often you will see verbs in the potential form being used for this grammar, as often a ‘change in state’ is brought about due to a new ability. Here for example, doing the splits is not just ‘done’, because most people are not that flexible. They can’t just ‘do it’. But this is about the stretching method that you do so that it brings about a change in circumstance, namely that you’ll become able to do the splits. Interestingly this book/video seems like a bit of a phenomenon in Japan and is basically the only result you get for the word ベターッと.

ようにする

Microsoft Edge が自動的に起動されないようにする
Stop Microsoft Edge starting automatically

Generally the first thing you want to keep in mind is that we can see にする on the end, so we know it’s going to involve a choice. So we’re doing something or making a choice, so that it ‘doesn’t start automatically’ (自動的に起動されない). What is the thing that doesn’t start? Microsoft Edgeが

As mentioned above, generally as にする is involving a choice, you are doing something so that something happens or, in this case, so that something doesn’t happen.

悪夢を見ないようにする方法
A method to stop having nightmares

Notice that the phrasing in Japanese is to not ‘see’ nightmares, which is why you should always being trying to consume Japanese native material rather than translating from English phraseology.

自分を絶対評価で見るようにすれば、他人のことは気にならなくなります。
If you evaluate yourself on a total scale, you will stop caring about what other people do.

Here すれば is the provisional form of する, basically setting up a ‘if’ or ‘when’ statement.

Conclusion

I hope this explanation and examples help you get your head around this very useful grammar point. If you’d like more personalised tutoring, you can always contact me via the contact page or acejapanese@protonmail.com. Also check out my youtube channel for more Japanese lessons and leave a like, comment and subscribe!

“When will I stop translating in my head?”

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At the beginner stage of learning a second language, often you find yourself much slower than everyone else. This is because you hear what someone says in Japanese, try and remember it, then go through each word individually, parse the grammar and then maybe end up with an understanding of what was asked to you.

In the meantime, you’ve been standing there for 10 seconds or so in total silence.

So how can you stop doing this? The key is understanding that eventually you have to think in Japanese. You can’t spend time translating to English, then back to Japanese. It’s why when people go to live in Japan with the goal of improving their Japanese it can be so eye-opening.

Personally, it was not enough to go to Japan, I had to be firm with everyone around me and ask them not to communicate in English anymore. I also limited my time on the computer (because I would just chat in English and send emails) and I also stopped watching any English media on TV. This does result in feelings of loneliness, helplessness and isolation. It can be very jarring to suddenly not be able to understand anyone or anything, even the most basic of questions. Luckily I was with a host family who were very kind.

So how did I start to improve? It started with some basic phrases I would use around the house and school. One of the most useful ones was,

お風呂に入ってもいい？

Once this type of sentence gets in your head (which will happen if you repeat it every night) you start to notice you can swap some things out and use that same grammar. You start to notice that お風呂に入る means to take a bath, and the てもいい is a type of permission. Combined with textbook study, you see other permutations of this ‘permission’ sentence.

ドーナツ食べてもいい？公園に行ってもいい？And so on. At this point, you start to realise that one of the main things holding you back is how quickly you can make that てform. Luckily, your textbook has a list of all the てforms, so you start to just rote learn them.

Let me put it to you this way: rather than insisting on translation, it’s better to find out how Japanese people would express their thoughts and copy that.

It’s all about confidence, baby

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What’s the difference between someone who is just good at speaking a second language, and being fluent/native?

Maybe a hard distinction to draw sometimes but you know it when you see it.

The Triple JJJ Hottest 100 #1 song from 2018 sums it up nicely.

Features

Let’s think about some features of a skillful user of a language. They should have good diction, speak fluidly and at a native speed, use appropriate vocabulary, understand idioms and the like, apply grammar rules effortlessly while being mindful of exceptions, understand nuance and cultural references …

The list is long, and how would you know you ever reached such a level? Japan is a very insular country and this is made all the more so by the fact that Japanese is for all intents and purposes solely concentrated in Japan. Many people don’t like to watch dubbed or subbed movies or TV shows, and so Japan produces a lot of domestic content to consume. It’s very hard to watch Japanese media without knowing famous actors, songs etc which can only really come about through a lot of immersion in Japan and Japanese culture.

Strategies

So what can be done? A comment I came across recently is a good way to start

Let me put it to you this way: rather than insisting on translation, it’s better to find out how Japanese people would express their thoughts

There’s little point sticking your nose in a dictionary and looking up words or phrases you use in English and then wholesale copying them to Japanese.

Instead, you want to try immersion. I have a link to some websites where you can learn more about this in the Resources tab, mainly AJATT. Some newer versions of this include refold.

What do you think?

Using worksheets from Japanese primary schools: yay or nay?

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How does one study Japanese? Through these blog posts and previous videos I offer many sources you can use to practice your reading, writing, speaking in Japanese. One common question I get asked is, “Do you recommend to consume native materials, particularly kids’ books and school worksheets?”.

My short answer is yes, try and consume any and all Japanese you can get your hands on. But just as you cannot learn Japanese by watching Japanese TV a few hours a day, you won’t get a lot out of materials which are way above your level.

The reality is that school worksheets meant for natives are going to be challenging. I was browsing through https://happylilac.net/ and found a wide variety of printable worksheets that contain extremely complex grammar and vocabulary which I think many people below JLPT N2 would struggle to parse, and many more that N1+ people would struggle with. Some of the kanji worksheets were ridiculously difficult as they contained exercises requiring you to write the proper nouns for place names in Japan such as 長崎 and 佐賀, and to know words such as 干潟

干潟 ひがた (n) tidal flat; tideland

However, there are many short paragraphs of Japanese text, instructions and diagrams which contain a lot of excellent practice. Let’s look at the bottom of one of the sheets and work out what is going on. I’d recommend you get a variation of rikai chan to help read the Japanese text in this blog post.

First off in blue, it says Ｚ会ｘちびむすドリル.
Generally when you see 会 on the end of something, it’s some kind of organisation/group etc.　ちびむす is the name of the website (run by パディンハウス PadinHouse, Inc). ドリル is drill, which is what worksheets like this called. So there two organisations are working together to produce this.

In green, 考える楽しさを体験しよう！
考える is being used to modify 楽しさ, ‘the fun of thinking’. 体験 is a type of experience with しよう being the plain form volitional of する. Something like “Let’s experience the fun of thinking/learning”.

In pink, 一年間の総復習でスムーズに進級を
復習 is revision, with the 総 prefix having the meaning of whole; all; general; gross; entire; overall. You can see it written on the books. で is a particle which is “by means of” with に being used on スムーズ to turn it into an adverb (generally just add -ly, -er, -cal to make an adverb) of “smoothly”. 進級 means to “advance levels or grades”, basically to go from Year 1 to Year 2 etc. “Advance grades smoothly with 1 years’ worth of general revision books”.

The search bar says Ｚ会の本 which will just send you to their homepage for these revision books, with the text くわしくはこちら！
くわしく means “details” and こちら is another way to say “here”. Of course, the here being the above mentioned website.

Finding Housing in Japan

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Another aspect of being in Japan on a working holiday visa is finding appropriate accommodation. If you go to Japan on other visa schemes, particularly for example as an English teacher, your employer will often sort out your accommodation. This has its benefits, mainly that it will often be furnished, close to your workplace and you don’t have to deal with much of the hassle of finding somewhere. The downsides are that you generally are going to pay slightly inflated rates including things such as ‘key money’ and other charges and the place may not be exactly to your liking.

Upon arriving in Japan in 2010 on my WHV, I went to my old host family’s place and stayed with them for a month or two. After that I met some people through mutual friends and would literally ask everyone I met if they knew of any good houses etc I could apply for. Eventually someone said I could stay with them close to Nagoya University. This was an important step as my host family didn’t live particularly close to Nagoya and so I needed a ‘homebase’ closer to Nagoya while househunting.

I went into a nearby real estate office after looking at some of their offerings online and was invited to look through their listings. After picking out a couple that looked promising, the real estate agent drove me to several of the places so I could get a look at in person. This is definitely one of the benefits of going to a real estate agent! He seemed like a genuine guy and pointed out that some of the photos were very misleading as they were taken with a fisheye lens and so some of the apartments were tiny but didn’t look like that in the pictures.

After finding a few that I liked, we went back to his office and he started calling the landlords to see if they’d take me. The conversations on the phone went something like this:

“Ah yes hello Mr X, it’s blah from blah realty, we have a foreigner here who is looking to rent your apartment. Yes I see, thank you”.

After about 10 of these calls in a row, I volunteered that perhaps he shouldn’t refer to me as a ‘foreigner’ but as an ‘Australian’ as Australians have a pretty good reputation in Japan compared to the bad/terrible reputation that ‘foreigners’ have in Japan. He didn’t take my advice but eventually someone didn’t refuse me straight out, and the real estate agent handed the phone to me at which point the landlord asked one question:

“Do you know how to sort the rubbish?”

“Yes I lived in Japan for one year with a host family and I can speak-“

“Ok put the other guy back on”

And with that, I was in. Sorting rubbish in Japan is a bit of an involved process and very important as they don’t really have the space for landfill. Funnily enough a week or so after I moved in I got an unaddressed letter with 3 or 4 pages of full colour explanations of rubbish sorting.

The apartment was unfurnished and cost 四万円/月. That’s pretty cheap and it was in a convenient location called 金山, a bit south of central Nagoya. I hit up some friends who had cars and we drove around to some second hand shops to grab some furniture. I also found that some of these shops, particularly if they deal with whitegoods, will deliver to your place and help install for a small fee. They also ended up coming and buying back a lot of stuff from me when I left Japan. That took a lot of headache out of furnishing.

I ended up living by myself, which was fine. If I could do it again, I would probably look at getting into a sharehouse with a Japanese person. There are many websites that can help you find places like this and would be a good idea if you’re not comfortable with speaking/reading Japanese or haven’t lived in Japan before, as a native speaker experienced with the country is a valuable resource.

Before I left, I called the landlord and told them I was leaving, they did a final inspection and that was about it. I also had to cancel a few utilities like internet and the like. A lot of these things are by contract in Japan and I asked about cancellation fees. They asked my reason for cancelling and I told them the truth that my visa was expiring and I was returning home, so they decided to waive all cancellation fees!

Talking about reasons: から vs の vs のだから

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から

から can be used grammatically in certain ways to show reasons for something, basically acting as ‘because’ or ‘so’:

人とロボットが一緒に働く時代だからこそあらためて考えたい安全のこと
Because it is the era where humans and robots work together, we need to rethink safety

https://monoist.atmarkit.co.jp/mn/articles/2012/11/news046.html

オフィスチェアメーカーだから伝えたい。
Because we’re an office chair maker, we want to inform you.

https://www.bauhutte.jp/bauhutte-life/chair-mat/

This is one of the more useful constructions in Japanese and should be learnt as soon as possible after getting the basics down and is aimed at about N5/N4 level.

の

This grammar point, variously referred to as the ‘explanatory の’ or similar, is a slightly more advanced grammar point that would be learnt around the N4+ level.

あざとくて何が悪いの？
What’s wrong with being pushy?

https://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/azatokute/#/?category=variety

「彼女いないの？意外!」
You don’t have a girlfriend? Shocking!

https://jion.tokyo/5335

This is not the easiest grammar point to get your head around. One major reason is that we don’t particularly speak like this in English. Generally when I’m introducing this grammar point to my students, I start with the idea that adding の to sentences adds an implication. What that implication is will depend heavily on the sentence.

This grammar is also often used to seek further information or a proper explanation rather than just getting a Yes or No answer. There is way more to this grammar than I want to discuss here, importantly for the point of this blog post it can be simplified to ん.

の + だから and んだから

What happens when the two are combined? It is not so straightforward as just saying meaning 1 + meaning 2. This is a very common pattern in Japanese and so it is worth digging down into what it is used for.

Both forms are rather different. With から you explain the reason of something and it’s similar to the English word “because”.

の is much wider and it refers to some previous occurrence to make a conclusion or fill the gap in knowledge. It can be seen not only referring to reasons, but also used to mark paraphrasing, references and different things. Basically, it’s a nominaliser and its operation is similar to English. In English if we want to use nouns instead of verbs, we are probably dealing with の in Japanese. ‘It’s a thing’, ‘That’s a thing’, ‘Such things as …’, ‘The thing you did …’, ‘Oh, so it’s a ….’. For example, we can hear something hitting the roof and wonder, ‘rain?’ instead of, ‘it’s raining?’.

んだから has a very specific role. It’s used in a situation when both the speaker and listener knows about something, but in the opinion of the speaker, the listener doesn’t understand the importance of it. Thus the speaker tries to highlight that point using の as a reference and から as a reason for the preceding phrase.

阪神 大金あるんだから優勝しないと！
Hanshin [baseball team] We’re super rich and so we must win!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfZD_wigMf8

Hanshin Tigers are one of the biggest baseball clubs in Japan, based in the 関西 region of Japan representing Osaka/Kobe. They are well funded and we can see んだから attaching to 大金ある, showing that there is some implication being made about being rich. In pro sports, generally the more money you have, the better team you can buy including coaching staff etc. So then you are expected to win.

北の富士氏「走ってくるんだから、あの人は」琴桜の立ち合いは恐怖／初場所
Kitanofuji: “He’ll come running at you, that guy”. Fighting Kotozakura was scary (first tournament)

https://www.sanspo.com/sports/news/20210119/sum21011908000001-n1.html

Kitanofuji is a retired sumo wrestler who made the top rank of Yokozuna and does commentary on sumo matches. He is being asked about 琴櫻 傑將(ことざくら まさかつ), a now deceased former sumo wrestler who also made Yokuzana. Kitanofuji was being asked about Kotozakura, nicknamed the Raging Bull and how he used to be a very aggressive wrestler.
走ってくるんだから shows how んだから is attached to はしってくる, which is to ‘run at’ someone. んだから adds nuance of, ‘because he’s going to come running at you (and attack and not let up etc)’, emphasising that you cannot just sit back and hope to beat him or think that he will just be defensive as he WILL be attacking you.

旅館じゃないんだから
This is not a hotel, you know

https://ameblo.jp/sunnyblue99/entry-12651080842.html

This is a blog from someone who had issues with their marriage and ending up divorcing, and goes through the warning signs that they were not a good match. She recalls a specific argument where they went to the ex’s parents’ house for New Year’s. Seeing as they were staying in the house, she didn’t bother to bring any towels. When she asked for one, she got the above response from her ex-husband.

旅館じゃない means “not a ryokan” but the similar expression in English would be “not a hotel”. The addition of ん to this sentence really emphasises a few things: 1) it’s not a hotel 2) it’s my parent’s house 3) there will be no ‘service’ of the type you get at paid accommodation. Of course the point being that she shouldn’t expect to be given things like towels, meals, daily cleaning etc. The use of んだから here is used to tell the woman that her expectation of towels is ridiculous (apparently 1 towel was produced which was shared between the two of them for 4(!) days).

難問

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A 難問 is difficult question. Here is an extract of the kanji entries.

難 
[音] ナン  
[訓] かた.い -がた.い
むずか.しい むづか.しい
むつか.しい -にく.い[英]  difficult; impossible; trouble; accident; defect

問 
[音] モン
[訓] と.う と.い とん
[英]  question; ask; problem

There is a similar word, 難読, read as なんどく, with the second kanji giving more a meaning of ‘difficult to read’. This is generally in the context of kanji that are hard to read because they are rare or obscure. Words in which this appears include

難読地名【なんどくちめい】 difficult place-name to read
難読漢字【なんどくかんじ】 difficult kanji to read

Looking through lists of 難読漢字 are good ways to test your abilities but obviously require a lot of prior kanji study. However the reality of being in Japan means there is a lot of difficult kanji to read and so effective practice is vital.

Another good way to get in such practice is to pay attention whenever you’re travelling, as train stations will have their name with furigana above. I used to try and visualise how a train station name would be done in kanji and then look at the sign to check my guess. I did something similar when working at a hotel in Japan, which was to cover the section which showed the reading of the name and then try and read the names on reservations.

In the end, you need to put yourself out there and try and read everything! Engage your brain as much as possible and never be content with passively reading things. It is very important to test your knowledge by asking Japanese people how things are read. I used to carry a physical flashcard in my pocket with the following phrase:

この漢字の読み方を教えてください。

I would also have a small notebook that I would write these things down (or even better, get the Japanese person to write it to make sure I didn’t make some silly transcription mistake).

Make sure you are trying to put your skills into action and are not just nosedeep in textbooks all day.

Finding work in Japan

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Adventures on a working holiday visa

After I finished up at university near the end of 2010, I decided to go to Japan for at least a year on working holiday visa. WHV systems are generally reciprocal, which means that if you have WHV people coming to your country, you can very likely go to their country as a WHV holder.

This is of course the case with Australia and Japan. In fact, because of the big imbalance of so many Japanese coming to Australia, the scheme has seen many changes to try and encourage more Australians to go to Japan. After some research, I made some enquiries with the Japanese consulate (embassy is in Canberra) and filled out my form. The basic requirements involve money, and it depends on whether you have a return ticket or not on the amount of money needed.

Working in my favour is that I could put down Japanese nationals as my contact/emergency contact in Japan which makes my application a lot stronger but this is not strictly necessary.

Finding work

There are many options for working in Japan and speaking Japanese is not always necessary. Personally I didn’t want to do English teaching because my main goal was to improve my Japanese, and speaking English at work was not going to help with that goal. I was hoping to end up in some position that involved paperwork (so I could read/write Japanese), business level conversation (so I could speak formal Japanese) and something with customer contact (so I would get a lot of opportunities to speak about lots of different things).

I started attending HelloWork which is a government job hunting service. They have offices all over Japan so I went down and sat on the computers looking for jobs. From memory, most of the jobs were carers, factory workers and office jobs but there was a whole variety. The staff were helpful and friendly but reading job advertisements all written in Japanese is a bit of a hard slog.

Once I had a shortlist of positions, I would somehow make notes of them and then ask the staff on the next steps. Often they would look at my shortlist and cross off some jobs which were special positions meant to help stop unemployment and were only available to Japanese nationals. Or jobs which required certain things which I did not have like licensing etc.

After the OK from them, I would take my list home after swinging past the convenience store to pick up blank 履歴書 and then go through and fill them out for the position. Things may have changed now, but I was told to write it out by hand. If you make a single mistake, you’re supposed to start all over again. Writing out all my personal details etc many times got old fast. I used my host family to help out with any questions but I’m sure the Hellowork staff would do the same. However the whole process was pretty arduous and I’m extremely thankful to my host family for helping me out!

Hearing back from people

After many many applications, I started getting back a lot of rejections or I just heard nothing at all. I would also get occasional calls from people responding to my applications. Bizarrely, most of the conversations went like this (of course in Japanese):

Hello is that… Kendall?

Yes.

Thank you for your application… do you speak Japanese?

Yes, I graduated university with a Japanese major and I have JLPT N2. I lived in Japan for over a year.

Yes, yes. Thank you. Can you read and write Japanese?

Yes. I did that 履歴書 that you’re reading off right now.

Understood, we’ll get back to you with a decision soon.

That decision was always “No”. But of course you have to keep trying. This process went on for about 2 to 3 months and was a lot of work. The reality is that most jobs in Japan do require a very high level of Japanese, and I probably wasn’t quite good enough to be able to do these jobs. I did some odd jobs like data entry (would not recommend) and some other things but eventually an application I made to a nearby hotel was successful and I started there on the front desk.

This became my main job throughout the entirety of my stay and was very good for my Japanese. The role itself was a bit up and down as I did a lot of nightshifts and not much happens, but in the end it was ticking all the boxes and I can definitely say my Japanese improved.

Changing jobs

The pay was not great at the hotel and the hours were terrible. But considering how hard it was to get that job I wasn’t about to quit it to find something better. But as time went on and my contacts grew, I got offered many other opportunities to make some money. The best one was that I was an extra on a Japanese miniseries called 真珠湾からの帰還. I appear a few times and even got a voiceover! The pay was a lot better than the hotel although not much exposure to Japanese as most of the extras didn’t speak Japanese.

If I could do the working holiday again, I would probably consider living in Tokyo and joining some agencies to do TV work as there are many opportunities. But unfortunately you only really get one WHV and I had to return to Australia for another opportunity.

All in all, it was a great year and I’ll do some more posts about how I found housing etc so keep your eyes peeled!