When you start studying a new language, it goes something like this, right?
You learn a word.
You learn five words.
You can make simple sentences!
You’re picking up the vocab and grammar to talk about what matters to you. It’s a snap to store all of it in your head. Is this awesome or what?
You’re gonna to keep going, you’re so fired up!
But then you find there’s so much to learn. Too much to learn.
Between the written characters, different ways to address different people and the slang, your eyes start to swirl. You’ve hit a plateau. It’s not fun anymore.
Everyone forgets or doesn’t realize or wants to hide that Japanese is an extraordinarily hard language to learn.
This means that if you start slow, you lose steam.
Japanese is usually taught in a way that gently guides you through the Japanese language; they don’t want to scare you off too early. But, most people slow down or stop sometime during the first year: it can seem ridiculous, the amount of time and effort needed to get even a basic working knowledge of everyday Japanese, which is why taking the long way around actually drains you more because it feels like there’s no end in sight.
I mean, how many times have you started something and never finished because it just dragged on or felt oppressive? (You can be honest. Not judging here. I’ve been guilty of it too.)
What you want to do is laser-focus your energy and enthusiasm at the beginning to get you through the jumble of characters, the formal language and some of the tougher grammar by absorbing the harder things first.
This probably feels counterintuitive. Might make you kind of antsy? But, the philosophy I’m proposing, that I try to follow, is to do the opposite of what is comfortable for you because when we go easy on ourselves, we’re actually setting ourselves up to fail.
And you have what it takes. I really believe that you do.
Sometimes you just need to look at things a little differently.
Sometimes you just have to find the path of least resistance.
But they all require that you don’t give up before you do those things.
Once you’ve found ways to make it easier for yourself (NOT the same as going easy on yourself), whenever you have a bit of trouble you’ll know you can do it because you’ve done it before.
I want to put you in the mindset that you can read and write, speak and understand Japanese, so that when you run into, say, confusing verb conjugations or backwards word ordering, they won’t make you call it quits. They’ll just be bumps in the road instead of mountains you have to scale.
Why do I say that?
Speaking Japanese was an incredibly sweat-inducing, heart-pounding, flushed-face affair in the beginning but I made it less traumatic for myself by doing exactly what I’m telling you to do.
Again, this is going to sound counterintuitive but the more exposure you get, the less nervous you’ll be each time. It’s not going to be immediate (sorry, no instant fix) but each time you use Japanese, you’re better prepared than you were the last time because you know something that you didn’t before. At some point it will hit you: I’m doing it! I don’t know when it happened but I got all of that!
It’s really a gradual thing.
It’s like being in a room that smelled of lemon cleanser when you walked in but stopped smelling like that after you’d been in there a while. Your senses got used to it.
This is the same.
By setting the expectation that ‘hard’ is the baseline, it’s no longer ‘hard’. It’s just normal.
If all you’ll say is “It’s not that bad.” after you get through a course with me, I’ll take it!
Honestly, learning Japanese teaches you way more than just the language: it helps you gain the ability to overcome something that feels insurmountable at times. So, treat the Japanese language like a large project.
And, what are always the first two steps when handling one? See the big picture and break it down into smaller tasks!
I’ll help you do both.
Since Japanese has a lot of moving parts, I lay out what you’re in for and then give you the tools to figure out and tackle each of those parts.
Remember, Japanese is a very dense, layered language. Kind of like an onion. So, we’re going to cut off the top so you can see the rings.
My workbooks, books, courses and lessons start using the kana writing system (hiragana and katakana) right away. Once we start learning kanji (Chinese characters), all of the worksheets use kanji where there should be kanji.
I know. It sounds kind of scary.
But I show you precisely what it’s like because it doesn’t get any easier the more you know—it’s consistently difficult, just in different ways at different stages of your learning journey. And, you’ll get used to the fact that there are things that you haven’t grasped. Yet.
Because I’ll keep bringing back words, grammar and concepts that we’ve covered before, at some point you will master them.
My methods include repetition, immersion, opportunity and constant exposure to encourage your brain to think in Japanese.
And the less you compare Japanese to English, the more you’ll enjoy Japanese for what it is.