[2023-09-17] How I learned Japanese in UNDER 6 months [SSpvEJzY3AM]

When I was 17, I discovered anime and I

got really hooked and I was watching it

every day. And it was at that point I

developed this intense curiosity and

interest in Japanese culture and Japanese

language. So I decided to study Japanese

and it took me about 6 months to be able

to have conversations with Japanese people

without too much difficulty. So today I

want to talk about the 5 steps that I feel

are important when learning Japanese or

any new language.

I really believe that learning to read is

very important, but learning to write is

not really that important. You don't

really need to learn how to write Japanese

using a pen or a brush because you'll be

typing Japanese using your phone or your

computer. I'm not saying you'll never have

to write Japanese using a pen because when

I worked in Japan at Lawson in the

convenience store, I did have to use a pen

to write Japanese almost every day to fill

out forms for customers. But you can learn

that later. I don't really feel like in

the beginning stages of learning Japanese

that learning how to write is super

important. But reading, on the other hand,

I feel like it's very important because

you have to start talking to Japanese

people as quickly as possible. And the

easiest way to do that is by texting them

using some kind of messaging app or some

kind of website where you can practice

with native speakers. And they're going to

be speaking or typing in Japanese, and

you're going to have to be able to read

that. So there's 3 alphabets in Japanese.

There's hiragana, katakana, and kanji. It

will take maybe a week or 2 to memorize

hiragana and katakana. There's only about

40 characters in hiragana and about 40

characters characters in katakana, and

there's like a little dash thing, the

circle thing that goes above certain

letters. I think it took me about 10 days

and then I could fluently read hiragana

and katakana without any problems. Now

kanji, on the other hand, is a lot

different and a lot more difficult.

There's thousands of symbols, but you only

need to know about maybe 400, a couple

hundred, to be able to converse fluently

in Japanese to Japanese people. I would

recommend starting off with the very basic

kanji like tree, mountain, sun. Some of

the basic kanji shapes are very basic,

like the kanji for mouth is literally just

a square. Okay, so it's been a few weeks

and now you can read and type hiragana and

katakana, and you know maybe between 30

and 50 or maybe even 100 kanji by now. I

think that's a good start and you can

start chatting to Japanese people at this

point. But before you start talking to

Japanese people, you actually need to know

how to construct a sentence in Japanese,

and to be able to do that you need to

learn grammar. Constructing a Japanese

sentence is kind of like building a wall.

You need bricks and concrete. So if you

think of the vocabulary as bricks,

and you think of the concrete as grammar

that's holding all the bricks together.

It's kind of like you need vocab, but then

vocab on its own won't really make any

sense, and you need the grammar to bind it

together and turn it into a sentence that

makes sense. So after you've learned how

to read hiragana, katakana, and a couple

hundred kanji, I would recommend you blitz

through the basic grammar of Japanese,

and this should only take maybe a couple

weeks. The Japanese grammar is not too

difficult to understand, and all you need

is like a good course that will guide you

through the beginning stages of basic

Japanese grammar. Personally, I used a

website called yesjapan.com. I think it's

called fromzero.com now. I don't know how

much it's changed since I used it almost

15 years ago, but I recommend that site.

It was pretty good and it worked for me.

I don't really feel like there's a lot of

basic grammar in most languages. You

basically just need to know how to ask

things like what, when, where, how, what

time, numbers, counting, asking questions

like do you like this, have you ever done

this, have you ever been to blah blah

blah. When you can ask basic questions,

then you can start building upon that. I

don't really feel like trying memorize

loads of random vocabulary in the

beginning is very useful, very helpful.

Sure, you could go through like a list of

gardening vocabulary or kitchen vocabulary

and just try and memorize it, but I feel

like you're kind of wasting your time and

you need to focus on learning the grammar

first and then later building upon your

vocabulary knowledge. You could master all

of the basic Japanese grammar with only

knowing maybe 5 words of vocabulary like

pen, car, cat. Currently I'm learning Thai

and I go to a Thai language school and we

spend hours and hours in class just trying

to memorize random fruits, like a whole

list of fruits, or like a whole list of

words or tools you'll find in the garden

or around in the kitchen. And I just feel

like this is a very inefficient way of

learning a language, and I'm not gonna

need to know how to say all these

different fruits. It can be tricky trying

to understand how grammar works and what

the rules are, but when it comes to

learning new vocab, all you have to do is

memorize it.

Okay, so it's been like a month. You

should be able to read hiragana,

katakana, and a couple hundred kanji, and

you should know the basics of Japanese

Japanese grammar. I think you're ready now

to be able to speak to Japanese people. I

used to use several websites to be able to

talk and communicate with Japanese people.

I used to use lang-8.com, but I think it's

kind of a dead website now. HelloTalk is

good, and HiNative is good for writing

blogs, and then Japanese people can

correct your blogs and send you messages.

And also dating websites are very good,

like Tinder is good because you can change

your location to Japan and then start

matching with Japanese people and then

just try and talk to them. I personally

was talking to about 10 to 15 Japanese

women at the same time, and I made one of

them into my girlfriend, and we used to

have Skype calls every night for about 2

to 4 hours, which was really helpful.

Having an online internet Japanese

girlfriend was so useful. I cannot express

how useful it was more than I'm currently

trying to. She was just really cute, and

that really motivated me to want to learn

Japanese so I could understand every

single thing she was saying, so I could

connect with her on an emotional level,

and then later on a physical level. You

really need to have something that

motivates you, and if you're a guy, I

don't think there's anything that

motivates us guys more than just like a

cute girl. I personally was really

motivated because I wanted to impress this

girl so badly with my Japanese skill, so I

was basically just learning Japanese all

day long every day for months and months,

and then she dumped me anyway because she

found some other guy and we never actually

met up. Finally, my final tip

is consuming. You have to consume as much

Japanese media as you possibly can— music,

drama, TV, video games,

YouTube videos, reading articles online.

For me personally, I was really into anime

and I'd watch anime all day long for

months and months, and I picked up a lot

of Japanese from anime. And then when I

got bored of anime, I moved on to TV

dramas, and then I kind of got bored of TV

dramas, and then I started watching comedy

panel shows like reality TV in Japanese on

Japanese TV. They usually have YouTube

uploads so you can just watch it on

YouTube. And if you just listen to how

Japanese people speak in casual

environment and pick up on the phrases and

the way they speak and just try and

imitate it, then you'll learn quite a lot

that way. And that's why I say reading is

so important, because if you know how to

read, then you can read articles, or you

can go onto Japanese Twitter and read

Japanese tweets and read what Japanese

people are talking about, and you can see

how they speak in a written way. If you

don't learn how to read, you're kind of

closing yourself off to an entire type of

Japanese media that you could have been

consuming. Also doing little things like

changing your devices into Japanese. I

used to turn my phone settings, changed my

phone settings so everything was in

Japanese, like the menu layouts,

everything. That entire system I had on my

computer, my phones, was all in Japanese

to help me study it and help me get myself

immersed into the language. You need to

install or download the Japanese keyboard

onto your phone and your computer so you

can easily type Japanese. And the reason

why I'm struggling to learn Thai right now

is because I don't actually consume any

kind of Thai media. I don't watch TV in

Thai, I don't watch movies in Thai, I

don't listen to Thai music, I don't really

talk to to any Thai people in Thai. And

that's mainly because I'm just not really

very interested in Thai media. Like I was

really interested in Japanese media,

anime, TV shows, chatting to the women.

So it was kind of like a very different

experience. And now I'm realizing that

without this genuine passion for either

TV or music or something that's in the

language that I'm learning, it is kind of

hard to learn the language. So I really

believe that under 6 months, you should be

able to read and write and type, and you

should be able to have basic conversations

with Japanese people. You won't be super

fluent, you definitely won't be native

level at all, but I think it's going to be

a very good starting place. And then after

a year or 2, I think you could definitely

become fluent or become like native level

if you really try hard. I personally only

passed level 2 of JLPT. I came very near

to passing N1, but I just failed by a few

points. And I also worked in a Japanese

company for a few months, and I was

married to a Japanese woman where we only

spoke Japanese every day to talk to each

other. So I think my Japanese is good.

It's definitely not fluent or perfect or

native level, but I reckon my Japanese

level is at a decent level. And I kind of

just thought, well, my Japanese is good

enough now. I don't really care about

getting N1 or being super perfect or

sounding super native. And I just kind of

gave up studying Japanese because I kind

of just lost interest.