How I learned Japanese

Hey, and welcome back to another exciting

video. I want to tell you about how I

taught myself how to speak Japanese. Uh,

the short answer would be the internet.

Okay, what about the long answer? Well, I

never went to, um, university. I never

studied Japanese at school or on some kind

of special course or in college. It was

completely self-taught just using the

internet. I don't have any Japanese family

or relatives. Actually, that's not

entirely true because my granddad actually

had this brother and they had an argument

over something and they stopped talking to

each other and that brother moved over to

America and he had a son and that son

married a Japanese woman and they had

kids. So over in America, I have half

Japanese, half American cousins

and they don't even know that I exist. So

it's not like I was exposed to the

Japanese language at a young age. I never

even heard the Japanese language until I

was 17. And when I was 17, I was at school

on the computer and I was on the internet

doing something, and suddenly this image

of a skinny-looking blue and green robot

came up, and I decided to click on it.

And it said it was this robot from an

anime called Neon Genesis Evangelion, and

I decided to read up on that anime on

Wikipedia, and it sounded pretty

interesting. So I decided to go home, go

onto eBay, buy myself a copy, and And I

watched the whole thing about 2 times in

English, in English dubs. And then I was

fiddling around with the remote control

and I pressed this button and suddenly

they started speaking in this

strange-sounding language, which was

Japanese. And that was the first time I

had ever heard the Japanese language. I

must have watched the whole thing about 5

or 6 more times in Japanese. So in total,

I must have watched that whole anime

beginning to end about 6 to 7 times. And I

still don't understand the ending. I used

to have this huge crush on the woman with

the purple hair and the red jacket. After

watching Neon Genesis, I developed this

addiction to anime. For the next 2 years,

I would watch anime pretty much every day.

My favourite animes were Naruto, Bleach,

One Piece, Death Note, Welcome to the NHK,

Elfen Lied— was it lied? I really liked

the way the language sounded. I thought it

sounded really cool and exotic. And after

about 2 years of watching anime nonstop,

I found that I was starting to understand

what they were saying. So I thought to

myself, why don't I actually try and study

this language properly? So I went onto

Google and I typed in learn Japanese, and

one of the first websites I came across

was this website called yesjapan.com. So I

signed up to be a member on yesjapan.com,

and I went through all of the grammar

exercises. I learned all of that. And I

learned the alphabet. Learning the

alphabet wasn't really difficult, it only

took about 10 days. It's the kanji that

takes ages. The best bit about

yesjapan.com was they had all these

videos, they had like a podcast series.

At that time I wasn't really into YouTube,

there wasn't really much on YouTube if you

wanted to learn Japanese. So they had this

podcast called the George and Keiko Show,

and George is the, um, the person behind

the website, the person who made the

website, who designed all the lessons,

and Keiko was a Japanese woman who

co-hosted the show. And I used to

absolutely love that podcast. It was so

funny and interesting. I really liked the

co-hosts. George was really funny and

energetic and interesting, and his

Japanese was amazing. I used to think he

was really cool, and I kind of looked up

to him. I felt like I wanted to be like

him. And I used to have this huge crush on

Keiko. She was just like the typical

Japanese woman, but she had like this

purity, innocence, this femininity to her

that I feel like a lot of girls around

here in my country don't really have.

There were around 200 episodes of the

George and Keiko Show, and they charged

you $1 per video per episode, and I

watched all of them. I bought all 200+

videos. I spent so much money on that

website, it was just unbelievable. But the

stuff you'd learn in the videos in each

episode and the entertainment value make

made the whole thing absolutely worth it.

After a year or two, the George and Keiko

Show came to an end, and they had other

shows with different Japanese people, but

I never really found them to be very

interesting, and I kind of lost interest

in yesjapan.com. I moved on to different

websites. I used— I started to use books.

I found out about the JLPT test, the

Japanese Language Proficiency Test, and I

decided I wanted to study for it. So I

bought a lot of books, a lot of textbooks,

past exam practice papers, and I took the

test in 2009, and I passed it. I passed

level 2. I have my certificate here. I

don't want to show you below this part

because it has personal information on it,

but this is my level 2 certificate. It's

the real thing. I think that passing that

exam, getting my level 2 certificate, was

the proudest moment in my life. It's the

biggest accomplishment so far in my life.

The problem with the JLPT is you have to

study a lot of useless stuff in order to

pass the exam. Most of the stuff you have

to learn for level 2 You don't even use

maybe 60% of the stuff you learn for

studying the JLPT Level 2. You won't even

need— you won't even use it in daily

conversations when you're speaking in

Japanese. Unless you're writing up like

really formal documents, you won't even

need most of the grammar you learn for

JLPT Level 2. I did take the Level 1 test

a few years later, but I failed it. I did

really well on every part of the test

apart from the reading. I did so badly in

the reading that it brought my average

mark all the way down. And I failed it,

and it was really depressing. And after I

failed that, I kind of just gave up

studying Japanese. But I felt like level 2

was good enough, and I was happy with my

conversational level of Japanese. I didn't

really feel like getting level 1 was

important. Okay, now we've gotten all that

out of the way, all the internet stuff,

books, studying for exams, all of that is

fine. But for me personally, the best way

to study a language was having a

girlfriend who speaks that language and

doesn't speak English. I signed up to

various dating websites and international

pen pal websites, and I met this Japanese

girl one day, and we started talking. We

got on really well. She became my

girlfriend, and we ended up speaking for

about 4 to 5 hours a day on Skype. I think

we used to talk about things like getting

married and living together and having

kids. It was kind of, um, it was really

childish. Some people may disagree, but

Really, having a girlfriend who speaks

Japanese and can't speak English and

talking to her 5 hours a day for nearly 2

years, there's nothing better than that if

you want to improve your language ability

in a foreign language. Now, there are

things you have to be careful about. For

example, in Japanese, there's like a

feminine way of speaking and a masculine

way of speaking, and if you try and

imitate or copy your girlfriend's way of

speaking too much, then then you end up

sounding like, like a homosex— you end up

sounding very girly, so you have to be

very careful not to imitate your

girlfriend's speech patterns too much.

And it's important that she can't speak

English, because if she can speak good

English, then you're just gonna end up

speaking English all the time because it's

easier. Yeah, I know, it kind of sounds

like you're just using them to improve

your own Japanese language ability, but I

guess it is what it is. Everyone uses each

other for some reason, don't they? In the

end, I never actually met that girl. Even

though we were in a relationship for

almost 2 years, we never met once. She

ended up running off with this guy from

the Czech Republic, and they got married.

I think I left it too long. I mean, I knew

her for almost 2 years, and I didn't even

go out to see her. This is why when— now,

when I meet someone online, I don't wait

for too long. I just— I go out there and

meet them as soon as possible. This is why

I'm being so hasty with my current

girlfriend, even though I only met her in

January. I'm going to meet her in April

because if I leave it for like 2 years

again like I did last time, she might run

off with another Czech Republic guy. I

remember the day that that online

girlfriend broke up with me. I was

absolutely crushed. I genuinely believed

that she was the one, that I was gonna

marry her and move to Japan and have kids

and have this perfect happy life. On the

day she said she wanted to break up, I

remember running downstairs shouting,

she's breaking up with me! She's breaking

up with me! To my mum. My mum was just

sitting there. She didn't really care.

She was just like, okay. And then my dad

came home from work and he came up to my

room to see if I was okay. And for the

first time ever, I broke down in tears in

front of my dad and I told him everything.

After she broke up with me, I was in this

complete state of depression. I was so

depressed and I cried myself to sleep. I

couldn't stop thinking about her. I'd look

at her pictures and think things like,

you betrayed me! How could you do this to

me? You said we were going to be together

forever! And then 2 weeks later, I met

this other Japanese girl, and I completely

forgot about her. I went over to Japan to

meet her. I met her online in December,

and I decided to fly out to Japan in

February to meet her. I wasn't making the

same mistake as before. Oh no. You know

when I was working in that office, the

office job that I got fired because I

didn't want to make tea? Well, I used to

study Japanese all the time whilst

working. I'd be constantly writing down

notes like words and grammar in Japanese.

And one day my boss came over to me and he

said, Daniel, when you're writing notes,

can you write it in English please?

Because we can't understand it and we

can't correct you if you're making

mistakes. I said to him, oh, it's not

work-related, it's just for my Japanese

study. He wasn't very happy about that.

So yeah, those are my tips for learning

Japanese. Watch a lot of anime.

Then get a Japanese girlfriend. And then

get your heart broken. And then get

another Japanese girlfriend. And yeah,

just rinse and repeat. It's just like a

cycle, isn't it? And then one day maybe

you can get JLPT level 1 as well. Oh, I

didn't get level 1. Oh wait, I got level

2, didn't I?