Hey guys!
Today I wanted to share with you
some of the ways that I used
when I was learning japanese
I get a lot of comments from you guys
saying you don't have japanese classes
in your high school or that you can't afford to take japanese classes anywhere else
so you're wondering, my advice for learning japanese
well I was lucky enough to go to japanese classes
in high school and university
but honestly most of my japanese was not learnt from there
most of it came from real life experiences
talking to japanese people, listening to japanese music
playing japanese videogames, i kind of just pick it all up from there
and I thought that's a way more interesting, and a fun way to learn honestly
I'm not much of using a book to study kind of person
so school was great for learning the alphabet
we had drills every day to remember hiragana and katakana
and we had listening drills
so I picked up some skills, the basic skills from there
but really to learn phrases and everyday useful japanese
it's a lot more important to get yourself involved in some real life experiences outside of the classroom
so I'm gonna teach you some of things that I used and hopefully these will work for you
Probably the first method that I used to study japanese was music
and I wasn't really conciously studying japanese
I just loved japanese musics
I spended lots of time listening to it
and reading the lyrics along with it while I listened to it
and honestly this was a really great way to learn new words
because I wanted to understand the lyrics I wanted to know what they were saying
so when I didn't understand something I looked it up in my dictionary or online
and I write little notes in the lyrics and I always printed them out
and have them with me
and that was a really fun way to learn some new words
While you're just listening to the music that you like
and even if you not actively studying looking at the lyrics
you can just listen to the music on the bus, on the train, whatever
and it will get stucked in your head and eventually you'd be able to say some of those things
so yeah, music is probably my number one recommendation
a couple of the bands that I really like were "19" (juu ku)
"19" is a really cool group but it's unfortunately no longer together anymore
but maybe check out some of their songs you might be able to learn something from there
I also really like Radwimps and Yuzu
there's so many groups for me to name
I probably have to make a separate video about that
but yeah, maybe check out those three and see what you think of them, see if you could find some songs you like
#2. Will be watching japanese movies or TV shows
Luckily we have YouTube now where you can watch tons of japanese shows
comedy shows are probably what I used to watch the most
and what's great about japanese TV is that it comes with japanese subtitles
so while you are watching the show read the subtitles
so you can kind of follow along with what are you hearing and seeing
and I think that's a great way to learn new Kanji
one of the programs I recommend the most is "Gaki no Tsukai"
I think many of you know this show it's hilarious
I'll see if I could find some links and link them in the description box for you
and japanese movies, I love japanese movies
especially horror movies, I just love horror movies in general but
japenese horror has a really different feeling
than western horror I would say and I really like it, it's more creepy as oppose to gory in your face scary
some of my favorite japanese horror movies would have to be "The Ring" and "Ju On"
those are like the basics ones I know but if you haven't seen the original japanese versions definitely do so
but for movies I guess when you're starting out it's okay to watch it in japanese with the english subtitles
just so you can get an idea of what's going on in the story
then once when you kind of got that down
I'll recommend watching it again with the japanese subtitles and the japanese voice
so again you're hearing the japanese and you're seeing the japanese
and that's a great way to pick up kanji and learn new vocabulary
and when you hear something and you see it and you don't understand it take a note
and look it up in your dictionary, even if you can just learn a few words
every time you watch the movie, that's a start right? Eventually once you see the movie enough
hopefully it's a movie you like so that you wanna watch it over and over again
but once you see it enough you probably be able to understand it without any subtitles whatsoever
one of my favorite movies that I've seen probably over 20 times now is "Zatoichi"
maybe look it up if you are into sword fighting and all that awesome stuff
I totally recommend it
and lastly is using SNS sites
like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook stuff like that
and finding japanese people to become friends with
it might seem kind of awkward to just message someone out of the blue and saying: "Do you wanna be friends?"
but there are tons of japanese people online that will probably wanna chat with you
cause they wanna learn english and you wanna learn japanese
so see if you get kind of a language exchange relationship going on there
if you don't have japanese people in your area to hang up with meeting them online is always a cool option
same goes for Instagram maybe searching the hashtags for say... if you like cars
#Skyline in katakana
and then some post will come up hopefully by japanese people
and if it's tag in japanese maybe you could start following them and when they post something
it will have a japanese comment that they wrote and you can pick some words from there
if they're posting stuff that's to do of your interest,
It's interesting right? it's a lot better than studying out of a text book
but really it's up to you guys these methods of studying
aren't exactly studying, so you need to be actively participating and writing down the words
when you don't understand them and looking them up
but I think if you use things like this to assist you in your studying it's gonna be a lot more fun
than just studying out of a text book at least for people like me anyways
I'm sure there's lots of you that like using text books and in that case I recommend the genki series
which I heard is really good I haven't used myself but all my friends say it's awesome so
maybe check that out!
Great, I hope that was helpful for you guys, thanks for watching. Bye!