Japanese is difficult, from the sheer number of kanji needed even to read basic materials such as menus and train schedules, through to the alien pronunciation, to the esoteric sentence structure and impenetrable grammar, to the myriad politeness levels needed to not cause offence, things are not easy for the Japanese learner.

However, these days there are a wealth of resources available to the Japanese learner to help with the process. A whole suite of methods, learning techniques, software programs and the like are available online for use by the Japanese language learner, often free of charge, or on a donation basis. People who have succeeded in tempering and mastering the language enough to work in roles other than English teaching now regularly blog on the Internet and share their techniques, advice and tactics on how to succeed. More crucially, the Japanese language seems to be shedding its cloak of mystery and intrigue (perpetuated by the Japanese themselves) as an “impossible language for foreigners to learn”, and turning into a viable and feasible language for everyone. It has never been easier than now to consider studying Japanese as a second language.

Over these net few blog posts, a handful of these modern techniques and software available to the Japanese learner will be discussed, as well as some thoughts and opinions into their effectiveness. Like with everything else, there is no silver bullet to successfully becoming fluent in Japanese. However, these days, there are plenty of killer apps available in order to make your learning experience as efficient as possible. With a series of different methods under your belt, enough grit and motivation, and plenty of hard work, it is possible to crack the Japanese language and reach a high level of proficiency.

Here is a list of some of the methods, pieces of software and techniques that will be discussed over the next series of posts:

Heisig - A Mnemonic Learning Technique for Kanji
Anki and Spaced Repetition Systems - A intelligently scheduled flashcard system
“10,000 Sentences” - Khatzumoto of AJATT’s preferred method of learning grammar, vocabulary and whatnot all in one go, instead of over-analysing the language.
MSN/Chat/Sharedtalk - Chat programmes are still a great way of assisting your learning. They provide a semi-real time environment to supplement your learning and build your confidence from purely academic/study into more realistic conversational environment
Rikaichan - A pop-up dictionary plug-in for FireFox to assist reading
Readthekanji - A beautifully designed and useful website to build vocabulary and kanji reading/typing confidence
My Japanese Coach - DS Software developed to help Japanese learning

Learning Japanese is a large undertaking, but its far from impossible! Many of the characteristics of the experience of learning Japanese are somewhat similar to learning a musical instrument, from the repetition elements, to the timescales involved, to the differences between private study (software repetitions) and public performance (speaking in public with Japanese people). And plenty of people have managed to learn a musical instrument successfully.

Of course, like with every undertaking of this nature, its important to consider what do you want to achieve with Japanese and what is your end goal. If it is a survival to intermediate level confidence, suitable for finding your way around Japan, ordering at restaurants, feeling confident booking tickets for transport and the like, you probably don’t need every technique and piece of software described. However, if your goals are to work and live in this country in a professional context, then a high level of Japanese is often required and this will require developing strong skills in all areas, from reading to writing, from listening to speaking. But with the introduction to the various software and techniques provided in this blog , and some hard work, it is more than possible to develop your Japanese quickly and effectively.

The next article will cover the Heisig Method, a powerful method for stuffing all them masses of kanji into your head without forgetting too many of them! Until then, happy studying!

It‘s been a while since I wrote anything on this blog, and since we seem to be entering that season of balmy promise making and lofty goal setting, I thought I should maybe at least make an attempt at getting into the season spirit by updating this blog. Also, Martin insisted that I did it, as part of his equally balmy ‘self-improvement‘ psychobabble. I suppose it’s worked in a way; I‘m here, typing at least.

A lot has happened in the last few months. Essentially, I now live and work in Japan, and spend pretty much 100% of my time divided between the tasks of learning Japanese, searching (or perhaps hustling is a better verb) for work, and actually working. Oh and not writing blog posts. I can‘t claim exactly that I work *in* the Japanese industry, but I certainly reside on it‘s peripherals, both literally and figuratively. I am working in the Hobgoblin Pub slap bang in the middle of Shibuya, with what must be dozens of games companies within walking distance (I know; I‘ve interviewed for a couple of them). I also did some localisation testing on an as yet unreleased but huge franchise game about to hit America and Europe in the next couple of months. In typical NDA‘ed If I Told You I‘d Have To Kill You fashion I can‘t really talk about it, but I‘ll certainly update once the games released. This month brings more freelance game proofreading work and audio checking for an as yet unknown game. I‘m also semi regularly doing translation training at a localisation company based in Shibuya’s trendy Daikanyama-cho called Windward.  So, yes, in the Japanese games industry, almost.

I‘m also an international spy. No, really. I‘d be stupid to talk about it here, but certainly PM or email me for details. It’s quite amusing, I trust you.

I recently wrote a series of blog posts for someone on a freelance site on the topic of Japanese learning tools and techniques. Unfortunately communications between us broke down somewhat towards the end, and I haven‘t been provided addresses to link to the articles. Instead, I am going to post up the articles here in full until I receive said information from the man in question. So, keep tuned in to read a series of articles on different ways you too can attempt to not suck too much at Japanese!

Happy New Year

Again it’s been quite a while since I’ve updated. Things have been very busy here, between finishing work, applying for a visa, and studying Japanese hard (Heisig count is now just shy of 1600), I’ve not had a great deal of time to update this blog.
Good news however, not only have I got my visa and flights sorted, I’ve also got interviews for a couple of games companies over there. So things aren’t quite as scary as they were a couple of months ago (and good timing too, I’d kind of resigned myself to teaching English at least to start with).

In other, non personal news, the trend for big Japanese publishers looking beyond Japan’s borders for development continues. Konami recently announced at E3 that the newest Castlevania will be developed by a Madrid based developer, Mercury Steam. Mercury Steam have some previous experience with Action/Survival Horror game Clive Barkers Jericho (and presumably looking at in game footage, a fairly snazzy engine, or maybe the Half Life 2 Engine). I wonder if Cliver Barker will get involved in the Castlevania project? That’d certainly be an interesting (and quite Western) influence on the series…

The video certainly promises much with a massive orchestral, and occasionally Baroque soundtrack (certainly quite different from the 80’s Power Metal/weedley weedley MIDI guitar solo strewn music usually associated with the series), massive Shadows of the Collosus style boss encounters and whip-led Devil May Cry looking gameplay. Time will tell if Kojima and Mercury Steam do the newest game in the series justice.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/xxiaojun/10

I’ve been studying hard, pushing my Heisig number to over 1000 in the last week and continuing to neglect this blog over the last month due in part to a high study volume as well as general ongoing commitments to work. I’ve cranked up my Anki flashcard addition to 50 a day in an effort to get Heisig finished in the next month to allow me to move onto learning 10,000 sentences. Hitting the halfway mark seems like a good milestone, and has given me a spurt of motivation to get it finished. If only there was a more social way of doing reading and writing study… This site seems to promise a slightly more social method to learning reading and writing so perhaps I will check that out at some point.

In other news I’ve handed my notice in in work. Quite a drastic move some may think given the current economic climate. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that, if I don’t set the ball rolling somehow, I’ll always be thinking of working in Japan as some slightly intangible thing some half-dozen months away in the future. So I handed my notice in and bought a flight for the beginning of August, and have started putting my application together for a Working Holiday Visa. The working holiday visa seems relatively painfree to apply for (although it does require £1,500 of savings and a ticket out the country to apply for, which has meant a knock on the head to smoking and socialising for the last few months to achieve). In any case, with this done, I have to study hard, have to apply for jobs and generally have to put lot’s of effort in, else I end up like the guy in the above pic. I’ll be moving in with my girlfriend in Koenji, where, hopefully, she won’t be asking for too much rent for the first couple of months. Hopefully actually living in Japan will give me more to talk about on this blog, which is another good point and I figure I can earn enough to start with doing English teaching and bar work to carry me through until I find an industry job.

Anyway, back to study! Here’s hoping that number is significantly closer to 2000 next time I write (which in turn is hopefully closer than a month away).

またね

Howdy everyone!

I’ve been studying hard the last month, as the number in my Heisig Tracker indicates in the right sidebar, with it’s slow, but steady increase. After an initial glut of learning, where I placed my Anki new card rate at 35 cards a day, I came to the conclusion that a rate of 35/day is probably too much for me to reasonably sustain alongside a full time job. I started finding holes of dozens of cards in my memory where I’d rushed over too many cards too quickly and wasn’t able to recall a single thing about the keywords being presented to me. I’ve since toned it down to around 20 a day which while leaving me with the occasional several hour review session at the weekend, seems to be a much more acceptable and comfortable rate to learn at.

For those that don’t know, Anki is a program that, in it’s own words provides “…a spaced repetition system (SRS). It helps you remember things by intelligently scheduling flashcards, so that you can learn a lot of information with the minimum amount of effort.” Well! What does this mean to the language learner then?

Spaced Repetition Systems are a method of memorisation and recall that are built on the knowledge that there is an optimal time to attempt to remember a fact that you need to know, and this optimal time is at the point in time where you are just about to forget said fact. A piece of software like Anki (or Supermemo, to name another) organises facts that you are trying to learn into flashcards, and schedules their review intelligently to maximise on the above remembering/forgetting phenomenom. That is, in a nutshell, what a spaced repetition system is. If you would like to find out more, the following links give a far more detailed introduction to SRS’s for the curious out there.

I calculate that at this rate of learning, I should have Heisig learned to an acceptable level by around June/July time, at which point I can swap out my Heisig cards, and start focusing more on JLPT vocabulary study ready for December’s exam. A lot of the feedback I’ve recieved from recruiters and westerners in Japan has been that obtaining JLPT 2 or  1 is important in having a successful job search, so I’ll be aiming for this come testing time in December.

On a semi-related note, there is talk of both changing the structure of the JLPT to span 5 levels as well as provide bi-annual testing periods in certain countries. This seems to be a decent restructuring of the test, which is often criticised for having too large a jump between the current level 3 and level 2, and oppurtunities to take the test being too infrequent.

Anyway, I hope some of this has been of interest to some of you, and best of luck with your studies until next time. Keep on… SRS’ing!

Hi there.

I’ve been rubbish again and haven’t updated in a few weeks. I swear, I have good reason though. Or at least an attempt at an excuse. 

First of all you may have noticed the Heisig widget (courtesy of Dani Wright over at ダニーの日本語) that has been sitting dormant in the sidebar to the right (or, as the case may be, haven’t if you are using Explorer… Scroll down for the time being, I’m trying to work out why the layout is screwy in IE). Well, that number has slowly started increasing as of late, as my study has been increasing. I’ve been endeavouring to get into work early and finishing early enough to do some evening study. The improvement in the weather, as well as having a flat with a garden combined with getting my laptop working again has really helped with my motivation.

The method I’m using for study for the time being is Heisig. For those that don’t know, Heisig is a nmemonic method for learning the kanji, which advocates a divide and conquer strategy by associating a single English keyword with each kanji only, for all Jōyō kanji, before learning anything else such as On-Yomi, Kun-yomi, compounds e.t.c.

While there are plenty of critisisms of this method (it doesn’t teach you how to combine kanji into compounds, it doesn’t build your vocabulary nor it doesn’t teach you pronunciation amongst other things) I’ve found Heisig useful in the past both as a motivational tool and to give basic comprehension and this is why I am choosing it again to study (as well as Khatzumoto over at AJATT recommending it as the first stage). Additionally, I think it’s one of the more effective methods to study outside of Japan,  where the more normal context of everyday conversation, MSN, email and other general aspects of immersion tend to be lacking and a more formalised approach is required.

I’m intending to switch to more JLPT orientated study come September ready to attempt JLPT 2 come December. I failed JLPT3 by half a percent a couple of years ago, so I reckon JLPT2 is well within my grasp for this year. 

The second reason I’ve been slacking off this blog is I’ve been doing a bit of XNA programming the last few days in an aid to keep my programming skills alive, and to make my portfolio look a little healthier. I’m intending to help out a friend over at Front Room Coder in a few days time, and maybe port his iPhone game over to XNA, so I’ll definitely be keeping busy. I also have a couple more posts in the pipeline for this blog, so here’s hoping my updates won’t be quite as sparse from now on!

Until the next post, best of luck with your endeavours readers!

Posts have been pretty sporadic as of late, I’ve been working on a portfolio, including rirekisho, as well as moving flat, which has sapped a lot of my time and energy, and left this blog a little neglected. Not too worry though, I should be blogging weekly from here on in!

For many years Japan held the gaming crown, their industry producing all the hardware, all the best software and their market share being one of the healthiest. More recently however it seems like their market just isn’t keeping up, having experienced decline annually for the last few years. All the while, the Western markets, and particularly the UK’s market are growing.

With that in mind, it would seem is the time for the Japanese market to start looking abroad, to start thinking about their portfolios a little more critically, and considering how they can make games that are both accessible domestically to themselves, and internationally to a broader audience.

Certainly it would seem that this game isn’t the answer to this problem.

As a bit of a self-confessed otaku, I’m probably not the best person to answer what makes game work in both Japan and overseas, though I will observe that the ratio of Japanese-made games to western-made games I’ve played in recent years has proportionally shrunk to when I was a teenager. However, it does seem to be a problem that the higher ups within the Japanese games industry have been pondering themselves as of late. While it would seem from both of them articles that neither Nintendo nor Capcom have really cracked the cultural difference code yet, it is positive and forward thinking for these figures to get up in front of a public forum and admit that they are pretty clueless as to what the western gamer wants as well, as well as to share company strategy on how to deal with these issues.

JC Barnett over at Japanmanship also covers a similar topic from the development perspective in his latest post.

One thing I often wonder is, surely during this climate of both a shrinking domestic market, combined with a relatively strong Yen and weak pound, will this lead to an increase in oppurtunity between the two countries? The news would seem to suggest so, it’s only a few weeks ago that Square announced that they were putting a generous offer forward for ailing UK publisher Eidos (all the while announcing record lows in its share prices), while Capcom recently announced a development agreement with Manchester based Monumental Games. I’d expect to see more of this kind of deal in the future.

So, to conclude, with us Brit’s are actually starting to become cheap for a change, and the Japanese domestic market is shrinking while ours is swelling, it would seem that UK/Japanese collaboration is a sensible direction to take. I would seem that it is true, oppurtunity is present during hard times, and we’d do worse than to look East for said oppurtunities and vice-versa.

Migration to a new domain seems to have gone well, can someone let me know if they spot a problem?

New post should be up in the next few days

Please update your bookmarks to point at http://www.road-to-japan.com/

I should also think about a shiny banner at some point too to go with the new domain…