so many Archives - Nihongo ha kantan desu ne

So Many Choices: What To Do?

November 24, 2020O47rashomonsNo Comments

The Japanese teaching industry seems pretty strong. People watch some anime, think Japan is a land of mystical ninjas and magic girls in short skirts, and say to themselves, “Boy, I bet Japanese would be great to learn!” Then after your first year of gently being taught hiragana and katakana and a few simple kanji, you look at the road ahead of you and see that it’s long and bumpy and curvy. And there are no ninjas or magic girls, just an occasional bowl of Sapporo Ichiban with green onions. What! Too hard? AJATT and Dogen agree with you, sort of, but by simply being independently wealthy and/or doing nothing… Read More

So Many Choices: Grammar [Apps and Web Sites]

October 5, 2020October 5, 2020O47rashomonsNo Comments

Web sites and apps, the painless way to study Japanese grammar. Ha, ha! Oh, I’m so funny. There is no painless way to study Japanese grammar. Just a lot of hard work and regular study. At some point, the pain lessens as you become more fluent in regular conversations. At least, that’s my theory. If it ever happens to me, I’ll let you know. This list isn’t by any means the full list of what’s out there. It contains entries I’ve had personal experience with. I roughly break these down into the following categories: Websites ImabiThis one is the full course meal. The owner of this site has a grand… Read More

So Many Choices: Grammar [Books]

September 28, 2020September 28, 2020O47rashomonsNo Comments

Japanese grammar. You start off studying it thinking, “Say, this isn’t too bad!” And then you get into て form, and adjective conjugations, and set grammar constructions, and then you listen to real Japanese people speaking outside of a classroom, and realise that you know nothing, John Snow. But, you have to learn some kind of rules, so when you go to speak, people can cheerfully smile at you and say 「日本語は上手ですね？」. Japanese people are very polite, you see. This entry is a bit long, so I am going to talk about apps that I use for grammar in a separate post. Books Holy cow, there are a lot of… Read More

So Many Choices: Vocabulary

September 20, 2020September 22, 2020O47rashomonsNo Comments

There are a lot of ways to learn Japanese vocabulary. This is one of the times where I think a mix of self-study methods is better. Textbooks I started learning my vocabulary the old-fashioned way. Took some Japanese courses, didn’t do a lot of my homework, and then stammered in class when 先生 asked me a question. I don’t recommend this as a great method, but still, you do retain some things. Genki I/II Sure, there are lots of other textbooks out there, but these give you a great start in studying Japanese. Sure, the situations and vocabulary are a bit skewed towards academia (do I really need to immediately… Read More

So Many Choices: Kanji

September 19, 2020September 19, 2020O47rashomonsNo Comments

I started off this blog talking about kanji. and I’ll never stop talking about kanji. Intriguing, beautiful, frustrating, vital…what’s not to love? These characters, borrowed from the Chinese and then evolved by the Japanese over many centuries, are one of the biggest obstacles in learning Japanese well. You can certainly get to some level of proficiency without learning kanji. but if you can’t read in a language, how proficient are you really? Books I didn’t start my kanji studying with books, but I certainly splashed out some cash on them. Remembering the Kanji This certainly is one of the most well-known study guides. James Heisig locked himself in a library to… Read More