(Updated with more links and videos)

Good Friends

Things like 鍋パ with friends is a blast. Japanese people actually stop and listen to you when you talk. Something which seems far too rare here in the States.

Music

My favorite Japanese artist is 椎名林檎. I also love the band 東京事変. Please get back together and make more songs!

I’m also amazed at the collaborator efforts of amateurs online such as Vocaloid and 東方.

Movies

タンポポ – Oh man, this film is so awesome. Just watch it.

Other films I liked:

Departures
After Life （ワンダフルライフ）
Sanjuro – My favorite Akira Kurosawa film.
Man, Woman & the Wall – Creepy, sexy, funny (not for kids)
Trick (TV series and movies)
The Great Happiness Space – Not really a Japanese movie but still a fascinating (and disturbing) documentary.

Is it just me or do Japanese movies all seem like either art films or crazy horror?

Books

I definitely need to read more books so please give me some suggestions! Of the very small number of books I’ve read, I liked:

涼宮ハルヒの消失 (my favorite out of the series)

Manga

Dragon Ball – I first read this in Korean back when manga was virtually non-existent in the US. I didn’t really know what was going on but it was still awesome (by the way, my dream job was to work at a 만화방). I also watched Dragon Ball Z in English on Adult Swim (Vegeta’s voice was pretty good). I have since read parts of it again in Japanese, and it’s still good, after all these years.

Others I enjoyed:

One Piece
Azumanga Daioh

Anime

攻殻機動隊(Ghost in The Shell) Stand Alone Complex – My favorite anime of all time.

Others I enjoyed:

Serial Experiments Lain
Soul Eater
Darker Than Black
Steins;Gate
涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 (Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) Season 1
Spirited Away

Games

My first Japanese console is a PS2 so I have not played that many games in Japanese. I am meaning to replay classics like Chrono Trigger in Japanese when I get my hands on it. Until then, of the limited games I’ve played so far in Japanese, I liked:

MG3 Snake Eater – Metal Gear Solid is my favorite in the series but Mei Ling’s English voice was annoying. Hoping to try it in Japanese sometime.
Disgaea (haven’t gotten to 2,3,4 yet)

What’s on your favorite list?

Anyway, now that I can read Japanese, I’m thinking of replaying classics like Chrono Trigger and ones I missed like Mother 2 (Earthbound) in its original form. However, figuring out what game is available and in what language is a big chore and often times confusing.

For example, the JP version of Chrono Trigger for the DS has both English and Japanese. But apparently, they removed the Japanese in the US version. Yes, they went out of their way to remove something already in the game for the US release. I guess because of the strong yen?

I don’t buy anything from Nintendo anymore because they love to lock things down (except I just pre-ordered this, oops!). Everything is region-locked except for the DS and DS lite. Unfortunately, that was too consumer-friendly so the newer handhelds such as DSi and 3DS are now region-locked. I guess it makes sense because their only region-free system did terrible (ie, fastest-selling handheld game console of all time).

Thankfully, Sony has seen the light as the PS3, PSP, and PS Vita are region-free, which means you don’t have to buy one for each region. Unfortunately, while some games support both Japanese and English, for the most part, you still often have to import a game to play it in Japanese. Some games have dual audio options but don’t allow changing the text which is bizarre to me. In the end, it’s a big and confusing mess though I guess it’s better than the old model of everything being locked down.

The only annoying problem with Sony is that they switched the X and O buttons around for the US? WHY??? Sometimes with a Japanese game on a US console, you have to press X to confirm until you start the game. Then you have to switch to O until you go to save or quit. Then you have to switch back to using X. Argh!!!

Games with full Japanese support

If you have any games that have Japanese language option, please let me know! I like to play games in their original language (English games in English) so I’m more interested in games made in Japan that have dual languages.

1. Asura’s Wrath (PS3)

   I just got this game so I can’t say much about it except that it does have full Japanese voice and text. For under $20, I can at least say, it’s a good deal. But I read somewhere that you have to pay extra (DLC) to get the true ending…. ugh…

2. Resonance of Fate (PS3)

   The text will be in Japanese if your console’s language is set to Japanese. You can select the language for voices between English and Japanese.

3. Star Ocean: The Last Hope International (PS3)

   Allows choosing between English and Japanese voices, as well as, a larger list of languages for the game text. I just started playing and it looks good for the price. My first annoyance is that ship has too many screen transitions so it takes forever to get around.

4. The Last Remnant (PC)

   The PC version (not Xbox 360) has both Japanese voice and text options. I only played the very beginning. The graphics are pretty good but the dialogue seems slightly out of synch. Might be just a config issue. It’s on sale now for $8.99 so I can’t complain too much.

5. Half Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy (PC)

   Called 勇者30 on the PSP, I got this PC version on sale for $5.99. The Japanese text uses too much Hiragana for my tastes (no audio) but it is strangely entertaining.

6. Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3)

   Need to set your console’s language to Japanese. It took me forever to beat the first boss so I haven’t touched it in a while but can’t hurt to get it for the price.

7. Resistance (PS3)

   Need to set your console’s language to Japanese. This kind of game is better in English anyway given the setting and genre but I listed it anyway. Have not tried 2 and 3 yet.

8. Soul Calibur V (PS3 & Xbox 360*)

   According to a comment, this has both Japanese audio and text.

   *For XBox 360, according to play-asia, only the US version is region free. So don’t buy the Japanese or Asian version and expect it to work on a US console.

9. Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (PS3 & Xbox 360*)

   According to a comment, this has both Japanese audio and text for both XBox 360 and PS3. I will definitely be picking this up sometime to try it out.

   *For XBox 360, according to play-asia, only the US version is region free. So once again, avoid the Japanese version unless you have a Japanese console.

10. Fragile Dreams (Wii)

    The Wii is region locked but if you have one already for the US-region, this game apparently has both Japanese audio and text.

Here’s some more I haven’t verified from this link

Battlefield 1943
Devil May Cry 4
Home
Little Big Planet
Lost Planet
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Resident Evil 5
Resurrection
Soul Calibur 4
Street Fighter 4

Digital releases

Digital releases that are download-only don’t come with any physical packaging and so require almost no distribution costs. So we should be able to buy all sorts of stuff from Japan right? After all, it’s just virtual 0s and 1s that speed across intercontinental fibre optic cables. Not so fast. Turns out companies still want to control distribution channels across regions, virtual or not. So here’s the breakdown of the usual jumbled mess of various policies and schemes.

1. Steam

   While you can get a list of games that have Japanese support, it’s not obvious to what degree the support is, whether it’s the text and/or audio. What’s even more baffling, games that were made in Japan like Ys I & II Chronicles+ have absolutely zero Japanese support. Shame on you, XSEED.

2. Playstation Store
   While the consoles are region-free, your PSN account is not. You must select Japan as your region when creating your PSN account and it cannot be changed. You also cannot buy games on the Japanese store without a Japanese credit card or Japanese PSN cards. You can buy the latter on various sites but expect to pay extra for the service.

   However, once you purchase a game, you can play it on your console for any user. So for example, I have a US and Japanese PSN account on my PS3 using two different email addresses. Once I purchase a game on one, I can install and play it on the other. However, oddly enough, avatars are tied to the PSN account so even though I downloaded some cool free avatars on my Japanese account, I can’t use it for my US account. There’s no way I’m paying money for those things so oh well…

3. Nintendo eShop

   I don’t own any recent Nintendo consoles so this is on hearsay but the advantage of region-lock means that if you have a Japanese 3ds or Wii U, you can buy Japanese games using a US credit card. Buyer beware though, Nintendo’s DRM policy is apparently very strict and you can only have ONE copy of the game on ONE system. So you know how you can play PSN classics on either the PS3, PSP, or PS Vita? So like, wouldn’t it be cool if you can buy a digital copy of Mother 2 on the virtual console and play it on the 3ds? Fuhgeddaboudit.

   Hopefully, I’ll get to check things out for myself once I import me a 3ds.

OMG, are these guys like real people?!

I mean, seriously this article is pure racist garbage. The article uses words like “문제” (problem) and “실수” (mistake). Imagine if a textbook in the US had a picture of a German family instead of an American white family. Guess what, we won’t give a shit because WW2 is like a lifetime ago and most of the people involved are almost all dead from at least old age. On the other hand, Korean automatically take this is a “problem” and a “mistake”.

The last line in the article is pure gold. It’s some bullshit about how elementary school textbooks are for teaching a proper and happy lifestyle to 870,000 kids.

초등통합교과서는 기존의 바른 생활, 슬기로운 생활, 즐거운 생활 등 3개 과목을 합친 것으로 1, 2학년 87만 명이 사용한다.

What is this insinuating? That the Japanese are the devil that will somehow corrupt kids just by basically existing??

Korea, your obsession with hating Japan is ridiculous. If you weren’t personally harmed by the occupation, it’s time to let it go. (psst… by the way you have a slightly larger problem just slightly to the north)

PS I’m Korean.

But you know what my pet peeve is? People bidding up used games I wanted to buy past the price it would cost new on amazon.co.jp! Look, don’t bid $40 for a used game you can buy new for 3,000 yen. Since the yen is finally down to reasonable levels, let’s buy some games direct in Japan!

For example, instead of paying $39 for Final Fantasy Type-0 on play-asia or for $45 USED on ebay (duh), let’s buy it for about 30 bucks NEW on Amazon Japan using these (not so simple) steps.

1. Create an account on tenso.com, a forwarding service that gives you a Japanese address you can ship items to. There are other potentially cheaper services but I found that this one was the cheapest for EMS, a really fast way to get your stuff with tracking (let me know if there’s a better service). There’s a link to the English version of the site on the upper-right.
   *Due to some new law in Japan or something, you may have to upload an image of identification with your name and address. No big deal, I just uploaded a picture of my driver’s license on the website.
2. After you sign up, you should get an email with your new Japanese address. You’ll need that later obviously. You can also check it on their website.
3. Search Wikipedia for the game so that we can get the Japanese title (right next to the English title in parentheses).
4. Go to amazon.co.jp and copy+paste the title into the search box （in this case ファイナルファンタジー 零式）. There’s a tiny link “In English” at the top right to get the English version of the site. None of the product information will be translated but it may help you for creating an account and checking out.
5. Select the game you want (It’ll have the console name next to the price so you know you’re not getting an artbook or something). I’m gonna pick the budget ultimate hits version because screw em. I bought the first print of 3rd birthday only to find the bonus DLC had an expiration date like 2 years ago. WTF
6. Go through the usual checkout process. Amazon will take care of the currency conversion for you. The only trouble I had was fitting the massive forwarding address within the maximum length requirements. Here’s how I arranged it so that it all fit.
   

   Fitting the forwarding address is a bit tricky

7. You should get an email once the order arrives at tenso and you can go to their website to pay them to then forward it to you. I paid with my credit card via Paypal to avoid a foreign transaction fee.

There’s a shipping calculator on the bottom of the page on tenso.com. If you put the weight of a PSP game (about 170 grams), you can see that it will cost about 1,690 yen to ship.

So about $23 for the game and $18 for shipping means you pay $41 for a new game. Wait, isn’t that MORE than play-asia? Yes but usually, you want to save on shipping by buying in bulk. For example, I bought 3 PSP games and paid about $24 on shipping so only $8 for each.

In retrospect, I should’ve bundled more games for even more savings.

Also, try to pick items that ship from amazon so that they can send all the items together. Tenso.com can consolidate multiple packages for you one time only (and you should for multiple packages) but they will charge an 800 yen consolidation fee.

Why don’t they localize more of these games?

I wish they would as it often drives down the demand for people like me that actually want the Japanese version and not simply because it’s the only one available (perfect example is Mother 3).

I got a Chinese copy of Jeanne D’Arc off ebay, which would have really pissed me off except the game itself is completely in Japanese. Only the cover and manual are in Chinese. Weird, I’m not sure how that really makes any sense but I guess Chinese people are flexible enough with English and Japanese to deal with it??

On the other hand, Americans complain like babies if they have to, god forbid, read any subtitles, which is why everything has to be dubbed often with disastrous results. If people say they prefer the Japanese voices, they get comments like, “OMG, why would you want to READ the dialogue??” and get called stupid stuff like “weeaboo”.

Take Final Fantasy XIII for example. Which do you think cost more? Throw in some Chinese and English subtitles for the Asian release and call it a day? Or hire all new voice actors to redo all the voices, redo all the animation to synch up the lips, and do a crappy Xbox 360 port on two discs for the US release?

This morning, my almost 2-year old daughter pointed at my nose and said, “hana”.

I replied, “Yeah, hana.”

She replied, “One, two.”

So long, Google Reader, we’ve had a good run. Along with iGoogle, Google is systematically killing how I organize and consume information on the Internet. They claim they are culling the less popular products but make no mistake, this is a deliberate ploy to get more information about you (and hence more money). I don’t like Google+ and Facebook because they are very invasive, constantly trying to find out about my personal relationships. I have no interest in disclosing my personal information and activities offline to the rest of the world. And the rest of the world isn’t interested in what I do offline either except for, of course, advertisers.

But hey, nothing in the world is free, eh? The price of getting information is selling information, in this case, about yourself; information that can be all too easily leaked via security holes.

Looking back, it’s kind of shocking how many words I didn’t know. But then again, I’ll probably feel the same way looking back at the next 300 words I learn. For example, I tweeted 「処方」 back in 2011/11/2 and I had a Skype conversation (via mixxer) recently with a 「薬剤師」. I can’t believe I didn’t know those words till last year.

I also recently remembered 「男尊女卑」 and I see that I tweeted this way back in 2011/11/11 so I’m pretty happy about that.

I always learn new words in context and so I got to catch up to quite a bit of culture by searching for additional usages online. These words originally come from books I’m reading (huh? you mean on dead trees?), chatting locally and online (wha? like with… people?), games, shows online (Hulu/Youtube), and various podcasts.

For example, I learned the expression 「二進も三進も」 while playing FF13 (I used my phone to save the word). Much later (in this case several months), I look for other stuff online from my list that uses the same vocab like this.

Catching up on culture

Here are some highlights from my Twitter feed.

そばかす – Song from the 90s
(Lots of) Vocaloid and 東方 music
SKE48, AKB48
ニコニコ
Minecraft
Anime
Manga
TV
Weird commercial
Politics
2012 was a leap year

Looking back, 300+ words is actually a pretty small list. I still have over 600 stocked up that I have learned to various degrees in the last year. Us language learners have to do a lot of memorizing.

I feel sorry for those learning from just flash cards, classes, and textbooks. Real life is so much more interesting.

Still here? Tsk tsk.

Lately, I’ve been wrestling with the ratio of how much English vs Japanese to use in my guide. The more Japanese I can get you to read, the better. But if there’s too much, it will be too difficult and overwhelming, having the opposite effect.

I’ve noticed that many websites for learning Japanese use WAY too much English. You can spend hours reading pages and pages of English text on how to learn Japanese (which seems ironic to me). This blog is mostly in English as well, so really, you should stop reading this and spend your time on something more productive.

I’ll try to keep it short, then. If your Japanese study material consists of reading a lot of English, you might want to try something else that has more Japanese text. Oh, I dunno, maybe something like this? (I know, totally no bias here).

As a fellow Japanese learner, I should probably be writing this in Japanese too… でも、めんどくさいからやめとこう。

Earlier this year, I’ve been trying to add more content and tune my site to rank higher for searches on “learning japanese” not just “japanese grammar”. (You can compare which searches are more popular with Google Trends). When I did some ad hoc testing at the time, it ranked somewhere around the 40-50s.

I still have quite a bit of work to do on the content side but here’s the results from the last few months. Unfortunately, the data doesn’t go back farther and it’s not representative as over half of the search queries do not provide the search keyword (unless I become an adwords customer apparently). As it is, the site ranking has been improved to an average of 6.8.

I expect the CTR to be miserable until the site ranking goes up to at least around 3-4. Lately, I’ve been concentrating on my own studies, but I’d like to eventually get back to working on the complete guide soon. In the meantime, if you think my site is useful for learning Japanese, any inbound links with the phrase “learn Japanese” would be appreciated.

Oddly, the most common search query was “katakana”, about 2-3 times more impressions than “learn japanese” and “hiragana”. I wonder why? Maybe I should beef up my Katakana sections?

Research indicates that page load time is also critical for traffic. So I also installed Boost for my drupal installation to speed things up a bit yesterday. The results are inconclusive but it does seem a bit snappier to me.

Overall, the look and usability have been greatly improved. There is no longer a popup per deck, which is great because popups SUCK. Though browsing a deck is still a popup, it’s not as annoying as Anki 1. AnkiDroid is much better as well in that it’s actually usable now. Before, it would crash on my phone at least once basically every time I’ve used it. In addition, Synch can now actually SYNCH (ie “synchronize” not just whack one set of changes with another).

I would highly recommend upgrading though the upgrade process hosed all my old decks (don’t know if this is just me or a common issue). It’s much better once you get everything setup. However, I must warn you that getting setup initially is very confusing. The UI can still use a lot of improvement in that regard.

1. No menu option to login. You do this by synching for the first time, which also doesn’t have a menu option. You have to use the icon on the top-right. Not very obvious.
2. Do not use the Default deck! It disappears when you add another deck. As you can see, the Default deck is nowhere in the desktop app even though it appears in AnkiDroid.

   

   

3. “Full synch” is a misnomer. What it means is basically, scrap everything I have locally, and replace it with what’s online. This caused me to lose my changes several times before I realized what was going on. This should be called “Reset”.

Once you get over the initial confusion and get all your decks setup and ready to go, it’s not too bad.

You may be wondering, didn’t I recommend against using SRS? Well, while I still think it’s an inferior way to memorize things, I have to admit, it’s nice to have something to study when I’m waiting in line at the grocery story or whatever. I don’t have much time nowadays to sit down with a book or watch a show so it’s a convenient way to review something when I have a few minutes to spare. Also, I was previously using iGoogle, which is going away, so it’s also a convenient way to store interesting words to share on twitter or facebook later.

By the way, my main deck had only one side and it completely failed to migrate over to Anki 2. Obviously, I’m not using it like most people.

Lately, my speaking has been getting very rusty so I’ve been trying to find a conversation partner via mixxer. However, I found out that the west coast is pretty much the worst in terms of time difference for conversing with people in Japan. Also, most of my activities are done in small spurts, 5-10 minutes at a time (like this blog post) so allocating a contiguous block of time is difficult.

On the other hand, I’ve also been reading/listening a lot and learning tons of new vocabulary. I probably learned hundreds of new words and expressions in the last year. These include words in my twitter feed and more such as: うなぎのぼり、くまなく、鬼が出るか蛇が出るか、甚大、にっちもさっちも、もどかしい、色白、往生際、大往生、雑然、しらばくれる、張り子の虎、森羅万象、波乱万丈、前途洋々、後悔先に立たず. So how much has this improved my speaking?

Not one iota, zilch, nada, zip
まったくまるでぜんぜんちっともこれっぽっちも

So don’t fool yourself into thinking studying hours and hours with classes, dictionaries, and books will enable you to speak Japanese.

Anyway, my (admittedly poorly-made) point is that while you might not have as much time as you’d like to devote to something, the important thing is to do as much as you can and to get enjoyment out of it. I listen to podcasts on my commute and read things online here and there whenever I have the chance. This morning, I learned the word for fuse （信管）, reading this short article. This word in particular took no effort to remember because I know the kanji and it’s a memorable combination (“a pipe I believe/rely on” = fuse).

What did you learn by doing what today?

PS: Lately, I’m totally addicted to Disgaea. It’s evil. Even though the game is in Japanese, even I have to admit that the education value vs time spent (wasted) is extremely low.

No way to respond, though. Maybe I’ll respond in my next submission. It’s getting really hard to find words not already in edict though nowadays.

Jim, I hope you live forever, man. You’re awesome!

So you’re supposed to hear things until you can naturally tell what sounds right and what’s wrong and not study grammar at all. This is bad advice unless you live in Japan or speak/hear Japanese everyday with someone willing to correct everything you say. As with most things in real life, the correct solution is to use a balanced and practical approach.

The problem with anecdotes is that someone can always come up different ones to make an argument. Ok, you’ve met people who have studied grammar and still can’t speak the language, well, I have met people who haven’t studied grammar and still can’t speak the language. It proves nothing. For instance, my dad has lived in the United States for as long as I have and his English is still broken and a grammatical mess. He has listened to English naturally for over 30 years, day in and day out, and he can do anything he wants in English whether it’s conversation, filing taxes, or starting a small business. But he hasn’t studied a lick of grammar and his English still sucks.

Heck, I’ve lived in the US since elementary school and they still taught me grammar in school. I learned things like subject-verb agreement, double negatives, and how to avoid run-ons and sentence fragments. you needs to learn these stuffs; so we don’t sounds like no dummy.

The fact of the matter is, grammar is one tool of many in your arsenal that you would be foolish to ignore completely. You shouldn’t be thinking about grammar when you’re talking but it is a stepping stone or guideline you can use to reach the point where you don’t need it. If you only learn with phrases, you need to be exposed to every type of grammar, verb conjugation, and vocabulary usage to internalize it naturally. This is fine for learning your native language as a child but it will take far too long for adults seeking second+ language proficiency, especially in a non-immersive environment. Grammar can help you systematically organize the language such that you can learn entirely new words, phrases, and sentences and quickly incorporate them using the same rules that apply for all words without having to encounter them over and over again. The rules themselves are simply a means to an end, not the end result.

Grammar can also help you break down sentences you don’t understand and provide guidelines on how to structure your own sentences. I’ve often met people who know all the vocabulary they need to say something but still can’t figure out how to organize them into a sentence to express what they want to say.

Of course, you need to do lots of listening and speaking practice but I don’t see why that precludes you from learning grammar and applying it as needed. Eventually, with enough practice, you won’t need to think about the grammar anymore but until then, it can help you figure out how to say what you want. Sure, it may be slow, but it’s better than not being able to say anything at all. Japanese classes often spend TOO much time on grammar with very little actual conversation practice. That’s obviously a problem but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t learn ANY grammar.

My first impression was wow, there’s a lot of marketing and no clear picture of what products are available at what price. You have to scroll through various links and pages of marketing to even see what’s for sale. A simple product matrix would be nice.

Signing up for a free trial shows a checkbox: “YES! I want to try Rocket Japanese for free!”. Ok, why would I want to uncheck that? Anyway, once you’re in, there are 5 major sections, parts of which are inaccessible in a trial.

Interactive Audio Lessons

I could only force myself to listen to the first few lessons. Overall, it’s a nice introduction to some useful Japanese phrases but Kenny’s pronunciation is so bad, it’s really a mystery why anyone would want to learn Japanese from him. Unfortunately, he drives the lessons instead of the native speaker. JapanesePod101 had the same problem in the beginning but they now have much better hosts on their staff. (I should do a review of JapanesePod101, they’ve come a long way.)

The grammar explanations are useless and creating your own sentences from these lessons is impossible. For example, they mention things like the stem or te-form but offer no explanation on how one would go about conjugating a verb to these forms. The explanations also sound like they came out of a 20 year-old Japanese textbook including instructions on how to bow and the overuse of 「あなた」. Let’s review the definition of 「あなた」.

From 大辞泉:
あなた
１ 対等または目下の者に対して、丁寧に、または親しみをこめていう。「―の考えを教えてください」
２ 妻が夫に対して、軽い敬意や親しみをこめていう。「―、今日のお帰りは何時ですか」

◆現代語では敬意の程度は低く、学生が先生に、また若者が年配者に対して用いるのは好ましくない。

1. Address someone of equal or lower social status politely and/or with familiarity.
2. Wife addressing husband with light respect and/or familiarity.

*In modern Japanese, the level of politeness is low so it’s not preferred for student or young people to address a teacher or elder （with あなた）.

Plus

1. Exposure to Japanese phrases

Minus

1. Kenny’s pronunciation is terrible
2. Quizzes use romaji
3. Grammatical explanations are terrible
4. Cultural notes are outdated
5. Kenny

Basically, if you want to get some exposure to Japanese and get to repeat some phrases, ignore everything Kenny says and you might get some value out of it.

Language & Culture Lessons

Once again, there’s no real explanation of how the example sentences are constructed so you won’t be able to make your own sentences but you can hear the pronunciation of the sentences that are there. Some of the culture notes are informative but romaji is used in quite a few places including most of the quizzes.

Plus

1. A smattering of words/sentences with audio you can use to practice listening and pronunciation
2. Some informative culture notes

Minus

1. Frequent use of romaji
2. Grammatical explanations are nonexistent

Writing

There are tons of websites that teach Hiragana and Katakana because it’s an easy thing to learn and teach. Rocket Japanese’s version has nice videos for the stroke order though it only covers up to 「な、に、ぬ、ね、の」 in the trial. I also don’t see any mention of long vowel sounds in the menu (though I can’t verify). It’s a very important and often overlooked part of Japanese pronunciation. Considering how many free resources there are for learning kana such as Memrise‘s innovative approach, it’s surprising that you get so little with the trial.

Games

The games are really cool! But it uses romaji. Darn. I haven’t progressed far enough to know if they switch to kana/kanji at a higher level.

Other

On the left nav panel, there’s a section called “My community” which is basically an online forum and “My motivation”, which has some good learning tips worth perusing.

Conclusion

It’s not clear which of the five sections on the top I should start with and when to go from one to the next. Replace Kenny, teach the full kana in the trial, kill the romaji, and make the navigation and progression clearer and you might have a decent package for practicing and learning phrases. However, if you want to learn grammar and how to construct complex sentences from scratch, you won’t get it with their teaching methodology, which basically consists of translating bits and pieces of pre-constructed sentences.

To sum up: Rocket Japanese is a confusing mishmash of audio lessons, culture notes, writing lessons, and unhelpful quizzes with no clear ordering or curriculum covered up by a mountain of marketing. You can find some useful learning tips and nuggets of good audio phrases buried in a confusing interface, romaji, and Kenny’s horrible pronunciation.

Verdict: Try out the trial if you’re really bored but keep your money.

Interesting phrase I noticed in this episode at 5:15: 「ポコヨを慰めてあげてくれる？」

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９月、東京に行きます。９月７日金曜日の夜は、暇だったら、一緒に遊びませんか？
興味がある方は下記のイベントどちらかに登録してくださいな。詳細は後で更新します。
場所は多分渋谷・新宿辺りになります。

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話している時に、言語によって自分の性格が微妙に変わってしまう気がしませんか？私は、日本語で話している時に印象が変わると言われたこともあります。確かに仕草や表現の仕方は言語によって必然的に変わるから、性格も変わるといっても過言ではないでしょう。

Here’s the first one but the rest are (mostly) in Japanese. They are scattered throughout the complete guide. Make sure to check out the hover text too.

The further along it goes, the easier it is for me to write because I can use more grammar but probably harder for Japanese learners. Which is kind of the point. I hope you like them! Also, check out Martyn’s site. He’s really good!

I have lots of bold plans and very little time but hopefully I can put the money to good use to make it even easier for people to learn Japanese. Here’s what I’d like to accomplish in the next 10 years.

1. Finish writing the complete guide. I’ve been making good progress on this recently.
2. Make more Youtube videos. I’d like to get some native speakers for the examples so it’s not just me.
3. Start a lecture series at a local library and post on Youtube.
4. Get audio for all the dialogues in the complete guide.
5. Add Yonkoma comics to the site. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no art skills.
6. Put everything above together in a monster, awesome, interactive eBook for iBooks.
7. Start a podcast show for Japanese learners. I have some ideas on how to make an awesome show.

Unfortunately, I have to do all this in my free time so if you want to help me out, here’s how.

Time

1. Make a link to www.guidetojapanese.org with the phrase “learn Japanese”. I want to be #1 on Google when you search “learn Japanese”.
2. If you’re good at drawing, I’m looking for simple manga style drawings like あずまんが大王、ダーリンは外国人、 or even just stick figures like xkcd. Email me at: taekim.japanese@gmail.com
3. For native Japanese speakers, anybody interested in contributing audio or co-hosting a podcast show, email me at: taekim.japanese@gmail.com

Buy the book (if you want one) or donate

I do not know what I’m going to do with the money specifically yet but it’s definitely going to be used to improve the site.

CreateSpace: It’s kind of hassle to order from and you have to pay for shipping but it will save about $5 on printing costs.

Amazon: They will take a bigger cut but you will get free shipping. Also if you like the book, I would love to see some reviews on Amazon.

PayPal: The donate button is on the right side of the main site.

Special thanks goes to Sven ($200), Sergey ($100), and Eric ($200) for their generous donations! (Eric bought the book too!)

It’s been about 10 years since I started this site in college and I hope to bring you more exciting stuff. Thanks for your purchases, donations, contributions, emails, comments, feedback, suggestions, and corrections. Here’s to another 10 years!

Anki Review

The user interface is pretty clunky especially for the Android version. For example, I have to download a deck for every client. If I synch, why won’t it grab all my decks? What’s the harm? Also “synch” is not an accurate term because if it detects changes on both sides, it forces me to pick one even if I just added cards on the PC and only reviewed it on the phone. There doesn’t seem to be a concept of merging. AnkiWeb is also missing a lot of pretty basic functionality such as browsing your deck. Given the advances of modern webapps, I personally would ditch the desktop client and focus purely on the web and mobile apps. It’s silly to have to install the program on every computer and launch it every time. I would much rather have a richer and interactive web version always open in my browser with tab synch on every machine.

Overall, gets the job done but a LOT of room for improvement.

SRS Review

So I discovered this SRS thing is not for me at all. First of all, it takes way too long to make the cards. Eventually, I just imported all my words using only one side. There’s really no point to filling the other side because I usually read whole web pages and articles to fully get the nuance of new words as people following my twitter account know. At this point, simple words like “car” and “doctor” are not really on my list.

Second, the whole review thing seems backwards to me. If I review a word that’s completely new, I pick “Hard” and then it shows up again right away. For me, seeing a word I don’t know over and over again does not help me. I need new words to bake over time. If I know the word, I want to delete it, and if I don’t know it at all, I pick “Easy”. If the word looks familiar to me, I pick “Hard” so that I can see if I want to delete it the next time.

If you are just starting out, given all new words you would need to learn (and quickly), I would not recommend SRS. Given the additional time it takes to make the cards and the time wasted reviewing words you already know, it’s not worth it. If you know a word, you don’t want to hide it so that it comes back in 8 days. You want to get rid of it and move on. You have thousands of new words waiting for you to waste any more time on ones you already learned.

I personally recommend the “deluge” method of dumping your brain with TONS of interesting content. This means plowing through pages of books and manga, hours of dialogue, and conversation practice forgetting more words than remembering them. Don’t sit around wasting time entering and reviewing what you’ve already seen, just get more, more, and MORE STUFF!!! You’ll be surprised at how much just seems to stick somehow like osmosis. Some people feel this is not effective because they end up forgetting so much stuff. They don’t realize that the fact that they even remember forgetting it means they’re learning it.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just weird…

Available on Amazon for $25

Now I can concentrate on finishing my next book!

If you’d like to hear some of these songs, check out the medleys below. Really cool, it’s like the open-source version of music.

Here are some other interjections to practice:

1. ええと – Err, umm
2. あのう – Umm (usually to get somebody’s attention)
3. あれ？ – huh?
4. えっ – eh?
5. あっ！ – Oh!, Ah!
6. こら！ – hey!
7. うーん – hmm (wondering/pondering)
8. へえ – really? (surprised/impressed)
9. いたっ – ouch
10. よいしょ – when exerting effort such as picking up something heavy

I put a lot of thought into how I would structure my videos and how to fix what I didn’t like about many of the existing videos on Youtube.

Keep it short. Don’t try to be funny.

A lot of videos fill up a lot of time by trying to make things funny and interesting. Unfortunately, not everybody find the same things to be funny and frankly, a lot of the videos I saw were just not funny to me. One of the disadvantages of video vs text is that it’s harder to skim through so I try to keep things as short as possible. Look, you’re probably busy and I know I’M definitely busy. Let’s not waste each other’s time with my poor attempt at humor and just get straight into learning Japanese.

If I want to try to be funny, it’ll be in the Japanese examples. That way, at least, you’re learning something in the process and it may make you more interested in learning the Japanese instead of listening to me ramble on with some stupid joke in English.

Why would you want to stare at my face while you’re trying to learn?

I know Youtube started out as people recording themselves on their webcam but do you seriously need to stare at my face for minutes at a time while trying to learn Japanese? I’m not exactly Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. I’ve even seen videos of people giving lessons on tiny whiteboards while they take up most of the shot! That’s kind of like sharing a word doc by printing it, scanning it, and emailing the scanned image.

I know watching mouth and body gestures help in learning a language but unfortunately, I don’t have resources to create scenes with staged dialogues. I would love to if I could though.

Cover everything step-by-step

I wanted to have a set progression where a person with zero knowledge of Japanese can start from the first video and learn by watching the videos in order. Too many videos just start kind of in the middle without really going over everything before it in full. I know it’s an ambitious project but I figure no matter how long it takes, the next wave of Japanese learners can benefit with whatever I get done.

As far as I knew, there were no videos for learning Japanese as I just described when I started making them. So today, I saw this video published 4 months after my first video. LOL.

Wow, it’s defintely more professional than my lame Powerpoint slides. And they have more than just one guy (me) that can read the Japanese examples! I’m so jealous. I’m just this dude making videos from my house with a cheap USB mike.

I applaud the “new” format but unfortunately, the grammar explanations suck! 「ＡはＢです」 pattern means “A is B”??? No no no no no! Bad boy! You can’t learn Japanese with sentence patterns!! What are you, an American Japanese linguistics grad student from the 60s?? Please watch my latest video or let me make your slides so I don’t have to spend all my time trying to make these videos by myself. Argh!

Since I’m no longer living in Japan, I’ve been trying to learn baby-related words mostly on the internet. Since just looking up words in the dictionary almost never works if it’s from English to Japanese, I learn by reading sites like this one. It helps to be prepared in case I want to talk about my baby in Japanese.

Wow, Japanese sure is dependent on Katakana.
ベビーカー – stroller
ベビーベッド – crib
ベビー布団 – baby futon
ベビーチェア – baby chair (seems like mostly high chairs)

はいはい – crawl
伝い歩き – cruise
子守唄 – lullaby
つみき – building blocks

Somehow I don’t need to have a real baby to know all the English words. Just goes to show how great immersion is.