We’ve previously discussed the importance of turning your environment as Japanese as possible. With very little money (far less than you might need for a typical class), you can turn wherever you live into a little Japan.

Even if you already live in Japan but your Japanese needs work, these suggestions will still work for you. If you’re like most expatriates on these islands, you may have turned your life into a little enclave of non-Japaneseness. I would like to show you how to turn that on its head.

Wherever you are, it is crucial that Japanese become the “official language” of your life. Japanese can’t be just this thing you visit for an hour a day, five days a week, and then go on with your “real” life the other 90% of the time. It has to be pounding at you 24/7; it has to be the 90%. I don’t know all the reasons why this works, but one that comes to mind is this: In life, whether it’s learning a language, losing weight, or waking up early we usually don’t fail at a major project because we’re lazy or stupid. We fail because we’re forgetful. We forget what thing it was that we were ultimately trying to do, especially if the road to that thing just seems painful; we get lost in the fog of effort and forget the joy that the mere thought of our destination can give us. Remember that what you are trying to do is to become your dream: you are trying to become indistinguishable from a native speaker of Japanese. If you don’t constantly hear native-spoken Japanese, then you might forget that; it might just seem like you’re trying to get through a mountain of gruntwork. On the other hand, if your eyes and ears are bombarded by things Japanese all the time, then you will always remember where this is leading—to fluency, not to Gruntwork Valhalla. That which you cannot now fathom (Japanese), you will one day fathom fully.

Learning in general is the birthright of human beings. We humans, relatively speaking, don’t have sharp teeth, big lungs or fast feet; instead, we have flexible minds. Language is so fundamental to our lives; it’s foundational — language is just the basics and it’s not “hard”; there’s nothing truly difficult about it; it takes time, but it’s not some intractable problem. Unfortunately, somewhere between boring classes, boring textbooks and boring teachers, we’ve forgotten that. In a sense, this site exists to remind you of your power to learn.

So, here is a list of about 10 things to do (and not do), in order to Japanize your environment.

1. Music: Japanese only
Put away the Avril Lavigne. Sell the CDs on EBay; give them to a Japanese friend who’s learning English. Whatever, just get rid of it. Delete the mp3s. Don’t “put aside” your non-Japanese music; that includes the Manu Chao; I don’t care if he sings in English, Spanish *and* French; it’s irrelevant. Destroy it. I know this is harsh, but it’s something you have to do. Why destroy it? Because if you don’t, you will listen to it in a moment of weakness or nostalgia (you’re all: “(sigh) I remember when I understood the lyrics in the songs I listened to, those were the days”); it could lead to weeks of regression, or even destroy your immersion program altogether. Replace it all with Japanese music: music by Japanese *in* Japanese. It’s best not to even “do it in stages”, just go cold turkey. Even if you have so little Japanese music that you have to keep repeating the same song, then that’s a good thing! Repetition is the mother of skill, remember? Let go of the non-Japanese bands; there are plenty of Japanese bands that have the sound and feel you’re looking for.

Not only should you exclude languages other than Japanese from your life, but you should actively include Japanese music with you wherever you go. If you don’t yet have a portable music player, acquire one, and where it around with you *everywhere*. If you are not in an important conversation with someone who does not speak Japanese, then you should be listening to your Japanese music.

2. Movies: Japanese only
Movies that are not in Japanese no longer exist to you. Now, fortunately, you can get Hollywood movies dubbed into Japanese at www.amazon.jp (be sure to check the item details, especially for movies more than 5-10 years old, since these may be Japanese-subtitled but not dubbed).

Don’t use your significant other as an excuse. “But we have to spend time together”, you say. Bollocks. Take a walk together and hold hands, but make sure to be listening to Japanese music on your portable player; come on, let’s be honest, you don’t really want to hear what they have to say anyhow (joking)! And don’t let your friends or family make fun of you or browbeat you into going along to see the latest mindless flick with them. Don’t let them tell you that you “have to unplug sometimes”; they’re full of crap; they’re only saying that to get you to go along. Don’t let them tell you “you can do it later”. Will they be there for you when your Japanese sucks because you didn’t practice because you were always “going to do it later”? Do your friends know Japanese fluently? Probably not. Because if they did, they would understand why you need to do what you need to do, and they wouldn’t try to dissuade you from it. If they do know Japanese fluently, then they should know better than to attempt to strip you away from the very thing that got them fluent: constant practice.

Be strong. Your friends and family will make fun of you for a while, but just hold on. In the short-term, they may not seem to like you unless you do what they want. But it in the long run, they’ll respect you more than if you’d just given in to their pressure. They may say horrible things to you: “Do you think you’re better than us? Do you value the advice of random people on the Internet more than that of your real world friends and family? Do you think you’re Japanese or something?” to which you may reply under your breath: “actually, I do”.

3. TV: Japanese only
Unless you live in an area with a large Japanese community, there may not be Japanese TV available. But you never know. Check with your local cable/satellite provider. Failing live TV, even if there’s only a small Japanese community, there may be a Japanese store in your area. More likely than not, that store sells/rents tapes of Japanese television, complete with commercials. You want to patronize that store and buy some tapes. Failing that, there’s always Ebay, YouTube and even (shudder) BitTorrent.

One of the cool things about Japanese TV is some of the most popular American TV shows (and even some of the good ones) are dubbed in Japanese, including 24, Monk, CSI (all cities), Friends, Full House (the worst show in human history) and many more.

Whatever your sources, get some Japanese TV arrangement going, and have it playing constantly. Like me, you may not even watch TV. But when it comes to Japanese, and only Japanese, you have the permission to be a couch potato. Or a couch carrot: lighter and leaner than a potato, but still a bit vegetative.

4. Radio: Japanese only
Again, unless you live in an area with a large Japanese community, there may not be Japanese radio available. Not a problem. That’s what the Internet is for. Sometimes, running Japanese TV could be distracting for you. But you can listen to radio and podcasts while you cook. Get some (ask me if you want to know specific places).

In the case of both TV and radio, don’t worry if you can’t understand it all. The point initially is not for you to get everything that’s going on. The point is for you to have it turned on, and playing. At first, you probably won’t understand a single word. Then you’ll start picking up single words. Then you’ll start picking up sentences. Then you’ll start picking up scenes. After some time, you’ll be able to watch and understand it all. It may take a while (many months), but stay patient and let the bright colors, shiny objects and detergent commercials entertain you.

5. Computer/Internet: Japanese only
Do it. Do it now. As far as possible, only visit Japanese websites. Need to check your favorite website? Check the Japanese version instead. Need to check the news? No, you don’t ;). In addition to original Japanese websites, there are Japanese-language versions of several of the most popular English webpages, including Yahoo, Wired, CNN and Slashdot.

What operating system do you use? Better get the Japanese version.

What’s your browser’s homepage? Better make it a Japanese one.

Tip: enter a JapaneseURL into the box on http://www.hiragana.jp/, and it will add kana pronunciation aids (furigana) to the kanji.

6. Friends: Japanese only
OK, this is as harsh as they get, but you’re going to need to work on your social circle. I’m not saying that you should kick out non-Japanese-speaking people from your life, but you should definitely surround yourself with Japanese speakers.

Sometimes you can’t always be with your real-life Japanese friends, so when you’re alone, your Japanese friends are the singers and actors you watch and listen to.

7. Walls: Japanese only
What is on the walls around you? You need some Japanese posters and signs. If you’re in the kanji-studying phase, then there’s this cool poster of all 2000 odd General Use Kanji; at $24 it isn’t cheap, but in the spirit of “discipline is remembering what you want”, I think it’s a valuable reminder. I had one on my wall. You could also make your own poster by filling in each kanji you acquire. Whatever you do, Japanese the walls of your home.

8. Food: Japanese only
The Japanese restaurants I know of are expensive. Maybe you can visit them only once in a while. You could also visit Japanese food shops, buy the ingredients, and cook your own food. You don’t know how to use the ingredients? Just ask the shopkeepers (or your friends) about what to cook.

Also, whatever kind of food you eat, eat it with chopsticks. I started using only chopsticks years before going to Japan. Don’t be intimidated, they aren’t hard to use. Plus, you can almost eat anything solid with chopsticks: rice, cake, ice-cream. So use them! Again, you may earn the ridicule of those around you, but just grin and bear it. Since moving to Japan, it’s dawned on me that the chopsticks thing wasn’t just a psychological tool and it wasn’t just for getting attention. It really is a social skill; outside of Japan, they may be rare, but in Japan everything comes with chopsticks; you need to know how to use them.

9. Floor and Furniture: Japanese only
This is similar to the chopsticks suggestion. Again, before moving to Japan, I thought I was just being kitsch by doing this, but it turns out (again) that in addition to reminding you of your goal (Japanese fluency) this is actually an important social skill. Japan very much remains a floor-centered society.

Use Japanese-style furnishing in your home. You don’t necessarily need to go out and buy new furniture to do this, and even if you do, it needn’t be expensive. All you need is a low table (zataku, 座卓) to sit at. Low enough that you can sit on the floor with a cushion (seiza, 正座) and use it.

You should also sleep on the floor on a futon; if you don’t have one, you can lay down a duvet/comforter and sleep on that. Anyway, the point is: sleep and work close to the ground. Outside of offices, almost everything in Japan is low, close to the ground (private homes, restaurants, etc.) You’d do well to get used to it sooner rather than later. If you’ve been working high off the ground until now, this may take some getting used to, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. The task doesn’t change; you do.

10. Brain/Thoughts: Japanese only
Last but not least, your brain. You probably have thoughts and some of them might be in words and those words might be in a language that is not Japanese. Well, that won’t do. My method for changing the language of thought, the “inner monologue” if you will, was to carry around a Japanese dictionary (electronic) with me. Whenever I was walking, if I had a non-Japanese thought, I would look up the words in a dictionary, and then re-think the thought in Japanese instead. I now have an inner monologue mostly in Japanese, except when I’m speaking or writing English. Don’t feel silly — it’s worth it. Surrounding yourself with Japanese should eventually Japanize your thoughts anyway, but this forces it to happen sooner.

Anyway, as always, go out and have fun doing Japanese! Take control of what goes into your brain, and your brain will reward you handsomely.

Dick and Jane continue to learn more about Hansel and Gretel. Who are they, and where have they come from? And what’s Mr. Brown planning? Find out more!

第　十二　話　やで (PL2)
Episode 12, Dude!
第 【だい】 ordinal prefix
十二 【じゅう・に】 twelve;
話 【はなし】 episode
や[is] this is a regional dialect version of だ. For a more detailed explanation, please refer to:
The Japanese Page
で　 [emphasis]

前回
Previously
前回 【ぜん・かい】 previous installment

何処　から　来ました　か (PL3)
Where are you from?
何処 【ど・こ】 (n) (uk) where
から [from]
来る 【くる】 (vk) to come from. The polite past form is 来ました　(prounounced: きました). For more on this verb, visit the WWWJDIC.

ん　だ　よ　お前 (PL1-2)
What the heck is wrong with you?
ん is short for 何
何 【なん】 what
だ/です is (copula)
よ [emphasis]
For more on the Japanese copula, visit any of these fine links:
Wikibooks
Wikipedia
Nifty
Epocrypha
お前 【お・まえ】 you (familiar, singular)

接客 じゃね～ よ 馬鹿 (PL1)
Don’t “I’m receiving guests” me, you egit!
接客 【せっ・きゃく】 receiving guests
じゃね～ is the colloquial version of じゃない (is not). じゃない is short for では(わ）ない. △△△じゃね～よ often has the meaning of “don’t △△△ me!” Note: there is a tendency, in very slangy Japanese such as that spoken by Jane, for words ending in あい or　おい sounds to have their endings changed to an ええ sound
よ [emphasis]
馬鹿 【ばか】 idiot, egit

今回
This time
今回 【こん・かい】 this time

私達 です か (PL3)
Us?
私達 【わたし・たち】Us
です is (the copula crops up again)
か [question particle]

ってか、他 に 誰 が 居る か (PL2)
Well, who else could it be?
ってか　[Well, like]. Short for って言うか or と言うか. Can also have the meaning of “by the way”.
他【ほか】 other
に [particle] Here, に serves a function similar to that of “-ly” in English; it turns 他 into an adverb so that 他 can modify the verb 居る. In other words, it is helping to describe an action or situation (see #10 on the に entry in the Infoseek Dictionary).
誰【だれ】 who
が　[subject particle]
居る 【いる】 [to be]
か [question particle]
Remember that in Japanese, a particle always acts on the word or words that comes BEFORE it!

厳しい (PL2)
Mean!
厳しい 【きびしい】

まぁ (PL3)
Well

一方
一方 【いっぽう】 Meanwhile

ドイツ　から　来ました (PL3)
We’re from Germany
ドイツ [Germany]
から [from]
来る 【くる】 (vk) to come from.

ハンセル　登場!　最近凄い人気
Enter, Hansel! He’s so hot right now!
ハンセル [Hansel]
登場 【とう・じょう】 (1) entry (on stage); (2) appearance (on screen)
最近 【さい・きん】 lately
凄い 【すごい】 incredible. Technically, 凄い should appear here in its connective form: 凄く (すごく). But this is a common Japanese native speaker “error” — kind of like how Americans often respond to the question “How are you?” with “I’m good” rather than “I’m fine”.
人気 【にん・き】　popular

ドイツ　人　です (PL3)
ドイツ人 [Germans]
We are Germans

何で　ハモって　ん　だ (PL2)
What the speaking at the same time is going on here?
何で 【なんで】 Why? What for?
ハモる (v5r) to be in harmony; to say the same thing at the same time as someone else.
ん here is short for の. For an explanation of this use of の, please refer the following fine sites:
Tae Kim’s “The 「の」 particle as explanation”
だ/です [is] is again, the copula

続く
To be continued
続く 【つづく】 to be continued;

[Previous Episode] [Episode Guide (Home)] [Next Episode]

You know, I don’t know how much like me you are. But I imagine that there must be some truth to the idea that if I have a particular problem, then you or someone else shares the same problem. By extension, if I have found a solution or mechanism to deal with that problem, then that solution may well work for other people.

The problem here is slipping up on your practicing. Of course you’ve surrounded yourself with Japanese music, movies, TV and books. But that needs to be backed up by good old low-level practice of kanji and sentences, in the form of practicing electronic flashcards (or, in the lingo, “doing repetitions”) in your SRS.

But some days, things might happen — an emergency crops up, or you have a particularly busy day. You have little or no time left to practice the specific number of sentences or characters you have set out to learn on a daily basis; you’re not meeting your daily goal for units of practice (repetitions in your SRS), and you’re worried that this means you won’t reach your ultimate goal of fluency. What do you do?

Let me just tell you that you’re not a failure. You’re just a baby, remember? Mistakes are almost certainly going to be made. Accidents are almost certainly going to happen. This doesn’t absolve you of your responsibility: you certainly shouldn’t blame the accident, that would be shifting the responsibility. But, you shouldn’t beat up on yourself either. Why? If you’re responsible, shouldn’t you punish yourself?

No, that’s the carrot-and-stick behavioral model. And, if my sources are correct, then according to the biggest behaviorist of them all, B.F. Skinner: reward for good behavior works far better than punishment for bad behavior. In other words, use carrots, not sticks.

A. Make the Best of It

Let me repeat: don’t punish yourself; it may make the masochist inside you feel better, but really all it does is cause you pain and worry, which are an entirely separate different thing from work. So don’t worry. Instead, act. Just do something, anything, as long as it’s headed in the right direction (i.e. towards practicing Japanese). OK, so, it’s bedtime, and you wanted to do 50 kanji or 50 sentences but there’s no way you’re going to make it? What do you do? Well, do some kanji/sentences, maybe 10. Even if you’re dead tired, do just ONE. One kanji. One sentence. That never killed anyone. Remember to treat learning Japanese like a guilty pleasure; with guilty pleasures, you always say you’re only going to do a little, but you always do more.

The situation isn’t perfect; but it’s better to salvage a bit than to just throw your hands up and brace for a total loss. There is always something better than total surrender. In aeroplane terms, a crash landing beats a crash.

If all else fails, if you really can’t even do the smallest unit of practice, then smile. Smile. There’s no use having negative emotions associated with doing Japanese.

B. Prevention is the Best Cure: Deal with the Problem at its Root

Now, we’ve taken care of you dealing with the unfortunate one-off incident. But what if this is a regular problem? What if you’re consistently missing your daily practice goals? This is a deeper problem, and you need to nip this in the bud. The solutions that have worked for me are as follows:

1. Practice first thing in the morning.
No ifs, ands or buts. Get up and practice your Japanese. Now, maybe you’re not a person who is active in the morning, and maybe you’re saying “Khatzumoto, me and morning, we’re not very good friends”. I know how you feel. The way I took care of that was to eat my favorite candy each time I was doing Japanese. I love gourmet jellybeans (the crack cocaine of candy, for those in the know), so to get myself to practice Japanese (and, actually, Digital Signal Processing), I would eat a jelly bean for each kanji or sentence I was practicing, whenever I practiced. I stopped doing it after about 5 weeks, but to this day, Japanese and Fourier Transforms still “taste” sweet to me. So change your schedule: make Japanese practice the first item of your day, and if you have to get up earlier than usual for it, reward yourself.

2. Aim lower
I hate this idea; it feels like giving up. But sometimes, you may indeed be trying to bite off more than you can chew. Yes, you want to learn as much Japanese as quickly as possible, but clearly the pace at which you’re trying to do it is too fast for your schedule; otherwise you probably wouldn’t be underperforming every day. Remember, you not only need to be learning new material, you also need to be reviewing the old. Drop the pace a little. Cut your daily number in half. Make it big enough so it’s a bit of a stretch, but small enough that you can get through it every day given the constraints of your chosen schedule and other commitments.

3. But not too low: Aim higher
Ironically, sometimes, you can aim too low. I was once under so much (apparent) stress, that I decided “well, I’ll just aim to do 1 kanji each day”. Big mistake. Sure, you should be happy that you got at least one thing done, but that shouldn’t be your goal. There is such a thing as psychological momentum, and you’re never going to get any of it if you do so little. When I was aiming that low, I would often just forget to learn the kanji; the daily goal was too insignificantly small.

4. Aim sideways: timeboxing
Timeboxing is one of those ideas that is so obvious that you hate yourself for not having thought of it yourself. Or maybe you thought of it, but you didn’t give it such a sweet name. Anyway, most of us live lives bound by time; we want to get many things done, but it’s no good for one thing to take up more than its fair share of time. One way to deal with that is to timebox; just say “I have X amount of time to do today’s practice/repetitions; I’m going to keep practicing until the time is up, and after that I’m going to go eat jellybeans”

Anyway, those are just some ideas that might help you deal with a common problem at the day-to-day level. Hopefully it’s helpful to you. Remember that you do need to practice Japanese every day, but if something unexpected comes up, it’s not the end of the world; just pick up the pieces and move on; take a lesson from Japanese history: Japan is the only country in the world to have ever actually had The Bomb dropped on it; if they wanted, the people of Japan could have decided to curl up in the radioactive fetal position and have a pity party; they instead decided to build the most technologically advanced society in the world. When you fall, don’t lay there crying, hating yourself and your mother for “messing it all up” for you in the first place, just get up and get going. And as always, have fun doing Japanese!

SRS is short for “spaced repetition system”. Generally speaking, it’s a piece of electronic flashcard-like software that helps you to long-term-memorize large quantities of information by effectively working on only a small subset of the information each day, using spaced repetitions.

The idea of spaced repetitions is painfully simple: when you first learn something, you (need to) review it very frequently in order to keep remembering it. Later, you can review it less frequently — apparently this is a property of human memory regardless of age or “intelligence”. The ever-increasing space of time between repetitions allows you to keep reviewing (and thereby remembering) old material even as you learn new material. The SRS takes care of that constant “leaking bucket” problem where you only remember things learned recently. In this sense, it could be said that SRS basically solve the problem of long-term memory: as they say at SuperMemo, you can forget about forgetting.

SRS aren’t perfect, but if used correctly (i.e. daily and with well-formed question-answer pairs), then they promise retention in the range of 90-95%, and in my experience, they do deliver. It’s interesting to think that actually “letting go” — allowing that you will forget 5-10% of what you learn, rather than being obsessed with 100% retention, has the counter-intuitive effect of leading you to actually learn more. To put it in numerical terms, I have so far learned 4500 kanji with a retention rate of about 90%+; 90% of 4500 is a much better statistic than 100% of only, say, 1000. Also, the 5-10% that I forget generally aren’t the ones I’ve been reviewing for a long time; they are the more recently learned characters.

There are many SRS available for varying platforms. Whatever SRS you choose, remember that the key is not which SRS you use, but that you actually use one and use it every day.

For more on SRS and kanji study, check here and here.

If you want to read about Japanese bands in Japanese, you won’t go wrong with Listen.jp, with its well-written profiles and links to similar bands in the “if you like X, you’ll love Y” fashion; the perfect cool for finding out about musicians you’ve never heard of but that are in styles you like.

Rip Slyme are in a class of their own, with a jazz-inspired sound that has evolved into something that is both entirely hip-hop and entirely unique, feauturing fast tempo, good beats and great rhymes from the MCs who range from the boisterous ragga-style of Ryo-Z to the smooth bass Su, and everything between. They started young (when they got together in 1994, DJ Fumiya was 15 years old, and the others weren’t much older) and keep getting better and better; each album they come out with is even more fun to listen to than the last. They’ve developed a great deal as musicians, so much so that, to be honest, I have to confess that I hate their pre-2001 work as much as I love their later stuff — the difference is that big.

Rip Slyme’s Masterpiece marked the first time in my life that I liked every single song on album. But don’t take my word for it — if you listen to no other Japanese music, please listen to Rip Slyme.

Recommended albums: Masterpiece (2004), Five (2001), Tokyo Classic (2002), Time To Go (2003)

• Video sample(s)
• Official Site