I don’t know about you, but I’m always starting up plans and projects and schemes. There was “the 7 o’-clock bedtime” project (a good book by the way). The “liquid food only project” (would have worked, except for having to clean the stupid blender). And of course, the Japanese immersion project that led to me living in Japan and writing this site.

Have you ever tried to obey someone else’s forced plan or process? If you went to school, your whole life may have been one big forced plan. This is part of why school sucks so hard — you can’t change the way you do things, you don’t even get to decide in the first place, because teacher has made “the syllabus” through the power of the Magical Education Special Sauce that was slowly injected into her bloodstream over several years while at teacher training college and which is now helping her brain to function at “Teacher Level”; she knows better than you, so shut the front door, sit down and do what you are told. Right, and as soon as we get out of school, all we can do is stay up all night playing PlayStation because we’re so violently allergic to scheduling and so-called “discipline” — which, of course, only “proves” that we need school to get us in line.

Have you ever tried to force yourself to obey a plan of your own making? That is, if you can even remember what your plan was — chances are you’ll be wasting so many hours and minutes reading the piece of paper where you wrote down the plan that you’ll have no time left for execution. And, of course, the plan might be so painful that you’ll take the first opportunity to bail. That’s been my experience, at least.

OK, so what is my point? My point is that in all the cases where a project or plan of mine worked, the final version differed (often quite significantly) from the initial idea. As some random Prussian general once said “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy” or something like that.

No project plan survives contact with reality. It must either die or evolve. So don’t even try to burden yourself with this idea that you have to follow your original idea to the letter, you will only hurt yourself. It’s not that you’re lazy or incorrigible or undisciplined — you’re not — it’s just that the plan sucks, at least in part. Learn to accept that your good-looking plans may just have a lot of crappy elements to them, and that it is OK to let go of those elements once they are identified. For example, when I was first entering Chinese sentences into KhatzuMemo, I wanted Chinese, Bopomofo, Pinyin and Japanese on the “cards”. That was the plan. But bopomofo took quite a while to enter, because I had to convert to it from pinyin. No matter, the plan is the plan, and bopomofo is good for you; you need it to use a cellphone in Taiwan. But you know what? Converting to bopomofo added so many extra keystrokes and mouseclicks that the amount of actual Chinese I could actually learn per unit time was seriously reduced. So, even as the “we must follow the plan” part of my mind resisted, I decided to axe the bopomofo.

Always remember that your goal is not to follow a plan; your goal is not to obey instructions — yours or anyone else’s. Your goal is to become fluent in a language by any means necessary. Including altering and abandoning your original plans. When it comes to fluency in a language, there is no prize for merely spinning your wheels. No one’s going to be like “Hey, Todd, you suck at Japanese, but BOY do you TRY HARD! And that’s what counts!” — because it doesn’t count! There are no effort points. All that counts is winning the game — speaking, reading, writing and understanding the language. So grab the freedom to do what you want by the uevos, and while you’re at it, take the responsibility for your results as well.

Anyway, have fun!

A while ago someone asked me whether I still maintained a Japanese environment and why…I told him that yes, I did. And that it was because I believe that while sucking ends, learning never does.

Don’t I sound so deep and wise? HahaHaha. That reason may be partly true, but it may also be self-righteous B.S. on my part (in which case, it wouldn’t be the first time).

Perhaps the most important reason why I maintain a Japanese environment long after reaching fluency is because I’m used to it. I almost don’t know what else to do; I hardly own anything in English. It’s pure inertia; I am continuing to move in the direction of a mental force I applied to myself way back when, even though the force is no longer being applied. This is my default state now.

But that’s not a bad thing, necessarily. In fact it’s a wonderful thing. Pushing the Japanese environment boulder up the hill was hard in the beginning, but now it pretty much pushes itself. It’s a habit. Japanese is a part of me. My PC is in Japanese…my books are either Japanese or Chinese. The TV is on whenever I’m home, and it spurts forth Japanese shows (the good, the mediocre and the bad; I take it all!). This website is one of only three or four English elements in my life (incidentally, I would never have run this website while in the “pure hardcore stage”).

But I don’t actively work to do any of this, not any more. I just do it because it’s there, because it’s what I do. The movements and thought patterns involved are almost subconscious — like reflexes.

So have hope. It is a bit rough in the beginning. In fact, the biggest hurdle to get over isn’t laziness or lack of motivation, but forgetfulness — constantly forgetting that knowing Japanese is your major goal, and everything else has to wait; sometimes I simply forget to do Chinese — it literally slips my mind. As someone once said “discipline is remembering what you want” [emphasis added]; it’s not really a matter of suffering and willpower and self-denial, but more one of your ability to maintain a queue in your mind, and keep Japanese at the very front of that queue; remember the dream. After a while, you’ll forget that there was anything else. Your ability to maintain a Japanese environment — and by extension, to recall Japanese, to read Japanese, to understand and of course to write and speak Japanese is going to increase. Every day, it’s getting easier and easier to do it than before. Every day, every moment, you are getting better. Every repetition you do, every word you hear and see and say is bringing you closer to fluency.

As many of you are painfully aware, most Japanese-language movies, TV dramas and animes still have no subs on the DVDs. Foreign/Hollywood movies dubbed into Japanese generally do have subs, but these are almost never exact dialogue transcripts (at least, I have never seen one), rather they are a rewording or a paraphrasing.

But why? I needed answers. So I went to my local video rental store, and asked to speak to the manager. (Names changed to protect the innocent). And I said to him, I said: “Mr Nakamura, Double-U. Tee. Eff. Why are the subs so often inexact or nonexistent?”. And Mr. Nakamura told me that the thinking in Japan’s movie industry has typically followed two distinct lines:

1. Hearing-impaired people can go in the general direction of heck.
2. Subtitles on foreign movies are not merely intended to repeat dialogue, but to convey, clarify and expound on dialogue — in other words, to pick up perceived slack in the audio translation.

Which is all well and good, but that kind of thing can tend to leave an avid learner like you or me…cold.

But there is hope! For there are some Japanese shows that do have exact Japanese subs; right down to the pauses and bridges (the equivalents of “um”). Here are the ones I know about from my pavement-pounding research (I seriously went in the flesh, because the information on the web was on the unreliable side).

• タイガー＆ドラゴン (plus the special extra episode「三枚起請の回」 — a 2-hour prequel that fills in a lot of details that are alluded to later in the show; it’s really essential to a full understanding of the series (and was in fact made before the rest of the series, rather than later like some kind of starwarsian afterthought), so I highly recommend getting it and watching it first).
• クロサギ (cool plot set-up, but the worst acting ever…even the subs couldn’t redeem this show for me)
• 女王の教室
• 電車男 (infinitely re-watchable dramedy geek love story..based on a supposedly true series of Internet forum posts)
• 3年B組金八先生 (exploitative, tearjerking Confucian propaganda at its worst (love and respect for the sensei), but…whatever)
• ドラゴン桜
• 救命病棟24時 第3シリーズ
• Drコトー診療所
• ウォーターボーイズ2005夏
• あずみ2 Death or Love
• 花より男子
• きみはペット
• 医龍~Team Medical Dragon~
• 恋におちたら ~ 僕の成功の秘密 ~
• プライド
• 渡る世間は鬼ばかり
• 輪舞曲
• 元カレ
• 8時だヨ！全員集合
• 8時だヨ！全員集合2005
• のだめカンタービレ
• タイヨウのうた

There it is. I am quite certain that these shows have exact subs — I checked every single one at my local video store. But, just to make even more sure, you might want to check with the vendor in question, especially since at least one major vendor (Amazon.jp) has a naughty habit of not listing any info at all about whether there are subs or not. So here is a sample email you might write them:

Subject: 【お願い】DVD字幕の有無を確認する／「Name of show」DVD-BOX

お世話になります。

「Name of SHOW」というDVDセットを購入しようとしていますが、
これは大事な教材になりますので、日本語字幕が必要不可欠。
そこで、お手数ですが、日本語字幕が収録されているかどうか確認して頂ければと思います。

ご返事の程、宜しくお願いします。

[Your name]

Most Japanese dramas run for a single 10-12 episode season of 3 months; this makes it so the good shows end before ever jumping the shark, and the bad shows, well, end. Some shows do have sequel seasons, but this is rare. One thing to note is that just because one season of a show has subs, that doesn’t necessarily mean that any other seasons do. Very much a case-by-case thing.

Pricewise, buying a Japanese drama TV series box set will typically run you in the $120-$150 range, before shipping. In other words, the same price 2-3 normal university textbooks (or one chemistry textbook)…it is steep, but it’s worth it. If you can only buy one right now, buy Tiger & Dragon (タイガー＆ドラゴン); I love that show! It has a really cool plot structure that makes it very re-watchable. Infinitely rewatchable. I’m watching it right now — I often just loop the DVDs.

It can safely be said that almost everything I’ve written on this site is backed up by personal experience — and personal success. Certainly, when it comes to methods that I’ve shared, I share them because I have used them myself and gotten great results.

One of the reasons I stopped visiting online forums for Japanese learners early in my path to Japanese is that there is, in a lot of cases, too much talking and whining and not enough doing. Heat and no light. Theorizing without experimentation. It became abundantly clear that if I ever wanted to get anywhere, I would have to shut up and start walking the road, rather than discussing the map, the trip, the territory and whether the journey was even worth taking.

So I hesitate to share something that is still “in development” as it were, but here it is anyway.

As you may know, Japanese was, in a sense, a detour I took on my way to studying Chinese. Of course, because of the intermittency and lack of consistency with which I have studied Chinese, I suck at it (for now). There was a time when I sucked at both Japanese and Chinese simultaneously, until one of my friends, Marcelle, gave me the impetus to “stop sucking at two languages and get good at one”. So I picked Japanese for economic reasons. Japanese speakers were getting sweet-looking jobs; I wanted a sweet-looking job; I should become a Japanese speaker. Very straightforward.

But I still want to be good at Chinese. Every time I see, hear or meet a Chinese person I’m like “Come on, man!!! Look at all the fun they’re having!! They live in a world of all kanji all the time, and here you are still wading in the kanji-kana kiddie pool (no offense to modern Japanese writing intended)! Get on it, dewd!”

Which leads to the idea of laddering languages. It’s kind of a compromise between “learn many languages, perhaps simultaneously” and “stop sucking at two languages and get good at one”. Now, I don’t know about you, but I know people (including myself) who have gotten themselves confused when trying to learn multiple languages. Two of my sisters attempted to learn Spanish and French simultaneously and got so mixed up they nixed the whole project. And after taking almost 10 straight years of French in school and then starting to learn Chinese, I started unintentionally mixing Chinese into my French and vice versa. “Je voudrais 一個…” Hmm…not good.

I wondered why this was and quickly realized the reason. I had used the same “analogies” in my brain that I made for French in order to learn Chinese, so they were overlapping. Kind of like…trying to write on a piece of paper that has been under the previous piece of paper you were writing on, and so has all these pen impressions on it. The problem was that I had used English as a base language for both Chinese and French. Bad.

The idea with laddering languages is to (as far as possible) never use the same “base language” twice. For example, I used English as a springboard (base language) for learning Japanese. But I will not use it as a springboard for future languages. Japanese is now my base language for learning Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin will be my base language for learning Cantonese…I get the impression that Cantonese may be kind of a dead end in terms of lacking materials for learning other languages. Hopefully I am wrong on that, but if not, I may have to re-use a different language as a base (I would recommend one use the most recent base language available, i.e. not going back all the way to English but just stepping back onto (in my case) Mandarin or Japanese); this is admittedly dangerous, but perhaps unavoidable — unless I bust out a purely monolingual Norsk Experiment. Of course, in each case, as with Japanese, I will eventually switch to only learning in the language in question using the language in question (Autolearning? Monolingual Acquisiton? No idea how to phrase this one…). So, I will go Chinese-Chinese only at some point.

The beauty of laddering is that it requires you to be pretty darn good at the base language before you use it to learn another language. But even if you aren’t perfect, the worst that can happen is that you’ll increase your proficiency in the base language by necessity. Laddering also prevents deterioration of proficiency in the base language, which is always a danger when taking on a new language — you wouldn’t want to start sucking at something you had worked so hard to get good at. So, I am currently using Japanese translations when learning Chinese sentences (my electronic dictionary has Chinese-Japanese-Chinese on it…and a buttload of example sentences — however, my environment is not yet Sinified, so the pace remains slow for now). This way, Japanese remains firmly on my radar, and I even learn some obscure Japanese words, but I also get to spread my wings into Chinese. Very much a win-win situation. I never make reference to English for a Chinese word. And I never find myself getting confused between Japanese and Chinese.

Anyway, that’s about the gist of it. Sorry for discussing something that’s still incomplete, but I thought I might share it with you.

A couple of months ago, a high school kid teaching herself German asked me for tips on how she should make the most of an upcoming visit to Austria. Here is what I told her…Austria and German have been replaced by Japan and Japanese, but either way, the advice still applies. It’s mostly common sense, but hopefully it’s of some use to you.

Of course, I learned Japanese to fluency before ever setting foot in Japan — you don’t need to go there to get good. Nevertheless, going to the country of your target language is a great opportunity to do and see cheaply and easily, that which can only be seen and done outside of that country with great effort or at great expense.

There are three parts to cover: people, things and attitude.

1. People

First of all I’m assuming that you are coming to Japan (or whatever country) with a “bootstrap network”. That is, you have safe people who can welcome you into the country. These people are generally of the following types:

(a) Japanese friends you made in your home/base country.
(b) The network of your friends from (a)
(c) Host family (if you’re doing homestay).
(d) Japanese classmates (if you’re going to a school of some kind)
(e) Japanese coworkers

One of my friends, John D., is really good with people. He can walk around town with his guitar and instantly make friends. He also knows kung-fu (not joking; he knows martial arts). Unlike John, I am shy, quiet and sickly-looking. If you are more like me than John, then you may run the risk of being approached by drunkards and lonely old men (usually both in one). This is not a good combination. If someone random approaches you in Japan (or anywhere), chances are that they are a weirdo — I can’t say with 100% certainty that they’re socially unhealthy, they may in fact just be nice people (I have met some just plain nice strangers who just wanted to talk; I also make a point of asking tall Japanese people where they bought their pants) but they most likely are weirdos targeting you because you’re foreign and you have that fresh-faced “don’t have a clue” look about you; these weirdos would never approach someone who looks like she knows what she’s doing. That’s why you want to have a bootstrap network prepared in advance, to shield you from weirdos and connect you with quality people.

Endear yourself to the people in your bootstrap network. While in Japan, use your bootstrap network directly or indirectly to make some really, really close Japanese friends. Spend time with them. Wash their dishes, help them, smile at them. Eat meals with them and sleep over at their homes — scratch that, don’t sleep — stay up all night talking and laughing and making farting noises with bubble-wrap (for some reason, this becomes incredibly funny after 2am). Stick to them like glue while you’re there. Hang out and make memories with them so you’ll miss each other when you leave. Well before leaving, get all their contact information (don’t ask someone to do it for you, because they won’t, that’s just how the world works; do it yourself, get that contact info and get it all — email, snail mail, chat nicknames, home and mobile phone numbers). These people are going to become your lifelong friends/teachers/penpals. When you get back home, send these people personalized gifts (include notes about funny lines/jokes/situations you enjoyed together), chat with them online, phone them up, email them — stay in touch. You can have a deal where you might email them only in Japanese, and they might email you only in English, and you could help each other out by sending corrections. Or not, as long as you get your Japanese corrected!

I repeat. Endear yourself to people. Remember that the best way to make and keep a friend is to be one. Make yourself useful, suck up to them (not disingenuously…but do genuinely try to be of service; a good friend will be worth the work), and stay in touch with them. Remember little things about them. REMEMBER THEIR FULL NAMES; everyone loves to hear their names. Call them on their birthdays (by the way, my secret for finding out birthdays is to start a discussion about how horoscopes are a load of BS). Treat them like a million bucks, because…they are. When I finally moved to Japan, my Japanese friends from college are the ones who picked me up at the airport, housed me before I went to company housing, and acted as guarantors on my apartment contract after I left company housing. Though I came to Japan knowing Japanese at an adult level, I was still confused and scared when I arrived — sure, I could read the signs, speak and be spoken to; I was linguistically Japanese, but culturally as foreign as foreign could be; like a helpless child, I had no clue how Japan “worked”; where to go; who to talk to and how — my friends took care of me through that time, and showed me the ropes. Now, I show them the ropes sometimes…or at least debunk them. Last week, one friend told me that the courier services would never send a birthday cake. Imagine his surprise when he was eating it two days later. Black forest humble pie with strawberries; happy birthday.

Tell your Japanese-speaking friends to treat you like a child, tell them to correct you mercilessly both in writing and speaking. Tell them to hold you to a high standard, and not let you get away with mistakes just because you’re foreign.

Needless to say, avoid English speakers while in Japan. Ignore people from back home; you don’t want to get into an “expatriate cocoon”.

2. Things

Two words. SHOPPING SPREEEE. Buy lots and lots and lots and then MORE lots of Japanese-language materials while you’re there. This is time to extend that budget by any means necessary. Specifically, you’ll want to look into:

• Comic books — buy entire sets. Try a used bookstore if you can, but if you can’t — buy it anyway.
• Other literature — magazines, pictureless books, newspapers. Get a newspaper for every day you are in the country. Scandalous tabloids count.
• Foreign Movies/TV shows (lots of English-language movies and TV shows get dubbed into Japanese — get them!)
• Music
• Local Japanese TV shows — especially children’s cartoons (simple), comedies (fun) and soap operas/dramas (addictive) — maybe those friends of yours can recommend some good ones.

With materials, make sure it’s all stuff that you like, and that you’ll watch and listen to instead of your English stuff. And make sure you get lots of it because this is a golden opportunity to save on shipping back to your home country.

3. Attitude

Becoming fluent in a language — including your native language — isn’t difficult or unusual, but it is drastic. Drastic results come from drastic actions. And drastic actions come from drastic thoughts. Drastic thoughts like “if it isn’t in Japanese, then it is not of me”, lead you to take drastic actions like getting rid of all your English-language media and literature. Embrace Japanese. Become Japanese. Create for yourself the Japanese-speaking childhood, upbringing and environment that were denied you by accident of birth to a non-Japanese-speaking family in a non-Japanese-speaking country. Pretend that that whole “English” thing was an accident. Japanese is where it’s at for you now. Leave your linguistic past behind you. Don’t worry, it’ll still be there when you come back. You’re not going to forget English — but you do need to act as if you don’t know it.

Pretend that you’re just this little Japanese kid that’s returning to her native culture. Now, obviously that isn’t true. But just pretend. It’s a useful way of thinking, because it will both give you confidence and help you hold yourself to a high standard; you’re going to acquire real Japanese, not “foreigner Japanese”. When you’re on the Internet, pretend to yourself that you’re a little Japanese kid who’s just discovering the whole world for the first time. So, you don’t know English; you don’t want to know English, and you therefore have no business being on English-language websites. Fortunately, there’s plenty of Japanese out there for you to enjoy; for one thing, the Japanese-language Wikipedia is one of the largest there is.

A lot of people waste their lives away talking, thinking and worrying about stupid things — I know from experience — I almost had a heart attack this morning when a piece of paper wouldn’t fit into an envelope properly (solution: fold the paper). You have chosen to learn a language. Learning a language is one of the best possible uses of your time; it’s a skill that holds its value; it does not grow old quickly — language isn’t about to go out of fashion. So remember your choice and keep things in perspective. Forget about the things that don’t matter. Remember what you care about. Remember the joy you will be feeling when you are fluent.

And ALWAYS have fun!

よく「辞書を絶対使うな」と耳にするが、これは馬鹿馬鹿しいと言えば馬鹿馬鹿しい。辞書を使わずに一体どうやって言葉の意味を正確に理解すれば良いのだろうか？矢張り大事なのは、辞書を使うか使わないかではなく、辞書の使い方だ。文章を書きながら一々言葉を辞書で調べていると支離滅裂になり相手にうまく伝わらないだろう。詰まり、地獄への道同然だ。

昔から「言葉は最大の武器だ」という。本当にそうであれば、辞書を引くのは正に銃の引き金を引くのと同じことで、訓練をしなければならない。そこで言語学習者にとって辞書の役割は、ただ単語を教える事を超えて、取扱説明書の様に用例や「下に打ち消しの語を伴う」の様な注意などを通してその単語の用法を教える事も不可欠である。用例・注意などを満載した辞書は、まるで親友同然の宝物。

だから辞書は、「絶対使うな」なんて言葉に耳を貸さず、喜んで正しく使おう。何故かと言うと、永遠に頼る物ではなく寧ろ我々を解放する道具になる。辞書を座右の友にし頻繁に引き、引いた語の用例の意味を覚えよう。その用例をSRSに入力し復習しよう。すると、辞書に頼っていたからこそ徐々に頼る（引く）必要が減って行く。確かに時間が掛かるが、この手法の経験者として「価値はある」と確証する。辞書が無いと生きていけなかった私が、今では初めて見る単語の意味を調べず文脈から正確に推定できる様になったし、辞書を引く理由は殆どが好奇心からである。「絶対使うな」とのアドバイスに従っていれば恐らくここまで成長しなかっただろう。

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