I totally agree with Matt there. Forget the short-term panic and focus on the long-term. And yeah, get in the habit of doing kanji–don’t let it be swept aside by your first few whirlwind weeks!

Oh, and what really helped my kana was just reading anything I could when I arrived here. I’d be like ‘kanji kanji を, kanji ました。’

So in essense I agree with Kats. Don’t worry about the short term ‘I’m arriving in a month’ panic. Look for the long term - and open that Heisig again!

>What would you do if you knew basically no Japanese and had just a few weeks to attempt to reach a survival level before heading over?

Well, a lot of JET kids don’t know any Japanese at all, right? And they’re hiring you for your knowledge of English, not for your knowledge of Japanese. So, I would do one of the following.

a) Do what Heisig did–focus on the kanji for now. Ignore everything else.
b) Pick up a book like “The Quick and Dirty Guide to Learning Languages Fast” and apply it to Japanese.

My favorite would be option (a). If you’re going to learn Japanese, you might as well learn it properly. And since, I imagine, the JET program will be taking care of your work, housing and social interactions (i.e. “survival”), just focus on becoming good at Japanese since you don’t have to worry so much about surviving.

You see, my problem with learning the “bare minimum” of a language is that it (probably) won’t really enable someone to have that meaningful of interactions; it seems like it would be next to useless. For one thing, it doesn’t solve the problem that you will have to understand people’s responses. You may only know one way of saying something, but you have to understand 10 different other ways of it being said…especially in Japanese, where it won’t necessarily do to simply imitate the speech of the other person, since they may be speaking at a different politeness level from you.

Having said that, a few basic words certainly won’t hurt. Especially demonstrative pronouns (check this post)–これ　それ　あれ　どれ; greetings, yes, no, thank you, how much–these kinds of words can take you far. On the other hand, I wouldn’t bother learning how to ask directions, because…no one knows directions, at least in the Tokyo area, no one has a freaking clue where anything is–your best bet is to learn to read and use a GPS unit, honestly.

So to summarize. Learn some very basic, high-mileage words and phrases, but put most of your effort onto kanji. That’s what I would do.

I have Heisig and I truly believe it to work, having gone through about 200 characters in virtually no time about a year ago, but I’m extremely busy with my preparations at the moment and don’t feel I can really devote myself to it until I get over there. What would you do if you knew basically no Japanese and had just a few weeks to attempt to reach a survival level before heading over? I currently know the kana in the sense that I can read them, at least slowly, and I’ve done a few audio tapes but not made much progress.

Thanks for your site–it’s very motivating.

You’re hardcore, props to ya!

I’ve been in Japan for 5 years now, and work as a technical J-E translator at the moment. Your site is right on. I have thought of a lot of the things you mention to help with learning Japanese, but of course knowing and doing are two different things huh. Great that you’ve been able to put it all together!

Will be stopping back from time to time!

- Harvey

Consider taking a look at the introduction to Heisig’s “Remembering the Kanji, Vol 1″ to find out why it makes sense to do it this way (available free online–check here and here).

Let me also add a few things of my own to Heisig’s reasons.

1. Romaji is the devil. Learning a language using a writing system other than its own is a recipe for catastrophe. At least pronunciationwise. One can pick up awful habits that will take lot of work to correct–if that work is done at all. It’s best to make a clean break from any previous writing system.

2. There is a very low upper limit to one’s Japanese ability if one chooses to go the non-kanji road. There are some words that a person simply cannot even begin to understand without a knowledge of kanji (yet they are very easy to understand WITH knowledge of kanji in hand). It’s part of the agglutinative (I think this is the right word) nature of kanji words.

a. The kanji system allows one to both build (encode) and decode new words in a way that no alphabetic system can.

3. Text allows a learner to control the pace of and analyze the content of the study material in a way that audio does not and cannot.

4. Non-East Asian non-Japanese people’s illiteracy in the Japanese language is out of control. It’s time to tackle it head on and just have people learn to read. It’s not that hard when you just do it. And the best time to do it is from the beginning–certainly it’s far better than “making do” with illiteracy and then trying to cure it. Heisig’s idea, through learning the meaning and writing of kanji first , is for us non-kanjisphere people to give ourselves the same advantages coming into Japanese as people from the kanjisphere. Since kanji have a logic to them that transcends spoken language, they very much lend themselves to Heisig’s method.

Of course, you learned your native language (initially) without reference to text. But, (a) you didn’t have any other linguistic baggage going in (see point 1). And, (b) your later efforts in your native language were and are very much informed (and corrected) by text, no doubt. Even if your native language uses a phonetic (rather than logographic) writing system, as I’m assuming it does, text makes a difference. As a non-infant learner, a text-heavy approach seems to me like the way to go. Of course, for audio, the immersion environment also matters; audio does matter; correct pronunciation is crucial.

Thanks so much for your question. I hope I didn’t say anything offensive to you. But that’s my current position on the matter at hand. I don’t know that many languages, and Japanese is the first one I have taught myself. But…I think that the conventional wisdom about speech first and text later…isn’t an iron-clad rule at all. It’s nothing but an idea masquerading as a written-in-stone law. It is not impossible to learn a language from audio first, but I definitely would not go out there and say that it’s “easier” or “better” (if by “easier” we mean “gets you fluent in a short, direct path”).