So, I’m running a mini-series of posts on The Japanese Learner about my favorite shows of the season. I hope that these will help you find more anime to watch. Immersion is one of the most important aspects of Japanese learning and it’s also so much easier to study when you can enjoy the material, too.

This week I’m writing about Hyouka (氷菓), a slice-of-life mystery series surrounding a high school’s classic literature club.

Houtarou Oreki is a young boy who lives by a single motto: don’t do anything you don’t need to and rush though the things you must do. It’s odd, then, that an “energy conserver” like Houtarou should find himself at a school renowned for its wide variety of extracurricular activities. At his older sister’s behest, he fills out an application to join a club, even though it is against his nature. According to the letter she sent him from India, the Classic Literature club has no members and is facing closure if it doesn’t add new heads soon.

Being the only one in the club, he figures he can at least enjoy having a club room all to himself. He borrows the key from the faculty office and then heads over to let himself into the room… and there’s a girl, looking out the window. This is odd, since the door was definitely locked when he got to the room, but those thoughts wash completely away when their eyes meet. She has beautiful eyes and an intense gaze that penetrates right to his soul.

She’s Eru Chitanda, and she has joined the club for her own personal reasons. But, more importantly, she’s puzzled that the door was locked when Houtarou walked in, because it was unlocked when she walked in and he has the only key. She absolutely must know the answer to this riddle and she insists that Houtarou help her figure it out.

With his incredible skills of deduction, Houtarou needs few clues to piece the whole story together and Eru is very impressed. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t end there. Her curiosity about nearly everything is absolutely insatiable and when she looks into his eyes and tells him “I’m curious,” he just can’t seem to say no. And this is how Houtarou finds himself, his best friend Satoshi, and Eru solving a series of mysteries surrounding the Classic Literature club.

What makes Hyouka stand out for me is that it is visually stunning. Kyoto Animation, who you may remember as the studio that worked on The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, has outdone themselves here. The visual quality of Hyouka’s animation is top notch. When Eru’s passion is ignited, her eyes shine like precious stones, really driving home the incredible impression that she makes on Houtarou with her gaze. And when Eru walks up to Houtarou for the first time, takes his hand, and insists that she’s curious, we see her hair grow out to ridiculous length and wrap around him, pulling him uncomfortably close to her as she stares deep into his soul. The execution is fantastic and in my view really helps the audience to identify with Houtarou, who just wants to live his life in peace but can’t bring himself to refuse Eru’s earnest pleas for his help. In a way, he’s similar to Kyon, and KyoAni’s experience in depicting this kind of character definitely shows.

As of this writing, three episodes have aired, but this is already one of the most promising shows of the season. However, it also has some very strong competitors.

If you like school stories and you like mystery, give Hyouka a try. And tune in next week for a write-up of another excellent Spring 2012 anime series!

Here’s where I stand right now:

• Number of characters studied: 695
• Lessons completed: 23/56
• Number of reviews per day: roughly 30-40 characters, up to 20 of which are new cards.
• Time spent reviewing per day: 30 minutes on average
• Number of characters scheduled for review in one month or longer: 165 (and many more cards scheduled for review in 20-30 days)
• Percentage of mature cards answered with ease 4: ~80%
• Percentage of young cards answered with ease 4: ~50%

I missed a few days when I was travelling for business last weekend, but otherwise I’ve been doing reviews with Anki every day. While writing notes from the first lessons of the book and ripping out pages to use for practicing and reviewing, I’ve consumed almost an entire small notebook. Adding it all up, I’ve made a significant amount of progress up to this point. I feel a bit proud. As you can see from the last two stats, my retention of the material is pretty decent too.

But okay, enough bragging. Here’s how I currently study the lessons:

For each lesson, I consider the primitive elements that make it up and come up with a story, which I enter into Reviewing the Kanji. While thinking about that story, I write the character down in my notebook, trying to anchor the story to the character (including relative position of elements) in my memory. When I have difficulty coming up with a story, I look through some of the top stories and might either copy or adapt one of them for my own use.

All reviews are by Anki. I don’t currently sync to a mobile device, though I’ve considered it. I have my session limit set to 30 minutes and the new cards limit set to 20, which I’ve found to be a pretty good number even though some lessons are longer than others. The deck I’m using is a shared deck (File > Download > Shared Deck…). On the front is the keyword, which is a link to that character on Reviewing the Kanji, and on the back is the character as well as some other metadata (frame no., number of strokes).

I review every day and I try to set aside time to study each day as well, but that sometimes doesn’t work out since studying the characters takes much longer than the 30 minute session limit on my reviews. By default, Anki has four ease levels (four buttons that show up when you click the button to show the answer for your card). This is how I use them:

• Ease 1: I could not produce the character (I gave up on recalling it) or I produced it incorrectly. I am incredibly mean to myself on this one. Even a single stroke off and I mark it 1, no matter how mature the card was. This is important because sometimes characters differ by very little and you need to train your mind to sweat those very small differences.
• Ease 2: I struggled quite a bit but I was eventually able to produce the character correctly. I usually mark a card as ease 2 if I had to play and replay the story to recall the elements and write the character and this took me about a minute or longer.
• Ease 3: I was able to produce the character correctly but it took a bit of time to recall it.
• Ease 4: I produced the correct character (almost) instantly.

Here are some of the observations I’ve made as I’ve stumbled along:

• Before, forgetting a character was pretty much the end. Only by miracle might I be able to recall the sequence of strokes to write it again. But since starting to study via the Heisig method, I have surprised myself quite a few times by recalling how to write a character when, at first, my mind drew a complete blank. The story plays out in my head and the elements pop out, which triggers my visual memory to write them in the correct places relative to each other.
• As characters “mature” in my reviews, I use the story less and less. Sometimes all I need is to recall the plot (skeleton of the story which includes the elements). Sometimes, I don’t even need that and I just start writing the correct character almost immediately (I mark those as ease 4 when I answer them).
• Leaning too much on the stories that other students share on Reviewing the Kanji has hampered my study a bit. Apart from the stories that Heisig supplies in the early lessons, I tend to remember stories I come up with more strongly than stories I copy from others. My current fix for this problem is to switch to the kanji on the website and then look at the book, read the block of text (including elements and hints/tips) and close my eyes immediately afterward to form the story.
• Effort spent on coming up with a good story has definitely translated into a much more solid grip on the character. While Anki makes it very easy to do reviews, spacing repeats days and then weeks apart until you finally master the cards, spending a couple of minutes or more on each character to form a strong story can save you from repeating the same characters a lot.
• My strongest stories are outright absurd and a few are even offensive (I won’t share any here, but check Reviewing the Kanji and you can find quite a few). I think this means that something way out there tends to make a much more lasting impression on my memory.
• As I wrote before, this method gives absolutely no treatment of how to write characters neatly. I am currently looking at resources for learning to write characters more neatly and if I find something I like I’ll definitely be posting about it.
• Even though I can’t use it well, a brush pen (like this) makes reviews a bit more fun, though I spend longer on each character when I use it.

I hope this has been really informative to all of you who are also studying from the Remembering the Kanji series books. If you’ve got any questions or would like to share some tips of your own, e-mail us@thejapaneselearner.com or share it on Google+ with the tags #heisig and #rtk (or #rtk1 through #rtk3 if you want to be specific).

There are many good Japanese dictionaries (and similar) online — I personally recommend jisho.org, which I’ve started using over WWWJDIC because I find the interface is much nicer. But you can’t always have your computer with you, so if you’re studying on the go or you’re taking Japanese courses in a classroom setting, you need something you can use as a reference when you need to know what a word means or need help with translation.

A paper dictionary is always a solution. Entry-level dictionaries are fairly easy to find in print, published by names you’re familiar with from English dictionaries like Random House and Webster. At the beginner level, I personally recommend Kodansha’s Furigana Japanese Dictionary (not an affiliate link!) because it’s good to start working with hiragana and katakana as soon as you can and the ordering of the entries will get you used to the way that Japanese words are ordered phonetically. But you’ll soon find that unlike, say, French or Spanish, you can’t get by with just a dictionary for translating words between languages, no matter how large it is. You’ll soon need a kanji dictionary, a dictionary particularly for looking up kanji characters, which will help you to read/write unfamiliar words. And for more advanced reading, there’s nothing quite like a straight Japanese dictionary, which gives definitions of Japanese words in Japanese.

As you progress, those books will become bigger and more numerous until it just isn’t practical to carry them with you anymore. It is at precisely that point that you should consider an electronic dictionary. Electronic dictionaries, or 電子辞書, have a number of key advantages over paper dictionaries:

• They are portable. A copy of  広辞苑 (one of the more popular dictionaries in print in Japan), is quite a thick volume. Those ~240,000 entries can fit in the palm of your hand with an electronic dictionary.
• They tend to contain multiple volumes. The one I have contains 広辞苑 along with 明鏡 (another Japanese dictionary), a kanji dictionary, two encyclopedias, J-E and E-J dictionaries, and more.
• They serve specialized needs well. You can probably find an electronic dictionary loaded with specialized content for your particular field, including science, computing, and medicine.
• They tend to have features for easy lookup. For example, many models have a touch panel to allow you to look up entries by hand writing. With multiple volumes, good models provide a “jump” feature to allow you to jump from one entry to another, or even between volumes!

But there are also a few disadvantages:

• They are usually quite expensive. I paid around $300 for mine when I bought it a couple of years ago.
• They’re quite hard to get outside of Japan. Then again, so are many of the best Japanese dictionaries in print (though even those aren’t too difficult to obtain if you’re lucky enough to have a Japanese bookstore nearby, like Kinokuniya).
• They aren’t typically designed for foreign learners of Japanese. But I wouldn’t recommend buying an electronic dictionary unless you’ve gotten to at least an intermediate or pre-advanced proficiency in Japanese, so this is probably less of an issue than the two points above.

So maybe after reading all of that, you’ve decided to buy an electronic dictionary. What do you need to look for, you ask? Well, it turns out that somebody on the Japan subreddit posted a pretty thorough guide to electronic dictionaries. To summarize it very briefly, you want to find something that comes with dictionaries and reference books that you need and will actually use and you will probably want to aim for models that cost $300 or more (cheaper ones will tend to be outclassed by other portable dictionary options like smartphone apps, which we will cover in more detail in future posts).

Here are the features I really appreciate in my electronic dictionary, a Canon EX-word Data Plus 4 XD-SP6700:

• Twin touch panel: the lower touch panel can be used to look up entries by hand writing but the main display is also touchable. You can use the stylus to click on entries while browsing, or in combination with the jump function to select which word you want to jump from, among other things.
• Backlight: because sometimes the lighting isn’t the best when I’m using my electronic dictionary. The backlight is just about perfect for reading the LCD display, providing just enough light to clearly read it without overwhelming the eyes.
• Specialized volumes: in particular, there are some books on medicine and computing.

This all said, when my study of Japanese was slipping more, I got much less use out of my electronic dictionary, and looking at it now I think I could have done a bit more research to pick an even better model for my needs. There are quite a few parts of it that I have absolutely no use for at all. But since it, like many others, is designed with native Japanese speakers in mind, maybe that can’t be helped.

Do you have an electronic dictionary? Which model do you own? We’d love to see recommendations, especially since it has been a long time since I was in the market for an electronic dictionary. Leave a comment here or send an e-mail to enrico@thejapaneselearner.com!

One thing that I’ve noticed slips quite quickly when I’m not studying Japanese everyday is kanji. It’s a pretty tall order to remember the 2000+ characters set out by Japan’s Ministry of Education as the 常用 (Common Use) kanji, which are said to appear in 99.9% of all written Japanese. But once you’ve mastered these characters and their combinations, you are well on your way to full literacy and fluency in Japanese. It makes sense for Japanese school children to learn them by rote in the grade order that they’re given by the Ministry, but for the adult learner that’s much less effective. For one thing, it takes quite a lot more time than we’d like to spend. However, open just about any kanji textbook and the exact same techniques are in play: character, readings, compounds, drill, drill, drill.

James Heisig, author of the 3-part series “Remembering the Kanji,” has a different idea, and it is one that seems to have quite a following in the Japanese learning community. So, I grabbed a copy of the first book and started to work through it. At this point, I’ve read and studied the first 10 lessons out of 56. Out of the 2042 characters presented in the book, I have studied 234. I have been reviewing the characters using a publicly-shared Anki deck that has the kanji’s keyword on one side and the character itself on the other.

The basic theory behind Heisig’s course on how not to forget kanji characters and what they mean is simple; Chinese students of Japanese, having thoroughly studied their native writing system, have a distinct advantage over students of Japanese whose first language doesn’t involve Chinese characters. While there are some minor differences (Japan has effectively “forked” the Chinese writing system), Chinese natives basically know what the kanji mean and how to write them, just not how to pronounce them and not the particulars of how they combine. Traditional approaches to teaching kanji to speakers of other languages involve presenting the characters in some logical order (e.g. frequency of use, Japanese grade level) along with readings and sample compounds. These approaches thus mix learning how to write kanji characters with learning their core meaning, how they are pronounced, and how they combine together to form other Japanese words. The result can feel like drinking from a firehose. Heisig cuts away a lot of that and asks the reader to focus on one thing: associating the written character with its core meaning. And the way he proposes to do this is by engaging the “imaginative memory” to give students a tool for recalling a kanji character given its keyword.

So how does this “imaginative memory” work? Parts that appear in many kanji characters (not necessarily radicals) become primitive elements. Whole characters may also become primitive elements and sometimes the meaning of the primitive element is only loosely related to the character. Sometimes, it isn’t even related at all. For example, 里, the kanji for the Japanese unit of distance “ri,” becomes a “computer” when used as a primitive element. The primitive elements that make up a kanji are worked into a story and that story, once internalized, can be used to recall the kanji character given its keyword. As a brief example, I introduced 里 as computer, and can use that to create a story that helps me to remember 埋. On the left we have soil (土), so imagine burying a computer that has now become obsolete in the soil. If you can recall that image when you see the word bury, you can use it to produce the character. This process of building up full characters from primitive elements only loosely follows and sometimes steers completely away from the actual etymology of characters and the actual radicals that form them.

It sounds completely silly at times. Strange (奇) becomes the image of an article in a “Strange but True” column about a St. Bernard (大) who hit the brandy keg around its neck a bit too hard and, as a result, has had its mouth (口) nailed (丁) shut. I mean, in the first place, isn’t that kind of cruel to the dog? But these stories are meant to tickle the imagination and having put it into use for a while, it is surprisingly effective. Before, when I couldn’t forgot a character, I almost always had no hope of recalling it from my memory. There was no tool that I could use to bring it back, it was just gone. Since it was only ever a series of strokes, that’s to be expected. But while reviewing the kanji via my Anki deck, I have surprised myself several times by being able to dig a character out of my memory by using the story. As Tofugu writes in their 30-day eBook, being able to recall something after you’ve forgotten it is much better than trying to power through on rote memory alone, with absolutely no backup for when that fails you.

The book is also very good about providing some advice on how to follow the method and even some remedies for when things seem to be going horribly wrong. Lesson 11, in particular, only introduces 15 new characters but includes a thorough treatment of the common problems one might have in following the method. If you’re a stickler for classic pen/marker and paper flash cards, Heisig even has some advice for you there, too.

There are some drawbacks to Heisig’s method. Firstly, the method is fundamentally incompatible with just about any other traditional method of studying kanji. Heisig warns that you will very likely have trouble combining this with a traditional Japanese textbook and course. Another downside is that for all of the study of kanji characters and their meanings, you won’t learn to read and write any words. This method is not for building vocabulary; it is purely for remembering the kanji and its core meaning. Heisig argues that once you’ve learned to associate the kanji with its meaning, learning the readings and compounds comes easily enough. I’m actually fine with this, since even before Heisig’s book I could recognize many characters and even know what they mean, but didn’t know how to read them. It is possible to separate these aspects of kanji from each other and there are even benefits to doing so. Even if you don’t know how to read kanji compounds, you can often guess at their meaning by looking at the individual kanji, so a method for memorizing that for all of the characters in common use will certainly be valuable in vocabulary acquisition. Another thing that is missing from the book is help with handwriting. Other kanji textbooks in my collection include some tips on how to render characters neatly and even include the common handwritten version alongside the print and/or brush version, but Heisig’s book doesn’t. If you need a little help learning to write characters neatly, you might need another book.

So, it’s a bit of a leap of faith, but having taken the time to really try it, I can honestly say that I feel like it is working. And really, that’s the most important thing. Sure, the method is unconventional and even silly at times, but if it works for you, this book may be the most valuable addition to your Japanese learning bookshelf. If you’re not enthused about putting down your money to own this without getting to try the method, you might want to try borrowing a copy. Alternatively, you can try poking around this website, which acts as a sort of complement to the book, allowing you to record your own stories for kanji and exchange them with others. You can study the kanji through that site too, though you will definitely want to make sure you’re actually putting pen to paper as you’re working your way through the lessons. If you’re using the same publicly-shared Anki deck that I’m using, the keyword is actually a hyperlink to that same website.

While I did say that this book doesn’t cover readings and compounds, the next book in the series does try to provide a system for memorizing the readings of kanji characters. When I get there, I’ll be sure to write another review. For now, I’m pretty happy with my progress in learning the meaning and writing of kanji characters.  =)

That’s the thing with language learning. You can start whenever you like, and you can stop whenever you like, too. It can be a life project, or you can stop at hello, goodbye, and asking for directions to the train station. It’s really up to you. But if, like me, you’re in this for the long haul, or if you’re just getting started but can imagine yourself studying Japanese for many years to come, then you need to know how to keep yourself moving forward, come what may. This post is about my personal philosophy which has kept me going without fail.

Before I get into that, my first piece of advice is to have goals. We’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. An ideal goal is just outside your grasp, but not so far that it feels impossible. It’s something concrete, something you can actually work your way towards day by day, little by little. Often, people will say their goal is to become fluent in Japanese, but what does that actually mean? The question you want to answer, I think, is what do you want to do with Japanese? Once you know what you want to do, you can break that down and figure out what you need to do to get there.

For example, I want to be able to comfortably read light Japanese novels. To do that, I need to build a broader vocabulary by reading a lot of material, including the books I like to read, review that vocabulary (Anki is my tool of choice for that), and also review and learn more kanji, which will help me become less dependent on my Japanese-English dictionary when encountering new words. It’s a tall order, but in my mind it is doable, and I know what I need to do to keep myself on course.

Armed with your goals and your daily study regimen, you’ll get far. However, there will be days when it feels as though you’re getting nowhere at all. And it’s precisely then that you must keep going. This isn’t just any old motivational speech about how you have to push through the pain to attain your goals (though that’s definitely true). Unless your study regimen is lacking, that feeling that you’re spinning your wheels and making no progress is actually deceiving you. You’re in a plateau.

It’s sort of like the way that water changes state from ice to liquid to gas as you apply more and more heat. There are periods when the temperature of the water doesn’t go up even though you continue to apply heat. But it isn’t that the water isn’t absorbing the heat. It’s just that at that time, more energy is needed in order to loosen the bonds between the molecules and fully change the state. Once there’s enough energy in the molecules of the ice, their bonds loosen and they start to flow around. Now you have water. If you’re cooling water down to make ice, you’ll also notice that just before the liquid turns to ice, there’s a plateau; the temperature stays constant for a while until the molecules lose enough energy to slow down and start forming the rigid bonds of solid matter.

I think language learning is just like that. Those times when you feel like you’re not getting anywhere, the knowledge is still building up but you just don’t feel particularly better at the language than you were the day before. During those plateaus, you are accumulating the bits of knowledge and skills that will form your foundation for the next level. And here’s the best part: it works in reverse too. Even after spending a couple of years literally not studying Japanese at all (save for my exposure to it in my hobbies), I was surprised to find basic Japanese come back to me like riding a bike. As I continue to study in earnest, I’m noticing my skills start to rise rapidly to their original level, almost like a rubber band snapping back into place. Once something enters your long-term memory, it takes a long time for it to leave.

Rather than feeling like you’ve leveled out, you might actually feel like you’re getting worse. That’s a natural result of the Dunning-Kruger effect. As you become more skilled in Japanese, you start to become more and more aware of all of the things you don’t know. Your reaction to this might be to feel like you’re staying at the same level and aren’t going up, or you might feel instead like you’re steadily slipping down. The solution is the same. Steadily bring in new material, review it, retain it, bit by bit, day by day.

You’ll know when you’ve gotten over the plateau. You’ll do something with your Japanese skills that surprises you. I didn’t know I could do that, you’ll think, but the truth is that now you can. With your new foundation you can now attack more complex material and you’ll feel the pleasure of making steady progress again. But none of this is possible unless, when you feel like you’re struggling and your efforts are futile, you keep putting one foot in front of the other.

This eBook is filled with some creative ideas on how to optimize your Japanese studies. Each day, for 30 days, there is a different idea you can try out.

I was too excited to read all the ideas so, I read the entire book in one sitting! (I want to improve my Japanese that badly! Haha!) I have taken notes from some of the suggestions and have been trying my best to apply them to my current study goals.

For example, day one suggests that you create a habit. Any habit. It doesn’t have to be related to Japanese studies. It could even be as simple as washing your dishes on the same night every week.

We all know that at times, learning to write kanji and how to read them in compounds can be a little dull, but by creating a habit of doing the “not-so-fun” stuff with your studies, after a while, you don’t mind doing it. It becomes routine and it eventually becomes a part of your lifestyle.

One of my habits is when I wake up,  the first thing I will do is to update the daily word on our Facebook and Google+ pages. This has been helping me in many ways as I help others learn a new word every day while I also get to practice additional words within the example sentences.

I also have a “study journal” where I write down everything I reviewed and studied that day. This has helped me stay on track with my review for the N4 Japanese Language Proficiency Test that I plan to take in December.

From Tofugu.com:

“Over the next 30 days, you will go through a lesson per day showing you how you can learn Japanese better. Because this eBook only divulges the secrets of how to learn Japanese, it can (and should) be used with whatever Japanese resource you’re using at the moment.”

This eBook is currently being sold here: http://www.tofugu.com/shop/30-days-japanese/

Some Japanese Learners may say “wow, I just spent quite a few dollars on stuff that I already know” but luckily there is a 60 day guarantee. If you are not fully satisfied with your purchase, just e-mail them and you will get your money back.

There are many more ideas within this book that I have found to be helpful in my current studies, so I definitely recommend purchasing this book if you are looking for ways to keep your studies from getting too boring or if you need some suggestions on how to improve. the quality of your studies.

Join us next week when Enrico returns to our blog and writes about what to do when you feel like your studies are going nowhere.

See you all next Friday!

The Japanese Learner is not affiliated in anyway with Tofugu.com, nor are we receiving any money for recommending their products or services.

I’m excited to share with all of you that tomorrow I’m starting my “Japanese journey” all over again from the beginning, but in a Japanese language school and not just self-study. I’m nervous, anxious and excited all at the same time.

It’s been so very long since I’ve been to a Japanese language school. It’s been almost 10 years and felt it was finally time to keep pursuing my dream of becoming fluent in Japanese.

For as long as I have been studying Japanese on and off since I was 12, (I am now almost 29);  I know myself well enough that self-study can only take me so far but combined with a structured course of some kind; be it in a textbook or in a language school, Japanese becomes easier and easier over time. This is especially true when you have a good grasp of the basics, because you keep building your language skills on a strong foundation.

I know I have a good grasp of the basics but unfortunately; some skills are weaker than others. I would like to round out all my skills so that they are all just as strong. This is why I decided to start over from the beginning to review the basics while relearning new and better habits to polish up on my Japanese and then to surpass my current abilities. I’m more passionate to become fluent now more than ever and feel that this time around, I can really make some good progress towards my goal.

What I hope to accomplish with going back to Japanese school, is to come up with new tips and strategies to share with all of you. After all, anyone can learn Japanese if they really have the desire to do it.

The school I choose to study at is very different than any other Japanese language school I have enrolled in the past. How you many ask? They teach you Japanese directly in Japanese. It sounded pretty interesting to me as most courses teach Japanese in the English language, for example.

The one rule for the school is, to only speak in Japanese. No other languages are allowed to be spoken during class. It’s full immersion. I thought that this kind of learning environment will help improve my speaking and listening skills. It will also assist with “thinking” in Japanese.

I wanted to try a different approach to learning Japanese so I can keep it fun and interesting for me. I also feel that I will thrive in a classroom environment while interacting with the teacher (who is a native Japanese national) and with all the students.

I hope you would like to join me on my journey while I share with you the new things I will learn and how my progress is doing.

After all, my journey is also your journey as all learners start from the very beginning. Nothing is hopeless and Japanese will get easier if you stick to it.

So, let’s learn Japanese together, while also bridging cultural understanding between your country and Japan!

See you next week!

Share your thoughts with us on our Facebook and Google+ page for our daily word plus examples sentences and drop us a comment! Why are you learning Japanese? Let us know!

For those that may not know, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test is a test that is held yearly (and sometimes bi-yearly) at various test sites around the world to test one’s Japanese language ability. For more information, please visit this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Language_Proficiency_Test/

In today’s blog entry, I will talk about my personal experience plus my test results.

On Exam Day (December 4, 2011):

The test was held at a University in Toronto. While entering the facility; I was greeted with the sight of at least a 100 different people. It was really interesting to see all sorts of Japanese language students of all ages and nationalities congregate together to have their Japanese skills put to the test.

In the hall of the facility, they had various tables broken down into the different levels of the JLPT. I walked up to the N5 level table and handed to the representative, my exam number as well as my photo identification.

Next was our orientation in one of the lecture halls. During this time, the facilitator of the orientation had informed us of the rules to obey when taking the test.

When the orientation was done, each level was instructed to go to their designated test room. The seating arrangements were numbered according to your last 5 digits of your registration number. We were all instructed to have only our pencils, erasers, the test voucher and our photo identification on top of our desks.

Then the test started. It was broken down into three sections; vocabulary/grammar, reading and listening. (As long as one has a good grasp of these language skills, their chances of passing are quite high.)

I felt at ease once the test had started. The questions were pretty straight forward.

When the test was over, I felt pretty confident that I had passed. I really wanted to use the N5 test as a way to evaluate where I can make improvements to my Japanese studies going forward.

The Results (March 14, 2012):

After much anticipation, my certificate and my results arrived in the mail. I was very excited and anxious to get it.

What I got in the envelope was; a score report of the results by section, a bi-lingual pamphlet that explains how the JLPT compares to the old JLPT tests (click here for more info), how to read the score report and finally, the official N5 certificate.

Here are my results per section of the test:

Language Knowledge Vocab/Grammar・Reading:                     80/120

Listening:                                                                           53/60

Total Score:                                                                   133/180

(Approximately 74% PASS)

Reference Information: (*Grade per section)

Vocabulary:    A

Grammar:      A

Reading:        A

Based on my results, I can focus on my vocabulary/grammar and reading skills when I take the test in December 2012.

My goal this year is to pass the N4 test. I have been making preparations by collecting together vocab lists, kanji lists, grammar books and reading material.

I have to work really hard this year to pass the N4 test.  I know if I stick to my study goals, I should have enough confidence to pass it.

If you look to your right, you will see a “Daruma” image. When one eye is colored in, it means I have a goal to strive for and the second eye will be filled in once I achieve my goal. (To find out more about the “Daruma”, please visit this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daruma_doll/ )

Anyone that is preparing for the JLPT this year, feel free to visit us on our Facebook page or our Google+ page if you would like to discuss more tips and strategies for preparing for the test.

Next week, I will talk about going back to Japanese language school and my thoughts after being in self-study mode for so long.

A few of my favorite places to dine, fortunately has a few Japanese nationals as their serving staff. I always use that as an opportunity to practice my Japanese.

Try ordering your next meal in Japanese or perhaps strike up a conversation with the staff while you wait for your order to arrive. These are just some example exercises you can do while you are in the restaurant.

You may even find a restaurant where other Japanese patrons go to. If you are lucky to have such a place at your disposal, you will find that in some cases they have a menu in English and one completely in Japanese.

I always like to challenge myself by using the Japanese menu and when I couldn’t read something, I would ask the server what the item was and how to read it.

Please be aware that even though the restaurant you could be dining at may be a Japanese restaurant, don’t assume that the staff is Japanese either. You may find yourself in an embarrassing situation if the staff was from another nationality.

In cases where you are not sure, you can simply ask in a polite manner or even call the restaurant before your visit to see if they have any Japanese nationals on their serving staff.

In my experience, many Japanese restaurants like to hire Japanese nationals that are in the country on a working holiday visa. They like speaking to others as they can practice their English, while you get to practice your Japanese speaking skills.

Think of it as a glimpse of what to expect when you are in Japan someday. Once you familiarize yourself with the common terms and phrases for ordering food at a restaurant, being at a restaurant in Japan won’t feel as intimidating as you have already had lots of practice before hand.

I honestly wish I had that advice before my exchange program to Japan in 1999. I found it quite nerve-wracking to say the least, when I tried ordering something at a McDonald’s! Rather than trying to order a meal, I just said “Appurupai kudasai・アップルパイ下さい” (Apple pie, please) at the counter.

If I ever found myself in that situation again, I know that I have the confidence and the language knowledge to not be so nervous the next time around.

So give it a shot the next time you are at a Japanese restaurant!

See you next Friday!

Recently, when I was looking around, I noticed that they had an international section that had books in various different languages from around the world.

I was surprised to see that they had two full shelves with books in Japanese. They had all kinds of books ranging from self-help to famous literary works; such as “Bocchan.”

They even had children’s books in Japanese! This is a great way to improve your reading comprehension skills since there are rarely any kanji characters.

In some cases, they may also provide reference materials such as Japanese language dictionaries, books on Japanese history and even Japanese culture.

So, the next time you visit your local library, ask the staff if they provide books in other languages because you never know what you may be missing out on.

See you next Friday and happy learning!

Next Friday, we talk about how liking Japanese food can help with your speaking skills! I’m sure you have an idea how!