The Road to Japan

Introduction

Update 一 – Tips on learning Hiragana and buying study material
Update 二 – Learning Japanese on the Nintendo DS
Update 三 – Writing Kana and making a start on Kanji
Update 四 – The road is long, and hard. でも, so worth it!
Update 五 – Kanji Flashcards, and much more…

Introduction

Though I’m not exactly what one could call a ‘weeaboo‘ I have always had a fascination with some aspects of the Japanese culture.

My best guess is that seeing movies like Akira and Laputa: Castle in the Sky(not to be pronounced in Spanish) at an early age on the BBC inspired me, along with video-games and the occasional rental of well known Manga movies/series like Ghost in the Shell, Wicked City and Dominion Tank Police. I never went for the Manga magazine’s though. (I was too busy buying vinyls.) I remember there was an Anime on the Dutch TV show: ‘Telekids‘. Though I never found out what it’s name was. (And please, feel free to comment if you do!)

On this page I’ll post updates about my “roadmap to Japan”, as I plan too travel there for my internship for the Academy of Popculture. This plan started with meeting a new friend at school; Leonie Peerboom. A very talented singer. We both like Japanese culture, and her idea for an internship made me think about the possibilities of going there for mine as well. Japan is one of the many countries I want to see, but one of the few countries that are high on my priority list.

As a big added bonus, I always wanted to learn ‘a hard language’. And latin did not do the trick for me… Watashi-wa Nihongo-ga wakarimasen, demo, sukoshi wakarimasu.

That’s a lot more then I can say in most other languages! (I’m already helpless in France, and that’s just a few hundred kilometers away!)

So far, I’ve learned the basic Hiragana (no dakuten or anything fancy yet), some basic sentence structure and a few words to describe people, objects, countries and other ’stuff’. Though learning the language without romaji is nigh on impossible, I can already say: Start learning Kana early. Hiragana and Katakana are not that hard to learn, but Kanji is best described as; ‘nightmare mode’! (No cheats, little ammo and no save games.) So make the step early, you’ll have a nice advantage once the proverbial feces start hitting the fan.

On this page you’ll read how this plan unfolds…

Update #いち

I noticed something; Katakana is in fact a little harder for me to learn. I could see a lot of resemblance between the different Hiragana. But I see less similarities between Katakana ’symbols’. I do really like the tight drawing of the kana. I look forward to understanding it, and best off all writing them. I’ve got the basic hiragana covered by now, but I must say; I easily screw-up some similar kana like ‘ne’ ね & ‘re’ れ & ‘wa’ わ, ‘ru’ る & ‘ro’ ろ and ‘nu’ ぬ & ‘me’ め.

To help me learn Japanese I bought the following books:

- “Japanese for Busy People I ” Published by AJALT, available in just about any bookstore, I guess.

- “Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary“

Update に

Another great attribute for learning Japanese is the Nintendo DS.

The best application available for learning Japanese is an official release called ‘My Japanese Coach‘ by Ubisoft. In this learning tool you learn Japanese step by step in a playful way. The “games” used for learning the language don’t feel pointless, with the exception of “Hit-A-Word”. But so far, I haven’t encountered this mini-game anymore since lesson 6, where you get an introduction to Kana in the form of Hiragana.

What helped me learn Hiragana so fast (In a week! – Ed) is the homebrew application ‘Project JDS‘. A simple yet usefull application based on tutoring the Kana. You can choose to learn Romaji to Katakana, Romaji to Hiragana and Katakana to Hiragana, and all of these in reverse order if one wishes to do so. Project JDS has some nice added features in the form of an audio preview and an animated preview on how to write the Kana, and what order to perform the strokes in.

There are more applications available like ‘Kanji Dictionary: Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten‘ (Kanji Dictionary). But they seem a little to hardcore for me right now. And the above two cover the same ground. Though I must say, I have yet to complete ‘My Japanese Coach’, so I don’t know how far that “game” goes.

Update さん

In the last few weeks I’ve been thoroughly learning how to write the all the Kana in the correct stroke order. And looked for a few good website to help me make a start on Kanji.

A good website to make a start (and to learn Japanese in general) is www.learn-japanese.info. The website offers charts of grade-school Kanji, sorted per grade, including the different meanings, and sheets to practice these on.

www.learn-japanese.info is also a good place to practice the Japanese grammer and more, be sure to visit!

On Kanji-Step you can find a lot of GIF images showing you the stroke order of some of Kanji. I have no idea why this website hasn’t been updated for since 2003, but that’s the way it is… It still offers some resources, so use them to your advantage.

Another website dedicated to learning Japanese, that offers exactly what it says on the tin! freejapaneselessons.com. Free lessons for all!

And finally For Dutch visitors of my website; Japanology.

This website is a young website with an already active community of people aspiring to learn 日本語. Take a look if you please. And feel free to sign-up to the website.

Update し – The road is long, and hard. でも, おもしろい　だよー!

After quite some time without an update to this page, I decided to let y’all know where I’m at.

I haven’t touched Project JDS in a long time for the simple reason that I don’t need to practice recognizing ひらがな or カタカナ anymore! Reading and writing Kana is now a basic part of my everyday Japanese language studies. All thanks to Project JDS in combination with My Japanese Coach! (Both highly recommended!)

And to help me get faster at reading Japanese I decided to look for another game to help me out.

So, I’ve started playing around with Anpanman to Asobo – aiueo Kyoushitsu. (アンパンマン　と　あそぼ　あいうえお　教室)  A very simple and, well, childish game. But then again, most people learning 日本語 are of young age! And I’m just an old-guy trying to catch-up.. If you are any good with Kana you’ll get the hang of this game quickly. It consists of a lot of mini-games, that (except for the really かんたん (easy) games) focus on learning the aiueo (The Japanese ABC) and a lot of everyday words like dog (いぬ), cat (ねこ), ears  (みみ), and (like I’m used to by now in these Japanese-training-games); Sushi (すし).

This game offers a good way to expend your vocabulary, and could very well be used in paralel to My Japanese Coach, since it doesn’t offer a big challenge and aproaches the Japanese vocabulary from a child’s point of view. And let’s be honest: If you are just starting out with Nihongo, You are, in a way, just a kid learning your first words. And if you are just a kid, isn’t it nice if you are able to name everyday items like fruit, (りんご – apple, もも – Peach) animals, (きつね – fox, せみ – fly) or a pencil (えんぴつ)?

The game contains a lot of spoken (informal) Japanese too, if you are a starting student like me you won’t understand most of what the speech is about, but hard practice makes good practice! And it will help you understand Japanese faster, although in a very, very childish way. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but does make you wonder how much money you want to spend on learning Japanese on your Nintendo DS.

I wanna finish this post with a lovely gift I got from a very, very lovely woman:

Update ご – Kanji flashcards, and much more.

A while back I promised a few sites to learn Kanji from, in the form of flashcards. Well, The Japan Times beat me to the punch!

That saves me time figuring out which site is right for you, and means I can start using these methods too. The time saved is valuable at the moment, as I’m just a little more then three weeks away from my first trip to Japan. Time better spend on learning the Japanese language.

My personal favorite is Smart.FM a website filled with study-courses and lessons in all kinds of subject, including our beloved Japanese. It has a build-in application for learning in different ways which does the job quite well. But, since I’m not even near any good at reading Kanji, I combine the lessons of Smart.FM with the material that About.com provides. About.com is a very well known website for just about anything. (I guess that’s why they called it About.com. *Rimshot, classhhhhh*).

What I do is the following;I take about 10 or so Kanji and write them on a piece of paper. (I couldn’t find any kanji-paper, so I use math-paper instead.) I write the on and kun readings beside it, to the right. And the meaning (Dutch, English, whatever suites you best) on the left side. And take a moment to study these. Then, I take a new sheet of paper, try to draw the Kanji, including correct stroke-order, on it. And try to repeat it’s reading and meaning in my mind. If I happen to fail, I go back to reviewing the words.

In between learning sessions, I stumbled upon the website ‘All Japanese all the time’. It’s a lot of fun to read his website, and a lot can be learned from his endurance-race to knowing the Japanese language.

Son of 8-Bits | datetime 23/03/2009 20:39

9 Comments

  • By himeno16, 12/05/2009 @ 14:03

    Hi Hi Jordy,
    I was googeling myself and then I found you writing about me, about my singing. Its so nice of you to say I am very talented, Domo arigatou gozaimasu ^-^, Lovely Leonie XxX

  • By sonof8bits, 12/05/2009 @ 14:07

    オイオイ　ひめのさん！
    どう　いたしまして　:)

Other Links to this Post

  1. More about my ‘Road to Japan’ | Son of 8-Bits — 27/03/2009 @ 15:37

  2. My roadmap to Japan | Son of 8-Bits — 27/03/2009 @ 15:44

  3. Update に | Son of 8-Bits — 28/03/2009 @ 22:35

  4. Update さん | Son of 8-Bits — 22/04/2009 @ 18:28

  5. アンパンマン　と　あそぼ　あいうえお　きょうしつ | Son of 8-Bits — 09/06/2009 @ 20:47

  6. Kanji Flashcards | Son of 8-Bits — 13/08/2009 @ 14:43

  7. Some web hosts suck | Son of 8-Bits — 13/11/2009 @ 18:15

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