sharing my Japanese journey one coffee at a time
Lately, I’ve been listening to different podcasts in Japanese. Here are some of the ones that I’ve been enjoying. I’ll start with my recommendations, and then my reviews. All these podcasts can be found on Spotify. Recs (N4 - N3) Let's Learn Japanese From Small Talk This podcast is led by two girls who speak… Continue reading Japanese Podcast Reviews and Recommendations
Today, I would like to talk about some differences I’ve noticed so far between reading manga vs novels. I will use ReLIFE and キノの旅 manga, and 天気の子小説 as examples. This may seem really obvious to some people, but it may not to others, which is why I wanted to discuss it. For your information, according… Continue reading Reading Manga vs Reading Novels
*Learn vocab by subject To be honest, this is my biggest tip. There’s a memory technique called memory place where you associate physical objects with words (𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘣𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘌𝘋 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘦.) But for me that’s just too random, but learning vocab in groups by… Continue reading Memorizing Japanese Vocabulary Tips
This will be a two part post.*The first part will be on listening as a skill, some important factors, and practice tips.*The second part will be on how higher listening skills can help retain vocab and improve reading.These are based off of my own experience trying to improve my listening ability. So for context, I… Continue reading The Importance of Listening
Intermediate or advanced-level learners may know this already, but this is useful for everyone. TRY to remember vocab in short phrases rather than standalone words. Certain objects will always have a certain verb that goes along with it. It also helps to remember the particle associated with the verb, since (を) is not always used.… Continue reading Speaking and Writing Tip: Remember Phrases Along with the Vocabulary
Someone asked me a few months ago: Q: How do you read a book when you have to look up almost every word?A: I don’t… This is just MY opinion, but everyone learns differently. This is just one approach. In my opinion if you have to look up every other word, that’s a sign the… Continue reading My Current Approach to Reading in Japanese
Here’s a small reading tip that I actually learned fairly recently, but it makes a lot of sense. It’s called rendaku. 𝗘𝘅.𝟭 空 (そら): sky青い空 (あおぞら): blue sky秋空 (あきぞら): autumn skyThe そ -> ぞ sound when the (空) kanji is placed second.𝗘𝘅.𝟮 島 (しま): island小島(こじま): small island中島 (なかじま): Nakajima last name, island in a pond… Continue reading Another Tip to Learning to Read and Pronounce Kanji Faster
(From my personal learning experience) I think we all agree from an English-speaking background, kanji is hard. It’s REALLY hard. But I actually think the more you know, ironically the easier it gets to recognize the pronunciation at least. It’s more about patterns and memorizing the onyomi/kunyomi reading/sounds. (Disclaimer: for beginners, don’t worry too much… Continue reading How to Memorize and Read Kanji Faster
I think the first thing every beginner needs to do is CHANGE their mindset towards kanji. There seems to be a general fear or ugh feeling of starting out and not knowing everything. Well guess what, until you are N1 you probably won’t know all the common kanji and even then you might still not… Continue reading Demystifying Kanji ~ Beginner Kanji Learning Tips (and Where to Begin?)
Background Beginner Grammar First, you need understand that Japanese grammar needs to be broken down into Beginner and NOT-Beginner level (I thought about this a lot on how to explain it well). The beginner level focuses a lot on just understanding sentence order: subject particle object particle verb. It focuses on learning to different ways… Continue reading Tips for Learning Japanese Grammar
framed in beige 