Love this post. Some very good observations there.

jasenko wrote:

I also found that it is so easy to learn Kanji if you live in Japan. Pretty much every train station, lots of places, even streets also has a romaji name written under the Kanji. Once you see the same name, and kanjis, you start to make connections without even thinking about it. Seriously, I believe that anyone could figure out at least 3-4 hundred kanjis without much effort if you lived in Tokyo for 5-6 months.

Clever trick you can use in lieu of actually living there: Google street view. Just find a central shopping street or area, plonk the little man down in the middle, and go for a wander.

You also learn how to pronounce some places correctly. I always thought that Marunouchi is prononounced like “Maroonoochi” until I saw the sign this time 丸の内, so now I know…

Aye, that’s the exception to the whole ～おう = a long お sound: when the う is the start of a new word. 丸の内 = inside the circle = it’s inside the outer moat of the Imperial Palace. Or was, when the Imperial Palace had an outer moat. の in proper nouns is frequently the particle の, though it’s not always explicitly included in the name – for example, the name 井上 is pronounced いのうえ (meaning is “on the well”), while 木下 is きのした (“under the tree(s)”). If it’s not the particle の, it’s often 野 = field. 上野, for example.

jasenko wrote:

Being surrounded by and listening Japanese constantly, the language gets into your ear and you hear some things a lot easier. What was not apparent to me is how they use particles. Here and in many textbooks, they are sort of written with spaces around them so I was always reading them like I would in English, like a separate entity. In fact, they are basically the extension of the preceding word. を　is probably the only exception, because that one sounds like the addition of every verb.

Particles in Japanese are post-positions – they modify the word that comes before them. を marks the direct object – not every verb has a direct object. So yeah, particles are pretty much glued to the word that precedes them.

For example the sentence こんばん、レストラン　で　かぞく　と　すし　を　たべます。(not sure if it is 100% grammatically correct, but wanted to say, “This evening, I will eat sushi with my family at the restaurant).

Yeah, that’s correct, albeit possibly a tiny bit too confident (a Japanese speaker would probably say たべるつもりです = I intend to eat). =)

When spoken, the Japanese would make pauses after every particle, except を, so it sounds like こんばん、レストランで　かぞくと　すしをたべます。

Aye, I’ve made that suggestion to people on occasion as well. The lack of a pause after を, mind, is not because it’s attached to the verb, but rather because since all you’ve got left to say is the verb, there’s not really any need for a pause to draw breath or collect your thoughts or whatever – just need to get the verb out and you’re done. If that makes any sense. =)

Also, you may be lucky and get some free lessons. I had a free lesson on i-adjective conjugation from okonomiyaki vendor in Hiroshima. When we finished the meal, I told him the food was おいしい he replied with おいしかった with a smile. I don’t think I will ever forget that.

Hah, that’s good. If you’ve got a lesson that comes with a personal anecdote, you’ll never forget it. =)

And with some words/kanji being everywhere, it starts to sink into your head in a similar way like they use now to teach kids to read English using sight words. I had that Eureka moment after I saw こちら for the millionth time 😊 I wasn’t even reading it, just recognised the shape of the word and knew exactly what I need to do, no thinking involved (by the way, for the absolute newbies, that word means “here”, but I was seeing it everywhere as it is used to show the path, as in “this way…”).

This is one of the things I was trying to express in another thread when we were talking about learning kanji readings by learning vocab – since the readings are everywhere, you kinda learn them by osmosis.

Don’t count that you will speak a lot of Japanese while there, I tried many times, started some simple sentences, but people are so quick to jump in with their English (they are also practicing) and I go with it. But you get brownie points for effort. While in Hiroshima, the guy spent 15 minutes, trying to get us seats on Shinkansen during the biggest holiday week in Japan (The Golden Week), just because I asked in nicely and in Japanese

My one trip in Japan was before I started learning Japanese, and I used it about three times: once order dinner, once to ask a policeman how to find an okonomiyaki restaurant in Hiroshima (turns out he was directing us to Okonomi-mura, a sort of okonomiyaki theme park thing, but I misunderstood and stopped at a place about ten metres short), and once to call “sumimasen” because I wanted to get off the train. I TRIED to call our hotel and tell them we’d be late, but I made an absolute hash of it and she didn’t understand me. I also memorised the line “excuse me, I’d like to get reserved-seat shinkansen tickets to [Shin-Yokohama]” for when I was getting tickets with the rail pass at a green window, but after a few attempts to get it out, I realised that since I was at the green window, ninety percent of that was assumed knowledge.

I can, however, easily think of at least six interactions that I managed to muddle through with English and charades that would have gone far smoother if my Japanese ability had been a little bit more rigorous than a phrasebook and some half-remembered phrases from anime. =P

The best part for me is that now I know what I need to focus on to continue with my studies. Being in Season 6 now, I am noticing more and more complicated grammar that I don’t think is necessary at this stage, not until the vocabulary is up to a reasonable level. And checking some of my sentences on HiNative, a lot of feedback I got is that nobody speaks like that in Japan. Their sentences are very sharp and simple and to the point, I guess the rest will come with time.

Japanese is an extremely contextual language. If something can be understood from context, then a Japanese speaker won’t say it out loud – typically, they’ll omit as much of any sentence they can omit without changing the meaning or making things excessively ambiguous.

I will continue to focus on the kanji, but will try to find a way to learn the most usable ones first. I have seen the frequency lists but those are mostly based on what appears in the newspapers, have nothing to do with the real life.

Yeah, this is one of the places where Koichi teaches things a little bit oddly. His reasoning is that as adults, we don’t need to start with the kanji that have simple meaning, so we can start anywhere, so in order to get us used to kanji, he starts with the simplest-to-write kanji. Downside is that you don’t learn the most frequent kanji for literally ages. I mean, you can’t even say 私 (“I”) until you’re into the seven-stroke kanji.

Still, the newspaper-based frequency list isn’t a terrible place to start, thanks to the ol’ 80-20 rule.

I won’t be learning 都 until level 12 on Wanikani, but that one is also everywhere if you go to Kyoto (京都). After returning back to Tokyo from Kyoto, I started seeing it a lot in Tokyo too, because it means “metro, metropolis area”.

More than that, it’s the “prefecture” name for Tokyo, for want of a better word. Under the Japanese 都道府県 (とどうふけん) prefecture system, there are forty-three regular prefectures (県), two urban prefectures （府) – Osaka and Kyoto – one “territory” (道) – Hokkaido (the only prefecture with the prefecture label in its name) – and one metropolis (都) – Tokyo. Strictly speaking, there is no city named Tokyo, only the prefecture of Tokyo, comprised of the twenty-three special wards.

Another good one is 開, it’s in every train, bus, subway, etc. It means “open”. That one is level 10 on Wanikani, so I guess another couple of months away for me.

Also 閉 = closed. On a related note, the word 禁止 (きんし) is helpful to memorise – it means “prohibited”. 立入禁止 = no entry. 駐車禁止 = no parking. 飲食禁止 = no eating or drinking. Et cetera.