I don’t like your chances at all.

If I were you I’d first make sure you at least get your GED, then look at maybe going to a community college. Depending on your area, they may have a work transfer program, like an exchange program, for technical skills.

Another option would be to try to get a job in the US that has a Japan branch or that works closely with another Japanese company that you might be able to get in to. But likely they would also require a GED and some type of technical training.

From what I’ve heard, most Japanese employers would prefer to have Japanese employees over foreign as they are seen to be more reliable and stable. So unless you have some technical trade to offer or are working for a foreign company in Japan…

I wouldn’t give up hope, but you might have to put in a lot of work and research before you get there.

がんばって！

• This reply was modified 12 years, 1 month ago by  Aikibujin.

Welcome to TF!

Welcome to TF!

OMG! OO;;;

<— (Jealous)

LOL, I guess my ninja joke turned out to be less of a joke.

You could look up general expressions and idioms.

Ok, but don’t do that either.

(Has the quote option disappeared?)

-Missing

You are correct that you should have a go with everything and see if it works. He already had a go at more complicated things and it wasn’t working for him, so trying everything should include something more basic.

As far as my ESL/TESOL stuff, I taught it in the US. I was contemplating JET at one point, but wound up going to AUS instead and got married…

Bbvoncrumb- I strongly disagree with the whole the language is the language thing. If you can speak English as a native you still can’t just decide to open a book on particle physics and expect to understand it, as there is a ton of jargon (aka words you don’t know) that you have to understand first before having any hope of understanding the text.

If it didn’t help to learn basic stuff first, we wouldn’t have so many Japanese books that basically contain the exact same content, eg: Introductions; This, That, Over there; Telling Time; Times of the Year; How Much Something is; Counting Objects; Coming and Going, etc

We’d just jump right in to cool stuff like anime and manga, which as far as the introduction threads go seems to be the starting motivation of 90% of the board. Why bother with simple sentences when we could just jump right into complex compound sentences? Because most people need a solid base to start with so they can build on it. Which is exactly why Koichi has built TF the way he has.

Some people are very natural language learners, and thus don’t need much of a base to build on, this probably describes you two, but most people aren’t like that. Unless they can achieve full immersion, the basics can take a long time to process and absorb.

Hey wanted to translate something, but the Kanji were holding him back, as it was too difficult, thus something in Kana should be as challenging, but more manageable.  It’s also more likely to contain a lot of words he already knows, so he should have basic comprehension of some level, which will reinforce what he does know, and allow him to see it constructed in a more natural environment, instead of random sentences or short conversations about the same thing that you see in every textbook: The weather, taking a trip, riding in a cab, etc.

If it still doesn’t work for him, as Manga obviously wasn’t, then he should scrap it and move on, but as Missing said, he should definitely have a go at everything and see how it works out first.