Learn to speak and write Japanese fluently

There’s no better way to learn something than to teach it. When you teach something, you have to really think about it in order to present it to others in a clear way. It forces you to think about rules and circumstances which you might not have thought about before. For language, it might force you to speak using proper grammar and complete sentences. I know I would have to learn more to teach for real but I’ve contemplated becoming a teacher before. This year I started answering people’s questions online and that led up to creating a podcast to teach Japanese. Doing this has made me realize how much I know, how much I’ve forgotten, and how much I don’t know. It’s humbling and rewarding. I’m itching to visit or live in Japan again to not only improve but for podcast material. Terrible perhaps but now I’m always thinking about podcast material and if I didn’t have that, I probably wouldn’t be using Japanese as much in my life.

I don’t live with my mom anymore so I don’t speak Japanese on a daily basis but I’ve been writing actual letters to a relative and I’m much more involved with using Japanese on the computer. I have found online dictionaries which has made me super lazy from picking up an actual dictionary. Very briefly I even had a temp job at a Japanese company so I’ve discovered the joy of Japanese on a PC rather than a Mac, which makes me a bit sad. (I know of no Mac way to look up kanji by writing it with your mouse.) I’m listening to music in Japanese much more often and since my last entry have been active in the Nikkei community though I’m stepping down my involvement this year. (being Nikkei isn’t hand in hand with knowing Japanese) I even found among my stuff a photocopy of the poster in my mom’s restroom of the required kanji so maybe I should mimic her and contemplate kanji even in there. Though that poster is better for native speakers as a reminder rather than a learning tool. That is helpful though since most Japanese abroad forget kanji from lack of seeing it on a daily basis and god knows that’s me too. (I have sumo wrestler names in a restroom as decoration but that’s not helpful at all.)

i’m not sure how many kanji i even know anymore. at my best i could read like a 3rd grader but i’m sure that’s diminished to a 1st grader. i took a peek at the “remembering the kanji” book by heisig that seems to work well for many but i found it completely useless. there were stroke orders and translated meanings, but no explanation of how to read it in japanese (onyomi or kunyomi) nor when conjugated with other kanji. i think if i want to get serious about strengthening my reading skills then i better crack open the books for children that illustrate the form of kanji in pictures because it makes more sense that way to me. i suppose i am too much of a visual person. or to do the japanese method of writing out the same letter a thousand times or however long it takes to really know it. plus i could use my mother’s restroom every chance i get—she has a photocopied poster pinned up in there of all the kanji required of a literate japanese.

i thought that by living with my mom, my japanese skills would naturally improve. yeah right! as she knows english, i feel this is a serious crutch. whenever i get frustrated, i just resort to english. i always feel like my japanese is so much better in japan, though it takes a few days for noticeable improvement. when i’m surrounded by it, when it is everywhere and unavoidable, then it flows out much easier for me. when there is much more around me to learn from context wise and sentence structures, then my own grammar is improved.

strengthening my vocabulary will be a real challenge. it must be a concentrated effort. i think i’m just too preoccupied right now to work on my japanese. speaking is one thing, but improving my writing/reading skills will be much more difficult. especially because i don’t read any websites, write letters to anyone, and i can’t stand using japanese operating systems. overall though, being here is so much better than where i’ve been for the past decade. at least there is a japanese community here. i live with native speakers. there are japanese tv shows. plus i’m taking shamisen classes conducted in japanese, for the most part. improvement will be slow but steady. first i need to be comfortable speaking in whole sentences. then work on speaking properly, which i never did as a kid. kids just don’t walk around speaking proper japanese, especially in okinawa.