JapanNewbie

Learn Japanese with Gundam

Posted on 26. Sep, 2007 @ 7:03 pm by harvey in About, Books, Media Views: 234

I’m not ashamed to admit that I used to be a reasonably hardcore anime fan back when I was in Iowa. The main reason though, was that I could hardly get my hands on any other Japanese media to learn Japanese from. Of course, I watched movies rooted in reality like Shall We Dance and Tampopo over and over and over again, but I also had a healthy dose of anime as well. This was back in the day of VHS, and anime wasn’t available for download (easily) via my 56.6k modem either. Most of the stuff I got I purchased at Best Buy.

Anyway, one thing I noticed about anime, was that a lot of the vocabulary I picked up from them, was near useless in real life. Space ships, fancy weapons, magic, overly flamboyant phrases… All those things don’t come up in everyday conversation, so while it was fun, it was never a serious part of my Japanese study. I would say it helped with general listening comprehension though…

Now though, I came across this book on JList…

Learn Japanese from Gundam

Apparently this book seriously takes you through Gundam dialogs and teaches you Japanese from it English to Japanese readers. Of course, Language learning is a two-way street right? So theoretically, one could use this book to learn Japanese. You’d probably have to be a bit more proactive about it than with a regular textbook however.

I’ve always said that the best way to learn a foreign language is just to interact with the language in the most fun way possible… But wow. These guys are really taking it literally!

One confession though… I’ve never really watched Gundam.

Can you believe it? I’ve been here this long and never gotten into Gundam? I have seen Evangelion, all the Miyazaki Hayao movies, and even have read and watched One Piece… But I never got into Gundam… If I was, I would have loved to have this book. Ah well.

- Harvey