JapanNewbie

Japanese Learner Interview with @sandkatt-part 2 of 2

Posted on 08. Dec, 2009 @ 12:30 pm by harvey in Books, Language, Travel, Working Views: 942

Hey everyone! This is Part 2 of our interview with @sandkatt. Be sure to check out Part 1 if you missed it!

Following you on Twitter it’s obvious that you have a firm grip on Japanese. You read casual Japanese Twitter speak, and can reply in Japanese quickly as well. Your grammar is also very clean and natural. At what point in your Japanese learning do you think you hit that point where you could engage in a real back and forth conversation with a native speaker?

My first real jump in conversation ability was when I bought a real Japanese keitai (that’s Japanese for cell phone). At first I just had a dinky pre-paid phone given to me by my boss, but in the summer of ’08 I finally developed enough self-confidence in my abilities where felt I could start actually conversing. I went to the AU store by myself and negotiated, in Japanese, a good contract and phone. I was so proud of myself! Getting the keitai was important though because not only could I start using keitai mail to converse with friends, but I could also sign up for Mixi. This is really when I started to open up really start conversing in Japanese. Looking back at my first Mixi posts, they weren’t very good, but I think but nobody is very good when first starting out.

Then after moving back to the US I upped my Twitter usage quite a bit and found it a great way to converse in Japanese. And by following many Japanese Twitter users I could see how they structured their sentences, the words they used, and really examine some of the nuances in Japanese conversation. Plus it allowed for near instant communication and feedback.

Are there any particular Japanese-tweeting tweeps you would recommend that people follow and interact with to learn about Japan, Japanese folk, and the Japanese language?

These are just some of the Japanese people I follow and talk to on a regular basis, but I recommend them because they are bilingual as well so you can learn a lot by following them.

@ujm, @Leilani @shiho722, @rumiko_t, @tamuro, @tomoakiyama, @doramimy, @ryotama2000, @nyafuri, @shuzo_matsuoka (technically a bot, but his tweets are hilarious!)

Lots of people say, “I want to learn Japanese.” Or, “I wish I could learn Japanese!” What would you urge these people to do as their first step to learning Japanese?

I would want them to think about their ultimate goals. Why do you want to study Japanese?Where do you want it to lead? This matters because depending on your goals, how you study and what you study may be different. I know people who’s only interest in Japanese is to play untranslated visual novels so they don’t care about actually communicating, just reading.

With that being said you need to look at your available options. I think some formal education at the beginner level will make it easier in the long run. Once you have a good base of grammar and vocabulary to work with and you’re able to effectively communicate basic ideas, doing self-study at the advanced and higher levels should be much easier.

Do you have any concrete goals for your language learning future?

I’m a goal oriented person so for me studying for the JLPT is very important. My ultimate goal is of course to pass the JLPT1 and then I’m not quite sure. I’ve been neglecting my writing ability so that’s something I would like to focus on post-JLPT1. And thanks to a push from you I’ve decided to start looking at doing translating.

What are some of your favorite tools for Japanese study? I’m talking about dictionaries, websites, programs, books, whatever it is that helps you learn.

Anki Anki Anki. I don’t know how I got along without this program. Combined with my Unicom JLPT2 Kanji/Vocab book it’s been a boon to my studies. I especially recommend that book as well because I really like the way it manages vocabulary, giving you different kanji/words with similar sounds. It makes meanings and pronunciations really easy to remember I think.

Aside from that, I love my electronic dictionary. It’s a Casio EX-Word SP6700 with monolingual dictionary, JP-EN, EN-JP, and kanji input via stylus. I probably wouldn’t recommend something like that though until you hit the advanced level.

I actually don’t really use a whole lot of study oriented websites, although I know there are many good ones out there. I do read a lot of Japanese blogs and news sites though. Some of my favorite ones are ones like Hatena B, 2ch VIP, Gigazine, and Famitsu.

I’m a big book fan. I love books! So a lot of my study material comes from them. As I’ve mentioned before, I highly recommend the Unicom series. Also for straight grammar, the Complete Master Series (完全マスター) has pretty much all you need.

All you need for JLPT3 Japanese Grammar

I also wanted to share my absolute favorite book which is called 「外国人のためのケータイメール＠にっぽん（＞▽＜）」 which loosely translates to, “A guide to texting for foreigners in Japan XD”. It sounds silly, but it’s the most amazing book. Of course it shows you the basics of using a keitai (Japanese mobile phone) and sending keitai mail (texts), which depending on your situation may or may not be helpful (it was for me), but it it also has a lot of grammar explanations for plain conversational Japanese with lots of examples.

Outside of that I do a lot of little things. I took a little bit from the AJATT page and changed my computer completely over to Japanese (OS X & Windows). It’s a bit jarring at first but a great way to pick up vocabulary and really challenge yourself.

I’m also a gamer so I’ve been playing Dragon Quest 9 and FFT: A2 (JP) on my DS. I also recently bought a PS3 and the nice thing about that is you can play Japanese games with no mods. So right now I’m playing 3D Dot Game Heroes and Final Fantasy 13 coming next month. Also some PS3 games automatically switch to Japanese if you set your console settings to Japanese. For example, I bought Little Big Planet in the US but because my PS3 is set to Japanese the game displays everything completely in Japanese. Noby Noby Boy and some demos I’ve downloaded do the same as well.

So you’ve been back in the states for a while now, what do you miss most about life in Japan?

Everything! I miss my friends, I miss Hiroshima, the food, the language, the culture. I absolutely loved it there. Which is probably why I’m itching to go back. I always love pointing people to my Flickr page so they can see how beautiful it is and share my experiences.

Hiroshima at night

Whew! That’s a wrap! Thanks @sandkatt! If anyone has any follow up questions for @sandkatt you can hit her up on Twitter directly, or you can leave a comment here and share them with other JapanNewbies.

Hope you enjoyed the interview! Be sure to check out Part 1 of this interview in case you missed it!

- Harvey

If you want to read up on what was going through @sandkatt’s mind while she was in Japan, check her discontinued blog here!

Check out @sandkatt’s flickr feed for more Japan shots!