Hi everyone! My name is Ian, I’m a Nikkei-Canadian. A month ago, I started working at a Japanese engineering company and automotive supplier. I survived a Japanese Language minor 10 years ago, but Genki I and II and not a lot of speaking practice did not do very well for preparing me for a job like this. My Japanese environment is essentially a lot of work emails (which I can sort of read with the help of Jisho etc.) but I struggle to keep up with office conversation and end up sounding more like a caveman most of the time.
I really am hoping to strategize my studying to be more efficient. I have about 2-3 hours or more at least at my desk to work on passive studying techniques.
Currently:
I found a website called Genki Study Tools, which I was using to diagnose gaps in my Japanese grammar. I started from Lesson 1 and have been working my way up very slowly as I peruse my old textbooks. Because I’m not always looking at my Genki book though, I question how practical it is beyond practice and diagnosing myself.
I’ve been mining some car maker websites for critical vocab that I will need to eventually understand. This one proved super useful. While I didn’t really have success with Anki in the past, I did decide to make some very simple decks that I could eventually practice once I know how to set Anki up. In theory, I could group words by their mechanical function, or the specific part of the process I’m likely to encounter them, because my company sells parts and machinery for these processes.
Speaking Japanese:
My office is roughly 50/50 English speakers and employees sent from Japan, and my department and supervisors are Japanese. I am often sitting in meetings where Japanese makes up at least 50% of the total speech. There really is no shortage of speaking opportunities, so that’s just chugging along slowly. My coworker is also learning English at the same pace as I am learning Japanese, so that has helped in a lot of ways as I learn how to explain things.
Reading and Writing:
My coworkers graciously provided me with templates for what to write in Japanese business emails for introductions, conclusions, etc. Wani Kani will eventually pay off for reading the many technical documents, drawings, and untranslated powerpoints that I get (as I understand, technical Japanese has the “be able to read it, not write it” demand of kanji), although for now it’s still being chucked into Google Translate line for line if I’m personally given a copy. After years of Genki though, I feel that I am still only able to communicate comfortably (not looking anything up) in basic-ish sentences, and have a hard time reading full passages even at a child’s level. That being said, if I have my Sticky Notes vocab primer next to me, I can write in emails fairly well.
Immersion?
I generally find that my brain is tired after bilingual work, so sometimes watching Japanese language stuff after a long day can be a big ask. I do consume Japanese media, though it tends to be less anime (I don’t even know where to start watching). I started watching the Japanese dub of For All Mankind, which has turned out to be pretty useful for some engineer speak.
What can I be doing better? Long story short, my understanding of grammar seems to be okay if I am forced to use it, but my vocab is slowly building back up, and I would like to at least be able to read at a child’s level within the year. Is there something that will help me just grow more comfortable with reading and listening comprehension that I’m not already doing? Any advice is super helpful.
I’m not planning on moving to Japan or living in a Japanese-speaking environment, so it hasn’t been high priority. But I really liked what I saw! I used to use the textbook version, but now that they have an online web app version too, so I use that instead.