Fun fact: pitch accent differs by region too. For example, in Kanto, “bridge” is HAshi while “chopsticks” is haSHI, whereas in Kansai it’s exactly the reverse. Or maybe the other way around, I never can remember.
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There’s something in between “an accent so bad it’s exhausting for natives to listen to” and “being able to fool people that you aren’t actually native.”
You don’t need to study pitch accent Dogen-style to get out of the former zone.
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There’s also something in between the level of Dogen’s course, and the level of Dogen himself, and your comment doesn’t address that at all. In fact, I’m not sure if “Dogen-style” is meant to mean studying like Dogen does, or just studying using his materials, but if it’s the latter, I would disagree. His course is just meant to get you into the zone you described, between the unbearable gaijin accent and the impeccable native accent. And from what I’ve seen, it’s the best course available for that purpose.
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His course has you memorizing rules for different categories of verbs and adjectives… That’s not necessary at all in my experience.
I don’t have “unbearable gaijin accent” and I’ve never done that.
A couple of basic rules of thumb will get you past “unbearable.”
For example I would say “Don’t use stress in Japanese words” and “Say two character compounds with heiban accent” is enough to get someone up to speed to where it’s not going to be excruciating to listen to. They’ll still make mistakes, but that takes care of the worst offenders.
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Just to clarify, it is the other way around. In the Kanto dialect, 箸 (chopsticks) is high-low; 橋 (bridge) is low-high (the intonation drops down with the following word), 端 (edge) is low-high (the intonation remains high with the following word).
In contrast, in the Kansai dialect, 箸 is low-high, 橋 is high-low, and, surprisingly, 端 is high-high.
edit/fun fact: one thing that helped me remember the difference between the 箸 and 橋 intonations (in “standard” Kanto dialect), was the way Tom Cruise pronounced the word 箸 in The Last Samurai, lmao. As far as I remember, he did put the high intonation on “ha”.
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I acknowledge that the Japanese learning community in particular seems to have an unhealthy obsession with perfection. However, if you ask me…
This is just the wrong kind of perfectionism. For that matter, it’s not even perfectionism: it’s an obsession with maintaining the illusion of perfection, which leads to a fear of mistakes.
I’m a perfectionist in every language I learn, and the more proficient I become in each one, the harsher I am on myself. I still correct myself mid-sentence in French when I realise I’ve forgotten to agree a past participle with a preposed direct object or when I make a grammatical gender error, and when I write long posts in English on these forums, you’ll notice that within the first five minutes, and sometimes beyond them, the contents of my posts will constantly change as I rephrase my sentences or ask myself if I’ve used the most appropriate preposition with a particular verb, and that’s despite the fact that most of my posts are around 1000 words long. You’ll also often find that I go back to posts days later when someone replies me, because I’ll realise I’ve made a grammatical/typographical mistake that was quoted in the reply, or that I could have expressed something more clearly. English is my native language. As for French, the results: almost all my classmates at university in France are native speakers, and many of them say I speak better French than they do. Most people also say my accent is native or near-native: one of my teachers recently told me he thought I grew up in France; I actually started French at the age of 13, but I worked endlessly on my pronunciation and prosody.
The truth about perfection is that you can’t attain it in one day, and that is the truth the people Cure Dolly talks about can’t accept: the only way to reach perfection is to polish each and every thing you learn until it shines, and then take the next step. It’s like building a flight of wooden stairs: you can’t finish all the steps at one go, and even after you’re done with the basic structure, not all of the steps are going to be polished at one go. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to make mistakes, but the right way to avoid them is not by avoiding situations where you might make mistakes, but by doing your absolute best not to make them while navigating situations in which you need to use your Japanese knowledge. Then, when you do make a mistake, or find out that something is unnatural, learn from it. If your mistake was stupid, then by all means – unless it impacts your motivation and mental health – hate it with a passion. Hate it so much that you promise never to make it again, and then make good on that promise. Look out for it with laser-sharp eyes and fry it to a crisp every time you make it. As you go along, eliminating your mistakes and creating new ways of keeping them out of your language use while actively using your target language, you’ll approach perfection, at least as far as grammar and natural expression goes, even if that doesn’t guarantee you’ll become a great writer or anything like that.
That aside, there’s nothing wrong with focusing on the ‘non-essential’ aspects of learning so long as they don’t get in the way of the essential bits: I know plenty of Chinese and French proverbs that are essentially meaningless because I’ll never need to use them in conversation – I still remember the collective confusion and surprise in my class of 30-40 French students when I said ‘castles in the air’ in English was like “châteaux en Espagne” in French; only the teacher and a few of my classmates knew which expression I was referencing. (The irony of it all was that I was trying to draw an analogy between the two expressions in English class in order to make it easier for my classmates to understand.) Nonetheless, you can still use such knowledge in writing or in formal situations as a means of appearing erudite (which is sometimes necessary) or for rhetorical purposes (because drawing on the wisdom of an entire culture or of great thinkers of the past often gives one credibility). Similarly, we could probably all skip learning the ichidan 〜られる form because it’s increasingly being replaced by 〜れる in casual conversation, but we still need it for more formal situations. No knowledge is truly useless. However, you might want to consider whether you will need to use it.
Ultimately, my point is this: perfectionism in language learning isn’t necessarily counterproductive, provided you accept the fact that perfection is something to be worked towards, and not simply an image to be maintained or a mere exact imitation of what you find in the textbook. It requires a willingness to constantly search for better explanations and fundamental principles that allow you to imitate, achieve or even surpass average native understanding. However, if the desire for perfection is something that paralyses you or which slows you down immensely, then – while again, I think this may simply be a result of misunderstanding how to reach perfection – perhaps perfectionism isn’t for you.
All that being said, I don’t agree with Dogen’s suggestion that it might be a good idea to set aside the rest of your Japanese studies just to pick up pitch accent knowledge: you can definitely start memorising pitch accents for individual words at the very least, without needing to drop everything else, and you can probably learn more complex rules later, when you’re actually able to read works on pitch accent in Japanese.
Certainly, and I don’t think everyone is interested in sounding like a native, but to be fair, I think that Dogen didn’t actually claim that everyone needs to share his aims. (Correct me if I’m wrong about that.) I think his first free video on pitch accent on YouTube just pointed out the fact that almost no textbooks discuss the existence of pitch accent or show students what it’s like, which I found to be true, and I think a basic awareness of its existence and some attempt to look out for it is necessary to start picking up a decent accent. That’s all. I think he’s doing everyone a service by appealing to a fairly large English-speaking audience while drawing our attention to something that’s quite badly neglected, even if obsessive focus on it is not necessary for having comfortable conversations with natives.
I don’t do that either, but not everyone is as good at noticing the same patterns on their own, and some people can’t even hear the difference in pitch at first. That aside… I guess that if he’s getting people to pay for his videos, he might as well provide some rules – i.e. a sort of pseudo-textbook/syllabus – instead of just teaching people how to listen. It may not be necessary, but if he doesn’t ‘teach’ much in his course, I guess people aren’t going to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. Finally, I think he might actually be targeting people who want to get as close to a native accent as possible, so while he doesn’t provide quite enough information for that, perhaps he’s just trying to get people as far as he can since they’re paying him and his own goal is having a native accent anyway.
It’s the other way, as @Dafthar explained. I guess an easy way to remember is to imagine the tones for 橋 as a bridge: ha-SHI-[particle]. low-HIGH-low. Looks like a bridge to me. 
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Well, now we’re just arguing about what’s “necessary”, which isn’t going to resolve. From what I’ve seen of your posts in the pasts, you’ve gone far beyond what’s necessary in kanji learning, which is just another aspect of Japanese, and one that takes significantly longer than pitch studies. It’s really a highly personal decision for everyone about how far to go in their studies. If you think advanced kanji is necessary and spending time with pitch isn’t, fine, but it might be personally necessary for some other people who want to connect with natives at a high level in conversation.
As for the rules, I don’t know which ones you’re specifically talking about, but as I mentioned in a post above, the course is laid out in a way where if things get too complicated for your purposes, you can stop, and you will have gotten all the fundamentals. And as I also mentioned in a post above that, learning the rules just lays a foundation, and then they become second-nature, just like grammar rules.
Your rules of thumb are fine, but it seems that taken alone, they would lead someone to sounding more robotic, since both of your rules deal with taking away emphasis from words. Realistically, you’d need maybe 10x more than that to get, say, halfway from unbearable to native-sounding. I have a feeling you’ve actually studied pitch accent significantly more than you’re letting on in your posts, even if you didn’t use Dogen.
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I’m curious: how did you learn this? Most of the experience I have with the Kansai dialect is through anime (and through my friend who’s studying in Kansai now, meaning that some part of the basic Kansai lexicon isn’t a problem for me), and I’ve noticed that most of the pitch accents are inverted compared to Kantō, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what the pitch accents are for specific words in the Kansai dialect.
I was looking for comprehensive resources to study 関西弁, and I found this one website, kansaiben.com. It even uses “hashi” as an exemplary difference between these two dialects: click
edit: there’s also this website, 京言葉, which focuses on the “Kyoto dialect” which is slightly different. Though, it is addressed as “kyoukotoba” because the people of Kyoto apparently don’t like it when someone says “kyoutoben” 
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You seem to be implying that I broadly think studying pitch accent is unnecessary and that studying kanji to the extent I do is necessary.
I’m arguing that you don’t need Dogen’s course to have a “non-excruciating” accent that doesn’t bother natives.
You also don’t need to study kanji like I do to be able to read things in Japanese.
If people want to go extreme in those categories it’s different. I go extreme in kanji, but I don’t in pitch accent. And if someone wants to do the opposite that’s cool too. If someone wants to do neither, they can still end up really proficient in Japanese and they won’t necessarily end up with an unbearable accent.
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Sorry to derail this, but I was hoping for a discussion on this guy:
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If I implied that, I apologize, because the point I was trying to make is exactly what you just described, which is that everyone chooses their own level of “necessary”. I was just pointing out that you labeled Dogen’s course as “unnecessary” even though some people might not consider it as such, and using your own kanji studies as an example of something that isn’t strictly necessary to communicate but that nonetheless can benefit your interactions and Japanese. As a side note, Dogen’s course isn’t nearly as much of a commitment, nor does it go in as much depth, as advanced kanji studies do, so I feel it’s just your personal perception that his course is too rule-bound.
I agree Dogen’s course isn’t necessary to have a non-excruciating accent. My argument is that it’s the best resource for that information, by far.
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Perhaps the disconnect is in the meaning of “sounding native.”
If people are imagining a better than average accent that has few mistakes when they say “sounding native” then sure, that makes natives more comfortable conversing with you and will be beneficial.
If people mean, as I hear it when they say it, that “sounding native” means you would be mistaken for a native, I think that’s an extreme goal that most people will not achieve even if pronunciation is their primary focus. It is ridiculously hard to be so near native that you literally never slip up at all.
If that’s not what people mean by “sounding native” then we were starting from different points in the discussion.
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I’m kind of indifferent. I’ve watched some of his videos. I enjoy his videos that are tips about the language. I am not as into his comedy videos, either because I don’t share his sense of humor, or I’m not immersed in Japanese language and culture enough to really “get it”. I had thought about joining his Patreon for pitch-accent videos but honestly it’s an afterthought and if I do it I probably won’t do it until way later in my learning journey.
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Huh…I actually never thought about it from a native listener’s point of view. It has happened to me for sure a few time with me.
Mine is likely to be broken for a while too but I think through exposure it’ll get better. Japanese has stuff like Kanji and what-not so I’m not gonna study pitch for a while but you do bring a very good point though.
I think the importance of pitch accent is a little overstated 
I don’t mind having an accent, though some day down the line I may start studying it. Steve Kauffman and George Trombley are both fluent and worked as translators and neither were even aware of it.
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Yeah you make a good point that there is a lot of ambiguity in what “sounding native” is. I think of it similarly to you, as in, basically one could mistake you for a native. I don’t quite agree that sounding that good is as difficult as it seems you’re portraying, but I will admit it is definitely not worth ignoring other aspects of learning to attain that level of pronunciation. And I’ll wholeheartedly agree that even if you had a perfect accent, you would still sound non-native if you used incorrect grammar or didn’t understand a large vocabulary, and that would obviously undermine the goal of sounding native.
However, the OP was really asking about Dogen, and so I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this, but I still think Dogen’s course is the best beginner’s resource for pitch accent, whether your eventual goal is to be one step above gaijin, or one step below pro voice actor.
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I do want to add one point that I don’t think anyone has made yet, but before I do that just say that I agree strongly with @Jonapedia, @Leebo, and @GustavMahler’s comments regarding both Dogen’s patreon, and pitch-accent in general.
In English, a whole lot of implied meaning can be changed/added to a sentence using tone of voice/emphasis on various words. This can also be done using pitch-accent in Japanese, a basic example of which being how implied question marks work. Dogen has a video addressing this, but I can’t remember which one. Basically any word that steps down will step down first, then go back up in pitch to imply a question. In English, we usually just go straight up in pitch from the start of the word, which doesn’t translate to Japanese.
Knowing these kinds of rules, and when/how to break them, can actually help with communication. Especially in a language that leaves so much implied like Japanese, miscommunications can and will happen due to pitch-accent at a certain level. Granted for the vast majority of speakers the miscommunication will happen well before a native listener even gives pitch-accent any attention, and even then is extremely rare, but it does happen and I’ve even had it happen to me on a couple occasions where I’ve said something much more heavily than intended, or implied something that I wasn’t trying to. Could this have been prevented with more complete sentences? Probably, but then that’s not super natural either.
Just my 2 cents, and for transparency, I am and have been for some time a patron of Dogen.
Edited to add: My background is also in music (majored in Music Education in University, classically trained bassoonist), and pitch accent is something that’s rather easy for me to pick up on and hear clearly. I still like knowing the patterns though as it gives me a better chance of saying words the right way the first time in conversation, whether I’ve heard them before or not.
Some of my students at the Junior High (in Japan) that I work at now occasionally get ridiculed/corrected by both peers and teachers for not being able to hear pitch accent themselves when prepping for the 文化祭 or at school assemblies, so I could definitely see it being an issue for non-native speakers.
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I’d never really thought about this, but yes, it’s true that when the pitch is raised for emphasis in Japanese, the same thing happens. For example,「まって!」 is generally more like「ま 
って 
」, which is something that makes other ways of doing this quite conspicuous, even if they’re not necessarily hard to understand or unpleasant (e.g. Korone from Hololive Gamers tends to say「ま って」because her accent is very different from most of the other Japanese VTubers).
That aside, it’s also true that saying the same sentence with slightly different tones tends to create different meanings. I believe the Waseda course I linked to covered 2-3 different ways of saying じゃない at the end of a sentence: I think one turned it into a question, whereas another made it sound more like a rhetorical question while implying that what came before じゃない ought to be obviously true. (It’s been a while though, so I can’t be certain that was what was implied.)
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