What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done or happened upon that has helped your studying? Mine is watching Korean dramas with Japanese subtitles! Why not just watch Japanese dramas with Japanese subtitles - that’s a good question. But mainly because Netflix in Japan doesn’t have a lot of Japanese subtitles for things already in Japanese! But on the other hand, there’s also not a lot of English subtitles for things not in Japanese. So the end result was, that by watching Kdramas with Japanese subtitles, my reading speed increased a crazy amount! Even if I was only understanding about 20% at a time, it made all of the reading material at my level SO much easier. So that’s my weird recommendation! How about you?
I learned my first Japanese words and the inspiration to start studying Japanese from the wrestlers of New Japan Pro-Wrestling. For some reason, I loved the sound of the language. Then whenever one of the guys would say their standard spiel I would remember the words very easily. I really don’t know why all that got me busy studying, but it did.
The weirdest thing that’s helped my studying is learning vocab and kanji from mystery novel titles. I’m a huge mystery fan, and wanting to read Japanese mystery fiction is the biggest reason I started studying Japanese in the first place. I’ve got a list of novels and short story collections I want to read, and I’ve learned a lot of words, not to mention some kanji, from keeping it. Some of the words aren’t too likely to come up in conversation (at least I hope that phrases like “murder case” don’t ), but they’ll come in handy when I actually read the books.
I say 殺人事件 as often as possible in polite company, thank you very much.
But yeah, I’ve joked in the read every day thread before that I have a very extensive “morbid” vocabulary for the same reason. I love me some murder books.
Hyperfixating on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure/ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 and Dio (a character from it). I went from constant burnout to being able to attentively listen for hours and focus on reading difficult handwriting and content until I understand it. Provided it highly involves Dio that is. The cascading reaction though is that I’m able to hold more and better conversations, understand a lot more in general, do online shopping, and understand video instructions/play effects. An all around win (excluding my poor wallet lol).
Well, I suppose it’s fine if you’re bringing it up, so long as it’s not, say, in conjunction with the cops asking you about the 殺人事件 that you’ve totally innocently gotten caught up in…
And what kind of mysteries do you like? I go in for the fair-play type myself.
Heh, not to derail the thread but I read all types. I like old classic Golden Era detective novels (think 江戸川乱歩), modern thrillers (ie スマホを落としただけなのに), police department inner-workings intrigue (ロクヨン), brilliant deductionist (容疑者Xの献身), bumbling detective (おしい刑事)…and the list goes on.
Basically, if someone gets murdered and the murder gets solved I’m there with popcorn.
To slightly bring back to to thread topic, here are some fun crime words for anyone interested. Bonus points for guessing from kanji:
轢死 (death from being run over)・惨死 (violent death)・過失致死罪 (involuntary manslaughter)・阿片窟(opium den)・誘拐 (kidnap)
And yes, those come up in conversation exactly as often as you’d expect, but I enjoy them so much
In my case Karaoke really improved my reading speed while I was in Japan. I, now, have forgotten that, but it was super useful. For people who can do that, I highly recommend it !
Started teaching English. My horrible english pronunciation made me focus harder on my japanese pronunciation, and it made me so much more focused when looking at/ listening to the pich of japanese words
That actually sounds like a cool way to go about it.
Not sure if it’s weird or not, but if I need to use DeepL to check something I’ll dictate it in Japanese. It’s helped me keep larger chunks of sentences in memory at a time.
My friend has her Siri set up in Japanese! I think it’s a good way to keep up speaking if you have no other options. I think it counts as weird/alternative haha
Y’all’s banter was really fun to read! I’m also a huge mystery nerd. 名探偵コナン めいたんていこなん has been a huge motivator for me. And the vocabulary might seem weird, but this one time a policeman knocked on my door to check my address and told me “犯人見たら…” はんにんみたら and I understood! I was so excited.
Passively I’m doing everything in Japanese: podcasts, music, Netflix etc. I recommend switching your phone into Japanese and reading the news in Japanese as well.
However, I do get the most benefits from doing sentence mining in Anki. I’ve even created decks for the next 4-5 years. It’s amazing for active reading and contextual learning (something Wanikani is unfortunately lacking so much of! ).
Try the beginner course of “Japanese in a breeze” if you wanna get familiar with the concept. The best part is, that everything is free! I can’t wait to share my kakegurui decks with everyone (still needs a bit of tweaking/formatting). No fees, no paywall.
I got a baby.
Baby needs to be calmed? Podcast on speakers, and walk around the room with the baby swaddled.
Baby needs to sleep on me? Japanese Netflix.
Baby sleeps in her crib? Wanikani/Bunpro/jpdb.
Baby needs to fall asleep in her crib? Read to her in Japanese.
Moral of the story: Want to learn Japanese? Get a baby!
Disclaimer: This trick might not work for everyone.
I guess this one’s a little weird: I’ve vastly improved my listening comprehension by watching/listening to ASMR videos in Japanese. There are so, so many videos out there and the themed ones are great for picking up and enforcing vocabulary. I already knew 右 and 左 before I started WK, for example.
It’s probably super strange if you don’t experience ASMR, though
I would say not studying Japanese helped me the most somehow, I started learning again after a long break and suddenly, all the grammar on bunpro that made me so confused suddenly seemed really easy and I had no idea what I found hard about it.
Small thing, but every single time I make a mistake, for example, with a vocab item, I will immediately write down the item, the meaning, and the reading in a notebook in front of me. Just the mere act of doing that has skyrocketed my knowledge retention rate (which is admittedly quite low to begin with haha).
), but they’ll come in handy when I actually read the books.
).
(still needs a bit of tweaking/formatting). No fees, no paywall. 
