Learning Japanese by Living Japanese: An Overview

So you want to learn Japanese, do you? Well, you're in the right place. Living Japanese is a learning method that allows individuals to learn by filling their lives with so much Japanese that mastery becomes inevitable. Immersion is the name of the game, and we play to win. (That wasn't corny at all.)

1. Immersion

The key to learning Japanese is to create as complete of an immersion environment as possible. The goal is to minimize contact with your native language and increase contact with Japanese. If you're serious about learning Japanese, then you should create your immersion environment as soon as possible.

I admit, you'll be surrounded with a lot Japanese that you won't understand for the first few weeks, but then you'll find that you understand more and more of it as time passes. That's the power of immersion. If you surround yourself in Japanese, the learning becomes inevitable.

Immersion Articles:

• Immersion is Key 
• The Two Roads to Immersion  
• A Typical Day Living Japanese 
• The Other Side of Immersion

2. Kana (Hiragana and Katakana)

The first actual “step” in learning Japanese is to memorize the kana. This shouldn't actually take much time at all. With your immersion environment in place, you'll be able to get tons of review for the kana, so you may not even need to keep setting aside time specifically for review after initially learning them.

Learning the Kana Articles:

• Learning the Kana
• Learn the Kana with Anki 

3. Kanji

One of the most intimidating parts of learning Japanese is finding a way to learn the kanji. Luckily for us, a fellow named James Heisig already created a method for learning the kanji in a logical order. With his book Remembering the Kanji the process suddenly becomes manageable, logical, and so much faster. I advise learning all of the kanji in the first book of the series so that kanji will never present a problem again.

Learning the Kanji Articles:

• How to Learn the Kanji
• Learning the Kanji
• Learning the Kanji - A Second Look  
• Reviewing the Kanji

4. Sentences and Immersion

With the kana and kanji under your belt, your immersion will truly begin to pay off. Where before you were faced with hundreds of symbols that made no sense to you, now you can understand their differences and find meaning in them. At this point, it's all about immersing in the language and finding new things to learn. There are plenty of tools to help you remember what you find, so you can focus on enjoying yourself in your new language.

This is the true heart of Living Japanese - you do what you'd normally do, but you do it in Japanese. When you learn this way, you learn what is important to you and you do things that are fun and interesting.

Sentence/Vocabulary Articles:

• Building Vocabulary
• Building Vocabulary with an SRS  
• Vocabulary: Simplified
• How to Add Sentences Faster 
• 5 Reasons to Make Your Own Sentence Deck

5. Stay Motivated

Learning Japanese is truly fun, but it's also a challenge. A challenge that is so very worth taking on and triumphing over. Sometimes it can be hard to find the will to keep pursuing this goal, so make sure that you arm yourself with the proper motivation to keep coming back to Japanese. You've got what it takes to become a master at Japanese, so be sure to remind yourself of that fact as often as possible.

Motivational Articles:

• Japanese is Possible
• Are you on the right path in learning Japanese?
• Another Self-Taught Japanese Success Story
• How to remain motivated in learning Japanese