How I learn Japanese
Introduction
Recently I have been learning Japanese in my spare time and it has been really fun! I wanted to showcase my workflow and how I go about learning Japanese. This blog post also covers some technical aspects like getting anki-sync working locally and installing fcxit5 and Mozc on Arch Linux. It also covers my schedule and how I go about doing things.
It is worth noting that I am not proficient at Japanese AT ALL. At best I’m at an N5 level. So please take the information here with a ton of salt. This post might also be updated in the future as well to reflect my current method of doing things.
Why I chose Japanese
I realised that I was interacting with a lot of Japanese content online like drawing tutorials, music, anime and video games. It was only after a discussion with a friend that I decided I wanted to start committing a considerable amount of time to learning Japanese.
My Approach to Learning Japanese
My method is similar to these resources. These are great resources and have been really helpful in helping my set goals and understanding what to expect.
I study for about 4 Hours every night and limit myself to 1 hour for anki and another hour for grammar practice before moving onto immersion. Please note that I say limit because usually I finish earlier. It is generally more important to immerse yourself rather than actively studying so I’m pretty easy going when it comes to grammar… not really anki because the reviews start to pile up.
Tools that I use
Here is a list of all of the resources that I use.
| Link | Description |
|---|---|
| Yomitan | This is a Firefox extension that allows you to see the dictionary definition of kanji. It also allows you to create anki cards using AnkiConnect. |
| asbplayer | Subtitle player for Crunchyroll. It’s officially supported on chrome but you can find firefox builds on their GitHub page. You can also use migaku. |
| Anki | I use this to memorize Kanji. I use a deck called Kaishi 1.5k |
| Anki Sync | I locally host the sync server to sync my notes between devices. It’s been really great when I want to revise on the train or bus. |
| IMABI | Japanese grammar resource. It is very thorough and very technical. There is always something new to learn on IMABI. |
| Tae Kim’s A Guide to Japanese Grammar | I kind of use this to learn the grammar rules very quickly. I’m using this as a stepping stone to work my way up to IMABI. I also have the physical copy of this. |
| Jimaku | Download subtitles for anime. |
| YUYUの日本語Podcast | Podcast targeted towards language learners. I feel like the language he uses is very easy to comprehend and it’s a good way of immersing. |
| Japanese Podcast with Hana | I mainly listen to YUYU’s podcast but I switch it up sometimes to hear different voices. I like this Hana’s podcast. |
| Hololive | My favourite channels to tune into are Okayu, Sakura Miko and Korone. I also think this is a really funny video. |
| Jisho | English to Japanese Dictionary |
| Fcitx5 | Input method framework (IMF) |
| Mozc | Input method editor (IME) |
Good shows
The best shows are the ones that you are compelled to understand, this is usually the advice that I hear. I also try to watch shows that I have already watched. This gives me more context and allows me to have more comprehensible input. This section is basically just show recommendations.
| Anime | Description |
|---|---|
| Black Clover | I think that Black Clover is not a bad anime to watch if you are starting out. I think in the show the vocabulary used can be repetitive compared to other shows and that certain phrases are said often. ありえねえ is one that I remember of the top of my head. It’s also very long with 171 episodes at the moment. |
| Kaguya-sama: Love Is War | This was a really enjoyable watch! I already watched this before and re-watching it in Japanese was really refreshing. I’m very glad that I watched it again. |
| Laid-Back Camp | I also like ゆるキャン△(Laid-Back Camp). This was actually the show that got me into camping! I also feel like the language aligns more with everyday use so I feel a lot confident because there is a lot more kanji in the show. |
Playing Video Games
To my understanding if you want to play videos you can do so in either two ways.
- Listen to a Japanese podcast in the background
- Change the games language to Japanese
From what I have experienced listening to Japanese podcasts in the background while you play video games can be a good way to passively listen to Japanese and can be a way to engage with Japanese practice even when you don’t want to. I recommend games that you don’t have to put much thought into. Here are some game recommendations.
- Minecraft
- Euro Truck Simulator
- Warframe*
- I only really use this to passively listen if I am idly farming. Otherwise it can get a bit too intense.
You can change the game’s language to Japanese. But in my experience it sort of degraded the experience at my current language level. I don’t think I’m there yet. Take Minecraft for example. I wanted to learn the kanji for “unbreaking” there is no result that shows on Jisho for this term. Though I did find that changing the language is beneficial to learning katakana since object names are usually written that way. I’ll definitely revisit this in the future when i feel ready.
Technical Section
Anki-Sync locally
I run anki-sync locally in Proxmox using LXC containers to sync my progress between my phone, laptop, and main computer. I can access anki-sync through the internet using WireGuard.
I installed the anki-sync server using pip since that is what I am most familiar with. Here are the instructions from the anki-sync documentation.
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python3 -m venv ~/syncserver
~/syncserver/bin/pip install anki
SYNC_USER1=user:pass ~/syncserver/bin/python -m anki.syncserver
If you looks closely at the install instructions you can see that the username and password is written in plain text. This isn’t that great when it comes to security, ideally you would want this password value hashed. I didn’t hash this password value since I use a unique password for both the container this runs on and the sync server itself which I felt was secure enough considering the environment and attack surface.
Another thing was having this start on boot. I created a service file that auto starts the sync server.
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[Unit]
Description=Anki sync server
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
Environment="SYNC_USER1=<username>:<password>"
ExecStart=/root/syncserver/bin/python -m anki.syncserver
Restart=on-failure
KillSignal=SIGINT
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Make sure to enable it so that it starts running
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systemctl enable anki-sync
systemctl start anki-sync
systemctl status anki-sync
And there you go! A anki sync server right in your home! This is how I keep all my decks synced across devices.
Setting up Japanese input method on Arch Linux (i3wm)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Localization/Japanese The arch-wiki helped considerably when setting up this on Arch Linux.
Firstly you need to install fonts (If you haven’t already). I use adobe-source-han-sans-jp-fonts be that was the first one I could choose from. You can install it using:
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sudo pacman -S adobe-source-han-sans-jp-fonts
You also need to enable the Japanese locale is enabled /etc/locale.gen. You need to uncomment ja_JP.UTF-8 UTF-8 like so:
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#ja_JP.EUC-JP EUC-JP
ja_JP.UTF-8 UTF-8
#ka_GE.UTF-8 UTF-8
Then regenerate your locale.
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locale-gen
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sudo pacman -S fcitx5 fcitx5-mozc
After you have done that you will need to create a file called .xprofile and add these environment variables. This is what I needed to do with i3wm, not too sure what it is for other systems. This is very important as without it I wasn’t able to use the input method in games.
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GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx
QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx
XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx
Restart your system.
After that I added fcitx5 to my i3wm config file so that it auto starts.
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exec --no-startup-id fcitx5