Hello From California

I've been hearing a bit about this site from several people on Youtube who cover Japan, so I thought I'd give it a try. It seems pretty nice so far!

I have a couple questions:

• Is there a decent portion of Japanese who read/post on these forums? Right now I'm trying to learn Japanese in hopes of going to Japan and having somewhat of an "authentic" experience so I can decide whether or not I want to live there. Of course, the opportunity to connect with people there is a great opportunity.

• Is this site generally active? No offense, but I really don't want to waste much time on a dead community. I really love participating in and adding to thriving online communities.


EDIT:I guess I could write a tiny bit about myself. I'm a nineteen year-old student in my fourth semester of junior college. Currently, I'm not too sure of what I want to major in since I'm thinking of living in Japan some day. (I'll probably just major in English) I'm studying to be a graphic designer -- I've been using Photoshop for about 8 years, and I'm going to try and pick up After Effects sooner or later when I find the time. I'm also studying spoken Japanese through the Pimsleur system, but I'm going really slow with it. I love playing video games. My favorite game is Tales of Symphonia. I also have the yellow fever. :3

That's pretty much it -- Thanks for reading, I suppose.

Welcome to JREF !

Probably the best way to learn about any forum is to spend a few days or a week or two following it and also taking time to read the old posts in the sections that interest you. Because this forum is in English , I believe we have many more Japanese who read our posts than who post them selves. We have some SUPER helpful members here who try to halp students of Japanese and answer questions on Japan and it's people.If you spend some time here and get to know other members , I think you will be glad you joined us.

Uncle Frank

Hello, I'm new to the forum and new to Japanese too. I'm doing the Pimsleur at the moment, I've been through the Michel Thomas Japanese which is a similar kind of audio-only learning, I found it an easier start for an absolute beginner than the Pimsleur, they take things a bit slower and less intense. The Japanese is spoken slowly and clearly, unrealistically so, but you have to start somewhere

Uncle Frank said:

Because this forum is in English , I believe we have many more Japanese who read our posts than who post them selves. We have some SUPER helpful members here who try to halp students of Japanese and answer questions on Japan and it's people.If you spend some time here and get to know other members , I think you will be glad you joined us.

Uncle Frank

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That's some pretty great insight there. Thanks for the info and the greeting!

RickNZ said:

Hello, I'm new to the forum and new to Japanese too. I'm doing the Pimsleur at the moment, I've been through the Michel Thomas Japanese which is a similar kind of audio-only learning, I found it an easier start for an absolute beginner than the Pimsleur, they take things a bit slower and less intense. The Japanese is spoken slowly and clearly, unrealistically so, but you have to start somewhere

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It's great to know that there are others on here who are just beginning to learn as I am! Maybe we could consult one another about our progress? One of the reasons I've been wanting to take part in a forum dedicated to everything Japanese is that it's always great to have peers who you can fall back on and help out when you need to.

Yes definitely. How are you going with the Pimsleur? I've just finished "Japanese I" but there's a lot I need to go back and do again. At the moment I'm trying to learn as much as possible by just listening and letting it sink in, I try to get through a lesson each time I'm on the bus or walking somewhere. I've never tried it while driving, I think it would be too distracting. I'm also using a book "Japanese Verbs and essentials of grammar" but not very intensely at the moment. Usually I just listen and if I want to know more about sometihng, I google. I'm not trying very hard with Kanji, just learning a few here and there as I learn words, I might get into that more later, but my focus is on the spoken language. I like to take as many different approaches as possible to keep mixing it up, so it stays interesting and you get a broader picture. Right now I'm watching the japanese dub of Star Wars , I can pick up maybe one phrase in fifty, but it's very satisfying when you do get something. I want to get the sound of Japanese in my head as much as possible.

RickNZ said:

Yes definitely. How are you going with the Pimsleur? I've just finished "Japanese I" but there's a lot I need to go back and do again.

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Ah, you're a pretty good deal further than I am. Admittedly, I've hardly just finished the 10th lesson in Japanese I. I've been listening to the Pimsleur lessons for a few months now -- I'm not sure if I'm just slow, or if it's the fact that those lessons are so heavily saturated with information, but I really can't seem to get the confidence up to move on to the next lessons until I feel like I've "mastered" the current one. I suppose another reason I'm trying to take it slowly and steadily is that I'm afraid of burning myself out. I've got to admit, I may be a weak person, but trying to wrap my head around the sentence structure of another language can be VERY challenging. I'm sure that we'll have a lot more overlapping breakthroughs and difficulties as the time goes on though! After all, we can't even hope to tap a tiny fraction of the language with even all three Japanese lesson sets.

RickNZ said:

I like to take as many different approaches as possible to keep mixing it up, so it stays interesting and you get a broader picture. Right now I'm watching the japanese dub of Star Wars

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You know, that's actually a pretty great idea! I've been trying to surround and bury myself in anything Japanese, but I'm a little afraid of coming off as a weeaboo to my friends and family. xD Are you interested in Japanese music? Although I understand that the sentence structure in music can be very confusing, when I started all of this Japanese stuff up, I used the names of Japanese bands, artists, albums and songs as a way of remembering some Kana and understanding the words a little.

RickNZ said:

I can pick up maybe one phrase in fifty, but it's very satisfying when you do get something. I want to get the sound of Japanese in my head as much as possible.

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I know exactly what you mean! I actually get very excited when I hear important words and sentence particles I learned from Pimsleur in Japanese media. As ridiculous as it may sound, I feel incredibly relieved that I'm learning real Japanese, if that makes sense. I have no use for learning how to say "this is a pen", but I DO have use for a lot of the jointed vocabulary that we learn in these lessons.

I'm also very excited to reach a point where I can navigate the language on my own so that instead of learning with "point and state" repetition, I can just learn more by using the words I already know. In a way, we're unlocking a lot more of the language with each important term and particle we learn. Very exciting stuff!

Tamayo said:

Ah, you're a pretty good deal further than I am. Admittedly, I've hardly just finished the 10th lesson in Japanese I. I've been listening to the Pimsleur lessons for a few months now -- I'm not sure if I'm just slow, or if it's the fact that those lessons are so heavily saturated with information, but I really can't seem to get the confidence up to move on to the next lessons until I feel like I've "mastered" the current one. I suppose another reason I'm trying to take it slowly and steadily is that I'm afraid of burning myself out. I've got to admit, I may be a weak person, but trying to wrap my head around the sentence structure of another language can be VERY challenging. I'm sure that we'll have a lot more overlapping breakthroughs and difficulties as the time goes on though! After all, we can't even hope to tap a tiny fraction of the language with even all three Japanese lesson sets.

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In the Michel Thomas course, they describe the role of the course as being like an architect who builds you a house, then you have fill it on your own. They aim to give you a basic structure of the language without too much vocabulary, and that should get you started finding things on your own. I like that approach, I find I remember words much better if I randomly come across them somewhere than if I'm getting them from a lesson. I really enjoyed that starting out, but as I got further along I started wishing they'd introduce more new stuff. That's where the Pimsleur comes in, it gets things done quicker, but I find it needs more concentration. I have to find time when I'm doing absolutely nothing else.

but I'm a little afraid of coming off as a weeaboo to my friends and family. xD Are you interested in Japanese music? Although I understand that the sentence structure in music can be very confusing, when I started all of this Japanese stuff up, I used the names of Japanese bands, artists, albums and songs as a way of remembering some Kana and understanding the words a little.

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I've never particularly checked it out. I'm a bit of a rock dinosaur so I think it probably wouldn't be me LOL. I'm 40 so I'm in no danger of people thinking I'm a weeaboo LOL.
My brother's been living in Tokyo for 25 years, but I don't really know him all that well, he's ten years older than me and he left home earlier than I can remember, I've hardly seen him since. My immediate motivation for learning Japanese is that my sister and I are going there to visit him later this year, so we're both trying to learn what we can in a year. I find it very interesting in its own right though, I'd probably still be learning it if I wasn't going there. I don't really know anyone else learning Japanese, it's not as common in my age group, so I mostly learn on my own.

I know exactly what you mean! I actually get very excited when I hear important words and sentence particles I learned from Pimsleur in Japanese media. As ridiculous as it may sound, I feel incredibly relieved that I'm learning real Japanese, if that makes sense. I have no use for learning how to say "this is a pen", but I DO have use for a lot of the jointed vocabulary that we learn in these lessons.

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Yeah, even if it's just "watashi wa", it's like "Hey, I know that!" It's very encouraging.

I'm also very excited to reach a point where I can navigate the language on my own so that instead of learning with "point and state" repetition, I can just learn more by using the words I already know. In a way, we're unlocking a lot more of the language with each important term and particle we learn. Very exciting stuff!

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It's hard at first, when you read a simple example sentence in a lesson and you don't know ANY of the words and you end up looking everything up, but after a while you reach a kind of critical mass when you start to know more than half of the words in a typical simple sentence and it's so much easier and faster to learn! I'm nowhere near the point where I can usefully spend my time trying to learn from real-world written Japanese, it's still in the "have to look up nearly every word" stage, but I can see it getting closer all the time. I really enjoy the process of learning so it's not too hard to keep motivated.

RickNZ said:

That's where the Pimsleur comes in, it gets things done quicker, but I find it needs more concentration. I have to find time when I'm doing absolutely nothing else.

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Yeah, definitely. Another one of the reasons I'm not very far yet is that I'm not practicing every night. I really can't complain about using Pimsleur to learn since they didn't have programs like this in an earlier time, but sometimes it's just too boring to bother doing. xD At times in the lessons, especially during increased repetition, I'll end up dozing off and not being able to finish it. It definitely wouldn't be an issue if it was a program you could easily listen to while folding laundry or something, but again, I can't complain much -- I mean, how easy should it be to pick up a new language?

RickNZ said:

I'm 40 so I'm in no danger of people thinking I'm a weeaboo LOL.

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Haha, that's great. I'm only a year out of high school, and I've got to tell you, there were some people who just annoyed the hell out of everyone with it. "Oh-Em-Gee, that's so kawaii desu~~" I try to tone to Japan ranting down a bit around friends and family because I'm a bit of a nerd to begin with, so it isn't very hard for them to make that connection. Be happy you don't get mistaken for being part of a new age counter-culture! ._.

RickNZ said:

My brother's been living in Tokyo for 25 years, but I don't really know him all that well, he's ten years older than me and he left home earlier than I can remember, I've hardly seen him since. My immediate motivation for learning Japanese is that my sister and I are going there to visit him later this year, so we're both trying to learn what we can in a year. I find it very interesting in its own right though, I'd probably still be learning it if I wasn't going there. I don't really know anyone else learning Japanese, it's not as common in my age group, so I mostly learn on my own.

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It's great to know that there are others trying to learn for a one-time visit, or rather so that they can get by on the first of many visits. Or have you been there before? I'm hoping that I'll be able to visit Japan some time before 2014 and I'd really love to invest the time into learning it before then since it seems so promising.

RickNZ said:

I really enjoy the process of learning so it's not too hard to keep motivated.

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You know, I was just thinking the other day about how much I love the English language (planning on double-majoring in it). All throughout high school, it was addicting for me to pick up new words that sounded sophisticated and such, and I absolutely love having the ability to articulate what I'm thinking (since I'm also very interested in philosophy). Higher literacy is something that I love to strive for, and it just hit me the other day that I'm similarly addicted to learning new Japanese vocabulary, even though I hardly know a thing yet.

I've never been before, looking forward to it! Our brother is going to show us round a bit but I don't want to be completely useless when he's not around. I'd like to be able to speak "tourist japanese" at least, but if I can get a bit of general conversation going that would be really good. Don't know if that's realistic in one year though. We'll see!
I know what you mean about English, I'm always interested to learn new words and expressions. I can't let it go if I hear a word I don't know, I have to look it up and find out its meaning and etymology. I'm quite interested in the history of languages and the way they develop from each other over time.