It’s hard learning Japanese, isn’t it? You got to learn 3 new writing systems, work on your pronunciation (especially that ‘tsu’ and ‘r’ sounds), reprogram your brain to put the verbs last, and just embrace a whole new culture and way of thinking to understand what isn’t being directly said.
BUT even if you push through the basics, you can become quite stagnant. If you aren’t in school and don’t have a language partner, it can be hard finding additional learning material, especially reading material that is easy enough that you don’t have to look up every other kanji.
Despite all that, maybe you’re someone who mainly wants to learn Japanese because you enjoy the anime, the books, the music, or the dramas. Despite studying for a few months or a couple years, you’ll realize that you still don’t understand much.
Learning real life conversation words like ‘to go’, ‘book’, ‘big’, ‘name’ and ‘person’ is only going to get you so far when the media is filled with higher level words that aren’t used in daily life like ‘fight’, ‘believe’, ‘magic, ‘monster’, ‘prince’, ‘match’, ‘dream’ and ‘die’.
One may even feel unmotivated because, despite putting so much time and effort in, they still can’t enjoy what they want to the most. They still need to rely on subtitles and translations if they want to understand anything.
If that all sounds like you, don’t worry! Your answer is finally here!
To solve this problem, I crated a dedicated, focus solution: The Japanese Study Guide For Anime, Video Games & J-Pop Music!
My guide focuses on reading comprehension through media-specific dictionaries, kanji-filled sentences that focus on that vocabulary, folk stories, song translations, flashcards, and more.
The more you familiarize yourself with the vocabulary, phrases, and kanji regularly seen and heard in anime, manga, video games, music, and dramas, the easier it will be to hear or spot it out when you come across them.
I can say this with confidence as I have learned a lot just by creating it, and can already understand anime scenes and my music a lot easier.
If this is your first time coming across my blog- Hi and Welcome! ^_^
My name is Nostalgia. I’m a 90s kid so I’ve been watching anime for as long as I could remember since it was on TV. In middle school, I started watching anime online and that’s when I found out it was originally Japanese and I fell in love with Japanese songs.
My History Learning Japanese
In high school, I wanted to understand the music without having to always look up the translation. (I loved anime, but it would always have subs). So at the beginning of Grade 10, I self-studied for 2 years diligently. Learning to pronounce properly, and learning to read and write the basics.
During my year at university (I had a scholarship for 1 year, then I switched to college), I took a beginner Japanese course. Got a pretty easy A as I already knew the majority of the basics by then. But it was the only I really got to practice speaking it until then.
Since then, I haven’t studied as seriously. It’s not that I’m unmotivated to or anything. I’m still learning new words and phrases now and then. This website was actually made for my anime cover rookie band, so I’m learning a lot of new words through lyrics now too. BUT, I’m not really seeking lessons as they don’t cater to what I care for.
For example, despite studying for 3 years seriously, I still couldn’t understand the music because their ‘real life’ words and phrases don’t really touch on their fictional or expressive media. I never learned words like shinjiru (believe), sekai (world), tataku (fight), tenshi (angel), chikara (power), or akiramenai (won’t give up) in any of my courses or textbooks….but I hear those alllllll the time in anime and Japanese music. I picked up Duolingo a few times in recent years but again, it’s conversation real life Japanese.
Adding on, while learning to speak Japanese is certainly exciting and I’m not against learning that at all, I just…don’t really have a use for it. I do live in super-multicultural Toronto, but there really aren’t that many Japanese people here. Trust me, I looked. Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino were most common in the city. According to Wikipedia, Japanese only make up 0.5% of Toronto’s 6.7 Million population. I did have a couple Japanese conversation partners while in University that I found online, but they were just studying abroad temporarily.
I did do a solo trip to Japan for a week back in 2018. Without even spending much time brushing up on my Japanese, I had no issues asking questions, getting around, and ordering food. You really only need the basics if you stay in the popular cities.
I do plan to go again and see more of Japan with friends or family, but I’m not going to spend years studying and mastering Japanese just for a couple short trips. Thus, conversational Japanese is a bit of a waste of time for me. Time I could be using to learn Guitar or another useful hobby.
Why I Want To Learn Japanese These Days
As I said above, I do still love Japan and Japanese. The language is so fun and beautiful and I’m happy to be at a place where I can navigate around easily. But my goal these days is to read and understand words and phrases I would see regularly in their media. You know…the stuff I listen to and watch more regularly.
It would be nice to not have to read subtitles all the time when watching anime, cause I may want to cook or exercise like I do when watching other English shows. I don’t watch anime as much as I could cause I know I have to give it my full attention or I’ll miss out.
When I go to Karaoke with friends or my band, we do love to sing Japanese songs. While I can navigate the Karaoke books and find numbers for the songs they want, we would usually pull out our phones for the romanji of the song cause they only got real Japanese on screen. The words are fast, and many are new and foreign.
I remember years back, I attempted to read raw manga, but I could barely get past the first page without having to look up various new words. And at that point, reading isn’t that enjoyable. It gets tiring by the 3rd page.
Learning while reading is best when you’re already familiar with at least 75% of the vocabulary for that book, but I felt like I only knew 10%. And if I were to take a regular Japanese language course, I’m pretty sure words for fighting or about magical powers would be left for the final level.
But on that point, reading is so important! Kids learn to read early on for a reason. It’s an opportunity to see, spell, and comprehend new words. Even if they can hear and say a word, they won’t always know how it’s spelled or notice it when they read it.
But kids are lucky. They have soo soo sooooo many books with pictures, and usually a parent, teacher, or older student to read with them a few times until they can recognize these words by themselves. We don’t have that luxury. Kanji is already a battle. More so if furigana isn’t available and it’s not online for you to copy and google search it. And that’s why I started working on this guide for me to learn from.
Creating This Anime & J-Pop Study Guide
All this came to mind when I created this study guide. I wanted to find a way to help me and others not only brush up on basic kanji, but also learn and familiarize themselves with words they’ll hear in anime and J-pop, and see in manga and karaoke. I wanted to give them lots of sentences and stories that they could read over and over to familiarize themselves with them.
But most of all, I wanted everything to be in one place, in a handful of documents. There’s so many shallow articles online so you have to reference 4 or 5 to learn everything you need. I hate needing to reference multiple textbooks and dictionaries as well. Why can’t one website or book have everything I need to learn in it?
Many sites don’t have everything on one page either, which is a pain for those who are using a smaller device or don’t have reliable internet at home. I’ve relied on the public library for many years of my life, so I know how frustrating it could be. Even now when I have internet, I despise subscriptions because you have to keep logging in or can only use it on your phone.
So while I could have created an online course or videos, I wanted to create documents that anyone can access anywhere, and they can also download or print them freely. If you’re like me, I really don’t want to have to look at screens all day, nor deal with the distractions that naturally come with them.
Consider this for the old-fashioned studiers. Those who just want the information with no frills. Who want to be able to study what they want at their own pace and not follow a specific path. Who wants something they can copy and paste or highlight to fit their needs. Where everything is highly detailed and organized alphabetically or by topic so they can easily find what they are looking for.
If this sounds like you, this study guide is all you need!
So what’s included, exactly?
I’m glad you asked! In this guide, you’ll get:
- My Japanese Media Dictionary (800+ Common Words)
- My Kanji Study Guide (400+ Kanji w/ Sentences)
- Video/Arcade Game Kanji & Vocabulary List
- 200+ Onomatopoeias (Sound Effects) List
- 100+ Jpop Song Title Translation & Analysis
- 10 Japanese Folk Stories Broken Down Line by Line
- Access To Kanji Flashcards On My Website
- Easy Short Anime Clips List for Listening Practice
On top of that, you’ll also get these additional bonuses:
- 20 Easy Japanese Songs with Translations
- Anime Quotes with Translations
- Additional FREE Resources To Read Japanese
And who knows what else I’ll add in the future! As a customer, you’re also free to pitch anything you feel would be beneficial for everyone and I’ll work hard to do the research and compile a document on that topic 🙂
So what do you have to lose?
Not only will you have pretty much everything you need to practice, learn, and review media vocabulary and kanji, but you’ll also be supporting me, this blog, and my band, which will essentially you’ll help me teach, support, and inspire others for many years to come ^_^
So if you’re interested and want to learn more, you can check out my listing here!
Still Have Doubts?
But, if this truly is your first time coming across my blog, I get that it may be hard to trust me. But hear me out for a little bit. I am a very serious and passionate blogger. With blogging obviously comes a lot of research, organization, and writing skills.
If you found me via Google, that means Google trusts me 😛 Why? Because I have written 150+ articles in an 8 month span, and they are all long, detailed, and valuable. I give everything I do 120%. If there’s something that comes to mind that I feel I could cover, or a question I feel could be answered, I will always include it. Feel free to check out some of my articles as an example:
I promise that this study guide will have just as much detail and effort, plus more because I truly believe in value, more so if someone is paying for it. And best of all, for just one single payment, you’ll have eternal access to my study guide drive which I’ll always be updating and adding additional content. ^_^
So if you’re interested, you can see and learn more in my Ko-Fi shop!