Best way to study / improve in this situation?

Index » The Japanese language

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Reply #1 - 2012 June 29, 6:12 pm
Zagato New member
From: Sweden Registered: 2011-02-14 Posts: 3

Hey guys! Long time lurker here.

I've been working on RTK for a while now, and the the past 10 months I've been working in order to finance my trip to Japan and China.

I've read a lot on these forums about different ways of studying Japanese, many of them involve doing Anki decks (Core, RTK, JPLT stuff etc.) I personally have only worked on RTK, Hiragana / Katana, first volume of Genki and some Tae Kim as well. (I haven't used Anki yet, but I've been intending to once I move to other decks after finishing RTK.)

Add to that about 9 years of anime / J-drama. smile

So, next month my long sought dream will finally come true: I will be going to Japan. Which leads to the point of this thread.

I have every intention of studying and improving my Japanese while in Japan, but I won't be attending to school.

Instead, I will be biking from Tokyo to Fukuoka, and staying with WWOOF families in between. I'm planning to stay around 4-6 months. (I need to do a visa run at some point.)

So my question to you is: How would you study in those conditions? I will have a massive backpack with me, and I plan on taking books with me. (What books is yet to be decided. Maybe you can help with that.) But so far I've liked Genki. It seems very basic and elementary and gives you a solid foundation to the language. RTK will be coming as well naturally.

Oh and, I have an Iphone 4 with me as well. I don't have the Anki application, but it seems like it might be invaluable in this scenario.

So yeah, that's basically it. Biking through Japan, staying with some Japanese families, sneaking in a hour or two of studies / day (sometimes more, sometimes less.) How would you do it? And what would you recommend for me? Sadly, internet access won't be a certainty so I really can't rely on it.

Any tips, recommendations regarding books / decks (or anything in general) for my level would be highly appreciated.

Thanks!

Reply #2 - 2012 June 30, 3:27 am
IceCream Closed Account
Registered: 2009-05-08 Posts: 3124

いいね！！

It sounds amazing...

probably the best advice for someone in your situation would be to get a tablet. It doesn't have to be a super-expensive one, as long as it's functional.

You can keep all your Japanese learning materials on there. You can download television programs, manga, and 小説 when you do have the internet, to keep for when you don't. (there's tons of stuff linked from this site).

You can also get anki and premade decks and review flashcards while you're offline.

Don't take physical books, you'll only regret it when you have to carry them.

Reply #3 - 2012 June 30, 5:06 am
Zagato New member
From: Sweden Registered: 2011-02-14 Posts: 3

IceCream wrote:

いいね！！

It sounds amazing...

probably the best advice for someone in your situation would be to get a tablet. It doesn't have to be a super-expensive one, as long as it's functional.

You can keep all your Japanese learning materials on there. You can download television programs, manga, and 小説 when you do have the internet, to keep for when you don't. (there's tons of stuff linked from this site).

You can also get anki and premade decks and review flashcards while you're offline.

Don't take physical books, you'll only regret it when you have to carry them.

Hey!

Thanks! I've been seriously pondering about getting a tablet. I might just end up buying one. I should be able to do most of it on my Iphone, but it's just not the same.

Do you have any decks that you would especially recommend? There seems to be quite a few and I'm not sure what would fit best for my level of knowledge.

I'm aware that books will add extra weight that might suck, but I'm also the type of person that enjoys working on books. smile Obviously I won't go overboard. wink

Appreciate the advice.

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Reply #4 - 2012 June 30, 5:14 am
IceCream Closed Account
Registered: 2009-05-08 Posts: 3124

The Core6k deck is solid, and should last you through the trip. It starts off easy and gets harder. You might want to look at "Nukemarine's guide for beginners" in the resources thread, he has lots of good advice there.

Ah, ok, yeah, i can totally understand liking real live books ^_^

But if you want to take some Japanese childrens books to read, then it might be worth putting them on a tablet, because there's tons of them online, with audio. (Look at the "audiobook" thread. le petit prince is good, as are the Kenji Miyazawa kids stories.)

Reply #5 - 2012 July 01, 8:26 pm
callmedodge Member
From: Tokyo Registered: 2012-02-06 Posts: 69

The new Google tablet is only something like $200 I believe and meant to be extremely good. Very affordable for what it delivers.

As for studying, just being in Japan and conversing with people daily will basically be your studying without even really noticing it.

Reply #6 - 2012 July 04, 7:07 am
Zagato New member
From: Sweden Registered: 2011-02-14 Posts: 3

callmedodge wrote:

The new Google tablet is only something like $200 I believe and meant to be extremely good. Very affordable for what it delivers.

As for studying, just being in Japan and conversing with people daily will basically be your studying without even really noticing it.

Thanks both of you for the advice.

Yeah, Google tablet seems to be great for this type of stuff. It's cheap, seems to be quite fast, has access to internet, and uses Android. It basically almost has everything a guy like me who's on the road would want.

Core6k seems like a very solid deck. Also thanks for pointing out Nukemarines guide! I remember reading it sometime ago but forgot it existed.

Currently the 3 books that I've been thinking about bringing 1. RTK (I will probably throw it away shortly after, since I'm almost done with it and the book is a pretty bad shape.)

2. Genki, I'm currently finishing up the first volume, and I really like it. It seems to me it touches everything slightly and gives you a good overview of the language. So I will most likely finish the first volume, sell it / throw it away, and get the second volume somehow.

3. Particles, I can't remember the books name but it's basically a small book that explains particles in great detail and provides some good sentences. All around seems to be like a good book.

Those 3 combined with some decks like Core6k, flashcard reviews of RTK, Tae Kim, and some other general Japanese stuff (like childrens books for IPhone / Tablet etc), I think I have a pretty solid foundation for selfstudies for this trip.

Still looking for some recommendations for books / other tools and so forth. smile

Thanks for the help guys!

Reply #7 - 2012 July 12, 11:58 pm
dzurn Member
From: Hudson WI Registered: 2011-07-16 Posts: 17

Congratulations on your upcoming trip! Sounds like a GREAT way to see Japan.

For on-the-go study in Japan, I can't imagine not having my "Kotoba!" app for my iPhone/iPod Touch. It's a completely self-contained dictionary, using Jim Breen's JEDICT (Is that the right acronym?) and lots of sample sentences.

And as you are biking around, and come across an unknown kanji on a street sign, you can stop and use the Chinese Handwriting keyboard built into your iPhone to attempt to draw a kanji right on the iPhone. Then Kotoba will tell you what it likely means. (You still might have to try a couple different stroke orders to get it to recognize, but whaddaya want for free?)

And Kotoba and the built-in Chinese Handwriting keyboard are both FREE for your iPhone.

(I only wish that Rikai-chan worked in the real world, not just on web pages!)

Gambatte!
Darryl

Reply #8 - 2012 July 13, 12:07 am
dzurn Member
From: Hudson WI Registered: 2011-07-16 Posts: 17

Zagato wrote:

...

Yeah, Google tablet seems to be great for this type of stuff. It's cheap, seems to be quite fast, has access to internet, and uses Android. It basically almost has everything a guy like me who's on the road would want.

I just got back from Japan a couple weeks ago, and found that WiFi hotspots are a lot more available than the same time last year. However, almost all of them need a password.

The most common hotspot I found in the major cities (Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima) were for SoftBank and FON. SoftBank is only available for a device they you've purchased from SoftBank, nobody at any of the 3 small hole-in-the-wall SoftBank retail stores could tell me if I can buy just Wifi access for my AT&T iPhone 4S. FON was more of a subscription service, but I never got to the point of looking into that one.

The most frequent "open" WiFi I found was, strangely, "wi2premium". I just have to go to Safari first to click through and then it worked.

3G was by far the most reliable, but you better watch your data plan carefully: My AT&T charge for international data roaming was $14 per MEGABYTE. Their $30/month plan gave you 120 MB of 3G data, and you can turn off data roaming on your iPhone when you don't need maps or internet access.

Darryl

Last edited by dzurn (2012 July 13, 12:08 am)

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