How Much Japanese is Enough?

rom the mix of students who have come to me wanting to learn Japanese, I've noticed, not surprisingly, that a fair amount -- perhaps 80% or so -- want to learn Japanese "to understand animé."

Well, one might say that that's like saying for a foreigner, "I want to learn English because I want to understand what they are saying on 'The Young and the Restless.'"

Huh? might be your first reaction. You want to learn a fairly difficult language for the sole purpose of being better equipped to watch cartoons?

But I don't put the students down for this. Not everyone wants to learn a language because they're determined to go spend years in that country. I myself did everything backwards: even though I knew at least a year ahead of time that I was going to Japan for an undetermined length of time -- saying to myself that it was going to be more than 3 months but probably less than a year -- my purpose for going to Japan was not to learn Japanese or understand the Japanese culture, which are understandably noble motivations, but rather that I was told that by opening my mouth I could earn $30/hr. I found this hard to believe at first, but didn't really question the concept too much. To hell with it, I said, let's go and see what happens!

So you might imagine that I immediately looked for some local Japanese courses (I was in Northern California, and there is no shortage of Japanese people who live there) so that I'd be able to "get by" in Japanese when I got there.

But what did I actually do? I said to myself, Hell, they've all been forced to study five years of English in school -- most of them will at least be able to carry on simple conversations in English. I think at this point I was confusing Japan with the Philippines, because I was in for a very rude shock.

But back to studying Japanese: I had a year to prepare, so what did I do? Well, I borowed some cassette tapes from a friend on Beginning Japanese and listened to them a few times.

What?! you say, staggering backwards in disbelief, You thought you could learn a language by listening to some cassette tapes?

Well, the short answer to that is "Yep."

The long answer to that is that I wasn't unduly worried. I have been lucky enough to have lived in foreign lands for long periods of time; in fact, when I went to Japan, I had spent more than a third of my life so far living in countries whose main language was not English (India, Senegal, Congo).

So even though I was taking a calculated risk, I decided just to hold my nose and jump in at the deep end and let exigencies demand their course. I figured, what was the worst that could happen? I would be forced to learn Japanese in a hurry. Was I afraid at facing such an awesome task? Not at all.

As it turned out, I was completely and ridiculously unprepared for living in a country where 99% of the population could not even carry on the simplest of conversations in English, where even "Where is the station?" would elicit major panic reactions in some of the good citizens, who would literally scurry away from me as if I was some large, biting insect.

So I slowly, painfully learned Japanese, and it was both slow and sometimes painful. At some point I will tell you how that happened, and how I ended up not staying for one year, as I'd originally thought, but five.

But to answer the question, how much Japanese do you need to know? To be able to "understand animé" it's not such a huge task. You won't actually have to interact with any Japanese people, so it will largely be a passive learning experience, and it will be based on an awful lot of listening recognition. That means watching the same thing over and over and having enough of a vocabulary to understand what is being said.

The sad thing is, though, that the Japanese spoken in animé films is not some form of simplified form of Japanese that is meant for small children, with a much-reduced vocabulary and thus much less work for you; on the contrary, I would argue that it is actually more difficult Japanese, in that they will be frequently be using slang, colloquiallisms and most of all, be talking really, really fast.

You will never be able to understand animé by studying from tapes or a book. You must have a teacher to tell you what you need to know and what you don't need to know. You need someone who can tell you, with all seriousness, that you can safely eliminate having to learn a quarter of what is actually involved in learning mainstream Japanese, namely, polite Japanese, which is almost never used in animé. But you wouldn't know that if you just went to some nameless conversation school or tried to study on your own.

And what about you, the other 20%, who actually intend to spend a significant amount of time in Japan, or are forced by circumstance to have to learn Japanese (one of my students is the father of a half Québecois son whose mother has taken him back to Japan permanently; the son, who is four, can no longer remember any French, so the father must learn Japanese in order to speak to his own son!)?

You must learn enough basic Japanese to conduct simple conversations, but what is far more important than grammar and verbs and vocabulary is knowing how the Japanese people think; this to me is the single most important aspect of learning Japanese with an aim to spend time in Japan. Understanding what is expected from you in your rôle as a foreigner is crucial and will give you an enormous leg up on a student who merely attends classes at the local YMCA.

And that is what I am here to teach you. I live by the maxim "Learn only enough to accomplish the tasks you wish to accomplish and don't waste a minute more in learning anything else." This is why an individually tailored approach to learning Japanese is absolutely necessary and this is what you will get from me: not a unisex evening outfit but a measured, fitted and bespoke suit that will be designed for you and you only.