Moving 7,444 miles to Japan was exhilarating. Everything was exciting and new. I was ready to explore a new world, and part of that was learning Japanese. I love studying language and had always thought I was a natural at it. In Spanish, I got A’s and had reached the “clumsily conversational” stage (CC stage) in that language.
But then I started my job in Japan. It was also fun and new and so, at first, everything was great. I expected that in a few months I’d have amazing Japanese skills and still believed that just living in Japan was bound to make me fluent. I found out quickly that teaching eight classes of English every day and not being allowed to use any Japanese in the class made learning the language a bit trickier. This immersion stuff wasn’t working and I started to realize that I wasn’t progressing much.
Working any type of full-time job can make studying difficult, but having eight English classes a day with students struggling to form sentences was starting to become exhausting. By the time I would get home I would find I had no energy for learning Japanese. I would often watch Japanese TV, but many times would resort to English TV because I was tired. I was living in Japan, but I was living inside an English bubble.
A Goal for Learning Japanese
There’s a test for students learning Japanese called the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). At the time this test had four levels. It currently has five. The easiest level was level 4 so I set my sights on passing this test and got to work actually studying and learning Japanese. There are many resources to help pass this test and soon I was getting pretty confident that I could pass it. I registered for the test and passed it easily within a few months.
This was a win that felt good. But the lowest level of the JLPT doesn’t mean much. It certainly doesn’t mean you have reached any kind of fluency—not even clumsily conversational fluency. The next year, a friend of mine and I decided that we were so good at Japanese we were going to skip level 3 and take the level 2 test. This was quite a stretch for both of us. The grammar gets significantly harder between levels 3 and 2, and there are a ton of kanji that have to be memorized.
Cold Reality Bites
I remember studying with my friend in his cold apartment that winter—learning the grammar points, practicing the listening, wrapping up in blankets. (The apartments in Osaka are often freezing inside since there’s no central heat). We were ready, and on a chilly December morning we went to the testing center and crushed it. Both of us passed and thought we had arrived. We skipped level 3 and passed level 2 on the first try? We had both only been in the country for a short time, but now we were language bosses.
In reality, my friend quickly was becoming a language boss. Though I had passed level 2 of the JLPT and was now at the CC level of fluency, my friend was getting really, really good at speaking and I was just okay. What was happening? We both studied hard and knew our grammar and kanji, but my friend was able to sometimes make people believe he had grown up in Japan he was so good. What the heck? I was supposed to be the natural at languages.
Toss the Books
Here’s the key factor that my friend had learned and that I had not yet. Book study is helpful, and in order to fully learn a language (especially one with a non-Roman alphabet) you will have to crack a book or two. But the secret my friend had learned was not how to make killer flash cards on Anki or how to memorize grammar points. His secret was simple. He spent all of his available time speaking and listening to the language with native speakers.
This is so simple that it might seem silly to say it, but the key to learning Japanese or any language is not by studying a book. It’s by interacting with the language every day for as much time as you can. Teaching English in a foreign country can be tiring and boring, but despite his busy job, my friend had joined a soccer club with people who only spoke Japanese, found a Japanese girlfriend, and came early to work to spend time talking in Japanese with the office staff. He was getting hours of daily, real-world practice while I spent time watching Star Trek Voyager reruns in English.
Create an Environment that Forces You to Learn
Learning Japanese or any other language is theoretically possible without living in that country or speaking with native speakers. But the level of commitment needed to get really fluent at a language requires enormous levels of discipline. If you’re like me and sometimes lack discipline, you need help. You need to create a world in which you have no choice but to learn the language.
Whether it’s joining a club like my friend, taking a class, or just making friends with native speakers, you need lots of practice. So did I. I finally started to get better when I found myself in a relationship with someone who couldn’t speak English (and who wasn’t dating me just to learn it.) I was good enough that we could have conversations, but I soon realized that her level of Japanese (she was Korean) was way better and faster than mine. In longer conversations, I would have trouble following her at first. But after a while I found I could keep up. And I was starting to get better and faster at speaking myself.
Getting Fluent
I finally set my sights on level 1 of the JLPT. The pinnacle of language learning. The highest level a foreigner can achieve. If I could pass this test, I would finally be fluent, right? I studied hard and got ready for the test. I had been in country for four years now. Surely, I’m ready. But hours of cramming kanji and grammar were not enough and I failed that first attempt. (Fortunately for my ego, so did my study friend).
The next year I passed it, but the funny thing is, I was still not fluent. What does fluent even mean? My Korean girlfriend had passed it after only a year in the country, and it had taken me five. She could speak circles around me even though I had the creds on paper.
It turns out that fluency is a spectrum. It only increases with time, effort, and exposure to and practice in the language. My Korean girlfriend (now my wife) had lived for a few years with her step-dad who was Japanese. She had gone to a technical college where only Japanese was used. She had worked in a travel agency where she had to speak Japanese all the time and in a business-Japanese way. I had taught English for years and only studied for the JLPT.
You’re Not Too Busy to Learn the Right Way
It wasn’t until I lived in a world where I had no choice but to listen to and speak Japanese every day that I reached “confidently conversational” fluency. But sadly, before I got to higher levels (like being able to understand 99% of a movie with no subtitles) we moved to the US and I stopped studying. Still, I learned what it takes to truly master a language.
You might think you’re too tired and busy to study after teaching all day. You’re probably right. So don’t make it a chore for yourself by “studying”. Engineer your life so that you cannot avoid listening to and using the language every day for as long as possible with real people. In a short time you’re sure to reach some level of CC fluency.