Your first study day

This page will give a brief explanation of everything you’ll see in your first Unit of your first study day.

Here is the video version of this guide:

The most important button

Click on the all-powerful button known as the “Study Now” button.

A message from Niko

The first thing we’ll see is a message from NativShark’s president, Niko:

Thanks Niko!

Good info to know. Many textbooks will teach you "textbook" language, and not what people say in Japanese across everyday life, media, and more.

If you only rely on textbooks, university courses, and pre-generated flashcard decks, you’ll likely end up feeling lost when it comes time to talk to a person outside of the classroom setting due to this lack of focus on an entire part of the language.

This is something many of the team members experienced personally, and a big reason why we built NativShark in the first place. We were sick of studying as hard as we could and then still feeling lost when we went out and tried to use our Japanese.

It was painful to have a giant wall between our studies and the real world.

We tore the wall down with NativShark.

Since you're already in the guides (thanks for stopping by!), hit “Okay” and let’s keep moving^^

The kana tool

The first tool you’ll come across is the kana tool.

If you’re new or relatively new to Japanese, we recommend going through this tool. It gives important information about how to read Japanese, and talks about the 3 different scripts (”alphabets”) in Japanese.

If you’re already familiar with this, you can simply click “Skip this set” at the bottom and keep moving.

Otherwise, let’s click next and learn about how Japanese is written.

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We highly recommend having your audio on throughout this tool especially, but also using audio as much as possible during all of your studies at NativShark.

If you have some study days where you’re just too busy and can only study for 5 minutes in a noisy room without your headphones, then that's just how some days go.

No worries.

Showing up as often as possible is infinitely more important than how “productive” any single study day is.

You’ll see a few stories from the team about their lowest-focus study days as you keep going through the system, but the important thing is that we showed up and kept even just a bit of Japanese in our brains.

If you’re going through a comprehensive system like NativShark, then that’s all that really matters.

Once you’ve seen all the kana in this set, there is a small quiz to make sure they’re starting to take root in your brain.

Try to think of what sound these kana made and hit Show Answer when you think you’ve got it. You can also hit the spacebar if you’re on a computer or a tablet with a keyboard.

If it’s not coming to you, don’t worry about it.

Maybe hit “I forgot” once and then hit “Got it” once you see it again, whether you remembered or not.

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Once we start seeing our review cards, keep the above tip in mind.

Time spent moving forward is more valuable than time spent frustrated and stuck in reviews, quizzes, and flashcards.

You will be seeing everything again and again as you keep moving forward in your studies.

If it was even just barely on the tip of your tongue, that is a success. If anything looks familiar to you, then that means you’re learning and succeeding.

And even if it doesn’t look familiar at all and feels like this is the first time you’ve ever seen it, that’s still okay. You’re going to be seeing everything a lot more in the future, as NativShark builds upon itself.

So no need to stress about trying to memorize anything perfectly right off the bat!

Anyway, let’s finish the quiz and keep going^^

Feel free to hit “Quiz me again” if you want to do another run-through, or “Redo this set” to go back to the start and get the explanations for things again.

Otherwise, let’s hit “Complete”.

Good job~

Lessons

After you hit "Complete" in the kana tool, you'll be brought to your first lesson.

First, you’ll be greeted by our lovely Overlay-chan, who will explain how lessons work. Feel free to follow her through it and come back!

The lesson will start off with a summary right at the top and let you know what the lesson is about.

Since it’s our first day, we might not know how to read the kana in it.

Don’t worry, as we’ll cover any new ones you haven’t seen before in the lesson. You can click on any of those kana pictures to play audio of that kana as well!

In fact, if you’re ever feeling stuck on something, it’s often very helpful to just keep moving forward and:

Read the rest of the sentence.
Listen to the sentence audio two or three times.
Read the rest of the lesson.
Read the other sentences.
Listen to the other sentence's audio once or twice.

Then! Come back to it after. Or maybe even the next day. Or just forget about it until it shows up in your reviews or lessons again, which is what we recommend doing the most.

There are many concepts in Japanese that we often don’t have the ability to wrap our heads around until we start learning other concepts in Japanese.

So if you’re ever feeling stuck, just move on to the next thing.

Your brain might not be ready to understand it right now, but it might be tomorrow. Or after you’ve seen it another 5 times. Or after you’ve gone through another 5 lessons.

Learning Japanese is a marathon, not a sprint.

It’s good to take your time and not stress. This will be a long journey, and finding ways to make it fun throughout all levels of ability you find yourself at is a great way to make sure you stay on the path to your goals.

You can do it

Audio

Each sentence in NativShark comes with two pieces of audio, one from a male speaker and one from a female speaker.

In spoken Japanese, male and female intonation can often be a little different from each other. It’s good to listen to both as often as possible.

It can also be helpful to try to mimic how the speakers say any particular sentence while copying whichever gender you want to sound more similar to. When you have the time and energy, repeating the sentences out loud can be a very helpful thing to do.

In the lessons, the two different audios will show up near the bottom of the sentence, just click on these buttons:

You might notice something interesting with the male audio.

Specifically… it doesn’t even sound like he’s saying the word???

Yeah.

We’ll be talking about this in-depth in both the lessons and these guides, but for now, just note that he only seems to be half-pronouncing it.

Native speakers speak fast. And the faster they speak, the less they say certain sounds.

There are patterns to this that you’ll pick up with time.

If you want to practice it a bit, feel free to listen to it 2 or 3 more times, maybe even try to repeat it a few times.

But listening to it 50 times over and over while trying to force yourself to hear it will only cause frustration and eventual burnout. Don't worry if you don't quite understand or hear it yet.

Your ears will adjust with time and exposure to natural language, which you'll be getting plenty of as you keep progressing through NativShark.

So just keep moving on! No worries.

I think you'll be surprised by how powerful a tool simply moving on can be. You’ll have this down before you realize it ^^

Back to the lesson

There are a few important things you’ll see at the bottom of the page.

First, you’ll find the “Sentence Review” box.

Here, you’ll be able to choose what sentences show up in your reviews the next day.

If you already know this word, then go ahead and toggle the sentence off. Doing so will archive it, meaning that it won't appear in your reviews in the future. This helps you keep progressing through the system faster.

If you’d like to practice the sentences you learned in the lesson more, then feel free to keep them on.

Once that’s sorted out, click on the brains to show how well the lesson went into your brain, and then complete the lesson:

The brains are for your own reference, so feel free to answer whatever you feel. NativShark will also use this data to find lessons that need improvement or rewriting in the future.

Progression Badge

Hey, look at that, it’s your first progression badge:

Nice^^

It can be helpful to have that measurable progress on our long journey to our language goals. Progression badges like the above mark your achievements in NativShark and are a good way to keep track of your progress.

You are now one step closer to your language goals. You now know more Japanese than you did previously, even if it's still just beginning to solidify.

Just keep doing what you just did as often as possible and remember to enjoy the journey. While it will take time, you'll be there before you know it.

Feels good.

Now, let’s hit “Okay” and keep that ball rolling.

A message from Ty

Next, we’ll see a message from me:

Thanks me!

NativShark uses a Spaced-Repetition System (SRS) to help keep things in your brain.

Here’s a quick run-down of what that means:

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An SRS helps you remember concepts by showing you them in spaced intervals, calculated to be just before you’re about to forget them.

This is why showing up for reviews every day is important, even if you only have the time or mental energy for just 5.

We also build on our lessons so you only have one new concept entering your brain at a time, which means you’re constantly reviewing all that you’ve learned up to this point.

In other words, when using NativShark, you don’t need to worry about forgetting things.

Even if you do, you’ll see it again and again and again, especially the more important it is.

It’s a good reason not to stress during your reviews and go easy on yourself.

If the Japanese feels even somewhat familiar, that’s a victory.

It’ll feel more and more familiar until you can’t even remember you used to struggle to remember it. Just give it time and consistency.

Days Studied and reviewing

Hit “Okay” and we’ll be back at our homepage, welcomed by our beloved Overlay-chan.

She’ll tell you about reviews and your Days Studied.

In short, you can do 5 reviews a day to update your Days Studied. If the system assigns you no reviews, then doing any learning part of a new Unit will update them instead.

As we talked about above, consistently showing up is the most powerful tool in improving your Japanese.

That’s why we set the minimum needed to get another day on your Days Studied to be so low.

Even if you just speed through them in about 15 seconds, the fact that you’re showing up is doing great work for you. So do what you can to show up as often as possible, even if your focus isn’t the best on a given day.

Back to My Journey

We’ll be back at our homepage, as we have completed our first Unit in NativShark.

Good work! You now have the beginnings of Japanese seeping into your brain.

You can end your study day here and come back tomorrow to review and get into your second Unit, choose to continue doing more Units until you’re all Japanese’d out, or potentially even hit the Review Threshold.

If you did happen to hit the Review Threshold and want to keep studying, then feel free to immediately go onto the next part of the guide, as it will explain the Review Threshold and how to change it to allow you to study more Units in a given day.

Once you’re all set, log in tomorrow and follow our guide for your second study day.