The key to learning Japanese

September 30, 2023

In previous newsletters, we talked about the 3 core things we need to learn Japanese:

A good core resource
A stash of native materials/ways to get exposure to Japanese
Showing up

In this one, we’re talking about what is likely the actual most important step:

Showing up.

It doesn’t matter how good your resource is, how many books, games or practice partners you have, or how many hours of time you spent researching how to learn Japanese.

If you don’t open up your resource and start learning, you won't reach your language goals.

By the way, did you make progress towards your goals today?

You know what to do ^^

→ → Study Now ← ←

Not doing something we’re passionate about would be a bummer, so let’s talk about how we can improve our show-up rate.

But first, a 川柳せんりゅう:

寒さむい朝あさ
温あたたかいお茶ちゃ
勉強べんきょうだ

A cold morning
A warm cup of tea
Studies

A 川柳せんりゅう is basically a haiku but just more casual with less rules attached. Here’s the NativShark lesson explaining them. Was super helpful for me, I actually knew a lot less about haiku than I thought I did.

The reason that 川柳せんりゅう is there is because that describes a lot of my days studying, especially when I still lived in the US.

I found it helpful to wake up and study with some hot tea while my brain turned on (I wasn't a morning person back then). Even if some days were just a quick 10 to 15 minutes or so, studying early helped me feel like I’d started the day doing something productive.

I'd always think…"Even if the rest of the day doesn’t quite turn out how I’d like, well, at least I improved my Japanese this morning."

So I got into the habit of studying in the morning. And I found that habit really useful for improving my Japanese.

That's because…

The Power of Motivation

…is actually extremely low.

Seriously. I wouldn't recommend relying solely on motivation to get you studying Japanese.

Motivation is a limited resource. If you have to spend mental energy every day to decide if you're going to study or not, then you're going to need motivation to give you that kick to get your resource open and your brain absorbing the information.

In other words, the more you use your motivation, the more it runs out.

This is because we all suffer from this thing called being human

Being human () means that if we have an off day, like when we wake up sick, tired, in a subpar mood, or have some sort of life event outside of our control, our motivation will likely plummet to a nice, pleasant... 0.

And when we have 0 motivation, we likely have 0 studies to go along with it.

And then we don't reach our goals :(

This isn't to say that motivation is a bad thing, though. It's very helpful in getting you started in your journey, or for making positive changes to your habits.

Motivation is best used to set up something much stronger.

The Power of Habit

Habit will get you places.

Unlike motivation, habit is unlimited. If you can survive setting up a habit, you'll very likely be able to ride that wave for a very long time.

I've experienced this personally.

The habit that I made at the start of studying Japanese has still stuck with me, and I'm past the 8-year marker at this point. I've never missed a day of Japanese exposure, and I've missed probably less than a week or two of core studies throughout all of this time.

Me saying that isn't to show off. I just used habit to get me here, and I strongly believe that anybody can manage that and more if they set up their habit and are willing to adapt it as necessary.

Honestly, once the habit is set up, you tend to feel very strange about not studying on a given day, and you'll be opening up your studies even just for 3 minutes a time throughout the day if that's what it takes to get through them ^^

So let's look at the most powerful tool to keep you showing up for Japanese:

Habit Tagging

Habit tagging is when you attach your studies to something you do every day.

For example, if you drink coffee every morning, you can attach studying Japanese to drinking your morning coffee. Or before/after dinner, right when you get home from work/a walk in the park, after you brush your teeth, or anything else that you do on a daily basis.

Personally, when I first started studying and got home from college for the day, I would turn on my computer without fail.

So I habit-tagged studying Japanese to turning on my computer.

I would get home, press the power button, and then start my studies for the day, no matter what my motivation levels were (trust me, there were plenty of times when it was incredibly low)!

You could potentially tag your studies to things like…

…your morning tea or coffee.
…kicking your shoes off after work.
…studying on your phone during your lunch break.
…during your commute if you take a train, bus, etc.
...crying while eating matcha Kit Kats.
…before or after exercising.

Anything you do every day.

Or at least every day you're planning on studying Japanese. The odds are high that you can find some study time somewhere in your day, and can habit tag those studies to it.

Of course, life isn’t always going to work with you on that and sometimes life happens.

But building some sort of habit that makes it so you don’t have to think about when or even if you’re going to study on any given day is probably the biggest step to solving the showing-up problem.

If you happen to be losing motivation to the point where your habit is fading away, I personally find it helpful to look back on things that you tried to do in Japanese months ago.

Maybe that would be a difficult video game you put down, a manga, TV show... anything, really.

Go give that thing a try again. The longer ago it was, the better. Maybe it still won't be easy, but I'm willing to bet that if you've been studying, it will be easier than it used to be.

I find that really motivating^^

If you live a busy life and want some personalized suggestions about how to solve the showing-up problem, come ask in the NativShark community. There's a channel called #study-tips you can ask in, and everyone is really helpful there~

Good luck out there and happy studies!

P.S. Don't forget to click on this and solve showing up for today: → → Study Now ← ←

Weekly writing prompt:

Your friend has invited you to go camping next weekend. You want to go, and also want to bring your dog, but are unsure if dogs are allowed at the campsite. You text your friend…

Post your responses here and let's talk about them!

This prompt was written by "corrrreyw" in the Discord community. I'm pretty excited about this prompt, so thank you for suggesting it!

If you have an idea you'd like to see become a prompt, you can submit them here.

Feel free to ask for help if you want to say something specific as well. Both myself and other students will be in there offering advice and help~

Great job from everyone once again on last week's prompt.

One of the students (the same one who suggested this week's prompt!) asked their wife about some of the sentences we were saying, and let us know that 参拝さんぱいの仕方しかた(how to worship at a shrine) could be used over 祈いり方かた (how to pray).

So I learned something there as well^^

Some cool Japanese

Going along with last week's prompt about visiting a shrine, here's a sentence that talks about one of my favorite shrines I've visited:

You have to go. Here's one of the pictures I took while I was there:

I'm sad cuz the pic doesn't do it justice. There are SO many 鳥居とりい(torii gates) there.

If the above Japanese is difficult for you, all you need to do is keep hitting the Study Now button, and you'll understand it when you get there. Especially when using a study resource like NativShark, you'll be fine as long as you show up as much as you can. This screenshot comes from a lesson in Phase Two.

NativShark goodie bag

The content team released another 4 new Phase Three Units this week~

New Phase Three Units

New Podcasts Episodes:

The Konnichiwa Podcast

A Band-Aid by any other name - Spotify