I finally passed the JLPT N1. I got the notice in the mail in early September soggy and wet from typhoon #15 that rolled by over the weekend. For those of you who don’t study Japanese, the JLPT is the benchmark, for better or for worse, of how good someone is at Japanese. It has 5 levels, from N5 (beginner) all the way to N1 (black belt), and tests vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension, and listening.
With an N1 certification, I can:
- Go to university in Japan
- Work at most Japanese companies
- And the list ends here, I couldn’t find anything else
Anyway, the test is somewhat controversial among Japanese language learners. Primarily because it doesn’t have a speaking or writing component. You’ll find many countless Japanese language learners criticizing people who passed N1 with comments like “All the N1s I know are Chinese kids who already know kanji and can barely speak any Japanese! It doesn’t prove anything about your Japanese!” And you’ll also find some certification flexers who are like “N1 means that you are basically fluent cause you understand like 99% of all Japanese.” The reality is probably somewhere in the middle.
Despite what my Chinese parents say, I’m pretty convinced that knowing Chinese does not make learning Japanese a cakewalk, and Chinese kids who passed N1 probably worked their ass off studying in other areas such as listening and grammar. However, it is totally possible that you can’t hold a normal conversation with people because the JLPT just doesn’t test that. Just like how the SAT doesn’t actually test how well you’ll do in college, the JLPT is only an approximation of functional Japanese language skills.
Anyway, I’m pretty stoked to have finally reached the holy grail of Japanese language learning. While I can still remember the details, I want to take a stroll down memory lane of How. Much. Ass. I. Busted.
Year 0: The Prologue
Me and my parents with their lab at Awaodori festival.
I was born in China, but spent the first 4 years of my life living in Japan. So Japanese might have been my first language. Ya know.
But before we get too carried away… let me remind you that toddlers are not very articulate. I probably knew a handful of words like “Mommy”, “Daddy”, and “Poop.”
I basically don’t remember anything from this part of my life, cause when I hit the ripe age of 4 we moved to America and you know Americans; “You’re in aMeriCa, SPeaK ENGLish.” But growing up, my mom still liked to use some Japanese words here and there, specifically the words for carrot (にんじん) and strawberry (いちご). Don't ask me why, idk.
Family photo with rental kimonos during Hina Matsuri.
Anyway back to the point. I remembered basically nothing. In middle school I loved watching anime, but it probably improved my ability to read subtitles more than it did my ability to understand Japanese.
However, it’s not to say that these first few years were for naught. I subscribe to the idea that if you learn a language while you’re young, you’re blessed with the muscle memory of how to move your mouth. So when you try to pronounce words, it comes easier because you can manipulate your tongue in a similar way to how a native speaker would.
Year 1: The Carefree Days
すみません。マクドナルドはどこですか？
Excuse me. Where is the McDonalds?
-Genki 1
Our Japanese 101 class photo (missing our sensei though)
So I started learning Japanese like how most non-Japanese people learn Japanese, in a college 101 class. Our school was too small to have a language department, so me and my friend would hop on our bikes every morning, 5 days a week, at 7:30am to take Japanese 101 at Wellesley college. It’s not easy to convince a college student to wake up at 7am.
Our textbook was “Genki 1”, and we’d switch every other day between lecture and drills. I’d ace the quizzes and breeze through the skits. Out of all the years I’ve been studying Japanese, this was probably when I was the most confident (read: full of it).
But I think that’s how introductory courses should be. They should convince you that you’re a genius and trick you into paying lots of money to go study abroad.
Year 2: I’m in Japan Bitches!
And trick me they did. During my junior year of college I decided to go study abroad in Sendai, Japan. The program, G3 exchange @ Tohoku University, was an engineering program where all the classes were entirely in English. It sounds too easy right? Well it was. Mainly because I was a native english speaker, but there were also students from all over the world who had to study engineering in their non-native language.
Imoni party (a staple of northern Japanese life) with my friends
Despite being cocooned in a English bubble, Japan still managed to give me a good kick in the behind. I remember not being able to read any of the signs walking down the street, being flustered when the cashier at the convenience store asked me if I wanted chopsticks, spinning in circles inside of the train station trying to find the right platform until an old man felt sorry for me and told me where to go.
During my exchange I was taking intermediate Japanese classes at the University twice a week. This time the teacher did the thing where they only speak Japanese, and we were moving double the speed as the class I had in America. The textbook we were using here was “Minna no Nihongo 2”.
My favorite part of my exchange though had nothing to do with the University. It was this conversational Japanese class called 日本語のもり that happened two times a week at the city’s international center. You would walk in, they would pair you with a volunteer who were usually these really sweet retired people, and you would just sit and talk for two hours.
Here’s the flyer that they put up that convinced me to go
I say sit and “talk,” but for the first half of my exchange I could barely put together a sentence. The first lesson I had was with this chic old man who wore a scarf indoors. He spent the entire time pointing at different food in a picture book, and I would tell him if I liked to eat that food or not .「はい、すしすきです。」I’m not very picky when it comes to food, so you can imagine that this grandpa was very patient as we attempted to have an interesting conversation.
My exchange at Tohoku University was pretty short, only four months long, but at the end of my time there I had improved leaps and bounds. For my last day at the conversational Japanese class I wrote a letter to all the teachers there and gave a speech at the end. Everyone applauded. Though they might have just been trying to be polite.
When I finished my study abroad, I could introduce myself, make chit chat, and if I concentrated I could even understand what the other person was saying sometimes. At this point in time I would’ve probably called my Japanese conversational… that notion would be completely destroyed when I come back in year 4.
※If you are for some reason interested in reading more about my study abroad, I, like every worldly exchange student, kept a blog during this time and if you just flip back a few pages, you can find more posts from when I “discover myself.”
Year 3 Part 1: Climbing the Kanji Mountain
Part of this story actually happens in year 2, but for the purposes of good storytelling, year 3 is when I start getting serious about learning Japanese.
So by the time I came back to America I had just experienced a period of rapid growth in my Japanese language ability and gosh darn it if I let all my hard work go to waste! I’ve made it halfway through this arduous journey, and I’m not about to give up now.
Though realistically I was probably slightly worse off than a Japanese elementary schooler.
When I came back to start my Junior year in college I wanted to take more Japanese classes, but they were just not going to fit into my schedule. So instead I went the self-study route. Which can be a great idea if you’re disciplined. And a terrible idea if you’re like most people.
Luckily I was introduced to this very prescribed method of learning Japanese, specifically kanji, by a fellow exchange student called Wanikani.com. Wanikani is an SRS or spaced repetition software. How it works is that it introduces a flash card, and as you correctly identify it, it shows up in your review pile with less and less frequency. The idea is that you need more frequent encounters when the vocabulary is still new to you, but after a few times it becomes more ingrained in your memory and you won’t need to review it as much.
They teach you different radicals, kanji, and vocabulary 5 at a time
I love Wanikani. I paid for a year subscription for $150 with a coupon. And I got every single penny back and more. Using their service I learned 2000+ kanji in a span of about two years. That’s 6x faster than a Japanese student would learn in their 12 years of education. It shortcutted everything when it came to learning the hardest thing for most Japanese language learners… those darned Chinese characters.
But it wasn’t like it was easy or anything, it just made it easier than it would’ve been. Anyone trying to sell you “Fluency in only 6 months!!” Is a snake’s oil salesman.
Wanikani meant that for these two years everyday when I woke up, I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and then spent one hour pounding through flashcards. And every night I would change into my pajamas and spend another hour chugging through the rest. You couldn’t really take a break either, or the delicate equilibrium of flashcards in your review pile would exponentially soar burying you under a deep layer of hopelessness. But I guess that’s the business model.
But after getting through the program, again I saw this huge jump in what I was able to do. Now I could finally read real Japanese. I could dust off the manga that I told myself I would one day be able to read. Though, disclaimer: it still took me a few hours to go through a single volume of “Polarbear Cafe” which you probably can tell by the name, is not very advanced stuff.
Year 3 Part 2: Ukulele Dreams
笑ってくれる支えてくれる 励ましてくれる大事な人へ
To the people who’ve laughed with me, supported me, and encouraged me.
-感謝 by RSP
At first I was super excited that I’m onto year 4, and then I realized that this is actually still a part of year 3. So here we go... *backspace backspace backspace* *Y-e-a-r- 3 P-a-r-t 2…*
So around the same time I started learning Japanese, I had also picked up this other thing called a ukulele. I was drawn to it because it would finally let me sing outside of the shower, but also because it was a lot easier than learning the guitar.
The aforementioned ukulele...very good investment for only $50 on Amazon
During my last year of college I convinced my college to let me do an independent study on translating Japanese music. In reality I just wanted an excuse to futz around on my ukulele, borrow the schools expensive audio recording equipment, and get a chance to update my very on hiatus blog.
I would pick a song, translate the lyrics to Japanese, record myself playing the song, and then write a blogpost about interesting grammar or vocabulary things I found throughout the process.
At the end of the project I had ranked my initial learning goals from 1 (most effective at) to 7 (not so effective at), and this was the final list:
- Improve my familiarity with the language
- Learn how to shoot and edit simple music videos
- Get better at singing (at least on camera)
- Improve my reading speed
- Learn new vocabulary through songs
- Learn new kanji from songs
- Learn new grammar points
So you probably notice that anything related to “learn Japanese” ranked kinda low on what I felt like I had accomplished. Because I only ended up translating six songs total, it was hard to get the amount of exposure needed to remember new vocabulary. However, I would occasionally hear them watching anime or see them reading manga, and go “huh, that sounds familiar.”
So what did I learn from this project?
I think what I learned was how to sing Japanese songs on the ukulele. I learned where to get Japanese Ukulele tabs (U-fret.com). I learned about words that appear frequently in song lyrics but not so frequently in conversation like:
巡り会う to meet fortuitously
寄り添う to snuggle up to
よみがえる to be revitalized
I learned how to read faster so that I could keep pace with the music. So yeah. I learned an obvious lesson. I learned that you get good at the things you practice.
Year 4 part 1: Back in Japan
Wow! Are we finally at year 4? Year 3 was a struggle to finish writing.
The summer after graduating college I got an internship at a Japanese company. I didn’t really know what to expect and I was excited to see how much I had improved since my last time in Japan a year ago.
Me and the other interns doing some... “cultural exchange”
First day I walk into work and my boss greets me in English. I then meet my mentor, and he introduces himself in English too, this time with a full on American accent. And I was like woah, wtf. Is this normal?
Turns out the answer is no, and I just happened to luck out. Other interns I knew had to play telephone with their supervisors on google translate.
Outside of my direct supervisors there were many other opportunities to practice speaking Japanese so you’d think I’d be like COWABUNGA! But what I had failed to remember was that it’s heart wrenchingly embarrassing to try speaking a language your not good at.
So remember that point in Year 2 when I thought I was conversational in Japanese? Well after introducing myself and exchanging pleasantries I realized that I could not hold a real conversation with people. Once I was outside the comfort of what I had practiced in college, pushing a sentence out was like trying to clear a chunk of food after it gets lodged in your esophagus. Slow, awkward, and uncomfortable. But at least it wasn’t just me. Other people were also doing their best trying to communicate in English.
Year 4 part 2: Back home
My internship was only 2 months long, so eventually I came back home, unemployed and out of college. During this time I did several things to continue studying Japanese.
- I went back to hitting the books, specifically my third textbook “Tobira” which I would place around probably JLPT N3 level. Nothing super interesting here. I would just go chapter by chapter, read through the texts, and do the worksheets.
- I set out to challenge my first light novel, the first volume of “No. 6” by Asano Atsuko. It’s a short book but it took me a whole month, taking around an hour everyday to read a few pages, copying all the words I didn’t know down into a notebook.
- I wrote a journal entry everyday in Japanese on this site called italki.com where native Japanese speakers would then correct my entries. I just took a look back at the stuff I wrote and started sweating from how cringy it was…content wise and language wise.
- I made a language exchange friend through the same site and we would talk every week for an hour, the first half in Japanese and the latter half in English. We kept this up for a whole year (throughout my move to Japan), and she told me that there was a huge improvement from when we first met.
Here’s one of the many journal entries that I wrote...
Year 5: Shoot for the Moon (and if you miss at least try passing N1)
This year marks a period of extreme growth in my Japanese. In a single year I went from being unable to hold up my end of a conversation, to being able to sit in meetings held entirely in Japanese while also contributing my own thoughts and ideas.
After a few months at home, I got an email from the same company I did my internship at and they offered me a full time job. So I packed my bags and headed back to Japan at the beginning of the year.
What was different this time was that I wasn’t working on my own intern project anymore, so I was expected to collaborate with other people at my office, people from other offices, and clients that we had. This meant that while English was acceptable before, if I really wanted to contribute in a meaningful way at my job I needed to use Japanese.
This year wasn’t so much about studying, it was much more about learning on the fly and experiencing. Which-, hurray. No more textbooks. But because this was the real world and not a Japanese language learning sandbox, when I messed up the consequences weren’t just a bad test score. And I mess up real often.
It would be hard to write about every single thing that I did this year that has helped me improve my Japanese, but let's try to make a list.
- I work at an office where I speak Japanese daily
- I design, create presentations, write emails, and do paperwork in Japanese
- Shopping, eating out, going to the dentist, going to the hair salon, signing up for the gym, taking surfing and go classes, all in Japanese
- Weekly 1 hour Japanese lesson with my Japanese teacher
- Anime on Netflix in Japan doesn’t have English subtitles
- Reading manga, playing games, and learning more songs on the ukulele
- Studying for N1, I used Kanzen Master, Nihongo so-matome, and this N1 drill book (I should also mention that I failed N1 once before passing the 2nd time)
There’s probably so much more I’m forgetting but the point is, when you live in Japan, almost anything you do can improve your language skills. Though I would say out of everything in my list, the thing that has really improved my Japanese the most is work.
Being able to communicate my ideas, being able to discuss things with my coworkers, to be creative, and show people that I have something to contribute - this all required me to get better in Japanese. Sure I could do all of those in English, but then I’d be relying on someone else to have the English skills to interpret what I was saying. In order to communicate with a variety of people, getting good at Japanese fast was the obvious choice.
This year has been a lot of highs and a lot of lows. Choosing to study Japanese has given me this incredible opportunity to live this life outside of the U.S. I never thought I’d have. But even now I find myself stumbling with words, getting lost in conversations, anxious and scared about speaking. For every moment where I nailed it, there are so many more where I’m beating myself up for screwing up.
But that’s the thing right? The moment you stop feeling stupid, is the moment you’ve stopped learning. And luckily, I never seem to run out of ways to feel stupid when I’m in Japan.
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Here are some photos from the past year that I just wanted to share:
Went to Hawaii for the first time in my life
Climbed Mount Fuji
Went to Disney Sea
Met many awesome people
I’ve met a lot of people throughout this journey, so many who aren’t pictured. Thank you to each and everyone of you guys. I’m glad that the world brought us together.
