HannahEU's journey from barely aware to fluent: learning Japanese in 田舎 Japan!

皆さん、ようこそ! :wave:
I read Chimmsen’s slow and cozy Japanese journey recently, and felt inspired to post about my experiences learning Japanese as someone living in a rural area of Japan. :jp:
I hope others can at least be entertained by or relate to some of the experiences I share.
I tend to write a lot when I journal, so I can only imagine that will happen here too. I’ll try to create some organization for easier reading. :joy:
To lay the foundation for this journal, I’ll be writing a lot, so strap in and get comfy. :coffee:


The 田舎 and how it started

I am an ALT that came to Japan last summer through the JET program. By now it’s been about 7 months since I moved here! I live in Hokkaido, which is a massive area of Japan with many rural areas. Public transportation here is also more limited so if you don’t live in a city like Sapporo, having a car is pretty much a necessity. My town has a population of about 10,000 people. As of now, there is only one other ALT, but at least there are others in the towns nearby too. My area has a good amount of foreigners who moved here for farming too, but interactions with them are pretty limited. I work at 3 junior high schools with a total of 4 JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) with pretty decent English abilities.

When I first arrived, I had passed the N5 the previous December. Once I took the JLPT, I didn’t study much at all for the 3-5 months after that. Not sure exactly why but I just didn’t. So when I arrived in Japan I knew almost immediately that my N5 was not enough. That’s not to say it didn’t help, it did, but it made me realize it was just the beginning of understanding. This limitation fueled my fire to study and learn way more than it did when I was back home. I studied Japanese in university but the last official class I took was in 2019. After that, I studied completely solo. Never with much consistency until getting ready to take the N5 JLPT and applying for the JET Progam.


My language goals:

My goal is to become near fluent in Japanese. This is where my goals may seem pretty ambitious, but it seems more tangible to me on a flexible timeline. I know I won’t burn myself out and will let myself be flexible to take breaks or not do as much on some days.

I want to eventually pass the N1 and take the language proficiency tests that test your writing and speaking ability too, as those are not tested in the JLPT. I’ve also entertained the idea of getting my masters from a Japanese university. In the long run though, I don’t want to lose the Japanese I learn. That means, for me, to work in something that lets me use the language frequently. What that is, I don’t know yet.

Socially speaking, I want to connect with the people around me. I could tell from the beginning that people want to talk to me but the 言葉の壁 (language barrier) was in the way. I want to break that down so I can connect with my community.

Now, while I don’t want to restrict myself to a rigid timeline, just being on JET gives me a timeline of up to 3-5 years in my particular town. After JET is a whole lot of unknown so I find it best to do as much as I can while I’m here!

Why near fluency?
There are three main reasons for this. 1. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. 2. Many of my interests involve things that would use every aspect of a language; I have Japanese friends I’d like to talk to better and I like journaling, reading, and watching anime. 3. My college degree was in Anthropology and when I was young I got it in my head that the only way I would truly understand a culture was if I understood the language.


Where am I now in my language journey?

I am currently working through the Bunpro N4 grammar and vocabulary decks. I am hoping to take the N3 in December this year. I could take the N4 instead and pass no problems, but (here’s a nice JET insider) JET will reimburse the cost of the JLPT for N3 and above if you pass. So I’d rather aim higher and pay less. :star_struck:
My comprehension has gone up a lot compared to when I first arrived, but my ability to respond is pretty limited and rudimentary. Still better than it was though!


My study resources:
  • I use Bunpro every day to at least do reviews, but I don’t do the lessons every day if I’m too busy. I’m perceptually fighting a review mountain :mountain_snow:. I haven’t done any yet today and it’s sitting at a solid 358 right now. :sweat_smile: Each time I do a new vocabulary or grammar lesson I write it down in a notebook that I keep with me all the time. This helps me practice writing but also helps reinforce it in my mind. :writing_hand:

  • I also use WaniKani but I’m not as consistent with that. I have noticed it helps when I do though. I’m currently level 6, so not very far honestly, but it does help me create connections to the things I learn through Bunpro. I use it about 3-4 days a week on average.

  • Manga and Anime have been a great entertainment style of study. Lately I’ve been watching One Piece :pirate_flag: and reading 気になっている人が男じゃなかった. :green_heart: (multiple times since it’s not too long, good practice, and so cute!)
    A student lent me a novel to read, but I’ve never read one before, so I’m not sure how well that will go. It does have furigana at least and I was able to read through the first page with minimal googling.

  • I use YouTube for easy and controlled listening practice as well as shadowing. Some of the channels I watch the most are けんさんおかえり/ Japanese Conversations, Daily Japanese with Naoko, and Comprehensible Japanese

  • The people around me! I spend a lot of my time with Japanese people. I have my coworkers I meet outside of work, staff drinking events throughout the year, and chatting in the office here and there. Regularly I go to yoga, karate, the easy Japanese club, and run the English club for my town too. My guess is that I will end up writing about the social interactions I have here as those are times when I feel the most accomplished or defeated.

  • There are a few other resources I use scattered around too. I will link/ mention them as they come up.


And there you have it! お疲れ様です!We’ve made it to the end of this post! If you have any tips and tricks, comments, questions, or anything at all, I’d love to hear about it!
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you all next time! :wave: またねー

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Yeah same! Hopefully you have some deskwarming time now to study :slight_smile: the 1 is when I came to Japan on the Jet Program

I recomend trying KanjiDamage if you haven’t payed for Wanikani yet. It has some similarities to wanikani- but it’s free

Watching your fav anime and manga is the best feeling!
My town onsen/sento is 500円 on weekdays for residents (weekends and out of town pay more) and they have thousands of manga. a soothing bath then a good book is amazing. I try to go once a month.

You can also try watching the news or the Ameba App for more listening practice. Language Reactor lets you google words from Netflix. I usally don’t wanna break up the flow by pausing all the time, I’m trying it out now to collect more vocab.

Ah, at the cat cafe on Monday I started a heated discussion by asking “which is the best castle” the four Japanese people got so heated and into it. I’ve never seen a Japanese obasaan so pasionate!

I am also in both of these clubs.

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Thanks for sharing your experiences, HannahEU!

I really enjoyed reading about your take on life in the northern Japanese countryside. You also seem like you’ve got a good plan on how to achieve your language goals. 頑張ってね!

As for tips/tricks, maybe you could consider picking up the 完全マスタ (N3) vocab book if you’re going for N3 this year? Not everybody likes textbooks, but I find this series particularly helpful at preparing for the exam.

Anyway, keep us all posted !

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I’m so jealous about the onsen situation you described! It sounds so relaxing :slight_smile:

And haha! That’s hilarious about the castles as well. I’ve only seen a few but was really impressed. Hoping to visit Matsumoto Castle someday.

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Yay for your study log! Living in Hokkaido sounds lovely and I hope you will also add a bit about your daily life to your log :slight_smile:

Getting to N3 sounds really manageable for you! And if your motivation ever wanes, just hop into this thread and ask us to motivate you ^^

If you still find it troublesome to read, I highly recommend the wanikani bookclubs (you probably already know about them, since you are on wanikani), especially the beginner ones oftentimes analyze all the sentences in a passage, but even for intermediate ones, you can ask all the questions and get high quality answers. They were a big help in the beginning for me, and gave me the courage to tackle native materials on my own.

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Loved the post! Good luck on your studies going forward! (also love the Allen pfp I’ve had that exact same pfp on spotify for like 4 years now lol)

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@Noxsora
It looks like we both got into it once we were here lol.

I’ve never heard of KanjiDamage so I’ll take a look. I do pay for WaniKani already but having another resource never hurts. Just helps me figure out what works for me!

This is actually my first time watching One Piece. I have plenty of friends who love it and have told me to watch it, but the idea of it was daunting back home. Now it seems something that will never end and I’ll have plenty of entertainment while working on my listening.
Man, the onsen sounds like the dream! I have several large tattoos, so even the one onsen in the town over I can’t use. I bet they would have manga too though.

I have language reactor but no longer have Netflix :cry: I did enjoy it for the time I had it. I would probably enjoy it a lot more where I am now in my study journey though.
The argument with the obaasans sounds so funny! I should ask that at my next yoga class.

@Quickhands18
I have the N4 books now and have used them only a little so far. Another friend of mine really liked them for prep too. The N4 books, I think, are a bit behind where I am with Bunpro, so it’s acting as a way to review stuff. I’m still trying to get used to the reading book and how it works. I’ve been using kanji, vocabulary, and reading books the most, but I haven’t done much with grammar and listening. I also don’t have a way to read the CD yet.

@Chimmsen
I definitely will include daily life stuff! Those I find to be the most fun to talk about :blush:
I appreciate the encouragement, as I think I’ll definitely need some when I’m feeling bad about social interactions!
I did see that early on when I joined WaniKani, but I also noticed the same thing was here on Bunpr,o so I haven’t really used the community portion of WaniKani. Do you have an opinion on the differences of the book clubs on WaniKani vs Bunpro? Which one do you think is more beneficial?

@Nydren Yeeeeesss! D-Gray Man fan!! It’s such a good pfp. Half Off Books had the whole collection of the published books and I bought it so fast! I wish it would be completed already, but instead only short chapters are released something like twice a year… :sob:

As far as book clubs go, bunpro seems to be dead, sadly. Wanikani has lots of very active book clubs at all levels with a lot if in-depths discussion about grammar and vocab use, very learning focused. Natively also has a lot of book clubs, those are more themed, like a yuri book club, with difficulty varying a lot. The book clubs on there focus more about enjoying what you read and discussing the story.

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Today was graduation day for the middle schools and I got to experience a Japanese graduation ceremony for the first time. :man_student: :woman_student: It felt a lot heavier than US graduation ceremonies do. But I still had a good time. The amount of bowing was insane and I had to stay on my toes to figure out when I needed to bow too. While I couldn’t grasp the entirety of the speeches given, I was able to understand enough that I too felt moved by what was said.
As a foreigner, I don’t really know what is going on around me for things like this and I won’t know unless I ask. Even then, what is explained to me may not be enough to grasp the situation. I think this is because people don’t know what I don’t know.

After everything was wrapped up, I ended up chatting with a co-worker for a long while. We’d never really talked before this point. We talked about the Hokkaido dialect and compared it to other areas of Japan. I had known about なまら which is like とても and こわい which is like 疲れる but she also told me about 〜べ. I hadn’t heard of it before but it works the same as だろう、でしょう、and じゃん. She said it was pretty common to hear in my area. Until now, I was told Hokkaido ben was something only older people used so I’ll definitely be listening to べ from now on to see who uses it.
Among other things, we also talked about sports and she showed me the town was recruiting for テニポン which looked like soft tennis but…not sure if it’s different or not. :tennis: It was nice to talk with her for so long, feeling like I was surviving the conversation. Responses were rough, but I was able to try more the longer it went on for, and as I got comfortable in the conversation. She reassured me that she was able to understand what I was saying too, which was nice. I think it’s easy to tell when I’m searching for the right word or grammar.
The テニポン is every Sunday so maybe I’ll see what it’s like. I’m trying to keep a nice balance between active and rest though. The co-worker I talked with is leaving the school after spring break, which starts next week, so I don’t know if I’ll see her again unless she stays local. Either way, it’s nice to connect with someone new like that. Because she’s leaving, it also acted as a little push to keep going since there are people who I only have so long to get to know before life happens.

That’s all for now! Catch you next time.

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They should tell you when to bow/stand/sit. If you don’t know them then you may find these words useful for next year: 起立、着席、礼、一同、職員、卒業生

I remember being quite confused myself at my first ceremony. Where I’m from we have no graduation ceremonies outside of university so I was doubly confused as to what was going on and why. Actually at a different school event one of the teachers was on autopilot and stood up when the students were told to, much to everyone’s amusement, so don’t worry too much as even natives get it wrong sometimes.

This one is used in quite a lot of the North/Eastern part of Japan in general so you may actually hear it even on regular TV shows etc!

You may enjoy this map:

Enjoy 春休み!

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You may or may not like Dragon Ball Z but, having read the manga, I noticed that Chichi (Goku’s wife) uses this ending quite a bit. She’s supposed to be from the country side, so it makes sense.

Goku is also from the country side, but he doesn’t use this dialect. Instead, he’s more of a typical 少年 character, with a heavy use of slang. Because of that his Japanese is very rough, but then you learn the patterns and realize it’s actually not hard at all.

Anyway, just wanted to comment on that bit since it caught my attention and reminded me of when I was reading the DBZ manga.

Good luck in your journey!!

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@CursedKitsune Thank you for those key words! The first two are ones I’m not super familiar with but feel pretty important. While there was lots of 礼 it was never explicitly said when it was done. It was actually pretty quite with pretty much no instructions to those who weren’t actively participating like the students or speakers.

I actually heard recently from a coworker that where he’s from universities and above have “thank you parties” (謝恩会) after graduation, but in Hokkaido it’s most grades. It’s interesting to hear about cultural differences, even within Japan.

Thank you for the map! That’s very cool to see!

@Jose7822
I’ve only ever watched one episode of Dragon Ball Z, but it’s cool to see dialect differences in Japanese media. If you’re familiar with Barakamon, I’ve heard it’s pretty difficult to read because it’s not typical Japanese.

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This week is my last week at schools before the new school term. Around this time students graduate and some staff change.
Yesterday I had a farewell party for a friend I also worked with at one of my schools. It’s sad to see her leave since she’s an outgoing person and a great drinking buddy. She ran the Easy Japanese Club and helped many foreigners get comfortable here in town and find a place for themselves. She helped me find my current karate dojo too. The people who came were a mix of Japanese people and foreigners. I haven’t been in that much of a mix before so it was encouraging to see people who had a comfortable grasp of the language far better than I and also that I was understanding more than some. It hadn’t occurred to me just how much I was understanding. I have looked at my journey as something I must strive to get higher and higher with but I got a little reminder yesterday to look back at my progress.

Today I was gifted a little booklet of messages from my soon to be 3rd year students. It was so cute to receive and I wasn’t expecting it. I thought it was all in English but it was actually mixed. It also made me pretty happy to be able to read most of all of it except for a few words like “おかげ” “発声練習” and “苦手”

Now to deflate myself. I had a facepalm moment while studying today. I have been struggling with “choice: せんたく” for a while and after a conversation with a coworker about how I probably smell nice due to how I do my laundry, I had this feeling that I was confusing the words “choice” and “laundry.”
I hadn’t made the connection that they were pronounced the same. :woman_facepalming:t2: I definitely don’t think I’ll be having problems with those words anymore.

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Trust me that won’t be the last (at least when it comes to words that are pronounced the same).

Unless you’re already familiar with the words and their context, you’ll likely think they’re talking about something else, lol. But you know what? Those are the moments that truly solidify concepts in our brains, which help with acquiring a language.

頑張ってね!

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I second that, there was a time someone was talking to me about じしん and I was completely lost why she was talking about 自信 self confidence in that context, but she was actually talking about 地震 earthquakes :expressionless: I did know both words but for some reason without subtitles the right one didn’t come to my mind :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: now im well aware じしん can be different things and im sure next time I’ll figure out which one the person is talking about :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: (but probably this will happen again with other words…)

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@Jose7822
Absolutely! I also find it fun those conversations lead to because once everyone realizes the misunderstanding there’s a little conversation about it or something. It’s fun to see Japanese people realize how that mistake was made or for them to realize something about the language they’ve never really thought about as someone who grew up with the language.

@Estelle
I had that same problem! Except for that one, I realized pretty quickly they had the same pronunciation. Maybe because I learned them closer together? Context definitely helped in conversations and, so far, I’ve mostly heard people talk about 地震 and not 自信.

I’ve also been entertained by words where the only difference is the little っ or tenten mark. I’ve mentality prepared to ask my karate sensei a question but got stuck trying to figure out if “kick” was けり(蹴り) or げり (下痢)and knew it would be so embarrassing for me and funny for them if I asked and had them mixed up. :sob:

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Me too, all the time! Thanks for making me feel not alone :rofl:

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I’m glad your graduation ceremony went well! This year was my 2nd time so I knew what to expect (so I thought). One of my students fainted and landed on his face right in front of me… there was quite a bit of blood and he was stretchered away but it was quite shocking…

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@Chimmsen No problem lol There’s probably plenty of instances like this.

@someoneyoudontknow Wow! I wonder if they had locked out their legs for too long. Either way, that’s definitely shocking and painful for the student, no doubt. What a ceremony.

My study motivation has been pretty low this week. I have desk warming all this week and next and I was really hoping to take advantage of that time to study and bring all my reviews down. I study some but then do something different instead. I might just have to roll with it this week and hope motivation comes again.
I think initially, it was because of physical and mental fatigue. I was super sore on Monday from karate on Saturday. The infamous second day soreness. And then that same day I had a nomikai where I drank too much and stayed up too long for having work the next day. So yesterday I was fighting sleepiness throughout my work day. I took a big fat nap once I got home though so that was glorious.
I realized a lot of things I’ve been behind on today. So it’s possible I’m going through a lull in general and need to wait for it to pass or do the tiniest increments to try to get myself back into things. We’ll see how I feel after today.

Now for my nomikai this week! I had a blast! The first half was of course the formalities and eating at a restaurant. It was fun to talk with co-workers I don’t usually get the chance to and to see their silly side. I always forget that there’s usually a second wave somewhere else so we went to one of their houses and bought drinks and snacks at Seico Mart.
At the co-workers house, it was fun to chat and talk with everyone. Alcohol makes for less inhibition but potentially more mistakes but I had a good time! I know there was plenty of points where I was missing parts of the conversation and typically that’s not a problem. What did feel like a problem was when one of my co-workers was apologizing a lot to one of the girls. I had no clue what he was apologizing for but it went on for a while and curiosity had me dying that I had didn’t know why. That same co-worker who was apologizing ended up being the last person I was with at the end of the night walking home since we lived near each other and he apologized for bringing the energy down. He asked if I understood what happened and I told him no. He explained what he did and that he could see she was really angry about it. What blew my mind was that I couldn’t sense that at all from her. I get there’s a language barrier but how people act when they’re angry is not what I’m used to here. Maybe that’s how she is when she’s angry but it made me think I’m not going to be able to tell if someone is angry with me without the language to understand choice of words and phrasing.

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