I read lots of children’s books, played with plenty of apps on my iPhone and computer, watched the occasional Studio Ghibli film and some anime.

I became proficient at memorising kanji but the first time I heard real-life native Japanese people, I had no freaking idea what they were saying at all.

Looking back it seems a no-brainer but at the time I was so focussed on what the textbooks were telling me to do that I completely missed one of the most obvious needs of learning a language – the need to be able to converse with a native speaker.

What’s The Point

You may be thinking ‘I can’t understand any Japanese so why would I listen to it yet – what’s the point?’

The point is that the more you listen to Japanese the more you’ll pick up on the words, phrasing, timing and everything else about how a native speaks their language.

It’s no different to how we all learnt as babies.

We listened to our parents and those around us and then regurgitated that in one way or another until we got it right. As babies we had no idea what anyone was saying but once you listen enough, it will sink in eventually.

So with that in mind let’s take a quick look at some places you can listen to native Japanese speakers and it’s all for free – nice ^_^

Stick with the longer podcasts (20-30 minutes) as you can then sit back and listen or play it in the background on your computer without having to change it every five minutes.

Podcasts

There’s an almost endless amount of Japanese podcasts available across any genre you can imagine

I don’t particularly care what I listen to as long as it sounds like the people on the other end are having fun. I lean towards comedy and music plus some news but that is normally a little boring, which is not what we want.

So where do I find all these podcasts? Glad you asked. ^_^

At the bottom of your iTunes store page, change your store location to “日本” (it’s at the bottom of the page of countries – look for the Japanese flag).

Once you’re in the Japanese iTunes store, scroll down to the bottom right of the page and you’ll see a Podcasts list – click “View All” to see a whole range of choices.

They’re all free, so go ahead and preview a few and then subscribe/download a few that you really like.

Music

Japanese music is a little harder to get your hands on but not impossible.

You’ll need a Japanese iTunes gift card to be able to download any songs and you can only get those in Japan or at certain sites like JList, who sell Japanese products to the world.

As you probably don’t know any Japanese band names yet, just click around the iTunes store and you can listen to a preview of anything you want.

Make a note of the singer or band name and head over to YouTube to find their promo or concert videos, which you can then listen to as much as you want before making a purchase.

Radio, TV and More

There’s an awesome mp3 listing of English and Japanese novels and fairytales read by native Japanese over at how-to-learn-any-language.com

These are read in a more formal way so they won’t be anything like what you hear on the TBS comedy show I mentioned above but they’re fun to try and the wider range of audio you listen to the better you’ll get.

Other options are Japanese radio shows, which you can find via the “Radio” section of iTunes under “World” or “International” or just search Google.

Also check out Keyhole TV for live streaming of many Japanese TV stations. Although the quality is not good, I find listening to all the variety shows and the ads is heaps of fun.

There’s also Ustream, JustinTV and much more. Google is your friend ^_^

Have Fun

Good luck and listen to as much as you can and keep it fun.

You’ll find over the first couple of weeks that you start picking up lots of new words and that’s when you know you’re making progress even if it is just small steps to start with.

• App Giveaway: Japanese 101 Particles
• 3 Ways to Learn Japanese With YouTube
• Use Twitter To Improve Your Japanese
• App Review: Japanese 101 – Particles
• J-Music: Capsule

It doesn’t happen every week or even every month but lack of motivation hits us all at some point.

However, it’s the people who push through that wall and continue their studies that will eventually become a Japanese ninja. ^_^

My favourite thought when studying Japanese seems all too hard is that even the dumbest, most stupid person in Japan knows how to read, write and speak Japanese to a higher level then you are now.

So while you’re thinking that it’s all impossible – it isn’t – there are 125 million Japanese (give or take few) to prove you wrong. They all read, write and speak Japanese to one degree or another and if they can, then so can you.

BTW I don’t like to, and never have, called anyone stupid or dumb but I think you get my point…..anyone (yes, you) is capable of learning Japanese. ^_^

Good luck!

• Learning Japanese: Never Give Up
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• Don’t Be Deaf To Japanese
• Book Review: Japanese Graded Readers

What is a tense? Verb tenses are used to express time. Things can happen now, in the future or in the past and the tenses show the time of a verb’s action or being.

Below are a few simple examples in English.

On top of describing the past and present, we also need to know how to say whether the action is in the positive (also known as affirmative) or negative.

I’ll use drinking to describe the various tenses so make sure you’re over 21 before reading on ^_^

Present Tense

Affirmative: He drinks.
Negative: He does not drink.

Past Tense

Affirmative: He drank.
Negative: He did not drink.

That’s tenses in a nutshell….well in English anyway……but that’s not what you’re here for is it? You want it in Japanese! Yes? はい! Okay so here we go….

In Japanese there are only four main ways to construct a verb. We’ll look at the most basic “to be” in the examples below.

The では in these examples is pronounced “de-wa” not “de-ha”. The use of the “wa” particle can be seen in such common words and phrases as konnichi wa (こんにちは), konban wa (こんばんは) and watashi wa (わたしは).

Let’s go through some examples using my favourite pet – ねこ (ne-ko = cat).

Using the tense table above we can construct simple statements just by adding the appropriate ending to our noun, cat (ねこ).

To say “It is…” we simply add です after the noun to get – ねこ です (It is a cat). To make that statement in the past tense positive, we simple change です (de-su) to でした (de-shi-ta). ねこ です (It is a cat) becomes ねこ でした (It was a cat).

From previous articles, you may have remember that Japanese has no distinction between singular and plural so both of the sentences could also mean “They are cats” and “They were cats”.

Switching to the negative, ねこ です (It is a cat) becomes ねこ では ありません (It isn’t a cat) and ねこ でした (It was a cat) becomes ねこ では ありません でした (it wasn’t a cat).

Have a go a constructing your own phrases with words such as いぬ (dog), うま (horse) or いえ (house).

There’s plenty more on verbs including -masu and -te verbal forms but we’ll leave that for another day.

Any questions please leave a comment.

• Japan Signs: Soup Nazi Barber
• Word Of The Week: Monogatari (物語)
• Hiragana: The S Line
• Learning Japanese: Never Give Up
• Book Review: Japanese Graded Readers

Don’t worry if you miss out on the free codes as the app is also on sale from Friday 9th July to Monday 12th July 2010 at US$3.99 – close to 40% off!

The codes below will only work in the US iTunes Store – sorry to those outside of the US (like me).

Please make a note of the code you use in the comments below so others know not to use that code.

If you snooze, you lose! ^_^

Sorry – All codes now gone! Please take advantage of the weekend sale to grab yourself a copy for just $3.99.

Redeeming The Codes

• Go to the iTunes Store
• Click on REDEEM under the Quick Links category on the right hand side
• Enter an unused code to start the free download

The Codes

• R446Y44RM6YH
• RPMJAJJLNAAK
• H4KRNEJE39R6
• 6HXMP96EHEXT
• 7PLK9MYA4JKM

Check out my video review of Japanese 101: Particles plus more reviews are available at yonasu.com, lizlearns and mobileinjapan.com

• App Review: Japanese 101 – Particles
• Don’t Be Deaf To Japanese
• App Review: KanjiPop
• Japan Images: Condomania
• Remembering the Kanji: One Year Later

Surprisingly there are very few iPhone apps that cover this area of the market and even fewer that do it well.

This is where Japanese 101: Particles steps in to fill the void.

While its feature set is deliberately limited – it does what it does, very well and there is something to be said for that.

The app covers all of the particles you’ll need to master in the beginner to intermediate stages of learning Japanese, including は、が、に、で、と、も、や、を、にも、でも、より、か、まで and から.

Video Review

Study Mode

In Study Mode you choose from over 160 sentences in JLPT N4 and N5. Each level can be reviewed sequentially or via a convenient shuffle mode, which helps to keep things fresh.

Each sentence is presented in Japanese and automagically read to you by a native speaker. The user must study the sentence and guess the missing particle highlighted with red crosses.

If you happen to miss the audio when the screen first loads, clicking the speaker icon replays the sentence audio, which is especially helpful for beginners with very little listening practice – a common issue for beginners who self-study.

When you think you have the answer, you simply tap anywhere on the screen to reveal the full sentence written in Japanese, romaji and English. The correct particle is highlighted with asterisks in the romaji version of the sentence.

If you get the particle wrong, you can choose to click on the “Notes” button at the bottom left of the screen to view a detailed grammatical explanation of why that particle was used in the sentence. This feature alone is worth the price of the app.

Apart from the use of romaji, the Study Mode is an excellent way to sharpen your particle chops before heading over to the Quiz section.

Quiz Mode

The Quiz Mode is where you put your new found particle skills to the test and there are two ways to go at this point – Multiple Choice and Fill in the Blanks.

Multiple choice offers the same sentence groups from the Study Mode plus the choice of two or four particles from which to choose your answer.

Clicking the start button takes you to the test screen and the first sentence is read aloud to you.

This is where things can start to get really tricky as there are no cheat sheets or hidden screens to help – it’s just you and the audio and particles on the screen.

After answering each question, you’re greeted with native Japanese audio feedback based on whether you answered correctly or not. This can range from “Well Done!” to “So close!” and everything in between. A nice touch.

A tally of your right and wrong answers sits at the bottom of the screen and at the end of the quiz you can then review any questions you missed.

The other option in the Quiz Mode is “Fill-in-the-Blank”.

The difficulty meter hits its peak in this challenge as you have to input your answer in Hiragana and there are no multiple choices to help you out here.

While it is far more difficult than multiple choice, this option will give you a very good idea as to whether you know your particles or not.

If you can make it through the Fill-in-the-Blank section without a mistake you’re well on your way to becoming a particles ninja.

Summary

Japanese 101: Particles, as well as most of the other apps Harvey has on sale at www.japannewbie.com, wisely focuses on just one aspect of the Japanese language at a time rather than trying to be everything to everyone.

The result is an app that will definitely help you achieve your goal of mastering particles. It can’t force you to memorise them or make sure you’re doing your revisions – that’s up to you of course.

My only negatives with Japanese 101: Particles are mostly aesthetic.

As some reviewers have already previously noted, the look and feel could do with a bit more polish but I guess that is purely subjective and wouldn’t bother most people.

Something that I do feel strongly about is the use of romaji. I’m not sure it belongs in any app and especially one teaching particles, where you could safely assume that the user is a serious student.

If the romaji must remain, it would be great to have the option to switch between Kana and romaji. End of romaji rant ^_^

At US$5.99, Japanese 101: Particles is great value for money. Most Japanese learning textbooks are in the US$20-$50 range and don’t offer any of the interactivity and feedback of this app.

So if you’re struggling with particles or just starting out, get over to the iTunes store now and grab a copy of Japanese 101: Particles – you won’t be disappointed.

Disclosure: I only review applications that I own and pay for myself. Hopefully this means you get a review without any hidden catches.

• Review: My Top 5 Kanji iPhone Apps
• App Review: KanjiPop
• Have Fun With Kanji Reps
• App Giveaway: Japanese 101 Particles
• 3 Ways to Learn Japanese With YouTube

I stumbled on this juice bar at a train station in Tokyo and thought it would make a perfect image for my Japan Sign series.

There’s a great mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji although I’ll mainly be looking at the katakana in today’s example. As always please feel free to work your way through the whole sign and see what you can work out.

Banana Juice (バナナジュース)

First up on the left we have Banana Juice (バナナジュース), which is entirely in Katakana. Banana is written as バナナ (ba-na-na) and juice is ジュース (ju-u-su).

While banana is straight forward, juice is a little more tricky as it has two problem areas for beginners – the small yu (ュ) joined to the ジ (ji) to form ジュ (ju) and then a ー, which doubles the vowel sound preceding it.

Small Kana

To arrive at the final syllable (ju), we need to start with シ (shi) and then add the double marks (ジ), known as dakuten, which then changes its meaning to ji. From there we add the small ュ (yu) to form ジュ (ju). The ー after ジュ doubles the vowel sound to get juu. Phew!

There are several hiragana/katakana that can be both normal and small size including ゃ (ya), ゅ (yu), ょ (yo) and tsu (っ) or in katakana ャ (ya), ュ (yu), ョ (yo) and tsu (ッ). Check out my little tsu article for more information.

There are two main rules to apply when a little kana follows a normal size kana.

The first rule is for two letter kana (eg most of them) – remove the last letter of the kana and add the full little kana. An example is きゃ (kya), which starts as き (ki) but when the little hiragana ゃ(ya) is added it becomes きゃ (kya).

When it comes to three-letter kana like し (shi), the rule changes. In this instance you remove the last letter and keep the first two to get しゃ (sha) rather than shya or sya as you might expect.

More Fruit

Mango Juice follows the same pattern with Mango written as マンゴ followed by ジュース (juice). Mango, like banana, is a loan word and as such is always written in katakana.

Our next sign is カシスと黒酢ジュース, which translates as Black Currant and Black Vinegar Juice.

The spelling of Black Currant (カシス ka-shi-su) comes from the word – Cassis – which means French Black Currants.

We then see the particle – と – that basically means “and”.

Finally we get to 黒酢ジュース.

黒酢 can be broken down as 黒 (くろ – black) and 酢 (ず – vinegar).

Kiwi and Apple Juice (キーウィとりんごジュース) is our last Japan Sign on the right.

Kiwi is another loan word so is written in katakana – キーウィ. We see the と particle again and then りんご, which you most likely know means “Apple”.

Well we’ve made it through all of the great fruit drinks on offer. I hope it’s been useful to you and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

The Breakdown

• Japan Signs: Virgin Bourbon
• Learn Katakana: Japanese Computer Terms
• The Tale of the Little Tsu
• Japan Signs: A Day At Ueno Zoo
• Japan Signs: Going Overseas?

I found this small ¥1,000 barber shop hidden somewhere in the back blocks of Ueno Station in Tokyo.

The whole concept highlights the Japanese predilection for hyper-efficiency and I must admit that is exactly what I love about Japan.

Although the love doesn’t extend far enough to get my haircut for ¥1,000. I’d assume you get one style here – salaryman standard. ^_^

While the English words on the sign read like something from Seinfeld’s infamous Soup Nazi episode, the Japanese is actually a little more polite.

I’ll break down a couple of the phrases below from the sign and then you can take it from there.

If you’d like to learn more please use an online dictionary such as www.tangorin.com to work through the kana and kanji.

1st Phrase: 千円札をご用意ください

2nd Phrase: 両替はできません

I’m not going to go in to the details of every line on the sign. Instead, I have chosen a couple of key items from the 2nd phrase that are worth noting.

は Particle

While I won’t go deeply in to particles at this stage, the は particle in the phrase above is one of the most important in the Japanese language.

It is known as a “topic marker” and signifies the topic of the sentence, which in this case is the “changing of money” or “money exchange” eg if you don’t have a ¥1,000 bill, you’re out of luck.

There is no direct English translation for the は particle but it essentially has the meaning “as for”. So in this context it roughly means “As for the changing of money, we are unable to do (it).”

You’ll probably first come across the は particle in a sentence such as “わたはジョンです” which literally means “As for me, I am John” or in normal English – “I am John”.

Verbs – Tense

The dictionary form of できません is できる, which means “to be able to”.

To make a “ru” verb in to the negative present form as we see in our example above, you just remove the る and add on ません, which gives us できません.

There’s plenty more to know about verbs but that’s for another article.

Any questions please leave a comment below.

• Tenses: Past and Present
• Japan Signs: Waiting Room
• Japan Signs: Tokyo Fruit Juice Bar
• Japan Signs: A Day At Ueno Zoo
• Japan Signs: Watch The Door

The internet has made many things in our lives so much easier and learning languages is definitely one of those.

It doesn’t make the actual learning part easier, of course ^_^, but it does make the learning materials much simpler (and cheaper) to access and as such the excuses for not learning get harder to find.

Oddly enough, Twitter, the social behemoth, is one such learning resource.

The ubiquity of Twitter, via a strong mobile and desktop presence and a ton of third party apps, means you can connect to the Twitterverse in so many different ways.

I access Twitter via Tweetdeck and Tweetie on my iPhone and then through the browser and Tweetie’s desktop client when I’m back at home – simple and always convenient.

Having the ability to always connect to Twitter on the run means you essentially have a free Japanese resource available to you at any time and wherever you happen be.

If you are heading to work on the train or bus, sitting in a traffic jam, lying on the beach or just bumming around at home – if you’re connected, you can be learning.

So how do I actually learn Japanese from Twitter? Well, here’s a few ideas to get you started.

Follow Japanese Learning Tweeters

The first, and perhaps most obvious example, is simply to follow Japanese learning tweeters.

There’s a shedload of people providing great (and free) Japanese learning resources including everything from daily kanji updates to links back to blog articles at Japanese learning sites.

A few I’d suggest to start with are @learnkanji, @tofugu and @rainbowhill. To find more folks providing this type of service, try searching Twitter for keywords like “learn japanese”, “learn kanji” or just “hiragana”.

Follow Japanese/English Tweeters

There are also plenty of people on Twitter, who tweet both in Japanese and English.

A good starting point is to follow just a few tweeters at first and get used to reading and translating their posts in Japanese but also allowing your brain a rest in between with their English tweets. You don’t want to burn out by seeing a full page of kanji every time you open their page.

If English is not your native language, the same applies to finding a 50/50 tweeter in your language, who also tweets in Japanese. With millions of users across the world there will definitely be someone to fit your needs from Afrikaans to Yiddish. Although your mileage may vary finding a Yiddish-Japanese tweeter ^_^

If you’re only new to kanji make sure you keep a few tabs open in your browser and use Google Translate and/or an online Japanese-English dictionary like Tangorin to figure out what is being written. It’s as simple as cutting the Japanese text and pasting it into the translator of your choice.

Break the kanji down one by one, if necessary, and work your way through the tweet until you at least have a rough idea of what you are reading. If you only know two kanji out of 50 in the tweet and you learn two new ones then that is a great result – a 100% improvement!

Don’t think that you are somehow cheating looking up the kanji in a translator. You’ll learn much faster if you push yourself to read above your level but just make sure you are retaining at least some of the new information to use the next time you see the same kanji.

It is important to not fall in to the trap of using Google Translate as soon as you see any kanji. Make sure you first think about what you are reading and see if you can work it out – you may surprise yourself ^_^

Also be aware that the results from Google Translate are sometimes very rough so just use it as a way to get an idea of what’s being said but don’t try to translate a press release with it.

If you use something like Anki (and I highly recommend you do) I suggest making a new set of cards to note each new kanji you come across and that way you can keep testing and building on your knowledge.

Try starting your Japanese/English Twitter experience with @dannychoo or @ajatt as they, and some of their followers, post a lot in both Japanese and English.

If their tweets are not to your liking, try searching through people following them and you may find others who tweet in Japanese but have interests more to your taste. There’s something for everyone.

Follow Japanese Tweeters

Now we’re getting to the hard stuff – following Japanese only tweeters. There are thousands upon thousands of Japanese tweeters that never post in anything but Japanese.

These people are mostly Japanese writing in their native tongue but there are also many Japanese students, who post strictly in Japanese to maintain and improve their skills or simply because they enjoy using Japanese.

There’s a few things you can take away from following Japanese-only tweeters:

• You’ll learn a lot of new kanji, grammar and vocabulary if you use the steps I listed in the previous section above.
• You will quickly find out that real Japanese people talk/write quite differently from the crusty old textbooks you’ve been using.
• You’ll be exposed to a lot of the little idiosyncrasies of the language that come up in day to day native conversation, most of which you will never encounter in textbooks.

@mikamika59 is a great place to start as a Japanese-only tweeter. She occasionally writes in English but 99% of the time in Japanese and has over 6,000 tweets to get you started.

@gin_no_hera is an Englishman living in Japan who posts heaps in Japanese. These are just two different examples of many thousands available to you.

Try your hand at following these two tweeters and once you get confident, check out their followers for more Japanese-only tweeters and go from there – the choices are endless.

Share Your Knowledge

Amongst the Japanese-only tweeters you may also come across people who are currently learning English. You can bet they’re having just the same issues as you are with learning a new language and so hooking up with each other makes perfect sense.

The TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) is more or less the Japanese equivalent of the JLPT and as such you’ll find the term mentioned on Twitter by those who are working their way towards passing the test.

Do a quick search on Twitter for the term “TOEIC” you’ll find a very long list of potential learning partners. Follow them and then send a DM (Direct Message) or tweet them publicly and you may just find someone who is willing to give a little bit of Japanese tuition in return for some help with their English.

Don’t think you have nothing to offer – at the very least you’re probably 10-15 years ahead of them with learning English and vice-versa. Bear in mind that not everyone wants to be your learning buddy, you may go through 5, 40 or even 100 people before you find someone – don’t get discouraged.

So there you have it – four ways to use Twitter to improve your Japanese language skills and perhaps even find a few new friends plus of course you can find me lurking around tweeting most days of the week.

I look forward to hearing how you go.

• Don’t Be Deaf To Japanese
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If you spend any time reading around the interwebs this time of year, you’ll notice the great unwashed coming out of their caves and denouncing the JLPT as a waste of money and/or time.

While it is true that neither JLPT N4 or JLPT N3 are going to get you a job labelling life-saving pharmaceuticals in Japan, they do provide a consistent and relative summation of your Japanese skills. You take exactly the same test as everyone else in the world – it doesn’t get much fairer than that.

Of course, the JLPT on all levels is clearly lacking in some areas – particularly speaking and writing – but it is the best that is available outside of Japan so we can’t be too picky.

There’s really no simple answer as to why you should (or shouldn’t) take the JLPT, as everyone has a different reason for putting themselves to the test.

If you’re like me, you need a solid goal to get your arse in to gear.

As a full-time member of Procrastinators Anonymous, a tight, immovable deadline coupled with the fear of being mocked by my peers for coming up short would be reason enough for me to take it and to do well.

Perhaps your motivations are far less self-centred than mine, you may actually be looking at the JLPT certification for something important, like a job in Japan.

If you’re trying to secure any type of professional job, your employers will require at least JLPT N2 and more than likely JLPT N1.

Depending on the company, they may waive the JLPT requirement if you can prove in an interview that you are fluent. However, having that JLPT certificate in your hands confirms, at least on paper, that you have the required skills.

In a recent job ad on www.dannychoo.com, the ubiquitous Mr Choo posted his requirement for a new developer as:

You need to be well versed in Japanese – at least JLPT level two or equivalent speaking/reading and writing skill. If you can read most of the Japanese version of this post then you qualify for this requirement.

While JLPT N2 was used in the ad to set a benchmark that most understand, in reality if you knew your stuff and could prove your Japanese fluency then the job was yours. Unfortunately it counted me out of the race on both counts (^_^).

As with most things in life, it is best to do what you think is best for you and your future and not what others believe is best.

If you want a piece of paper hanging on the wall to tell your friends and family that you know 100 kanji and that your Japanese rocks, then do it.

If you’re eyeing off a future that includes well-paid employment in Japan then do it.

Take it for what it is, a simple test of skills. If you find the idea abhorrent then don’t apply.

What have you got to lose?

It’s a few hours out of your life and costs less than you’ll spend on beer at the pub this Saturday night.

• Do you have a J-CLUE?
• Learn Kanji: The Kanji Starter Kit
• Use Twitter To Improve Your Japanese
• Review: My Top 5 Kanji iPhone Apps
• Download: Free Kanji Graph Paper

So it’s only days away from the 2009 JLPT test and if you don’t know a good number of these i-adjectives by now, you’ll either need a case of RedBull to pull a few all-nighters or just resign yourself to guessing your way through the multiple choice questions.

Having said that, it’s never too late so I have prepared a quick Top 50 Adjectives list that should cover any questions of the i-adjectival nature that you’ll come across in a JLPT 4 test.

If you’re not sure of how the whole i-adjectives and na-adjectives thing works, I suggest taking a look at www.timwerx.net or Tae Kim’s Guide To Learning Japanese, who both explain it far better than I ever will.

Download JLPT 4: Top 50 Adjectives Worksheet »

JLPT 4: Top 50 Adjectives

Kana Only: Generally written in kana rather than kanji

Sourced via zonjineko.com, jlptstudy.com, tangorin.com and Jim Breen

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