I've been working as a developer in Japan for two years now. You'd think that since I came to Japan and got a job, I would have studied and prepared for Japanese to some extent, but that's not the case at all. I've never taken a single JLPT exam.
"How did this guy get a job in Japan?"
Putting aside my job search tale, which isn't all that exciting, let me share how I came to be able to speak Japanese.
I grew up indirectly watching and listening to Japanese dramas, movies, entertainment, anime, and music since elementary school.1 As my interest naturally grew, I learned hiragana and katakana by looking them up online. Whenever I was bored, I would jot down every object in front of me in kana in my notebook. For instance, if I had a computer in front of me, I'd write " コンピュタ " .2
When I was younger, I had no shame, so I would speak the Japanese I had heard and memorized from watching anime .3
Although I was interested, I didn't necessarily want to study Japanese; I just thought it was fun to play with another language. In high school, when we had to choose a second language, I would have studied Japanese if it had been available. Unfortunately, the only options were Spanish and French, so I chose French .4
It continued like this, and when I entered university, my Japanese language skills were roughly as follows:
| Skills | State |
|---|---|
| Hiragana | No problem |
| Katakana | It's a bit confusing, but I can manage. |
| Listening | I can understand about 70-80% of Japanese anime or dramas without subtitles. |
| Vocabulary & Reading | My skills in vocabulary and reading are abysmal because I haven't studied grammar nor kanji. |
| Speaking | Apart from the sentences I've memorized from anime and dramas, I struggle to form my own sentences. |
In my senior year, I didn't have many classes I wanted to take, and I had enough credits to fulfill, so I looked for something interesting. That's when I came across JAPN 10A. First-Year Japanese, which sounded like a lot of fun, so I decided to sign up for it. Looking back, I'm really glad I made that choice.
The reason I can now converse in Japanese is all thanks to that class.
Typically, people who study Japanese struggle more with listening comprehension rather than reading comprehension. They spend time studying, understanding, and memorizing grammar and kanji, but their listening skills tend to lag behind. However, I'm the opposite. I didn't study much, but I grew up listening and watching, so my ears naturally picked up the language.
It's bizarre that I can't say 'Can I eat this?' in Japanese, but when I hear ' これ食べてもいいですか?', I can understand its meaning and respond without needing any translation.
The reason I couldn't speak before was that I had no idea how to conjugate words. However, I was able to bridge this gap through my basic Japanese classes, and as a result, I can speak with a more natural accent compared to others.
For example, the Japanese verb ' 食 (た) べる ' (to eat) is a ' る -verb' and can be conjugated as follows:
食べる- to eat (want to eat),食べる?- Do you want to eat?
食べた- I ate,食べた?- Did you eat?
食べたい- I want to eat,食べたくない- I don't want to eat,食べてない- I didn't eat,食べれない- I can't eat, … etc.
Once I learned how to use them, I was able to engage in conversations using verbs I had never heard before, even though I would occasionally use them incorrectly.
The class was both enjoyable and informative. However, my main goal was to be able to communicate. Now that I could hold conversations, I no longer felt the need to take any more classes, especially since I was about to graduate.
These days, I live alone in Japan, and I have no trouble with speaking and listening. I can easily communicate with Japanese developers, and I even provide English-to-Japanese translations during meetings to assist non-Japanese-speaking foreign developers.
My vocabulary is limited since I didn't study extensively (and still don't), so it's not surprising that I don't have an extensive range of words. If I were to assess it now, it would probably be at the level of an 8-year-old boy.
But it's okay. I'm not a professional debater, and if there's a word I don't understand, I can simply explain it. It's satisfying to be able to express everything in plain language that even an 8-year-old boy can comprehend. 5
In my view, language serves the purpose of conveying the mental images I have to the other person. And you'll be astonished by what an 8-year-old can do 😏
A painting by 8-year-old Picasso Mikail Akar and soccer player Manuel Neuer - From Mikail Akar
Footnotes
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One of my family members was very interested in Japanese culture, so I was always watching Japanese anime, dramas, and entertainment. So naturally, I was exposed to Japanese culture. ↩
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' コンピュータ ' is the correct way of writing. ↩
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「おはようだってばー！ 」 ↩
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Everyone around me chose Spanish, so I did French. ↩
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It's called self-rationalization. ↩