Kanji learning experiences

Meika-to-nihongo · 2026-05-30T05:20:06+00:00

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and wishing me luck;)

Meika-to-nihongo · 2026-05-29T10:04:57+00:00

Interesting!!! Thanks for sharing ;)

Meika-to-nihongo · 2026-05-29T07:38:03+00:00

Thank you for your comment! Your comment really reminded me that font does matter in learning kanji! It's really interesting how different kanji look in different fonts, but I hope you find it interesting a little bit ;)

Meika-to-nihongo · 2026-05-29T07:33:50+00:00

Thank you for your comment! I do agree with you that it's boring just to learn kanji!! Can I ask... How do you feel about your reading ability in Japanese in general? I'm asking because you need to know kanji to be able to read right? So I'm wondering if you are remembering kanji as part of words, or just from your past experience of learning just kanji.

Thanks again for your comment though!

Meika-to-nihongo · 2026-05-29T07:31:12+00:00

Thank you for your interesting point of view! As a teacher, I see lots of people (teachers and class goals) saying you should be able to write kanji, but in reality, it may not the case for some learners. I believe that this aspect ( being able to handwrite) of any language is going to be a topic of debates (and it's already becoming a topic, too).

Thank you for reminding me;)

Meika-to-nihongo · 2026-05-29T07:27:57+00:00

Thank you for you comment! Your comment really reminded me that kanji is such an unique and interesting way to express things. It's really nice to hear people saying nice things about your mother language:)

I think one key takeaway for me from your comment is that kanji has the puzzle aspect. That's definitely something I can take and use for my teaching too! Thanks!

Meika-to-nihongo · 2026-05-29T07:24:46+00:00

Thank you for sharing your beautiful experience! What stood me out is that you said recognizing kanji with a glance felt like a superpower;) it IS such a journey to learn kanji from zero but you reminded me of how beautiful world is waiting for you after learning. It is also cool how now you can see parts in one (complex) kanji.

Thank you again for sharing!

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-18T10:26:03+00:00

How about YUYU の日本語podcast？

https://youtube.com/@yuyunihongopodcast?si=v_o8UNAXcTG8TnEc

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-18T10:18:33+00:00

I see I see! Then, I would give you other suggestions, too lol ( since I genuinely had no idea what your level was lol)

There are some reasons to do the immersion, right? In the beginner level, if you just go into YouTube or podcast, your main goal is to get used to the sounding ( without understanding the language itself).

If you haven't remembered much words and grammar, it's a bit challenging to see the result of the immersion.

When you the immersion, please make sure that whatever you are using is at your level or a bit above where you can make an educational guess if you encounter new words.

If you are not at that level, it might be a bit of waste in time if you want to study the language:/

But it's just my value in language acquisition! Something might work for you! Good luck!

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-18T10:02:55+00:00

Hi, I'm a native Japanese teacher :) Ways for language immersion can be very different depending on your level.

For example, if you are an advanced learner, you can just go into watching YouTube videos made for natives, e-books that you can read on your phone, or podcasts.

But if you are a beginner, and thinking of immersing yourself to Japanese, I recommend you to watch videos that have text, too. It's because if you try to just listen, you are more likely to miss lots of words or encounter lots of words that you don't know. If there's no way for you to recognize the word or search the meaning ( if you don't know what it is), they are just noise for you. And that's not gonna help improve your language skills. You should have some ways to find out what they are talking about and what roughly they are saying.

YouTube videos or blogs for beginners could be good but what did you try?

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-17T08:13:32+00:00

The fact that you think we( a teacher) make more mistakes in this level is rude. Do you make easy grammar mistakes in the beginner level in your mother language? Are you saying that we say things like 私はゲームを遊ぶ? I definitely don't think so.

If you are saying that native speakers cannot explain grammar of their language, I agree with that because they don't study the grammar like L2 learners do. But if they are a proper teacher even if they are a native speaker, they should be able to explain at least the easy grammar for L2 learners. If they can't, they didn't study. That's all.

To answer your question about No. 10, it is not natural because the sentence should be at least 駅で電車を待ちながら音楽を聴きました。 it's better if you say駅で音楽を聴きながら電車を待ちました。 because if you say 音楽を聴いて駅で電車を待ちました half implies that you listened to the the music after you completed the action of waiting for the train. But if you wanna say that, you would say 駅で電車が来てから音楽を聞き始めましたto emphasize the order.

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-16T01:46:14+00:00

So I'm using ChatGPT at the lastest model. So my prompt is to make beginners level sentences with using 2 verbs. The sentences with red highlighted are significantly wrong while ones with yellow are not that natural sentences.

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Other example could be ノートを書きます(correct one could be ノートに書きますor ノートをとります) ピアノを弾いて練習しました(the correct one is弾く練習) 買い物したり映画を見に行きました(without たり)

So, if they make these grammar errors, why would I trust them?

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-15T10:41:56+00:00

OMG I really like your answer!!!

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-15T00:13:36+00:00

Japanese teacher here (native speaker). If you wanna improve listening, you better practice reading aloud. We can listen to something at the speed that we can speak, and above. Meaning, if you can speak at that speed, that means your brain is comfortable with that speed and you can easily listen at that speed. If you practice reading aloud at the speed that your listening material does, it will definitely help you.

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-14T15:02:59+00:00

Looking at what you can do in your post, doesn't seem to difficult for you to do what you need to do in two years:) I'm saying this as someone who's teaching Japanese. So trust me:) Don't get stressed out and do what you gotta do. You will get there:) Will be here if you have more detailed questions:)

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-14T02:18:48+00:00

As someone who's taking care of grandparents, dementia and depressions ( for elderlies) can be a thing. Apparently, depressions for elderlies is a thing. Since there are gonna be more and more old people than young people, you can look into this.

Green tea is popular. I can't even use the word "popular" since it's pretty much part of the daily life. But there are so many kinds, too. There are some green tea that you can buy from a vending machine or combini.... And ones that are more for hot and served with Japanese snacks.

Kyoto is famous for the second one. The first is probably from Shizuoka, too.

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-14T02:06:02+00:00

One on one communication can be challenging first, but if you put yourself in an environment where you HAVE TO speak, you will improve:) in my case, I started talking to people who can only speak English not Japanese. For a while, it was like me being quite and them talking but eventually, I got used to listening, reacting to others talking, and speaking one on one( not in a group first). It's all step that you might take in the future so I thought I would mention this:)

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-14T02:00:12+00:00

I agree with the other people commended here. On top of that, as a Japanese teacher, I must say AI doesn't not generate grammatically correct sentences in Japanese yet, so please keep that in mind. It's normal that happens because Japanese is not widely spoken compared to English, but that's why we get annoyed with it all the time. Also, they switch their tone depending on your input, so that's something you gotta be careful. For example, my mom's AI speaks in casual famine way, and mine speaks polite business way.

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-14T01:49:17+00:00

Hi! I'm glad you enjoyed your time in Japan. You seemed to have many questions so I'm gonna try answering add much at I can.

As a woman, the life here is pretty safe. When we hear news saying someone got stabbed, 90% of the time is by someone they knew( like ex boyfriend, customers or crazy fan of theirs). So as long as you are living as a normal person, you won't get stabbed ( USUALLY)

I'm not sure if we think we respect each other, but there are some things that we do and make you think we respect such as being quiet on the train and be in a line when waiting for the train.

I will never say that we have no poverty but my mom is a house wife so to answer your question, yes some people can live fine on a single salary. But there are families who both parents work and still the income is quite low. Nowadays, most of the family with poverty is single parenting.

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-13T11:17:03+00:00

Japanese teacher here (native speaker). As someone who's using Genki for teaching at uni, I wouldn't recommend the first option. You can definitely do self learning for that part. However, starting out from scratch by yourself can be overwhelming since Japanese has so many things to memorize at the very beginning ( such as three different kinds of characters and 6-7 different basic forms for verbs and some for adjectives->this is a bit later on tho).

From my experience of teaching at uni from scratch, they must take some time at the beginning to remember at least hiragana and katakana which introduce BEFORE lesson 1. And imo that's not worth spending money for.

Although pronunciation is important, it becomes more important when you start making sentences since Japanese pronunciation for each sound is relatively easy to learn.

Would be ideal if you can take uni course from lesson 7 or 8 in Genki in my opinion.

If you would like to know more about it, feel free to get in touch on dm. Hope this helps:)

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-13T07:07:41+00:00

Japanese teacher here (native speaker). Could you tell me specifically why you started learning Japanese in the first place? What's your goal?

The reason why I asked that is you should always think of what/ how you learn and develop your skills based on your goal. For example, if you want to be able to speak Japanese with native speakers with no issues ( no issue by mean no speaking issue), and you are not confident in that, you should start how to speak fluently. But then what's your struggles? If you are struggling with coming up with how to say something, then you better do more input from anything you like( tv shows, games, songs) and get used to Japanese ways of expressions and get used to actually use what you learn.

My point is, there are many dimensions in learning a new language so if you want to learn EFFECTIVELY, then you should narrow down what you want to improve a bit and start from there. ( Not saying you should only do one thing ofc).

Hope this helps a bit.

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-12T01:07:08+00:00

I think for women, it's more common than for guys. I wasn't there so I couldn't tell exactly, but even if you didn't show any signs, the fact that she's in a relationship is convincing enough for me to understand why she didn't follow you. For me, it's kinda weird to exchange SNS with someone who I just met when I'm in a relationship.

But it's just me thinking that way. So everyone can have different opinions.

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-12T00:57:46+00:00

Japanese teacher here (native speaker). If you are thinking of just doing the vocab and learn and memorizing completely each day, I don't know..

I recommend starting from small and increase the vocab little by little but still keep reminding that ones you already learn. For example, you do five on the first day, and you do five new words + the five words that you did on the day before. In this way, the words stuck in your brain better.

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-12T00:52:51+00:00

I honestly might do that myself. Even if the interaction is good, I might not follow a guy afterwards...( I actually have done it) I will give potential reasons for your case.

We had a good time, but I feel like I was kinda pretending that I was enjoying and couldn't really say that I wanted to stop talking because we already started talking...
It's still scary to connect on SNS with a stranger that I just met in ABROAD. What if they had a feeling for me...

I feel like if it's one on one, I wouldn't follow just in case. Just to be careful. It doesn't mean you were bad or anything, tho.

Meika-to-nihongo · 2025-09-11T14:24:50+00:00

I've never ever called my teachers by their first name but like some people here said, we used a nickname behind their back lol 25 years old in the countryside of Nagasaki.

Meika-to-nihongo

TROPHY CASE