Talking Japanese

Written by Kevin Leathers on 09 Feb 2009

So you’ve been watching anime for a while now and you’ve picked up a hand full of Japanese words. You’ve gotten hold of the odd Japanese single which has your favourite opening music on it and are listening to it constantly on repeat to the point of singing the lyrics perfectly. The latest volume of your favourite manga has a raw preview sitting in its back pages, but you frustratingly can’t read what is happening. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. But has your mind ever turned to one possible solution to all this - to learn Japanese?

It’s not such a crazy idea. With ever-faster internet connections helping an already shrinking world, a second language can be an incredibly useful thing both as an addition to your hobby and to help in obtaining or improving a career in some shape of form.

So we at UKA have done the unthinkable and sent one of its staffers (i.e. me) back into the education system to talk about the advantages of learning Japanese from the ground up, what to expect when starting a course, some general information and my personal experiences during the learning process. Be sure that I’m going to be as honest as possible, so I won’t be sugar-coating any of it. This isn’t a means to scare people off from learning Japanese, quite the opposite in fact. But if you go into something like this, especially when you’ve paid for a course, you need to be prepared and that’s what we aim to do here.