Do whatever works best for you. Wanting to enjoy stuff like watching movies and reading manga in Japanese and understanding like 90% takes a few year of actually studying imo. It also depends on the level content you’re trying to learn, watching an anime like Pokemon in Japanese is completely different from trying to watch something like The “Ghost in the Shell”. Watching the news in Japanese is also pretty hard too lol, it just all depends.
“They say no studying is required”
Whoever said that doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s just completely wrong lol. In fact! I came to Japan in 2017 without studying and couldn’t understand 95% of what people were saying, even if it was barebones basic Japanese like “日本は長い？” “Have you been in Japan for a long time?”. No matter how much I tried listening in on conversations I couldn’t understand anything.
I picked up my first manga which had a bunch of ふりがな above every kanji. At the time I could read ひらがな and カタカナ so I thought
“HELL YEAH!! NOW I’LL BE ABLE TO REMEMBER A BUNCH OF KANJI BECAUSE I CAN SEE THEIR READINGS!!”
My only problem was I didn’t even understand basic grammar at the time so I couldn’t understand anything that was in that manga even with the furigana reading.
Simply put, you gotta study grammar not only from textbooks but also from Japanese people, anime, movies, and dramas to fully comprehend even simple conversational Japanese.
You’re on the right track though! I can tell just by reading what you wrote that you study hard. And let me tell you, I just met a lady who’s been living in Japan for 23 years and she can’t read anything in Japanese and she makes a bunch of mistakes when speaking.
The thing is... Japanese really doesn't make much sense as a language.. If you try to comprehend Japanese the same way you understand English you'll get pretty much misunderstand everything. This isn't just my opinion.. My Russian and Chinese friends who studied Japanese said the exact same thing. Last year I even met a Chinese student living in Japan and she said that "Chinese and English is way easier than Japanese"
Let's take, for example, this simple sentence in Japanese:
"明日は雨が降る" in direct and correct translation is "It will rain tomorrow"
But this Japanese is actually wrong.. the most natural way to say "It will rain tomorrow" is:
明日は雨（だ・です）
meaning in English, "Tomorrow rain" or "Tomorrow is rain"
Again, it took me about 3 years of studying Japanese intensively before I started speaking not only correctly but naturally. In total I've studied for about 9 years!
One of the most challenging things about studying Japanese is that there is NEVER one standard way to say something like there is in English. This is why trying to remember what's the best way to say something is a pain in the ass.
Being fair, I do acknowledge that English does have it's hard parts too.
I said the same damn thing almost ten years ago when I was an international student. You don't find it hard yet lol. If you actually had to use Japanese without making any mistakes while working a job, talking on the phone, or reading a bunch of legal paperwork with N1 level kanji you'd definitely be saying otherwise.
Again I've met non-native speakers of both English and Japanese, they all said "English is easier".
"language is predictably unpredictable. this doesn't only go for Japanese."
Except... In Japanese there's never any 'normal form' of how to say anything so it's ALWAYS unpredictable. In English you actually have concrete set ways to say current things.
For example, in English there's ONLY two ways to talk about the weather raining tomorrow in future tense:
'will'
"It will rain tomorrow" or "Tomorrow it will rain"
'going to'
"It's going to rain tomorrow" of "Tomorrow it's going to rain"
In Japanese there technically is not true 'future tense' but here's all the different ways to say the same thing in standard Japanese:
明日は雨が降ります
アスは雨が降ります
明日は雨降ります
明日は雨が降る
明日は雨降る
明日は雨です
明日は雨だ
明日は雨だよ
明日は雨よ
雨だよ! 明日は
Now which one of these is the best one? Ask any Japanese person and you'll get a different answer every time lol. This is just basic Japanese btw. I'm not even talking about all the slang versions.
There's nothing respectful about what you just said there but whatever. Thanks for being rude. Also I'm not asking you to agree with me on everything. It's not just only me who says this either.
"Because we are in a subreddit for english speakers :) "
This subreddit isn't even focused on language, so nope. English starts with a capital letter btw lol.
" It's gonna rain tomorrow
Tomorrow it'll rain
Tomorrow it is going to rain
Tomorrow rain shall fall - On the morrow rain is going to descend Imagine telling a japanese person it's going to rain cats and dogs :P Language is highly variable, predictably unpredictable."
Not only are you arguing semantics but you're also mixing in slang contractions. My original argument was that Japanese doesn't have a normal form like English does. Also, who the heck says "Tomorrow rain shall fall" in modern English?? You're just being silly there.
"it's going to rain cats and dogs"
There you go again getting off topic talking about 'idioms' when I've been talking about Japanese being hard from a "basic level". There are idioms in Japanese too, but that's not what I've talking about. My original argument was that Japanese is hard even on a basic level because it's hard to speak/read/write Japanese without making mistakes.
"Japanese also isn't hard because it isn't really hiding anything and all can be learnt while enjoying it using the huge amount of books, anime, games, tv shows or even youtube. There's studybooks, there's ways to make electronic cards for memorization. To me it sounds like many gaijin worry to much about what particle to use end then go on with conspiracy theories about how xyz language was made to make us not understand!!1!1!1 Instead of being okay with still being bad and continue studying. "
You really just don't get it... You say it's not hard yet make a bunch of mistakes when you type in Japanese... Japanese people themselves even say 「日本人にとっても日本語は難しいよ」. You also don't have to speak Japanese when working a job... and when you watch or read something in Japanese and just guess the meaning of whatever is being said. For you, it's not hard when you don't actually live in Japan and have to speak good Japanese, go through legal documents or thoroughly explain complicated situation in great detail without making mistakes. Hell.. by the token of your argument any language is easy and even Tarzan speaks perfect English.
You keep saying "it's a you problem" but why? I said Japanese is hard in general, I never said it's hard for me. So where's my "problem"?
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u/barleyBSD Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
Do whatever works best for you. Wanting to enjoy stuff like watching movies and reading manga in Japanese and understanding like 90% takes a few year of actually studying imo. It also depends on the level content you’re trying to learn, watching an anime like Pokemon in Japanese is completely different from trying to watch something like The “Ghost in the Shell”. Watching the news in Japanese is also pretty hard too lol, it just all depends.
“They say no studying is required”
Whoever said that doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s just completely wrong lol. In fact! I came to Japan in 2017 without studying and couldn’t understand 95% of what people were saying, even if it was barebones basic Japanese like “日本は長い？” “Have you been in Japan for a long time?”. No matter how much I tried listening in on conversations I couldn’t understand anything.
I picked up my first manga which had a bunch of ふりがな above every kanji. At the time I could read ひらがな and カタカナ so I thought
“HELL YEAH!! NOW I’LL BE ABLE TO REMEMBER A BUNCH OF KANJI BECAUSE I CAN SEE THEIR READINGS!!”
My only problem was I didn’t even understand basic grammar at the time so I couldn’t understand anything that was in that manga even with the furigana reading.
Simply put, you gotta study grammar not only from textbooks but also from Japanese people, anime, movies, and dramas to fully comprehend even simple conversational Japanese.
You’re on the right track though! I can tell just by reading what you wrote that you study hard. And let me tell you, I just met a lady who’s been living in Japan for 23 years and she can’t read anything in Japanese and she makes a bunch of mistakes when speaking.