STUDYING YOUR PASSION

“The passion, the competitiveness, the swinging for the fences, it adds up.” - Donny Deutsch

One thing that sets TextFugu apart from the others is our “passion” to keep you studying (not punning). If you quit for any reason at all (unless you find out you just really hate the Japanese language), then we’ve failed. In order to help you stay motivated, you’ll find that TextFugu goes way out of it’s way to keep you interested. One thing we do is tap your passion.

I’m almost 99.9% certain that learning Japanese isn’t your “passion.” In fact, it’s near impossible to be passionate about something you’re just starting to learn. But, there is a good likelihood that you have something else in your life that you could call a “passion,” and we’re going to use that to motivate you to learn Japanese. Maybe your passion is snowboarding, maybe it’s building miniature battle-ships, maybe it’s competitive eating. Only you will know. Now, if you can’t think of something that you’re passionate about, that’s okay. Keep reading and we’ll get to you.

As you go through TextFugu, there will be a lot of lessons that incorporate what you’re passionate about. This may include vocabulary learning, grammar practice, and more. As you go through the lessons, there will be plenty explanation to get you through. The first “prep” step is at the end of this lesson, and it will get you ready for various lessons ahead (so don’t skip it!).

But I don’t have a passion…

It’s not uncommon to not have something you’re passionate about. Something that you could do 12 hours a day and not ever get tired of it… P.S. video games don’t count. There are a number of ways to figure out what you’re passionate about, though most of them aren’t really short term. In the meantime with TextFugu, you can just use things “you really like.” If you don’t have a “passion” in life (yet), then this will work almost as well. Even those that have chosen their “passion” will need to choose some of these, so it’s not a big deal at all. That being said, here are some quick tips on finding your passion if you don’t know what it is already.

  1. Your “passion” doesn’t necessarily have to be something you’re good at. It doesn’t even have to be something you’ve done before. The main thing is that you love doing it. Once you find this thing, you’ll know. Love at first sight.
  2. Try a lot of different things. They can (and maybe should) be totally random. There’s no shame in jumping from one thing to the next in order to find the thing you love. As soon as you’re doing something you love, it’ll click. Stick with it for a little while longer, and it could become your passion!
  3. In order to find a hidden passion that you didn’t know existed, think: What do I love doing in my spare time? What skills come naturally without much effort? What things energize you (versus drain your energy)? Are you an “expert” in anything? If you were shopping on Amazon, what section would you go to first? What do you value most in life? What do you want to achieve in this lifetime?

The main advice I can give on this is that you shouldn’t rush it. Now, don’t confuse this with taking your time, because you shouldn’t do that either. Go out and live life a bit, try new things, and if you don’t like what you’re doing move on to the next. Savor each new moment, and you’re bound to narrow it down, and finally figure out what you’re passionate about.

STEP 1: WHAT ARE YOU PASSIONATE ABOUT?

The first step is to figure out what you’re passionate about. If you already have something, then good. If you don’t know what your passion is yet, then use something from Step 2 (below). Make sure you really like this thing, though, because we’ll be using it a decent amount as you go through TextFugu. If you pick something you only kinda-sorta like, it’ll defeat the purpose. The goal is to keep you motivated in your Japanese studies by injecting other things that you really like and can never get bored of. Once you’ve figured out this one thing, move on to step 2.

STEP 2: THE TOP 20 VOCAB

Download this worksheet and fill the following out:

  1. Your Passion (or the thing you really like, if you don’t have one). For the sake of this exercise and the point of this exercise, “Japanese” shouldn’t count as your passion, even if it really is. If that’s the case, then picking something else won’t hurt you, and will only help.
  2. Twenty vocabulary words associated with this thing (for example, if you chose baseball, you might write down “baseball glove, dugout,” etc). You can include a mix of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, though it’s probably best to get a little heavy on the noun side of things.
  3. You do not need to fill out the “In Japanese” and “reading” sections (yet). That’s coming next. It’s important that you figure out 20 vocabulary words associated with this subject. If you can’t figure out 20 things right away, try moving a step out and include more “secondary” objects as well. For example, in the case of “baseball” I might pick vocab like “hot dogs” or “fans.”

STEP 3: LOOKING UP THE VOCAB

Now that you have twenty vocab words associated with your chosen passion, let’s look them up. Thanks to the internet, looking up Japanese words has never been easier. For most of our looking up, we’ll be using Jisho.org (jisho means dictionary… makes sense, right?). There are a couple of things to know about Jisho, though, before we get started.

  1. When you’re doing a search, you’ll want to check the “common words only” checkbox, otherwise you’ll be getting hundreds and hundreds of results. You’ll want to pick the most common translation for each word.
  2. Since you (probably) don’t know hiragana yet, you might need to check the “kana as romaji” box in order to learn the reading of the kanji. If you can avoid this, though, you should. I would recommend you take this opportunity to study hiragana, and use your hiragana chart to find the reading of the hiragana provided on Jisho.
  3. If there are multiple “common words” and you can’t tell which one is better, try a simple google search! Copy and paste the kanji for one of them into Google and search. Take note of how many results Google brings back for you (top right area of the search will tell you this). Then, do it for the other word. Whichever one returns more search results is probably the more common of the two. Use that one.

STEP 4: CREATING A STUDY LIST

Now you have to learn these words, and there’s no better way to do it than Smart.fm. You’ve already used a list with your Hiragana studies, but you haven’t created one yet. It’s pretty straight-forward, and involves you putting in the English / Japanese word, and choosing the best definition. Of course, choose the definitions you’re using on your worksheet, but also try to choose ones that have audio and practice sentences associated with them. This way, you can be sure to learn correct pronunciation of your very special list of words. Create a list now.

3 THINGS YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT

Remember how in chapter 1 we wrote down that list of things we were interested / wanted to learn more about? Make sure you’ve pulled that out. In theory, you have at least one “Japanese” thing on there (like sumo, sake, kendo, kyoto, tokyo), and you should choose at least one of these for your list of three. We’ll be doing something similar to our “passion” list, but in these instances, we’ll be learning about something new (and hopefully something you’re interested in). Following the same steps above, fill out these three worksheets. When you pick your three things, make sure that you can figure out English vocab that’s associated with them. If not, you can always do some research on Wikipedia, or somewhere else.

After you’ve filled these out (if you’d like, you can work on the “interests” worksheet over the next few chapters if you’d like to move on) and created Smart.fm lists for them,  you should be ready to go! We’ll be using these lists (and more) all throughout Season 1, and then get a little deeper into it starting Season 2. This should be a lot of fun (or at least more fun than not integrating your interests), and hopefully helps to inspire you to be a better student.

Chapter Content:

Before You Move On:

  • Figure out what your “passion” is going to be (remember, you’re going to be stuck with it for a while!)
  • Fill out the vocab worksheet with your passion, English vocab, the Japanese, and the reading.
  • Fill out the vocab worksheets for the things you’re interested in learning.
  • Create a study list for your vocab on Smart.fm.

Japanese Grammar With Yoda →