“I am not particularly interested in saving time; I prefer to enjoy it.” – Eduardo Hughes Galeano
Now that you’re getting deeper into “intermediate” territory for Japanese, I want you to really start thinking about reading a lot more. Not only that, but reading things you don’t necessarily understand. You have to be able to look at something, read it, figure out what doesn’t make sense, then research the answers to your questions (whether that be vocabulary, grammar, kanji or so on). That’s what I want you to start doing now, though we’ll ramp you up from simple to more complicated.
To begin, you’re going to get a story. This story will contain some things from the time chapters of this season. It will also contain things not in this season (and sometimes not in previous season at all). This is all designed to make you do some of your own research. This is designed to get you ready for the “real world.”
Some things that will be helpful for this:
- Jisho.org: Look up words you don’t know. Don’t forget to look at the kanji too. Try learning the kanji with TextFugu’s radicals or your own, when you need to.
- Google: Don’t understand some piece of grammar? Type in “[Grammar] Japanese” and see what you can find. There’s a lot of people with the same questions as you! :)
Here’s what I want you to do:
- Read through the entire thing. Take note of what you don’t understand as you go through.
- First learn all the vocabulary you don’t know. The vocab is the building block towards understanding the sentence. Add these to your Anki deck.
- Now, figure out what parts you don’t understand because of grammar. Search and find your own answers. Ask in the forums. Do what you need to do to figure it out. This is good practice.
- When you understand the grammar and the vocab words, read through it again. Do you understand more of it? If so, move on to step five. If not, go back to step 1.
- Now use the audio. Read through the story and get as fast as you can. Then, try to talk along with the recording. Focus on pronunciation and fluidity until you are the same speed, comfortably.
- Now read it without the audio. Could you do it?
- Rejoice.
Alright, here’s the story to read. After you’re done with this, it’s Season 9. Story work will become much more common there, so be don’t be scared. It will be tough at first but it will get better over time as you get better at learning in this way.
Time
Read the story then listen to the audio. The goal is to look up the things you don’t know yet, and that includes vocab, grammar, and whatever else. There shouldn’t be anything that’s too out of your ability. The kanji should be kanji you’ve seen already, and words you don’t know should be looked up (on jisho.org, or whatever). This will get you used to looking things up for yourself and researching yourself, a skill that will be your most important weapon when you get to a higher intermediate / advanced level of Japanese.
今年は2012年。宇宙人が地球にやってきました。
宇宙人は１０月２３日にやってきて、
地球に３週間滞在しました。
宇宙人は毎日地球の人々と会話をしました。
そして、月曜日、宇宙人は私の家に来ました。
ここでは朝の５時半でしたが、宇宙では午後の３時半でした。
私たちは５分くらい話をして、
宇宙人は自分の名前がフランクだと言いましたが、フランクは私の名前です
私は彼に、「いいえ、私がフランクです」と言いました
そしたら、宇宙人は私にプレゼントをくれました。
プレゼントをくれた時、そして宇宙人はどこかに行ってしまいました
３秒間がたち
ピー、ピー、ピー
a Stay Awhile And Listen
Also, here is the English version. Don’t look at it until you understand 90ish percent of the Japanese version on your own. A little struggles will be good for you.
English Version
It is 2012, and aliens have come to earth.
They came on October 23.
For three weeks the aliens stayed on Earth.
Every day they talked with the people of earth.
On a Monday an alien came to my house.
Here it was 5:30am but on their planet it was 3:30pm.
We talked for about five minutes.
He said his name was Frank, but that was my name.
I said: “No, I’m Frank.”
The alien gave me a present.
After he gave me the present he went off somewhere.
There were three seconds.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
How was that process? I recommend coming back tomorrow or the next day to study it again. This will reinforce what you’ve learned and help immensely. Sometimes “time” can do that, har har.