Ian

If you want to learn Japanese, the best way to do it is like a Japanese person. This is often seen as a controversial statement, but it really isn’t. Western teaching methods are just not the best option for learning Japanese, things are just too different compared to European languages and you are effectively trying […]

I am going to start this by saying that this isn’t the only “system” you can use to help with your vocabulary studies. I am just going to show you what I personally use, and while it is a popular way of doing things, it’s not the only way. If you want to use a

A lot of people want to learn Japanese, but they feel they are too old …but this isn’t a problem. You can absolutely learn Japanese as adult. The only thing stopping you, is you. So long as you put the time and effort in, you can learn Japanese so let’s go through how this is

Learning Japanese is not easy and you can feel like you are struggling for a very long time, but if you actually stop and look, you are probably making progress. Sometimes the progress may be small, but that doesn’t matter, you are still learning and you still know more than you did before. It is

If you want to get good at Japanese then you will need to put a lot of time and effort in to it …and really the only way you are going to be able to do this is by making the language a part of your life, and actually using it throughout your day. So

If you have thought about learning Japanese you will have probably heard other peoples opinion on it and also realised it will take a lot of effort, so really it is perfectly reasonable to ask if it is worth your time or not. I would argue that it is, but really this comes down to

If you have started learning Japanese, or you are thinking about starting, you have probably asked how often you should study and the reality is the answer is not that clear. It is going to be slightly different for each person but really you should be doing as much as you, as often as you

When you start learning Japanese you will quickly realise it is a huge task and that will ultimately lead you to asking how you can hurry the whole process up. Wanting to speed things up is natural, we all want to see some success with our studies and we want to actually be able to

If you are thinking about learning Japanese, you have probably been told it’s really difficult and takes a long time, which is true, but how long does it actually take? …well the answer is that it depends. The reality is that there are a lot of different things that can affect how long it will

I am often asked how much Japanese you need to know to go to Japan and well the answer is simply zero. You can go and visit Japan without knowing a single word and you will have a fantastic time.  However, I don’t think you should do that and you should try and learn some