Japanese Day Zero – Getting Started With Japanese

Today we need to do a few “pre learning” activities and then you are good to go with your Japanese studies.

This “day zero” is also a long day. It might take you 2 or 3 weeks. It sounds kind of crazy, but you are at complete zero, so you just have to go through this part, and you will end up with your foundation knowledge, which is basically being able to read Japanese.

This stuff is basic and a little boring, but it’s VERY important and it must not be skipped.

Without these next steps you will fail before you have even started.

We Have To Start With The Japanese Alphabets

While my general approach to Japanese is “listening” based, you still need to be able to read, which means we need to learn the alphabets …yes, there is multiple, 3 in fact.

You have Hiragana, Katana and Kanji and I will go through them in a little more detail below.

Hiragana and katakana are very similar, each letter represents a sound in Japanese, so if you can learn these alphabets, you can make all the sounds that are required to speak Japanese.

People seem to lose their minds over the fact that the two alphabets represent the same sounds …but this is exactly how we do things in English, just with the lower and upper case letters. Some of these look the same like o and O and others may be a little different like b and B.

No one panics about this, so don’t worry about it with Japanese. Just learn both systems and you will be fine.

Yes, it takes a little effort and things get muddled up for a while, but once you get this down, you have taken a huge step into Japanese which most people don’t even reach!      

Start By Learning Hiragana

Hiragana is used to write words of Japanese origin, so basically any Japanese word can be written with this writing system. Then second you can read this, you can basically read anything in Japanese. 

I am going to send you away to learn this alphabet first. You can either watch the video below, or do it by reading the Tofugu guide.

Personally I suggest the video, so you can hear the sounds, but both are great.

Japanese Pod 101 Video – Learn ALL Hiragana in 1 Hour – How to Write and Read Japanese

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p9Il_j0zjc

Tofugu Written Guide – https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/

Leaning Hiragana took me 10 days. I just did one row of the alphabet a day, which was only 5 letters. So it really was quite slow and you could certainly do it faster.

I wouldn’t do it any slower than this, but regardless, you need to learn this alphabet as everything I teach you will use this.

(Once you start learning these letters, you should read – Tips To Help You When Learning Hiragana and Katakana to iron out any little problems)

Test Yourself Daily

You can use this awesome quiz to help you practice and really solidify your knowledge of Hiragana.

Tofugu Quiz – https://kana-quiz.tofugu.com/

You can just test yourself on one row of the alphabet, so even if you just do that every day, it will help. Just keep testing yourself until you feel comfortable recognising all of the letters. 

I would also make sure to spend some time on the combination letters, dakuten and the long vowels, these are often skipped over pretty quickly in the video, but they are still very important, so make sure you test yourself on these and are comfortable with them too.

Learn Katana

A lot of the katana letters look like the hiranaga ones, and the sounds are all the same, so it shouldn’t take you long to learn this.

These letters are used for loan words, or if the word needs lots of emphasis.

The system for learning these is exactly the same. You can either watch the videos, or read the guide and you can learn it slowly over 10 days, or you can do it a little faster. Either way you need to know this system too.

Japanese Pod 101 Video – Learn ALL Katakana in 1 Hour – How to Write and Read Japanese

Tofugu Written Guide – https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/

Test Yourself

Again, you should test yourself with the Tofugu Quiz – https://kana-quiz.tofugu.com/

Just keep going over what you have learned and get really comfortable with things.

Why Learn The Letters Like This?

If you are wondering why I am not trying to teach you the letters myself, well, why would I, these two guides are perfect, I can’t make them better. Both the videos and written guides are everything you need, so use them. 

You will see both methods get you to visualise the shape of letter with an image and this does really help. The video and text guide use slightly different images, but both are great, so pick one and go with it.

I have seen some guides use this, and the images they use, make no sense. I really like the above two, as each image will ACTUALLY help you remember the sound of the letter. 

For example for と(To) …I have seen an image of someone with their hands out spread, in a Y shape, so kinda like the と shape. I guess that is good right .. well what happens when I see that letter in a word …I think about the person with hands spread out …so what’s the Japanese sound? No idea … ahh damn, this didn’t work to well did it”

Whereas the above video guide teaches the image as a Tornado, so when you see this letter in a word you will think of a tornado and saying TOrnado  …it makes you say TO …which is the sound. it’s just genius. Use these guides, they will make it really easily to learn the alphabets.

The good thing is you will not need these images forever, after a while they just become letters you instantly recognise. Just give it time and practice.

What Is Kanji?

kanji is the last alphabet and its scares a lot of people, which fair enough it’s pretty intimating for English speakers.

As I mentioned before, Japanese words are usually spelled out with hiragana, but you can usually write most words as a kanji too. Kanji are not really letters, but are more little pictures that represent a word.

If I show you ∞ %  &  …do you know what these mean? Chances are yes, you just look at these and say what they are …so really they are little pictures that represent a word. You know that ∞ represents infinity. and you can either write ∞ or spell it out with letters “I n f i n t y”  …this is exactly how kanji and hiragana works.

The difference is that Japanese has about 2000 of these little pictures that are important in everyday writing. (They have something crazy like 50,000 all together) The good thing is that every kanji can be spelled out by hiragana and you will often see it written above the kanji, so you know how to say it properly

Learning kanji is hard, and I will be showing you plenty in the following lessons …but I will also be showing you the hiragana too so you know how to pounce it. I want you try and recognise the kanji associated with the Japanese word, but it’s not the end of the world if you can’t.

You need kanji for reading and even writing, so it is important, but this “course” is more focused on listening, so for now worry more about that. Hearing the words and understanding them is more important for now, with time the kanji will fall into place, they do get easier to recognise and remember the more you see them, so don’t panic about how many there is.

What About Romanji?

You may have heard of Romaji, which is both a gift and a curse. This is simply the Englishisation (is that a word?) of Japanese sounds.

The Japanese sounds are taken, and turned into the Latin alphabet …or Roman alaphabet …roman-ji … like kan-ji.

Anyway, this system is kind of important; you will need it to learn hiragana and katakana and you will need it to type Japanese on an English keyboard.

The issue is that people rely too heavily on it, as it is easier to read. Then when they have to actually read Japanese, they can’t.

You should try to avoid it as much as you can, but it is a necessary evil at times. I will use it here and there though out my lessons, but I will try and limit it as much as I can, as it really doesn’t help you in long run.

Learn Your Name In Japanese

If we are going to learn Japanese, then we may as well at least start with your own name.

Everyone in Japan will usually have a Japanese name and this will be represented by Kanji.

Chances are that you do not have a Japanese name, so you will not have a kanji spelling, your name is going to be “foreign” and as I mentioned above, any loan words that are coming from outside Japanese will be spelt using Katakana.

You are probably asking why you can’t just say your name as you normally do …and you can, but it is a lot easier for Japanese people if you spell it in a way they can read it.  It’s a bit strange, but you kind of need to squeeze your name it into the Japanese sound system.

This will make it sound a little funky, but it’s cool.

You can find out how your name should be here – https://japanesenameconverter.nolanlawson.com/#home

You will quickly notice there isn’t really an L sound in Japanese, so if you name has that in it, it may sound a little funny, but just go with it. The Japanese will understand it and know how to say your name.

So once you find out what your name is, learn it. 

Download Anki

While you are learning hiragana and katana, you should also set up Anki.

You need this to help you remember the new vocabulary you are learning. It’s free to download and easy to set up and use.

I will be giving you 8 new words every day and you job is to input them into anki and then it will tell you when you need to review them.

You can use anki as it is, which is very basic, or you can also install Yomichan. This will allow you to scroll over words in your web browerrs and quickly look up their definition, but more importantly, you can instantly import the word you have highlighted into Anki to learn at a later date.

You don’t need this for my “course”, but it will help you in general, so it’s worth getting.

I will write a more detailed gauide/ link to video on how to add Yomichan. I am not very technical and managed to set it up, so really any one can do it!

Why Not Have A Pre Made Anki Deck?

I am sure some of you are going to ask why I don’t just give you a premade Anki deck for all the words I am showing you.

I get it, adding the words individually each day is annoying …but it’s better for you.

I want you get used to making your own cards and I want you to have to take the time and highlight each word to add it manually, as it forces you to look at it and engage with it and hopefully remember the word better.

When you use a premade deck it is too easy to just skim past stuff and not really pay attention to what you are doing. The little bit of work I am making you do will help you.

Get A Japanese Keyboard

So now you are learning Japanese, you will need a Japanese keyboard. You are not going to be doing much writing, but you still need one.

Luckily you don’t need a physical keyboard. You can use the English one you have now.

You just need to install the keyboard onto your computer, and the same goes for your phone. This is easy to go and here are some guides on how to do it:

Pc:

Mac:

Once you install the keyboard, you can now type In Japanese. You type in Romanji which I talked about above. You type the romanji words like “su shi” and on the screen you will get すしwhich are the Japanese letters.

It’s very easy. A little funky at first, but very easy when you get going.　

Iphone:

Android:

For the phones, you will see there are two options, the romanji keyboard, and the kana one. I would suggest you go full native and use the kana keyboard. It is harder, and a little different to use, but every time you type something you are strengthening your letter recognition, so while its harder, it’s better for you.  

The Journey Begins

So now your Japanese journey is truly under way.

You are learning the alphabets and you have all the systems installed to help you along the way.

You may need to come back to this page a few times until you are finished, but that is fine. I also know it’s a little annoying having to go through all this stuff, and it doesn’t really feel like you are learning the language properly yet, but it is worth it.

I also haven’t linked any immersion for now, but while you spend the next 2 weeks or so learning the alphabets, feel free to try and do some immersion on your own. Have a look around Youtube and see what you can find and for now, it’s okay if you use the subtitles. As time goes on, you won’t need those!

So good luck, and I will see you on Day 1 when you are ready.

(Return To: The Full List of All The Japanese Lessons)