Introductions!

Hello!

My name is Max Goodfellow. This past spring, I received a merit scholarship to attend an international high school in Japan called United World College International School of Asia, Karuizawa, Japan (UWC ISAK Japan). While the school is English-speaking, I will still live in a primarily non-English-speaking country for two years. As such, I would like to learn as much Japanese as possible before I leave on August 12, 2025.

My Background:

I come from a background with little Japanese. In my previous high school experience, I took Latin, a language that is in no way related to Japanese. In the past few months since I heard the news of my scholarship, I have tried various methods of learning the language, to varying degrees of success. One of the most helpful resources I found was the audiobook Learn Japanese with Paul Noble, by Paul Noble. This book, combined with some basic flashcards, makes up the majority of my understanding of the Japanese language.

Basics of Japanese:

To follow my Japanese learning journey effectively, you must be familiar with some basic concepts and information about the language. Arguably, the most important of these is the three writing systems used: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. The first two are almost trivial compared to the last. Japanese people write phonetically; each sound that makes up a word translates directly to a character on paper (unlike English, where the letter ‘e’ can make seven distinct sounds). For example, the Hiragana character ‘か’ makes a “ka” sound. Katakana is the same as Hiragana, but is only used for loanwords in Japanese; there is no difference heard when speaking (“インタネット”, the Japanese word for internet, pronounced “in-ta-ne-to,” is spelled in Katakana, while “こんにちは”, the Japanese word for hello, pronounced “ko-ni-chi-wa,” is spelled in Hiragana). I will include a picture of the charts for these writing systems, but you do not need to know them to follow along! The final writing system, Kanji, is the most challenging of the three. It is logographic- each character represents a specific word with a specific pronunciation. To be considered functionally literate in Japan, you must know at least 2000 Kanji. This is what I believe will be the most challenging part of my learning journey.

My Plan:

To effectively learn as much Japanese as possible before I leave, I will be employing a couple of study methods. The most important will be a flashcard software called Anki, which is commonly used by medical students studying for the MCAT. It is called a spaced repetition software (SRS), and, as the name suggests, it modifies when it shows you flashcards based on how well you know them; if you know a card poorly, you will see it more, and vice versa. Along with this, I will be continuing with the second book in the Learn Japanese with Paul Noble series to improve my grammar skills. Finally, I will devote at least one hour per day to general Japanese study and practice; part of that practice entails (attempting!) translating my blog posts into Japanese. You can see this translation by pressing the button “日本語” in the top right corner of my page; in this, any words or sentence structures I needed to look up will be bolded, and hopefully, as time progresses, the amount of bold you see in the posts will go down.

Sign Off:

That is all I have for now! I look forward to updating y’all with my journey to learn Japanese to live in Japan!

Bye for now,

Max