Underground Journal

Transplant Japan to You

There are many different ways of going about learning a language – classes, self study, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, etc.  Despite the various options, there is one thing you can do that will help with any of them – immerse yourself in the language you’re learning.

Using Japanese as an example, a great way to help with your Japanese studies is to surround yourself with things from Japan, things with Japanese, and even things that just remind you of Japan or studying Japanese such as a World of Japanese Erasers.  Not only will this provide constant reminders of your goal to learn Japanese, but they also provide constant input in your target language.

Included in this immersion are things like music, television, and books in Japanese.  Instead of sitting down to watch a movie in English after work, trying watching one in Japanese (with or without subtitles).  It might not seem to be doing much at first, but soon you will realize how it is having a pretty powerful passive effect; one that is hard to duplicate with just about anything else.  The familiarity it brings with words and grammatical structures will find their way into your brain without you realizing (although you can’t just have it on in the background, it needs to be part of an active involvement in the language).

It might not seem like surrounding yourself with Japanese food erasers is enough to make much of a difference in your studies, but immersion can have a surprising effect.  In addition to the nice passive effects and motivation, a great way to utilize these tools by taking Japanese words and grammar from the movies and books and making flash cards or putting them into a spaced repetition system.  The emotional attachment that has already been created from previously using the media will help ingrain the information in your memory better.

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