Living with Japanese roommates in Tokyo was the highlight of my time in Japan. I found those roommates on the website Roomshare.jp, a great site that I introduce this week. And in Japanese I talk about how I ate のり弁 for nearly an entire year and how I think it’s a useful metaphor for Japanese study.

As promised, here’s the message I posted on Roomshare.jp that somehow convinced people I would be a decent roommate. Use at your own risk:

どうも、こんにちは。ダニエルです。２６歳。アメリカ人、ニューオーリ
ンズ出身。大学で日本文学専攻。
７月から東京に住むことになりました。３年間福島県の田舎で国際交流員と
して働いてきて、一人暮らしで住んでいるので、今回ルームシェアしようか
と思います。僕はいくつかのメリットがあります：
メリット１：日本語ができるので、決して周りの人に依存しません。
メリット２：HDテレビ、任天堂Wii持っています。日曜日マリオカート
Wiiを買いました。いい意味でやばいです。
メリット３：料理も少しできます。
メリット４：日本の経験が比較的長い。２００２年初めてきて、全部で４
．５年間ぐらい住んだ経験で、特にカルチャーショックはありません。（しか
し田舎分離不安は、すこしなるかもｗ）
メリット５：大学４年間ずっとルームシェアしていたので、ルームメート
とのやりとりとか、掃除とか経験あります。
とりあえず、西東京にしましたが、実はどこでもいいです。千葉でも埼玉
でも。家賃４万円～８万円ぐらいのところだったら、大丈夫です。仕事が新橋
なので、通勤が複雑じゃないところがだといいですが。
ぜひルームメート募集の人、ご連絡ください。よろしくお願いします。

And extra bonus content: Check out this blog post to see more about the Rainy Season Yamanote-sen Pub Crawl I mentioned.

Jason Coskrey is a sports writer for The Japan Times. He previously worked at the Birmingham Post Herald and the Marietta Daily Journal before moving to Japan in 2007. We spoke about learning Japanese (and how to do sports writing) through immersion.

• Japanese study experience
  • Immersion
  • Wayne Graczyk – baseball writer and commentator who passed away in 2017. See Jason’s articles on him here and here.
  • Meguro Language Center
  • Japanese For Busy People
  • Watching TV
•  Sports writing
  • College newspaper
  • Scott Adamson
  • Bill Rhoden
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • James Baldwin
  • Networking
  • Jon Morosi
  • Television news
• Moving to Japan
  • First games in Japan
• Sports in Japan
  • Athlete speak
  • Corporate leagues
  • Sports sponsorship in Japan
  • Region-blocked highlights
  • DAZN
• Sports on the rise in Japan
  • Rugby
  • New women’s soccer league
  • Basketball
• Japanese for sports interviews
  • 振り返る (furikaeru, to look back on)
  • Interviewing players after a game
• Professionalizing before or after going to Japan
• Blogging
  • Trevor Raichura – Hanshin Tigers English News
  • Deanna Rubin
  • The J-Talk Podcast
  • We Love Marines
• Share houses
•  Karaoke songs
  • Lara kani
  • 進めなまけもの (Susume namakemono), Saito Kazuyoshi
  • Oh My Little Girl, Ozaki Yutaka

Adjectives in Japanese are not always what they appear to be! I think part of this is because they function as what I call “performative adjectives.” One of my sixth-grade students helped me finally understand what かわいそう meant. And in Japanese I discuss 系 and how it helped me explain myself.

At the top of the pod I took a minute to thank a few folks for helping me with background for my article for The Japan Times about Jim Breen’s JMDict. That article is here.

Paul Snowden worked for over 40 years in universities in Japan. He taught at Tsukuba University, took a tenure faculty position at Waseda University, later served as the Dean of the School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda, and most recently was Vice-President of Kyorin University. He is also one of the three editors-in-chief of the Fifth Edition of Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary, affectionately known as the Green Goddess.

• Studying Japanese
  • Experience studying other languages
  • Immersion and translation at Tsukuba
  • Using new idioms
• Arriving in Japan by train via Russia
• When the language started to click
• Higher Education in Japan
  • Access to tenure for foreigners in Japan
  • Being determined to communicate in Japanese with colleagues
•  Waseda School of International Liberal Studies
  • Teaching in a multilingual classroom
  • Reading strategies for foreign languages
•  The Green Goddess – Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary
  • Dictionary of English Collocations (英和活用大辞典)
  • Fourth Edition
  • Roman alphabet order vs kana order 
  • Revision process
  • “Reverse authenticity”
  • Online version and electronic dictionaries
  • Adding new entries and updating existing entries
  • COVID-19 and Language
  • New paper edition?
• Karaoke Songs
  • 津軽海峡冬景色 – 石川さゆり

You don’t have to go very far to be a tourist, and looking at the world with that mindset can also be helpful for language study. In this week’s episode, I reminisce about when my parents visited Tokyo and talk about ノーダメージクリア (nōdamēji kuria, completing games without taking any damage).

The book I mention in the episode is Sumiko Enbutsu’s “A Flower Lover’s Guide to Tokyo: 40 Walks for All Seasons.”

Jenn O’Donnell is a Japanese to English translator and project manager based in Osaka. By day she works as a Localization Director for a video game company and by night she blogs about translation on J-ENTranslations and studying Japanese on Japanese Talk Online. She also hosts the podcast Recommendations from My Otaku Spouse.

• Mix of different methods
  • Private Japanese tutor – Japanese in 45 Hours (にほんご45じかん)
  • Gap year in Fukuoka – Language school and working on a farm
  • italki
  • Genki Japanese and Culture School 
• Japanese Textbooks
  • Genki Japanese
  • Minna no nihongo
  • Japanese: The Spoken Language
• Japanese Talk Online
  • Knowing what learning methods work best for you
  • Tracking what works for you as a student
  • University anime club 
• Strategies to avoid
  • Overbuying books
  • Mindless studying
• Strategies to use
  • Multiple different approaches
  • Mindful studying
• Dyslexia and Studying Japanese
  • Accommodations – knowing what works for you
  • “Research on Educational Support of Japanese Language Learners with Developmental Dyslexia” (PDF – in Japanese)
  • Study strategies with dyslexia
• Consuming Japanese media
  • “Kiki’s Delivery Service (魔女の宅急便)“
  •  『コーヒーが冷めないうちに』
  • Picking books that are easy 
  • Creating a reading habit
  • Reading a Japanese book and an English book at the same time to maintain the habit
  • How to develop habits
• Working in Japan
  • Automotive work
• Translation master’s program
  • SOAS – MA Translation
  • J-En Translations
• Getting better at translation
  • Full time work + freelance translation
  • Bellevue College – Translation and Interpretation
  • Translation contests
• Impostor syndrome
• Interviews With Localizers
• Building habits/keeping track of goals
  • Atomic Habits
• Job hunting in Japan
  • Japanese teacher
  • Preparing for interviews
• Japanese teachers
  • Linguage
  • italki
• Japanese games that are better for Japanese study than others
  • “All of them, and none of them”
  • Animal Crossing
  • Ace Attorney
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses
• Japanese karaoke song
  • “Again,” Yui
  • Violet Undergarden opening

Episode 2! 一番搾り (Ichiban Shibori) helped me cement my understanding of a translator’s role and what “fluency” means. And I was able to get this podcast up and running again thanks to a little 自己分析 (jikobunseki, self analysis).

Mel Ok is a translator and project manager based in Tottori Prefecture. We talked about Japanese study, the JET Program, translation, and Japanese whisky:

• Japanese in high school
• When did your Japanese skills start to “click”?
• Japanese in college
  • University of Washington – Technical Japanese Program
  • Working with long sentences – identifying subjects and verbs
  • USJETAA Reading Group
  • Jay Rubin’s “Making Sense of Japanese“
  • “Mirroring“
• Teaching English in Japan
• JET Program
  • JET CIR placements – rural vs. urban
  • Tottori Prefecture’s internationalization efforts
  • Interpreting on JET – consecutive vs. simultaneous
  • JET Program Translation & Interpretation Course
  • Connecting with local organizations for interpretations/translation opportunities
  • JET Program application advice
  • Watching TV = studying
• Project Management
  • Shifting from JET to project management
  • QA work
  • Unemployment in Japan – ハローワーク (Hello Work)
  • Types of translation projects
  • Experience writing
  • Sales
• Freelance Translation
  • Translation Memory
  • Japanese Association of Translators (JAT)
  • Felix CAT
  • Accordance searches
  • Sales work vs. translation work 
• Incorporating as a translator/company
  •  Hiring an accountant
• Translation Trials
• Work-life balance
  • The Oatmeal – Why working from home is both awesome and horrible
• Spirits/Japanese Spirits
  • Yamazaki 25
  • Balvenie 12 DoubleWood
  • Nomunication
  • The Complete Guide to Japanese Drinks, Stephen Lyman
  • Japanese Whisky, Brian Ashcraft
  • Stephen Lyman and Christopher Pellegrini Instagram events
  • Fuji-Sanroku
  • Aged Shochu
• Investing in Whisky
  • Yamazaki Owner’s Cask
  • Whisky secondary market
  • Mighty No. 9
• Karaoke Songs
  • “Sakura,” Ketsumeishi
  • Orange Range (The band Mel couldn’t remember.)

お待たせしました！ It took me longer than I hoped, but the How to Japanese Podcast is back. I’m interviewing another 10 people who have studied Japanese and done work in Japan. The interviews have run long, so I’ll be separating the interviews from my content and posting 20 episodes over the next few months. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you haven’t listened to Season 1, go ahead and give those episodes a listen.

Adam Evanko is the creative mind behind the Gaijinhunter YouTube account where he’s built up over 280,000 subscribers. He’s also an incredibly lucid communicator and diligent student. We discuss his early time studying Japanese, his work at McDonald’s and a hotel in Japan, and how a job at a translation company helped prepare him for a career in video game production:

• Had you studied Japanese before you moved to Japan?
• Once you were in Japan, were you taking classes or doing self-study?
  • Japanese Language Proficiency Test
• Did you have any strategies to help you with the reading section of the JLPT?
• Were there any big milestones in terms of a first game, manga, or novel you completed in Japanese?
  • 漢字検定 (Kanji kentei – Kanji aptitude test)
• What were your job hunting strategies in Japan? Are there any strategies you would recommend people looking for work?
• Did McDonald’s or the hotel where you worked have any guidance for 敬語 (keigo, polite speech)? How did you learn 敬語?
• What was your experience like as a translation project manager?
  • The word my coworker helped me learn was 必殺技 (hissatsuwaza, special move), not whatever it is I said on the pod.
• Did you do any coding, writing, or game creation when you were growing up?
• What is it like to work as a video game producer? What advice would you give people interested going into video game production?
• What drew you to Monster Hunter and what has kept you interested for so long?
  • 8-4 Podcast
• What was it about Monster Hunter: World that took the series to an international level?
• What are you excited to see in Iceborne?
• Do you think anything about Monster Hunter reflects Japanese culture or values?
• How has it been to raise a daughter in Japan? Did you make a conscious effort to include her in your gaming? Do you monitor screen time?

At the top, I talk about being mindful of the difficulty of your Japanese study – sometimes you need to actively choose to do difficult things when you study Japanese.