The basics of learning Japanese

By: Benaiah Imanuel Lionel Manoppo

This is my story of how I learn Japanese. First, you need to watch a lot of Japanese films, for example Japanese movies and anime. I recommend you to watch “Rurouni Kenshin” or “Samurai X”, they contain Japanese culture like samurai spirit.

The point is listening to the conversation, but not all of it, because they use some formal language that they don’t use now, for example “de gozaru” it’s commonly used to respect each other, but nowadays they use “de gozaimasu” which have the same meaning.

I started learning Japanese when I was in the 3rd grade of junior high school or middle school. What motivated me was the hope in that language for me personally.

Since I was kid my dad told me about the film “Ultraman” I watched it and it became my favorite film and “Ultraman Tiga” was my first series that I watched, I grew up with it, that makes me proud, I can relate with the character. The character is brave, he was three but one.

Learning Japanese is not about how hard you remember it. It’s about the willingness inside your heart to learn it.

Do you know samurai? Yeah, Japanese samurai, you don’t have to be a Japanese to be a samurai, you don’t need a sword to be a samurai but it's about your heart, just like how you’re learning Japanese, the proof is I can speak 100% like a native speaker. Remember Japanese is easy for those who have samurai spirit.

One more thing about the method is to use everything you have to learn it. Use books, phone, pencil, eraser, because the important thing is to write the Hiragana - Katakana - Kanji.

The next step is - grammar and the last is vocabulary. But when I learned it I made a few mistakes so I used the alphabet and now I fix it. But don’t learn Japanese by alphabet, use your imagination to learn Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.