Additional Vocabulary Used: ・日本　『にほん』ー Japan ・中国　『ちゅうごく』ー China ・歌　『うた』ー Song ・イスラエル ー Israel ・ボードゲーム ー Board game ・ミュージック ー Music Hiragana I forgot to include, sorry: ・見る　『みる』ー ・食べる　『たべる』ー ・聞く　『きく』ー

My personal feeling on this Japanese sentence structure is that you should learn and use it as early as possible if you want to have more natural conversations. Despite it being N3 for Japanese learners, it is very basic grammar in general. My host brother who was 7 years old at the time used it so much.

What it can look like in conversation: My host sister was really excited to take me to Daiso. It’s one of her favorite stores and I had only been in Japan for a month (she most likely assumed I had never been to one because she thought that they only existed in Japan) and it would be my first time going IN JAPAN. So she asks me:

妹：エンジェルちゃん、DAISOに行ったことがありますか？ 私：うん、行ったことがあります。 妹：えー！？行ったことがあるよ？ 私：うん、カリフォルニアに行く時、DAISOに行きました。だから、DAISOにもう行ったことがあります。

I am not a Japanese language teacher, nor am I fluent or professional. I am a learner and I merely share from my experience and studies. I explain things to help me remember better. :)

My learning style is “less explanation more examples.” Not everyone is like this so here are some other resources that explain ことがる:

maggiesensei is my favorite site, they speak about it in a similar way but they give a ton more examples.

@punipunijapan ‘s explanation from their site.

Click Here to learn more about やる VS. する

こんにちは皆さん～！

Because I could not find a decent youtube video to do it for me, I will personally tell you about this little app called Hellotalk 

If you put it in simple terms, it is a language exchange app and an international Facebook without the commitment. You can like and comment on anyone’s post just as they can yours and it’s best to do this in your target language so that any mistakes you make can be correct by native speakers.

With this app you can:

*As you can see my mistakes are crossed out and the corrections are in green making them stand out and see exactly where I went wrong and say that a correction was made that you did not understand. Well; you can message them about it and more often than not they are willing to explain, (sometimes they can only explain in Japanese which is great for you and I--the learners. However; if it is too difficult to understand, the app has a translator that truly rivals google translate, it is that good.) Here’s an example of me receiving a gracious explanation of a grammar point:

You can learn more about the app by visiting the app website which I linked above, so I will not go too deeply into but I want to share just a few tips on how you can really utilize it to improve your target language skills (which I will place under a readmore for the sake of length.)

“Most people when they study, they are very passive. They are reading things and they are listening to things but they aren’t actually practicing on PRODUCING the language.”

This youtuber is my biggest inspiration and why I’m starting Japanese from zero with Genki I revision. These are such good tips and I highly recommend taking her advice. 

Going to attempt to start this blog up from zero starting with Hiragana and Katakana charts from tofugu (a site with an abundance of Japanese language resources.)

Practice Charts for Hiragana:  http://happylilac.net/hiragana-50.html

Practice Charts for Katakana (Scroll down a bit):  https://print-kids.net/print/poster/katakana-aiueo/

Practice with games! http://www.mybenkyo.com/hiragana-games/

Sound chart for pronunciation: Click this sentence to access maggiesensei’s dot come online audio chart

Tips (Feel free to share your own!): Some people say not to write them but in my opinion it is best to do so and not only get it out of the way but it had helped me remember faster when I wrote them and even in Japan children practice through written and verbal repetition. These practices include the stroke order, do not waste your time writing them out if you plan to dismiss the stroke order which can be seen in the practice charts in the links provided.

The five a day method is great and effective but slow paced, feel free to bring it to ten a day and learn even quicker. Play some of the games in the links above to have fun with your learning.

https://www.memrise.com/ has an abundance of flash cards for not only hiragana and katakana but for grammar and kanji as well. I highly recommend you use it in your studies.

Say them aloud when ever possible.

Stay consistent be intent in your study and learn effectively~

Well, it was a little more than three but anyway-I’d be surprised if any of you actually remember this blog and it’s purpose but just as a refresher; I go by Bites, I am 21 years old and I started this blog when I was 16 years old in order to learn Japanese and help others learn it with me. (I did not know I would be going to Japan at the time, I just LOVE Japanese and wanted to learn.)

As you can tell by looking through the blog, I wasn’t very good at helping but boy was I enthusiastic!

This was the description of my blog when I first started it: “Hello I am learning Japanese! I am a big beginner! I am now focusing on Kanji, and speaking (grammar) please correct me if I make any mistakes. If you'd like you can join me!^u^ I also would love to help in anyway that I can! よろしく！” And I still can’t believe that it’s me because last year, I returned from a year long high school exchange in Japan!(There is a strange story as to how I went as a 19 year old ha ha) That’s right, I lived in Japan and after taking a year long break from all things Japanese, I have come to realize that I am forgetting soooo much Japanese!  In the time that I have been gone, my Japanese level had reached that of N3! Even I cannot believe it. Now however, I have forgotten too much and I am determined to become fluent so I must study harder than ever before.

Now, I am reviewing all of my textbooks. That’s right, starting with Genki I and if you’d like, you can join me! Follow this blog or be sure to keep an eye on the tag jpdiscordserver in the near future for a discord server that will change the way you see Japanese self study. There are no gimmicks or fees, all I ask is that you join with the desire to truly learn/study Japanese, no matter your level (It does lean more towards beginner friendly though.)

I am proof that if you study you can achieve, just cut the excuses and go go go!