So you want to learn Japanese, but you aren't in a position to pause your life, apply to Japanese school, and spend several years mastering the language from the ground up. You want to know if you can learn Japanese faster, easier, and without pouring over textbooks for hours a day.
I was in the same position as you three years ago when I started studying. I had just moved to Japan, and knew that I needed to learn Japanese, and learn it fast. But I had a life, a job, and hobbies I rather enjoyed spending my precious free-time on.
So the questions became - how can I learn Japanese quickly? What can I do to speed this process up without spending more time falling asleep over books?
Let's dive into what I learned as I went about answering these questions.
Contents:
Can I Learn Japanese Without Studying?
Technically, yes. You can learn to speak Japanese from the ground up entirely through context and conversation.
This is a form of something called context-based learning. According to Wikipedia:
Context-based learning refers to the use of real-life and fictitious examples in teaching environments in order to learn through the actual, practical experience with a subject rather than just its mere theoretical parts.
In a classroom setting, this often translates to simulations of something in the real world. But for people self-studying Japanese, the limitations of a classroom don't exist. We can plunge ourselves directly into situations and learn from context without waiting for teachers to set anything up for us. For Japanese learners, some examples of context-based learning are conversations, reading books or manga, watching Japanese media, and taking classes taught in Japanese (but NOT about Japanese - things like exercise classes, a flower-arranging lessons, or anthropology lectures).
Around six months into my Japanese studies I saw a video of a psychologist, linguist, and entrepreneur named Chris Lonsdale who moved to China and became fluent in Chinese within six months WITHOUT STUDYING. From his experience he created 5 Language Learning Principles and 7 Concrete Actions for learning a language solely through context as he conversed and interacted with Chinese people. This video absolutely changed the way I was studying Japanese. (Here's a 3 minute summary video if 18 minutes is too much right now.)
In short, Lonsdale's Principles are:
Focus on Language Content that is relevant to you
Use your new language as a communication tool from the start
If you understand the message you will subconsciously acquire the language
Language is physiological training (mouth and face muscles, ear training)
Psycho-physiological state matters (i.e. you won't learn if you're having a bad time)
And Lonsdale's Concrete Actions for Language Study are:
Listen a LOT
Get the meaning first (by using facial expressions, body language, tone, etc.)
Start mixing (practicing using the vocabulary, grammar, etc. that you ALREADY have to say different things)
Start with the core - 1000 words make up 85% of English conversations. Learn high-frequency vocabulary first. Learn to ask questions about language (How do you say ~, What is ~, Can you repeat that?) so you can learn these words and grammar structures in context.
Get a "language parent" - essentially, a friend or someone who cares about you in some way who will communicate with you only in your target language.
Pay attention to and copy the face and mouth movements of native speakers.
Connect new vocabulary to mental images, not to your native language.
Living in Japan was certainly helpful for implementing these practices, but these days you don't even need to move to Japan to study Japanese this way - you can use the power of the internet to find conversation partners online to practice your Japanese in the comfort of your own home. There's tons of video and auditory content available to all of us, just a search away.
So the short answer is yes. Even for an absolute beginner, learning without study is possible. However, 100% conversation and context isn't the only way to learn Japanese, and I'd argue that it's a bit far-fetched if you're not extroverted enough to be chasing down extensive communication and conversation on a daily basis. We need to keep things fun for ourselves, too. After all, one of Lonsdale's principles is that your psychological state matters, and for introverts it's going to be depleting to be conversing all the time.
For me, mixing more traditional study with context-based learning has produced a Japanese learning result that is effective, fast, and so enjoyable.
The Magic of Context-Based Japanese Learning
Despite the fact that I don't only use context-based learning, I want to emphasize how important and just plain cool it is.
I've been described as serious my entire life. I'm great at school, test-taking, and anything that happens in a classroom. I find most school subjects interesting, and I can memorize like there's no tomorrow, especially in a time crunch. So it was so frustrating when Japanese wasn't clicking for me. I'd do great in my lessons and I'd fly through Duolingo, but I couldn't speak or understand anything! I'd see foreigners who could speak Japanese at any level and be consumed with jealousy and confusion about what I was doing wrong.
It wasn't until I saw that video that I started to realize that learning a language isn't like learning math. You can't just do it on paper. You have to use everything you learned, all at once, all the time, in different combinations. It's real-world, and it's a problem that can't be solved by just studying harder. There are gelling moments where things that were once very hard are suddenly doable, but learning more vocabulary won't mean you just wake up one day able to speak if you've never struggled through a conversation before.
In a way, it's not that sophisticated. When I stopped thinking of speaking Japanese as something only geniuses could do, and started to realize that language is just muscle training (something even toddlers can do), it was like snapping out of a trance. Language is not that deep. We just have to use it.
Real Japanese language learning requires stepping out of your comfort zone, becoming more of a conversationalist, and getting comfortable with awkwardness and making mistakes.
When I stopped trying to be an intellectual about everything, and started to just soak myself in Japanese listening practice, whether I understood it or not, my level skyrocketed. When I started to seek out conversation practice - no matter how broken or awkward - I not only improved my speaking and understanding, but I was learning tons of new words and grammar structures too.
Again, these improvements weren't intellectual. I wasn't thinking about them. Like a baby, I was just learning naturally through context as I used the Japanese that was available to me.
Context-Based Japanese Learning and Increasing Study Time
The US State Department estimates that it takes Americans 2200 study hours to reach fluency in Japanese. Surveys conducted by the Japanese Language Education Center (JLEC) between 2010 - 2015 report that students (without prior kanji knowledge) who passed the JLPT N1 had between 3000 and 4800 study hours.
One of the best parts of context-based learning is that it can easily double, triple, quadruple the amount of time you spend engaging with Japanese in a day.
Think about how long you can actively focus on a textbook by yourself without starting to fall asleep. I can't go more than 45 minutes on my best days. Maybe an hour and a half if I'm studying together with a teacher or another learner.
Now think about how long you can listen to an interesting podcast while cleaning the house without ever getting bored of it. Think about how long you can chat with a friend at a coffee shop, read an interesting book, or binge your favorite show. I bet your answer was on the magnitude of hours.
Before I started making an effort to use context-based learning with Japanese, I was only getting a little bit of Japanese every day, despite living in Japan. But when I began listening to Japanese podcasts during my work commute and got back into watching anime on a daily basis, my weekly Japanese engagement time literally doubled without any extra effort on my part - I was just using my eyes and ears to enjoy content. When this got me to a level where I could start having conversations, my Japanese time increased even more.
I said above that I use a mixture of context-based learning and more traditional study methods, like Japanese lessons, Duolingo and Wanikani. However, if I were to analyze that mixture based solely on time spent, I would guess that only 20-30% of my time is spent on traditional studying, and 70-80% is listening, speaking, and living in Japanese.
The hands-down easiest way to start racking up those 2200 hours of Japanese study is by implementing more context-based learning into your routine. Whether it's through conversation, media, or books, this is simultaneously the easiest and the most important thing you can do for your studies. Start training your ears, eyes, and mouth for Japanese today.
Comprehensible Input - Context-Based Learning, But Make It Even Faster
Stephen Krashen is an American linguist famous for his Natural Approach to language learning. Krashen's methods, like Lonsdale's, are context-based. But while Lonsdale takes a rather trial-by-fire and brute-force approach to learning, Krashen emphasizes being more selective with the level of the language that you take in. He coined the term comprehensible input - i.e. natural, in-context language that is understandable to the learner, and he suggests getting a lot of it.
As unfortunate as it may be, input that is too difficult isn't doing much for us. Even though Lonsdale talks about brain-soaking (taking in tons of auditory language to get used to patterns, tones, inflections, etc.) as a part of your language learning process, he also clarifies at the beginning of his TedTalk that we have filters in our brain that filter out languages we don't understand. So if you can't understand anything you're taking in, you aren't gaining anything. This is why you can watch all the anime in the world without learning more than a few set phrases. Most of it is just way too high level.
Input that is too easy is also kind of a waste of time. You wouldn't expect to learn algebra by practicing addition, right? Same concept applies here. If you understand 100% of what's being said, there's nothing new to learn from context. You can't grow if you don't go outside of what you already know.
By focusing on the right amount of comprehensibility in our input, we can get the most bang-for-our-buck on time versus outcome for our Japanese studies.
There are a lot of numbers quoted in linguistics research about the optimal percentage of understandability for context-based language learning, but everyone seems to set the bar at 70% comprehensibility as the absolute lowest, and 95% as the highest. Since you probably aren't going scientifically dissect how much you know, just go by general feeling when you're listening or reading.
If you can generally understand, but are sometimes coming across words or grammar that you don't know yet, you're probably okay. If you're missing entire sections or can't even parse where words end or begin, that's too hard. If you can't find a single new word, find something harder!
The Be-All-End-All of Context-Based Japanese Language Learning: Interest
In Krashen's approach to language learning, comprehensibility is only one piece of the picture. Another important component of language learning is interest. Actually, this is a huge component of any learning. If you're interested in something, you're paying attention. If you're not, you're falling asleep. Even if an instruction manual for how to build a desk chair is written at the exact comprehensibility level for me to grow in my Japanese, it's not going to help me because I'm just not interested in building a desk chair.
This is basically Lonsdale's first principle too - language content should be relevant. Relevance also equals interest, just maybe not in a traditional sense. My hobby isn't building desk chairs, so I probably wouldn't find that manual traditionally interesting. But if I had purchased a desk chair and needed to build it, I'd obviously want to read the manual so I could stop sitting on the floor.
But in reality, I don't even have a desk. So a chair building manual isn't relevant or interesting to me.
If you're really interested in something, your brain is going to do it's best to understand it, despite any barriers. There are lots of kids here in Japan who learn to read really complicated kanji super early, simply because they read a ton of manga. The same is true for avid readers in English. This is also why media-based Japanese learning (like learning through anime) has proven so successful for so many people.
Of course, interest alone won't make up for 0% comprehensibility. No matter how much I love K-drama, I can't turn on an episode without subtitles and learn very much Korean. But if the interest is there and you're consuming Japanese of reasonable comprehensibility, rest-assured, your brain is filling in the gaps. It's learning, and it's learning fast. And this is why context-based learning can be SO POWERFUL compared to traditional learning.
Unless your hobby is understanding the intricacies of Japanese grammar structure, textbooks are boring. It's okay to admit it. It doesn't make you a bad student, it doesn't mean you don't care about learning Japanese.
If something is boring, you brain wants less of it. If something is stimulating, your brain wants more of it. Accept this fact, use this fact, and you'll change your entire relationship to studying Japanese.
When I first started practicing yoga here in Japan, there were so many Japanese terms that I didn't yet understand. But as I continued practicing, it was wild how those terms just started to make sense to me over the next couple of months. Never did I look them up (it isn't like I can have my phone in the studio), but using repetition over multiple classes and the context of watching my teachers and classmates, my brain was able to dissect the meanings of those words and retain them in my memory. Now I know some words that I'm not even sure of the English version, but I have an instant image in my mind when I hear them, allowing my to bypass any translation steps (Action #7 - Connect new vocabulary to mental images, not to your native language.) For real guys, context-based learning is powerful stuff.
How to Implement Context-Based Learning into Japanese Studies
This is a hard section to write, because so many things fall into this category. But in general, anything that gets you listening, speaking, and/or reading can be used for context-based learning, and anything that focuses on a topic that is interesting and relevant to you will produce far better results and increase your study time more easily.
Despite the breadth of possibilities, I'll do my best to summarize my favorite methods and give advice for finding comprehensible input at all levels here:
Japanese Podcasts - The main way that I accessed a ton of comprehensible Japanese input as a beginner and intermediate learner was by listening to podcasts where Japanese teachers would talk about random topics (Japanese culture, travel, psychology, etc.) in pure, simple Japanese. See this post for more extensive explanation, detail, and a list of the specific podcasts I used.
Graded Readers, Light Novels, and Children's Books - No matter your level of Japanese, there is reading content that can work for your level. I recommend graded readers and children's books for beginners and intermediate learners. Check out Tadoku's library of free graded readers (stories sorted by level) to find something for you right away! For upper-intermediate/advanced learners, light novels are a great step to take before full on novels and books. If you can find a Japanese version of a story that you already know (like Harry Potter), that prior knowledge will help bridge any gaps in grammar and vocabulary. NHK News Easy also has news content written in simple Japanese, and they provide kanji readings as well. Finally, my Japanese Reading Practice Series has short, easy, and bite-sized reading passages for all levels!
Japanese TV and anime - If you want the most bang-for-your-buck with watching Japanese anime and TV for studying, it's best to stick to daily life content, rather than something like fantasy or history. The daily-life genre will give you the most understandable and usable language content, and that's what we're going for. For TV, I recommend the reality show Terrace House, as it shows real Japanese adults speaking real Japanese. For anime-lovers, I listed some of my favorite daily life anime a while back in tip #4 of my post on simple ways to improve Japanese studies.
Do your hobbies in Japanese - This is obviously easier to do if you're living in Japan, where almost everything you do will be in Japanese, from buying a fridge to rock climbing. But even if you don't live there, think about if there's any way to incorporate some Japanese into your interests. Google search your hobbies in Japanese and see what comes up, especially on YouTube. Whether you're scrolling on Japanese k-pop fan TikTok, or following along to a pilates video in Japanese in your room, see if you can't do your interests in your new language.
Sing Karaoke in Japanese - Japanese Karaoke doesn't just help your reading skills, it's also a way of having fun in Japanese and taking in language content without making the effort of traditional studying.
Real conversations - As always, the sooner you can start and the more often you can be speaking with Japanese speakers, the better (especially native speakers). Lonsdale's 5th action (get a "language parent") is the most difficult to implement if you aren't living in Japan, but can make the biggest difference. I really recommend italki as a safe and affordable way to find native Japanese teachers and Japanese language partners. I use italki every week for online private lessons, but they also have group lessons, and even a free community area. If you're interested in trying out italki, use my affiliate link to sign up and get $10 USD in italki credits!
Conclusion
Sometimes, it feels like I hold an ancient secret about Japanese learning, because being in the middle of context-based language learning when it's working really feels like magic. I had never really experienced (or been aware of experiencing) learning a subject without doing anything that felt like effort. It's wild when you realize you know some word or grammar not from studying it, but just from absorbing it like a sponge. So, go out there and have yourself a lot of level-appropriate fun in Japanese, and just trust the process. If you can put the books down long enough to enjoy yourself, that's where the magic happens.
As always, any comments, suggestions, requests, or corrections are welcome below in the comment box! I'd love to know what you think. Don't forget to follow along on Twitter.
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