In March of 2018 (almost seven years ago!), I decided to start learning Japanese. At the time, I was growing increasingly annoyed about the lack of availability of manga I wanted to read and the quality of translation when they did get picked up. So, spurred on by a friend who already knew the language, I found myself wanting to learn for what seemed like such a frivolous reason.
Seven years is a long time and there are definitely people who will have spent this amount of time better, gotten more fluent than I am and accomplished things I haven’t. I’m not saying this to disparage my own hard work after all we all learn at our own pace and that’s more the point I’m driving at. I have days that I am envious of others, but also days that I am proud of how far I’ve come all the same. There’s no one size fits all and the important thing is that I engage with this language every day, getting better every day in small steps that might not seem like a lot of progress but slowly add up.
Descent into Radio Show Listening
As I mentioned at the start, I started learning to read manga and light novels primarily. I never cared about speaking and horribly neglected my listening skills despite the amount of anime I watch all the time, so despite my reading being moderately okay now my other language skills have lagged behind. Last year, I decided I wanted to do something about that fact – still not speaking, but at least improving my listening. It just so happened that in the Winter season The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic was airing and advertising a tie-in radio program on Onsen radio. Being the anime nerd I am, I did vaguely know that some shows had tie-ins like this where the voice actors got together to play games, discuss the show and respond to fan mail – but I severely underestimated just how many there are!
As it turned out, that season not only was there The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic, but also Delicious in Dungeon, Mashle, Sasaki and Peeps and ‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess with shows as well. Alongside that I’d recently started subscribing to more Japanese YouTube channels (for new anime trailers, primarily) and it hadn’t escaped my notice how many had “After Talks” or chibi shorts that were never translated into English but added another layer to these releases. Seeing this I found the determination or perhaps curiosity to try listening to these shows and watching the accompanying extras released as the anime aired, which honestly was the best decision I’ve made in a while for my language skills.
Since that Winter season I’ve continued to listen to a range of radio shows dedicated to particular anime, I also discovered that a variety of voice actors I love including Mamoru Miyano, Hiro Shimono, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Kentaro Kumagai and more recently Reiji Kawashima have personal shows of their own, which offered me a new way to get to know the actors I appreciate so much. I’m not going to pretend my listening was great, frankly at the start of the year it totally sucked and I’d be lucky if I understood 15-20% of what they discussed, frantically grasping for context from a few words or from reading the episode summaries. Still, I was engaged with it and trying, so slowly but surely the amount I do understand has raised considerably. Is it still difficult? Absolutely, but there’s progress and I know if I keep at it that will continue to improve. Some of it also helped by the fact that I’ve gotten used to the flow of these shows, so I know what to expect, which gives you a better foundation to understand what’s happening.
Honestly, I’m glad I persevered because engaging with the medium in this way has brought me a newfound appreciation for so many anime – and those involved with them. There’s nothing more fun than watching streams or stage events released on YouTube and watching the actors being total dorks or the staff talking so passionately about a project. There’s so much we never get to see in the West and I understand why because trying to translate it for such a small audience would be a nightmare, but it really is such a different experience. And it has brought me so much joy in my day to day, there’s always something happening. If I didn’t care for or engage with this hobby in the way I do I’d probably get burnt out, but I love it so much that I’m just really happy.
Drama Viewing
If the radio shows and streams had been the only big thing I did last year, that would have already been a huge improvement to my Japanese. But that wasn’t the only decision I made.
In June the I Hear the Sunspot drama started airing in Japan. God knows why given how busy the Summer usually is with work, but I decided I wanted to watch it and it wasn’t being released in English at the time so I worked out that TVer streamed episodes for a week after it airs (you do need a VPN, but otherwise it’s very accessible!). So once more determined and spurred on by my interest in the manga, I started watching it – and once again I’m incredibly glad I made that choice as insane as it was at the time.
I was no stranger to Japanese dramas having been eagerly watching them on Viki and Netflix. I was also well aware that many adaptations of manga I like are never licensed for the Western market, so I felt if I could watch them as they air in Japanese that would solve a lot of problems for me when it came to accessibility.
Watching I Hear the Sunspot was easier than getting started with the radio shows and unsubbed events, that’s for sure. Episodes were subtitled in Japanese which made it easier to look up any vocabulary I needed and I already vaguely knew how the story went, so I had far more context to hand. Above all, this story was very engrossing so my lack of language skills didn’t matter nearly as much as I thought it would. It was easy to follow and I put my brain to work looking up what I was missing if I was ever truly stomped. Above all, I found that I understood a heck of a lot more than I ever expected to.
Having found success with Sunspot, I decided to try out some more shows from the same season quickly hitting on a favourite with Go Home: Keishichio Mimoto Fumeinin Sodanshitsu, which is a police procedural about a woman working in the unidentified bodies department where they must work out who they were in life and sometimes solve the crime that led to their death. This was an original series, so unlike Sunspot I couldn’t just read a manga or book for more context. There was also a lot of very specific vocabulary that I hadn’t come across before, so it was hard. But thanks to the subtitles I could still look things up and again above all else I found myself really engaged with the content. Led by the talented lead actress Fuka Koshiba and with music by Yokoyama Masaru (whose anime soundtracks I adore), I had a lot of fun watching this. The premise sounds dark, but Koshiba’s character is optimistic and looks on the bright side of life having gone through some horrible things herself. There’s respect for the work they’re doing and of course, it does have darker moments, but the script adds in plenty of uplifting scenes between the cast that help balance the whole thing.
While Sunspot was later released in English on iQIYI, Go Home still hasn’t seen a release outside of Japan so I find myself increasingly glad I chose to watch it then. The same thing has happened for Usotoki Rhetoric, which I won’t get into too much here since I already rambled at length in a review. I love that manga, so I’m happy that the timing worked out in terms of me starting to watch more dramas in Japanese and this starting since there’s no sign of a Western release.
Compared to the anime side of things, I think this has worked out considerably better for both my reading and listening skills thanks to the fact so much is subtitled. The fact they’re ongoing stories and sometimes based on work I’m already familiar with means I build up context slowly as the show goes on, growing familiar with particular vocabulary that creeps up again and again. My comprehension has improved so much as I become able to spot speech patterns and vocabulary usage. And sometimes I just watch trashy romances that are easy to follow and rewarding in that I get to see some cute fluffy moments of the leads being cute together.
In Closing
This year I don’t intend to set any particular language-related goals (or goals at all, frankly), but I do want to continue 2025 in the same vein as ’24. I guess the one thing I would like to do is finish more Japanese light novels as despite being able to read them, I still find it difficult because I’m lazy about pushing through with them. I know I can do it, so I just need to actively work on it. I did finish Love Is Dark Volume 1 in 2023 and I have the Wistoria: Wand and Sword prequel to read, so hopefully that spurs me on.
My activities over the last year have reminded me how much better my Japanese gets when I’m truly invested in something and I think with reading especially I was starting to grow complacent. I’m building my skills in a much rounder approach now, even if it still revolves around my hobbies so heavily. And maybe more importantly not only am I taking solid steps forward on this neverending road of learning, but this has allowed me to appreciate and understand my hobbies on a whole new level than before. My friends tease me and say I fill my days up with all these dramas, anime, manga, etc – but I wouldn’t trade that for the world. I’m grateful to the me of seven years ago who started on this path, even if it was for something that seemed like a frivolous reason looking back now.
I hope this post serves as something to look back at in another seven years and see how far I’ve come since then. How’re you doing future me? Do you remember not knowing what 防犯カメラ meant (despite camera being a dead giveaway)? Or all that time dispairing and trying to figure out that Kohei was signing I like/love you to Taichi despite knowing full well since you read A Sign of Affection already? Or realising that trying to follow along with Radio Smile was crazy since Mamoru talks so fast when he’s excited, but you wouldn’t miss it for the world so pushed on regardless even when Kadokawa got hacked and the NicoNico uploads were frozen for months? It was a year full of new experiences, that’s for sure lol.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how long it takes to learn a language as long as you’re using it frequently and slowly moving forward at the pace that suits you.
Header image from The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio