TUJ Circle

日本語の勉強、頑張って！(Go to a Japanese Bar)

• Author: Jasmine Louis (Click to see my profile)
• Posted: July 20, 2009, 1:34 am
• Categories: Campus Life, Japan Life, TOPICS, Tokyo Life
• Tags: bar, beer, campus, culture, drinking, japan, japan campus, japanese, language, learning japanese, listening skills, nerima, nihon, nihongo, student, study, study abroad, temple university, tokyo, tuj
• Comment (RSS)

Yes, I am studying Japanese

Yes, you read the title right.
In this post, I want to talk about going to a Japanese bar in order to study Japanese.

When I first came to TUJ, I met a student who was really great at speaking Japanese. I asked him how long he had been studying and he said, “a year and a half.”
Any student of Japanese knows that a year and a half is a fairly short amount of time to get a tight grasp on Japanese. Eager for tips, I asked him what has helped him the most in his journey to fluency, and he said going to his local bar.

I was so suprised! He said he didn’t even learn from taking a class.

After going to a bar myself, I have seen how helpful it can be. You’re able to hear different speeds of talking, different accents and intonations, and you’re forced to speak– even if you’re usually too nervous!

For two months, I have been going to a bar in my neighborhood every Friday night. I bring my notebook and pen, electronic Japanese-English dictionary, and of course, money to spend. The bar is great for learning Japanese.

       ***I’m constantly hearing new words (slang, especially)
       ***I’m constantly hearing new and old sentence structures
       ***I’m meeting great people who I can actually call friends

Dancing the night away to Michael Jackson

This place has actually become like a second home for me. I see the same people every Friday night and I’m slowly getting to know everyone of them as I learn new things to say in class. I know the bar owners and they even invited me over to their house for an okonomiyaki party. I’ve been to karaoke with the regulars, to other clubs with them, and we always a great time. We laugh, and joke, and dance until the wee hours of the morning.

Until the next Friday, I’m anxiously waiting to see them again. And I’m also thinking of new sentences to say in order to express how I feel so they can understand me and get to know me better.

However, while the bar is beneficial and fun, it certainly has its shortcomings:

       ***If you drink too much, you’ll stop paying attention to the new things you’ve learned
       ***If you really drink too much, you’ll forget everything
       ***You’ll learn more impolite words than polite words
       ***People will finish your sentences for you, or not be patient enough to listen to you
       ***It burns a hole in your pocket!

These are the problems I’ve run into so far. Like any social setting, everyone’s talking at once, which is great, but it’s difficult to actually jump into a conversation if you’re a newbie to Japanese, like me.

I think the biggest problem I’ve had so far is that it’s a little overwhelming at times. Being at a Japanese bar highlights everything you don’t know yet, and becoming fluent in Japanese seems unattainable while you’re sipping down a ラムコーク (Rum N’ Coke) and dancing to Michael Jackson with 日本人 (Japanese people).

But through all the problems and frustrations, I know frequenting the bar has been the best thing that’s happened to me in Japan. I’ve met so many great, interesting people and although I can’t talk to them the way I want (because of my limited langauge skills), we’re still able to understand each other through laughter and simply having a great time.

For me, a bar is not enough to get a good hold on Japanese. I personally feel more comfortable with an actual learning session because it gives me a focus, instead of hearing everything at once!
I have learned many new things at my bar, but I rather have a number of outlets such as; Rosetta Stone, class, television, music, movies, and books. These things, in addition to the bar, will be helpful. Not the bar alone.

There have been other people who proclaim the bar has been their ticket to fluency. But I think it’s important to remember every method in learning Japanese will not work for everyone. You have to find a method that works for you.

My advice:

       ***Try everything you can, stick with it for a while, and if it doesn’t work, move onto
            something else
       ***It doesn’t hurt to go back to those old methods you dropped before once you’ve gotten
            more advanced in your language study!
       ***Remeber that everything eventually gets easier with practice.
       ***Have patience.

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