These are my notes about the book "Fluent Japanese from Anime and Manga," I collected them with Trello using the system I wrote about a while ago in this article. I thought my notes could be useful to other people as well as a reference to go back to sometimes.
Book Details:
- Title: Fluent Japanese from Anime and Manga: How to Learn Japanese Vocabulary, Grammar, and Kanji the Easy and Fun Way
- Author: Eric Bonar
- eBook Link: Kindle Store
- How I obtained my copy?
- From Amazon.com as part of Kindle Unlimited Program.
Book in 3 Statements:
- Focusing on Enjoyment is the best way to avoid learning burnouts. Once you get bored with a method, look for another enjoyable one.
- Four exercises for Anki: Production, Cloze, Listening, and Shadowing.
- Reading/Listening in two ways per day, Intensive: being on the lookout for repeated words to study. Extensive: Spending a lot of hours immersed in Japanese with a focus on enjoyment.
My Goodreads Review (Link)
Fluent Japanese from Anime and Manga came at the perfect time for me. I've experienced Japanese for media 10+ years and all I know is Kana characters, 100~ random Kanji & a humble amount of Vocabulary. I never dedicated time to learn because it wasn't enjoyable to me.
This book explains what I was doing wrong. It gives you a learning system based mainly on Anime & Manga, but those can be replaced with any native material of any Language, as the strategies are universal.
The strategies included fit my learning style. They're not for everyone though.
The book is not beginner-friendly despite being marketed as such. While you don't need to understand any Japanese to implement the strategies, the book is written in a way that assumes you're familiar with Katakana & Hiragana. I believe some parts of this book can be rewritten to be more beginner-friendly.
The book also doesn't directly teach you Japanese. It contains a lot of information to learn Japanese for free or at a low cost, and that's fair in my opinion. But don't go into it expecting a Japanese textbook, or a quick strategy for achieving fluency. All methods here are ways to maintain your interest in learning in the long term. It needs effort, but that effort is worth it!
(I read this book via Kindle Unlimited subscription so I didn't pay the full price.)
Useful Notes
- ANKI exercises:
- Production: English on front. Japanese on back. Spend less than 5 seconds on each.
- Cloze: Full sentence, missing only 1 Kanji, the answer in the back.
- Listening: A few seconds of voiced recording. English translation or Japanese transcription in the back. Don't spend more than 5 seconds trying for the answer.
- Shadowing: Listen and say the voiced script out loud at the same time trying to emulate the voice's accent.
- Don't learn Kanji's readings. You'll learn them as you go, by learning vocabulary.
How This Book Helped Me? My Ideas
- This is the first learning material that made me take Anki seriously. I didn't before for the same reason's the book states: It wasn't enjoyable!
- This book is the final straw that made me watch Anime in its native language.
Favorite Quotes
Page 24:
Japanese Pitch Accent Japanese pitch accent is completely overlooked and neglected by the majority of Japanese language learners. I was guilty of this myself for the first three years of my study, and as a result, I spoke with a very heavy American accent.
Page 27:
Boredom is our brain's way of telling us that we are going to burn out if we continue to push ourselves to learn from the same material day after day. Our brains are smart that way. It knows when something is no longer working. Resistance to learning doesn't mean that we are stupid or lazy. It means to stop and do something different.
That's nice to hear and makes me feel less guilty about my ever-changing interests in life. Even with this blog, I tend to get bored from writing about some topic so often...
Page 70:
On a more personal note, I can say the following with a high amount of confidence. Pushing myself to do 50 + Anki cards every day was one of the largest factors that led to my eventual burnout with learning Korean.
Thanks for Reading My Notes~
If you have a question or suggestion feel free to write in the comments! I reward the comments I like. These notes are published on Hive and also on Read.cash.
You can check more about this note-taking system from my notes on the Youtube video that inspired it.