Learning and communicating in a new language is a great experience. I can still remember the first time I really engaged in Japanese conversation. It was like I had passed through some invisible barrier. But what if you are traveling to Japan before you have had a chance to study much Japanese or need to get a point across you just don’t know the Japanese...

This post was originally about how to best use Mnemosyne as a study tool to help you learn Japanese faster. They say the best time to review something is right before you forget it. Mnemosyne is a flash card program program that uses an algorithm to help you do just that. Increasing the speed that you can learn new Japanese words and phrases. Unfortunately, I had a...

Let’s face it. You can only remember so much. The more you study the more you will remember, but you only have so much time. When it comes to learning Japanese, or any language for that matter, there is a lot to learn. You need to remember hundreds and eventually thousands of Japanese words, grammatical structures, and pronunciations. Not to mention kanji for...

The entire first year that I studied Japanese I didn’t really learn much. As I mentioned in the free E-book 5 Tips to Learn Japanese Faster, a big part of this was due to the use of bad materials. Another big reason was that I didn’t really have a strong reason or goal for studying Japanese. I had an interest in Japan, martial arts, and the samurai. And...

When I was studying Japanese in Japan, people used to ask me what did I think the most important part of learning Japanese was? If I could only study one thing what would it be? My answer, vocabulary. The more Japanese words you know the better you will be able to understand the conversation. Even if you don’t understand the grammar, you can convey your...