I previously wrote about my personal journey learning Japanese from videogames and other media. In this post, I want to provide a more general and updated overview on current tools and resources, so that you can go about this in the most painless way possible. I'll also touch on lifestyle and mindset topics, which are crucial for learning in a healthier, more enjoyable, and more efficient way.
This might be a bit long, so if you want a quick rundown, you can skip to the conclusion.
Is it possible to learn Japanese from videogames?
Not only is it possible, but it's also one of the best ways to go about it.
There are two main activities in the realm of language learning: input and output. Input consists of consumption of the language, be it through reading or listening. For a language learner, a portion of this time is also spent looking up words you don't understand from what you're consuming, reading up on how certain grammar constructions work, and so on. Traditional language instruction makes it seem like language learning works like math, where you can learn the rules through textbooks and homework and you'll be fluent in the language, but it doesn't work that way. A language is an unfathomably vast thing, not just due to its vocabulary, but to the complexity of the language rules themselves.
Think about it: unless you're a teacher, you're likely unable to explain a lot of concepts from your own native language (here's an exercise: try to explain what the word 'that' means, assuming your native language is English), and you yourself didn't learn these concepts from a teacher, but from constantly consuming the language for years on end as a toddler. The inner workings of the language are embedded into your brain, and not in a logical manner, but as something instinctive, kind of like walking or swimming are (which are also things you need to acquire through years of constant practice). If you have practiced an instrument or a sport for a long time, striving to improve, you might be aware of how it's imperative to develop correct muscle memory, so you stop thinking about each thing you do, and instead act on it by nature.
It's the same thing with languages. You don't learn logical rules and think them through every time you read or speak, but instead you get yourself exposed to the language for a very, very long time, until the it forms new circuits in your brain that make you think in the same way as a native speaker. The rules do serve as an scaffolding to get you to greater heights when you're just starting out, but they're just that, a means to an end, and not the end in and of itself. Having explained this, I can now make a very concise point: input is the most important activity in language learning, it's what should be taking up 90%+ of your time. There is no understanding and no ability to speak fluently without massive amounts of input first. Kids don't learn to speak before they can understand what their parents are saying, and it's no exception with adults.
How do I start consuming if I don't understand anything in the first place?
I did make an emphasis on the importance of input above all else to clear out any preconceptions about language learning, but of course reading secondary materials like dictionaries and grammar guides is encouraged and generally necessary. I mean generally because depending on the native language of the learner, the target language, and the individual's innate talents, they might end up getting to a high level with nothing but plain input and output, but it's not the case for most people. Even if you do have that ease, using external materials can considerably speed up your comprehension and make your output more accurate, so I recommend their use.
How do you go about this for Japanese? Well, Japanese is a fairly complex language. In fact, they say it's the hardest language to learn for native English speakers. So if you expect to just jump in and start looking up words in a dictionary like you would with Spanish or French, you're gonna have a bad time.
I believe it's practically a requirement to first learn how the writing system works, what the different sounds and their pronunciations are, and how the most fundamental grammar works. These things have been extensively covered by many people on the net across the years much better than I ever could, so I'll be brief and mostly just make reference to these resources.
One such resource is Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese. The first few steps of this guide cover the writing system and the sounds, then it moves onto grammar, going from the most basic stuff and ending in some more intermediate grammar. If you read the whole guide, you'll be more than ready to start consuming content in Japanese
If you want a more brief explanation to jump into the action sooner, the MoeWay guide is fairly in-depth while being shorter and more pragmatic. I will refer to it a couple more times since it gathers many good explanations in a single place.
I'm ready to start consuming native content, what's next?
You shouldn't think about it too hard, just pick a game you want to play in Japanese and go for it.
…That being said, you'll find that's easier said than done. Reading Japanese will at first seem like a herculean task, no matter how much preparation you've had. You need to understand that we're very used to Western languages, which share not only the writing system, but also the grammar, sentence structure, word roots (like how most Western languages come from Proto-Indo-European, or Latin and Greek), some of the pronunciation, and sometimes even whole words. So even if we don't "know" one of these languages, we can somehow make some sense out of a text. Even if we can't, we get the illusion that we can at least "read" the words since they're written with the same characters we're used to, and it feels like it's natural to read it and we just don't know the words.
In Japanese, you have none of these shared elements, and no illusions of comprehension. Japanese has pretty much nothing in common with Western languages. The writing system is completely different (and orders of magnitude more complex and extensive at that), the grammar and sentence structure is completely alien, the sounds are thought of in terms of syllables (or morae, technically) instead of letters, and there are no Proto-Indo-European origins to save you. It's a completely different language from the very foundations.
So naturally, when you try to read Japanese, your speed will be excruciatingly slow, and your comprehension will be practically null, since you're familiarized with absolutely none of its components. And that's completely normal. If you try to play guitar when you've never done so, it will take weeks before you can even play a single chord correctly, let alone a whole song. People who can play make it look easy, but once you try to do it, you realize pressing metal strings between your fingers and a wooden board isn't actually a nice feeling. You will need to play frequently, consistently, for a long time, until you get calluses on your fingers, so they stop hurting and they let you press on the strings with greater force, and only then will you start making some real progress. It's the same thing with Japanese.
Just like you start out small with a few simple chords, it's better to start out with simple texts to get your feet wet. That being said, there are many recommendations for what to read when you're a beginner, but the truth is everything will seem impossible at first, so my advice is to just go with whatever makes you most excited, and keep at it for a while. If you get bored or feel stuck, just move on to something else. The most important thing is that you keep consuming content consistently. Some months will pass, and before you know it, you'll go back to the first thing you ever read, and feel like magically you suddenly understand everything. That's when you realize you're on the right track.
It's also recommended you use Anki or some other SRS software to memorize vocabulary and kanji faster. It's not necessary, but it will greatly speed up the rate at which you learn new words, and especially kanji, so there's little reason not to use it. This section of the MoeWay guide explains how to get around to this.
How to make reading easier and more productive
Going into reading with no other support might end up feeling fruitless. That's because reading for the purpose of learning a language is not quite the same thing as reading for entertainment. When you read for learning, you should try to dig deep into what you're reading, be merciless with each sentence, look up the words you don't know, the grammar you don't understand, and try to formulate hypotheses on what this one sentence is actually saying.
Of course, sometimes you will barely understand what the text is saying. A useful skill to have is knowing when to just skip stuff you don't understand, and focus on consuming the language in quantity. The point is, language won't go into your brain by osmosis just by gliding your eyes over incomprehensible squiggles, but hyper-focusing on a single thing you don't have the knowledge to understand yet isn't productive either. Use discretion and change your reading strategy accordingly.
Repeat this consistently, and slowly but surely your comprehension will increase, and this increased comprehension will allow you to decipher more texts, further increasing your comprehension, so you can read harder texts, then your comprehension will go even higher, and this will create the snowball effect that causes you to become fluent within a few years.
In order to facilitate this kind of learning-focused reading, there are many tools available. In my opinion, the most important thing is to be able to quickly and easily look up words and kanji you don't know. Unlike a language that uses the alphabet, it will take a long time until you can just type out words you don't know. That's why it's important to have the text available as something you can digitally select and search. As you may realize, this is not possible with most videogames, since they don't work like other computer programs and you can't just select the text. With console games, this becomes even harder. Fortunately, fellow learners have been working on solutions for years, so this keeps getting easier and easier to do. Check out a detailed analysis on what tools to use in this post (short version: use Game2Text for visual novels, and Kamui or Yomininja for everything else).
Another must-have is a popup dictionary. It's a kind of browser extension that lets you quickly check definitions and readings for Japanese words simply by hovering over the words with your mouse, simplifying the process of lookups so you don't have to search on Google or a dictionary website every single time. Yomichan/Yomitan is what most people use, since it's the most feature-complete and most importantly, allows you to add any word to Anki with one-click. This is crucial for what's called "mining", which consists in adding words from text you're reading into your flashcard deck, as opposed to reviewing cards from a pre-made downloaded deck. 10ten Japanese Reader is another cool popup dictionary, but it doesn't feature Anki integration, so you can't easily use it for mining.
Don't you have to learn all kanji first before doing all this stuff?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Despite what some sources may lead you to believe, kanji don't exist in isolation, but as a whole, together with the language. Sure, you might be able to get some information about them in isolation, but that won't help you with creating holistic knowledge about them.
Each kanji has many readings, many meanings, and their meanings can't be summarized with a few English words, since they're part of a completely different language whose speakers' conception of reality greatly differs. Thus, the best way to learn them is not by memorizing separate units of information, but by reading, learning the words they make up, and understanding their multiple functions and ways they can be used in within the context of the actual language, creating new knowledge for a new language, completely separate from preconceptions your native language made you hold.
Kanji study in isolation might seem like a shortcut to read faster and understand more once you actually start reading, but the truth is it will only create a flawed understanding based on a language that has nothing to do with Japanese, the language these kanji actually belong to, so you'll not only have wasted time you could've spent just reading, but you'll also have to relearn how to think about kanji entirely, since you never learned how they work in real language.
So if you want to learn fast and have fun, do yourself a favor and start reading from the very beginning. Yes, it will take a long time to learn kanji, but it's a natural process and you don't have to rush it. Like the proverb says, 急がば回れ (if you're in a hurry, take the long path). Simply enjoy the ride.
Routine is important
When I used to go to sleep at 6AM, wake up at 2PM, and my room was a mess, I had a hard time understanding the purpose of routine.
Routine is very important to give some structure to your life. This structure is not to stress you out, but on the contrary, to give yourself emotional stability to achieve your objectives more efficiently, and to create consistency in the work you put towards these objectives.
Routine is made up of habits. Habits are tiny actions or activities that you repeat frequently, generally daily.
One habit that you'll end up building is Anki reviews. Doing Anki daily makes sure you stick vocabulary and kanji into your brain, so you'll progressively have an easier time reading, even if you don't read that much every day. It's very important that you do keep doing this daily. If you get overwhelmed with new cards, lower the number, or just disable them completely until you get a stable rhythm going. If you're too tired one day to do your reviews, make the extra effort and do them. If you let your reviews pile up because you didn't do them, you'll be even less motivated to do them. This will cause reviews to pile up further, and this might escalate to the point you stop doing Anki altogether. So make sure you do it every day. 15 minutes a day might save you several hours in the future!
Having a reading/listening habit is obviously very important too, as this is the main source of learning. Unlike Anki though, it takes a lot more time and effort, especially at the beginning. You'll even notice that you get very mentally tired at first, too. This is normal and not your fault. This mental exhaustion will go away as your brain gets more and more used to Japanese, but this will likely take several months or even years, depending on the complexity of what you're reading. So at the start, be compassionate towards yourself, and limit your reading time to what you can take. If it's only 30 minutes, that's fine. Your brain getting tired is a sign that it processed that much new information. It's better to go little by little than bite more than you can chew and burn out, which will tire you and demotivate you, and prevent you from keeping the habit alive. Remember, consistency, and not time or effort, is the most important thing. Here's another proverb: 継続は力なり (consistency is strength/power).
Make sure to at least read a few hours every week. Ideally you'd be reading a few hours every day, but you can leave that for when you're closer to an intermediate level and get less tired. Take in mind that in the same way that burning yourself out is not productive, reading very little, even if consistently, is not that productive either. Think of it like boiling water: you can put a kettle on the fire, and it will take some time to boil. You can take it out once it's boiled, and you'll be able to use it to make coffee or something for some time. If it's cooled down a bit, you can put it back on the fire and it will boil again very quickly. On the other hand, if you take it out before it has boiled for the first time, not only can you not use it for making anything, but it will also cool back down very quickly, and even if you put it back on the fire, it will take a considerable amount of time to reach its previous temperature, let alone boil. Make sure to reach a boiling point, and consistently keep the water boiling before it cools down too much. Deciding how much time this means, how often and with what intensity is up to you. Know your strengths and weaknesses and do your best.
Finally, I cannot emphasize this enough: SLEEP!!! Sleep is the mother of all habits. If you wake up tired, your mood is ruined, your energy is lower, and in today's society you rarely can afford to nap enough during the day to recover your energy. If you don't have this energy, not only will you be too tired to do anything, but you'll end up hating your life in general, since you're forced to do things even when you're tired! So before putting in any effort or building any additional habits, make sure you're sleeping well. Go to sleep at a reasonable hour and wake up at a reasonable time. Sleeping enough hours isn't enough, since our bodies are made for sleeping at night and being awake during the day. If you've had a bad sleep schedule for several years, you might have forgotten (or never felt) the difference, and think the time you go to sleep and the time you wake up at are irrelevant as long as you sleep enough, but trust me and try going to sleep at at least 1 or 2AM and wake up at 10 or 11AM for a couple of days. You'll notice how you go from being a zombie back to a real human being full of life. This is what it means to sleep well. This energy allows you to do absolutely anything, so it's important you conserve it! It's just like the proverb says, 寝る子は育つ (kids who sleep grow healthy).
If you have a lot of free time, you might find yourself in a situation where your sleep schedule isn't ideal. Say you try to build good habits, and finally get your sleep schedule in order, and one day you're reading Japanese late into the night, and get excited by how much you're learning, how well you understand, how good the story is and so on. You might think: "Guess I'll go to sleep late today, it doesn't matter anyways because I'm learning Japanese so it's justified, and I'll learn more if I read for longer." NO!!! You quit the game and go to sleep, it doesn't matter how much progress you're making. If you go to sleep late that day, the next day you'll wake up late, feel groggy, maybe a bit tired. You'll read less, and because you've woken up late, you might go to sleep late again. The cycle will repeat, ending with the catastrophic consequence of ruining your sleep schedule and your Japanese reading habit. Then everything will come to a halt. If you want to prevent this, then just SLEEP!!! Habits are not made through magic or being born a certain way, they're made by following them every single day, even if (especially when!) you don't feel like doing it.
Finally, if you go to work or school, breaks are the ideal time for study, especially lunch breaks. These generally give you a whole hour, which is a lot if you can make good use of it. Yes, this does possibly mean sacrificing time talking with coworkers or classmates, but when your time is restricted, you have to put your priorities in order and decide what you're going to put above and what below. If you really want to learn Japanese, it's inevitable that you're going to have to change something about your current lifestyle. This applies to any discipline that takes a consistent routine, like learning an instrument, studying for a big and difficult exam, and so on, so you might be more familiar than you think with this kind of attitude.
And this might not be morally appropriate advice, but studying Japanese during class or work is more than valid. Especially if what you do in those places is boring! If you think you can get by paying less attention to your responsibilities then it might be useful with a tight schedule, but it generally generates more anxiety and chaos than it's worth.
And obviously, there's the weekends. Prepare to sacrifice time out with your friends and family to study Japanese. When you have little time during the week, then this is pretty much the only way left. If you spend a lot of time playing games that aren't part of your Japanese learning, cut that out too. It's not necessary to stop doing it entirely, but if you play videogames that are not in Japanese 30 hours a week, and then you say you have no time to study Japanese, then you're doing something wrong. If being so disciplined all of a sudden is too challenging, ease yourself into it little by little. Start cutting out unnecessary stuff 30-60 minutes at a time. Make yourself some tea and get some cookies for your Japanese reading sessions. Post about your language discoveries on social networks. Make your study time as enjoyable as possible. Because if you're not enjoying what you're doing, then why are you doing it?
Conclusion
Read Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese or the MoeWay guide to quickly learn the basic building blocks of Japanese, then get to reading and listening native content, and do it a lot. Use tools like Kamui, Game2Text, or Yomininja for extracting text from videogames, and look up definitions and readings for words either with the tools integrated into these software or with a popup dictionary like Yomitan or 10ten Japanese Reader.
Use all tools at your disposal to break down the text you're reading, and try your best to actively understand it. Learning is different from reading for entertainment. You need to read deeply, not just a lot. But know when to shift your focus from needle-sharp to ocean-wide.
Use Anki to build a deck of flashcards out of the new words you come across, and do your Anki reps every day. Make sure you're able to do it every day, so if you need to lower down the intensity to catch up then go ahead. Also make a habit out of reading/listening.
Play games in Japanese at least a couple hours a week, and increase your playtime as you start getting used to the act of reading Japanese. Reading a little bit every day isn't enough, make sure that when you get to reading you make it count, and you are actually making an effort at understanding and learning new things with each reading session.
A lot of shallow reading isn't going to get you very far, but consistent learning-focused reading in any measure is sure to make you improve.
To keep these habits up, sleeping well is highly recommended. If you don't sleep well, you don't have energy to live, and any habit you try to build will quickly fall apart. However, if you sleep well, and make an effort of doing so every single day, you'll feel like you can do anything, even if it initially seems like you're cutting your study time short.
If you're on a busy schedule, set your priorities straight, and if Japanese is high on the list, slowly start cutting out time from the lower priorities and move it towards Japanese.
And above all, enjoy yourself.
