toras says hey man I started learning Japanese with your channel a few years ago and ended up giving up when kanji started oh no thinking about trying again any tips for kanji again for kanji don't focus on doing everything don't get Anki lists of all the kanji don't learn all the readings learn a kanji and learn some words with it that use readings that's it and don't focus on writing if it if it's demotivational for you to write I like to write so I would write like when I was in my Chinese class I was writing it all because I figur that helps me out remembering it better but you could just learn to read it just get good at reading it recognizing it okay don't focus on becoming perfect in any part of Japanese and you'll get good in Japanese perfect is the enemy of good it really really is you know that you can't become perfect without being good first but if you focus on jumping that level going up like you can't skip over bad poor pretty good good great perfect you can't get to perfect without going through the steps it's like a lot of people when they study Japanese because they I really firmly believe it's the internet like they'll hit a video on trying to be perfect in something and it's like trying to climb Mount Fuji immediately to the top it's like you know I'm going to climb Mount Fuji but um I don't want to do all the I don't want to make mistakes along the way I don't want to like now I'm just going to go right to the top and be perfect but what do you miss on the way to Mount Fuji the top of Mount Fuji you miss all the beautiful trees all the vistas at the lower levels where you're closer to the buildings you know you miss the deer the rabbits whatever beautiful experiences you might have you might slip and hit your knee every now and then but that's a story oh my God wait till I tell you hi I almost died on Mount Fuji right around that fifth that what do they call it the go go the fifth Summit I don't know what they call it I don't I've never climbed Mount Fuji I'm just saying you miss a lot along the way and you can't just do it anyway there is unless you're going to get in a helicopter and go to the top of the mount you can't do it it doesn't work that way you got to suck in Japanese before you can be good you got to be good before you can be great you got to be great before you can be perfect right so just learn it in stages with kanji it's the same thing just learn what is around you what you want to use what you see when you're studying when you're watching your favorite Japanese pop star and there's a lyric for a song like what is that and in a bonus you'll probably learn a new verb as well glacon says I'm a firm believer that writing helps retention it does it really really does it also helps you see the differences in the kanji for their radicals which you saw that mistake I just made right I looked at Matsu and thought it was Motu okay but Motu is the hand radical and Matsu is the like the go radical dbud Martin says you might not need to write kanji ever but writing helps recognize it absolutely true Eric pug says when writing for studying I found the Cuda toga mechanical pencils are fantastic a great Japanese product let me say this as well don't focus on having the perfect tool you can literally have any pen and write you don't need to do calligraphy I know it helps when you're doing fade stops and you know tomato and and hus you know those type of stroke types are important when you're learning to write calligraphy but you don't have to have the perfect tool just any pen will be fine the Cuda toga which I've never heard of before they're probably fantastic but if you make that something that you need it's another roadblock be sloppy with it it doesn't need to be clean and by the way it doesn't matter how much prep workk you do it doesn't matter if you have all the perfect tools the best book in the world the best teacher you're still going to suck it suck you're going to be sloppy you're going to have days where you hate yourself like why can't I do this I should have known this but I forgot it oh my God I spent so much time on my on my anky deck how come I don't know this word I cuz you didn't use it you didn't use it in in actual Japanese that's why you don't know it you know you didn't have a mistake or a funny story you didn't have experiential learning ma an said I just started with 15 kanji and most of those the first 10 numbers more came after and there were weeks and months and I barely learned new ones just use the ones to know I mean at a minimum that's what you got to do you're right you know just learn the ones that you need because if you try to learn all 2,000 conji before you know how verb conjugation works and how to say I like a cat you're unbalanced your Japanese is super unbalanced but if you learn kanji while you're like you learn the hiragana you learn the Katakana you learn verbs you start learning some kanji like you build it together do you think Japanese children learn all the kanji before they're out of high school no they it takes them 10 years to learn all the kanji I just always wonder what people are thinking when they learn Reon they try to learn all the kanji at once it's a great goal but it doesn't get you to fluency if that's your goal if your goal is to learn all the Kani you got to do that but but if your goal is to speak some Japanese be understood and understand you better practice listening you better practice having a thought in your head and making it come down to your mouth and come out in Japanese because I'll tell you what you think you're good you think you're amazing you you you every test you've ever done online every fake jpt not fake sorry um every J BT um what's the word not fake um sample test that you do you do well it's all fun in games until you get into a conversation and you haven't practiced the one skill that no one really thinks about speaking putting a thought you need to have the skill to go from English to Japanese to out of your mouth talk to anybody who was studying Japanese and then went to Japan they all say it every single one it happened to me I was studying Korean I thought pretty got a good hang on this first time I went to the convenience store and the guy said it was you know what do you say I wasn't ready for it I wasn't ready for something as simple as is 3500 w s wasn't ready for it if I saw that on the page I'd get it right away cuz one thing you forget about when you're looking at stuff like if you're watching Japanese on like a TV show with subtitles of course you understand more cuz you have a visual representation but have you turned off the subtitles Have you listened Raw it's a lot different skill listening with subtitles versus listening without subtitles versus listening while you have to think about the next thing that you want to say in response to what that person said a whole different skill do you know that I sometimes just cuz I'm probably weird I talk to the TV I do it in English cuz that's just a thing that I do I I respond to the character I do it in Japanese I do it in Korean because it's not because there's no reason why I do it it's just I'm weird but it helps me get good at conversation because I've already had that conversation as a joke in my head I did a video the other day not a lot of people watch it but I was analyzing a guy that was in the Philippines this Japanese guy and at one point he asked a Filipino girl T are you going to eat and I in the video I saw myself do it right I'm just remembering right now what how I I said yeah I eat I eat I I answered the question as if he asked it to me okay so that kind of thing I do all the time so if someone in a TV show said which even though that means will you eat it also means in that tone do you want to eat I might [Music] go right I might answer because it's funny to me because I'm weird but I kind of recommend you do that stop the video and answer the question what would you say in that moment and turn off those subtitles just turn them off completely no English no Japanese see what you understand is so different I'm playing that Yakuza game and I'll freely admit without those subtitles I don't know if I'd be doing as good I don't know how to turn them off by the way I don't think there's a way to turn it off and just have dialogue but it's a much different skill to not have it on there and by the way I'll say you this thing too sometimes when I'm reading the Japanese I realize I'm not hearing what he's saying too because sometimes it's the opposite if I didn't read it I would have understood it because my brain is saying wait a minute that kanji isn't normally read that way in my brain it's causing confusion I heard it one way but then I'm reading it one way and now I don't know what it means but if I just heard it I'd get it if I just read it I'd get it but when they mix together breaking what I think it should be I lose comprehension so what are the skills we're talking about reading Japanese as a skill listening while reading is a skill listening without reading is a skill listening where you have to answer is a whole another skill where you don't know what's happening you don't know the topic when you're watching a TV show you know the plot you know what's happening but if someone randomly comes up to you in Japan and says out of the blue no context do you have a blue wallet now the moment you understood i c maybe you oh my god did I drop my wallet and he picked it up now you have some cont text Hi and then you you check I picked it up over there oh okay it's a totally different skill if you only eat spaghetti you're not going to have a good time right you got to eat vegetables you got to have dessert you got there's like a balance of food same thing when you learn Japanese you got to have a balance of what you're doing because the end goal I don't know what it is you tell me what your end goal is but if your end goal is what most people is it's to watch TV without subtitles and speak some Japanese I feel like that would be a good end goal don't you think you know what another thing I do is I try to guess the next dialogue and I nail it sometimes and it's super super good dopamine boost you know it's like oh my God I did it I I not only did I guess how the story was going to go cuz here's the thing there's only so many places a story can go right let's say a character walked into a room where there's one Dead character and one living character what's the conversation it's really limited it would have nothing to do with eating there would be no like what did you eat today hey do you want to go eat it might have been that maybe he's going to go see the the character a who's alive and character B is dead let's say he was heading in to talk to character a about getting lunch he walks in he sees character a and he goes oh you show right and then he notices the body do you think the tedu conversation is going to keep going no no what's the next thing he's going to say probably nine times out of 10 DOA like what happened or the the character's name b b and he rushes to ban or there was a history between a and b and immediately realizes that a killed B so he rushes to he rushes to a and he grabs him what did you do there's only so many things that can happen in that scene that's what you learn when you have conversations right there's only so many things that's why experiences are important that's why paying and you don't get that in a textbook that's the problem textbooks you don't have all of those cues you know you don't walk into the textbook conversation and there's a dead person on the floor and someone holding a knife it's just like all of a sudden there's all of a sudden something happened and you have in your brain has has nothing to latch on to that's why listening watching and interacting with Japanese is a way more effective way to learn than purely using textbooks or purely using my videos or purely using even even from zero.com by the way guys if you want to learn Japanese check out our five courses at fromzero dcom