Monthly Archives: January 2014

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307 ways to learn a new language faster

Tanuki!

Remember Super Mario 3? Tanuki!

In numerical order:

  • 7 Tips to Love Where You Are Right Now
  • 13 Things That Are Totally Going To Change You In Your 30s
  • 14 Signs You’re Really Happy (And How To Stay That Way)

When did the annoyingly formulaic title, X ways to be a douche, become so ubiquitous? It sneaked up on me like a brain tumor, growing slowly, until I was like, “WTF, it’s everywhere”. Anyways, here are far fewer than 307 ways to learn a new language faster.

  1. Quit your job. This really frees up a lot of your time for that new language.
  2. Buy a plane ticket to wherever they speak your desired language (but choose a city/town/village where they don’t speak English). You saved some money before carrying out step 1, right?
  3. Learn how to say beer please in your new language: you will probably be thirsty when you get there.
  4. Befriend your local pub, bar, cafe owner and visit them everyday and never feel bad about pestering them and speaking their beautiful language terribly. Alcohol establishments are preferred as they will quickly help you bridge the fear gap of talking, or yelling, in your new language.
  5. Talk to EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. YOU. MEET. Old people are great. They come from a time when people actually had conversations so they’re good at it.
  6. Learn it on the pillow. Start dating a mother tongue in your new language. Make sure that they have no other language in common with you.
  7. Failing 6, find someone who is learning your new language and who doesn’t have any other language in common with you and date them, or, at least, befriend them. Avoid making friends with other English speakers. They are dirty.
  8. Don’t worry about being polite. Let’s be honest, you’re probably not that polite in your native tongue anyways and people expect foreigners to make mistakes. If you do happen to offend someone, pretend you’re Australian. Say Good-day mate and walk away.
  9. Exploit yourself. Figure out what makes yourself tick and exploit it. For example, if you seek validation in others, use that as a motivation to get yourself moving. Put yourself in a situation where you would be deeply embarrassed if you fail. If you’re competitive, find other people doing the same thing, make them your enemy and blow them out of the water.
  10. Drink plenty of water. This is just a good one in general.
  11. Don’t hesitate to masturbate. All that sitting and studying causes blood to pool in your nether regions. If the mood strikes you, go for it, but in the spirit of total immersion, pleasure yourself to content in the language of interest. An added bonus is you don’t need to feel guilty afterwards because, really, you kind of were studying.
  12. Don’t study all the time. That would be a seriously boring. Go for a bike ride, read a book, watch a movie, or, if all else fails, do some pushups.
  13. Yes, 307 is a prime number.
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Japan or the best place in the world to travel

It’s interesting how you can go from just meeting someone to being totally naked with them in the space of a few hours. Ladies, ladies, don’t get in a huff — your femen-centric minds are misleading you —I wasn’t with fuk-u and fuk-mi. I was in an après-ski onsen with some new friends I had made on the slope from Niigata city. Yes — dudes. Actually, I didn’t even know until today that onsen were segregated and nude. I figured it was just a big hot tub slash sake party. Well… life is a learning process.

Today was my second day of skiing at Myoko Kogen in Niigata prefecture just north of Nagano. I had just finished a nice conversation with an older man in his late 60s, who was retired, but working as a Japanese instructor, skiing during the winter, and playing tennis during the summer, when I went to see if I could get a private ski lesson. The guy at the counter didn’t speak English so so well, but a nice young woman was kind enough to help with translating. Note: she had a slight Aussie accent — it always cracks me up when ESL have a Scottish, English, or Aussie accent, somehow I just think they should all sound like Californians. Anyways, the result of the translation was come back later gaijin, but I ran into her and her friends, 5 of them altogether, while scarfing down a bowl of ramen on the slopes. She had learned English in Brisbane and spoke well, so we chatted up, and I skied with them from the rest of the day. It was loads of fun (たのしかったね), and then they invited me to go to onsen.

I have a history with heat-related relaxation. James and I used to hit the sauna fairly often and have epic conversations — we also went to an amazing public bath complex, Stadtbad Neukölln, in Berlin, that is, just by the way, nude and co-ed. Open air hot baths in Budapest, hamamı in Istanbul, and onsen in Japan… the list goes on dear reader. This was my first time at an onsen so I didn’t exactly know the protocol. Here’s the breakdown: you get a big towel and a small towel; get naked and put your stuff in a basket; bring the small towel with you and leave the big one; head over to the line of stools, hunker down, and wash yourself with the provided shower heads; once you’re good and rinsed, pop into the onsen. This particular place had an indoor pool that was about 40 degrees plus another pool outside. Now forty degrees isn’t too hot but they did also have a 90 degree sauna, which is awesome. And for that après-onsen comedown, why not hit the manga library upstair? Yes, there were in fact 4 aisles of densely packed manga sorted by series and sofa chairs for reading. I perused the selection and while remarking on the breadth of manga available, availed myself to the comic with the most scantily clad and impossibly proportioned woman on the cover — to my chagrin might I add: it was entirely PG. The considerate producers of the manga comic did include the pronunciation of the Kanji in Hiragana, so I could at least pronounce the words even if I didn’t understand them.

To end another day of ceaseless suffering, I went to my favourite Izakaya, Izakaya Pontaro, literally stumbling distance from my spartan hotel for the third night in a row. The couple that run the place are very very very nice. The husband enjoys telemark skiing, the wife doesn’t like skiing at all, they have two dogs, and visit their hometown in Kyushu every May which takes them two days by car. After my prerequisite pint of super cold Japanese draught and a few of their superb home-cooked dishes, the wife reminded me I had wanted to order the sake sampler… well, OK, if I must! Three glasses of slightly distinguishable sake later, they poured another one on the house, I would like to say because they enjoyed our conversation so much, but probably because I was their only customer.

Japan truly is the best place on Earth to visit. Come one, come all, unless you’re Australian, then stay effing put.

* Instead of fuk-u and fuk-mi, I was going to reference Zen Zen Chigau and Uso Bakkari from Hitching Rides with Buddha but it seemed a bit obscure.

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Module II: Japanese

IMG_3067

OK let’s get pumped for Japanese! Here’s the plan for super happy fun Japanese learning:

Any suggestions?! Leave a comment.

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German: lessons learned

Surprisingly, at least to me, I’ve already been travelling for 6 months. My plan was to stay in Berlin for 6 weeks to learn some German and then move on, but, as it happened, I stayed in Berlin for 11 weeks, spent all of November cycling in the Balkans, spent a week in Barcelona, and two weeks in Istanbul during Christmas. Now it’s the New Year and I’m in Tokyo: time to reflect, to see what I’ve accomplished so far, to see what I can learn from my experience thus far, and to determine if this is what I want to do with my time.

The 2 months I spent in Berlin were great — I totally fell in love with the city. I’ve never been anywhere that felt so free, and, I know I know, all I keep saying is that you can drink on the metro. It’s just an example though. The city is so laissez faire, so un-German, that you can do what you want, dress however you want, be who you want, and, yes, drink wherever you want, including the metro. I mean they have kiosks that sell beer on the platform: fantastisch.

Berlin, however, does have its downsides: it’s a terrible place to learn German. The city is incredibly international. Besides all the Turkish living there that immigrated in the 60s & 70s, there’s tons of Spanish, I assume because the poor economy in Spain, and even of all the Germans I met, none were actually from Berlin.

The German classes I took in Berlin were pretty good, and incredibly cheap, but, while it was especially helpful for making friends, dear lord, did it drag on sometimes. German is a complicated language, but after 6 weeks of classes we still couldn’t really have a conversation or talk about the past. This was frustrating — the whole point of language learning is to communicate with others. Learning a language is a lot like strengthening a muscle, you have to exercise it, but if you can’t have a conversation, you can’t exercise, and while the knowledge may be in your brain somewhere, you won’t have quick access to it unless you practice conversing.

Also, while I think I have a great capacity for doing boring things, eg studying a language course book, even I get bored. That’s part of the reason I was so gung-ho to go on the bike tour. New places every day, new country every week, and lots of exercise.

So what did I learn and how will I apply that to learning Japanese? The ubiquity of English in Tokyo is much less than Berlin so that shouldn’t be a problem. At this point, I’ve decided not to take classes but to do self-study and find a private tutor. And to keep from getting bored, I’m going to ski. My sister was kind enough to bring me my skis from Canada, so I will head to Nagano during the work week to ski and study. Hopefully, I can find some people to converse with there for practice, and, during the weekend, I’ll come back to Tokyo to visit with friends and make the party. Sounds like a great use of time to me.