My Goals

• I want to connect with people better - Whenever I meet new people, I try to guess where they’re from. If I know a few words of their language, I try to speak them, and I immediately see how they light up¹. I get happier when I make other people happy 🙂.
• It’s a fun activity to do - It’s a hobby, and I look forward to practicing it, which is important for motivation.

Why Japanese?

I decided to learn Japanese because:

• It makes me appreciate Japanese culture more - After traveling to Japan, I realized I have a very deep appreciation for its culture. I find it interesting that there are many ways of expressing yourself based on how polite you want to be.
• It’s linguistically challenging to learn - It’s very different from the languages I already know (English, Spanish, French). I think it’s challenging to learn Japanese words because you have to remember the meaning, the shape, and the sound. However, I’m ready for the challenge!
• I like to listen to songs in Japanese - When I used to watch more anime, I enjoyed Naruto’s openings and endings, such as Seishun Kyousoukyoku by Sambomaster or Harmonia by Rythem . Since then, I have started enjoying listening to Japanese pop music with artists like Sheena Ringo , Hikaru Utada , Ado (I love her voice!) as well as great metal bands like Baby Metal , Band Maid and Ningen Isu .
• Japanese Content - There is a vast amount of content available in Japanese that I’m interested in watching like Gaki No Tsukai . I found them through their Silent Library ² series and then discovered their “No-laughing” batsu games, they’re so hilarious!

In my journey, I have realized that:

• I can only learn the language through discipline - Like learning any other skill, it requires me to be consistent. This means practicing whenever I have the opportunity. Some days I might not feel like learning it, but I know that just trying for a few minutes will help. In other words, even if I don’t have the motivation to practice, I do it anyway.
• You get as much as you put in - Regardless of the method I use, I’m not going to learn it if I don’t practice it enough.
• Having an imperfect accent is okay - I acknowledge that I have an accent when I speak and that’s okay. My accent is what makes me unique. My goal is for the person or people I’m talking to to understand me, and if they can, then that’s it. Having an accent is not an excuse to stop learning other aspects of the language, though. I do put effort into learning new words and grammar.

Progression

I am applying the concept of Comprehensible Input to learning Japanese. If you want to know more details about it, you can watch this video .

Similar to my strategy for learning French through Comprehensible Input , I’m consuming Japanese content that I can understand. My favorite platforms are YouTube and Stremio (where I can watch anime).

Understanding Japanese content in videos

I am using my own Chrome extension called Subtitle Insights , to get smart AI insights and translations while watching videos. My current setup involves enabling the overlay where I attempt to read the sentence (in Kanji and Kana) without the translation enabled (which I disable to force myself to practice reading and recalling content that I learned). If I want a translation of the sentence, I can see it in the extension sidebar. If there’s a part of the sentence that I don’t understand, I read the “insights” which explain parts of the grammar. I configured the extension to use this system prompt:

Role: Japanese Grammar Instructor for English speakers.

Task: Analyze the grammar of the user's provided Japanese sentence.

Constraints:
- PROSE LANGUAGE: Use English for the explanation.
- NO JAPANESE PROSE: Never write full sentences in Japanese.
- NO TRANSLATION: Never translate the sentence.
- KEY TERMS: Use Hiragana/Katakana for particles (は, が, を, に, etc.)
  and specific vocabulary, focus on explaining grammar.
- BREVITY: 1-2 sentences maximum.
- START: Begin the explanation immediately with no filler.

RESPONSE RULE: Your response MUST have an English word

Example:
Input: 今日はカエル探偵というゲームをやります。
Output: The phrase 「今日は」 (kyō wa) indicates "today,"
acting as a topic marker (は-particle).
「という」 (to iu) is used to introduce the name of the game,
"カエル探偵" (kaeru tantei), which means "Frog Detective."

Example:
Input: 始めるをクリックします。
Output: 「をクリックします」 (o kurikko shimasu) means "click on."
「を」 (o) marks 「始める」 (hajimeru - to begin) as the direct object of the verb
「クリックします」 (kurikko shimasu - to click).

The input is: Sentence: うちには今、パンが２種類あります。

The output is:

「うちには」 (uchi ni wa - at our house) indicates the location.
「今」 (ima - now) specifies the time. 「パン」 (pan - bread) is the subject,
and 「が」 (ga) marks it as the subject of the verb.
「２種類」 (ni shurui - two kinds) specifies the quantity and type of bread.
「あります」 (arimasu - there are) indicates the existence of the bread.

Pausing, shadowing and replaying

When I’m actively learning (i.e., when I’m not consuming content passively), I want to understand most of the details worth understanding in the sentence, if not every word. I realized I needed to pause the video at the end to attempt to understand words from the subtitle with Yomitan³. I also wanted to shadow the speaker by replaying the current subtitle from where it begins. While Yomitan gives me per-word explanations, I also wished I could get deeper insights into a sentence, such as understanding the grammar, particles, and choice of verb endings. I’m able to do all of these with my extension , which is working wonderfully for me.

Deep grammar explanations

Japanese has multiple ways to express causality (like から - kara vs ので - node), and choosing the right one depends on politeness and sentence structure. While watching a video, I press Command+Ctrl+g (the default shortcut to trigger Gemini in Chrome) and ask Gemini to explain the specific nuances. Because Gemini in Chrome has awareness of your current page and context, it can provide highly relevant answers. I wrote more details about this workflow in this guide .

Mining Words with Yomitan

I have configured Yomitan with the Jitendex.org index and the BCCWJ frequency dictionary. As a result, when I hover over a new word I get to see: how it’s pronounced in Furigana, its meanings, and how often it appears. Knowing how often it appears is very useful because if a word appears often in text it should be very high on the list of words I learn first. I wrote more details about how I mine words with Yomitan and my extension in this guide .

Augmenting content to mined vocabulary

Mnemonics

Japanese words may have Kanji in addition to Kana. To remember Kanji and Kana, I use mnemonics. I ask Gemini to create a mnemonic focused on three things: meaning, shape, and sound. It’s much simpler to look at the strokes that form the character and remember a story around it, which eventually helps me recall the meaning, shape, and sound. This has worked wonderfully for me so far.

• While I could do that manually through the Gemini UI, I have a script that scans my list of recently learned words from Anki and augments notes to it.

You are a Japanese Mnemonic Specialist.

Your sole task is to generate creative, memorable,
and slightly humorous mnemonics for Japanese words and kanji.

The expression is: "{Expression}" (Reading: "{ExpressionReading}").

It appeared in the sentence: "{Sentence}"

### Rules:
1. NEVER critique the prompt.
2. ALWAYS follow the exact format provided.
3. **BOLDING:** Always bold the **Core Meaning**,
   the **Kanji Radicals**, and the **English Pun** that mimics the sound.
4. For the "Shape" section, break down the kanji into its radicals or
   components.
5. For the "Sound" section, use English puns or stories that sound
   like the Japanese reading.
6. Create a mnemonic for the expression only.
   The sentence I provided is just for additional context to help explain
   the mnemonic. Don't create mnemonics for the rest of the sentence.

### Output Format:

The Mnemonic: "[Title]"

Meaning: **[Brief Meaning]** ({Expression})

Shape: [Visual connection. Mention radicals like **[Radical Name]**
and **[Radical Name]** in bold.]

Sound: [Creative story/pun. The English pun **[SOUND PUN]** must be
in bold to connect it to the reading **{ExpressionReading}**.]

• Expression, ExpressionReading and Sentence were all mined from Yomitan. I replace their contents with a newly mined word like 聞く and I see the following:

The Mnemonic: "The Eavesdropper's Fate"

Meaning: To hear, listen, or ask (聞く).

Shape: You press your ear (耳) against the large wooden gate (門)
to overhear the secrets being whispered inside.

Sound: Watch out! If the guards catch you spying at the gate,
they will kick you! (きく).

i+1 method from Kaishi 1.5k deck

I also learn with the Kaishi 1.5k deck which has a curated list of words. The deck follows a i+1 method where you see one new piece of information, each card introduces a single new target word and provides a sentence composed entirely of words learned in previous cards. This approach shares the exact same sentence across 2 or 3 different target words!

• Target Word A: あなた (You) → Sentence: あなたはトムさんですか。
• Target Word B: さん (San) → Sentence: あなたはトムさんですか。

This ensures that when moving from Word A to Word B, I see something “familiar” and reinforces the grammar and vocabulary of the shared sentence.

I really like that methodology, unfortunately, when mining words with Yomitan it can only see the sentence where the word was retrieved from which might have lots of words that are still unknown.

However, with AI agents is easy to express these constraints to agument context to mined words using this methodology. The plan that I coauthored with the agent is:

# Specification: i+1 Sentence Reinforcement for Japanese::Mining

This track aims to enrich the `Japanese::Mining` Anki deck by populating the `Sentence`,
`SentenceFurigana`, and `SentenceEnglish` fields with high-quality "i+1" sentences.
These sentences will be specifically designed to reinforce vocabulary you have
already learned in both the `Japanese::Kaishi 1.5k` and `Japanese::Mining` decks.

## Functional Requirements

1. **Vocabulary Extraction:**
   - Identify "learned" words from both the `Japanese::Kaishi 1.5k` and
     `Japanese::Mining` decks.
   - A word is considered "learned" if its card interval is greater than 0 (`Interval > 0`).

2. **Target Prioritization:**
   - Process target words in the `Japanese::Mining` deck sorted by the `FreqSort` field.

3. **Sentence Generation (i+1):**
   - For each target word, generate a sentence where the target word is the only "new" piece of vocabulary.
   - All other vocabulary in the sentence must be from the "learned" word list.
   - Grammar should be "Dynamic," matching the approximate level of the learned vocabulary.
   - The context should focus on "Daily Life" situations.

4. **Field Population:**
   - **Sentence:** The raw Japanese sentence with the target word highlighted (e.g., in bold).
   - **SentenceFurigana:** The sentence using Anki's standard furigana format (`漢字[ふりがな]`).
   - **SentenceEnglish:** A clear English translation of the generated sentence.

5. **Automation:**
   - Utilize AI (Gemini) to generate the sentences and translations based on the
     provided "learned" context.

After processing my deck now I see the words that I learned in sentences created by the AI agent with words seen in the past. This environment is excellent because I can practice reading and recalling the meaning of other words while adding a new word to my vocabulary!

Reviewing mined vocabulary in Anki

The ‘Forgetting Curve’ suggests that without review, you lose 70% of new vocabulary within 24 hours. This is where Anki and its spaced repetition system helps; with Anki, I can review a word just before I forget it. Moreover, the word frequency data exported by Yomitan helps sort the list of words that I learn; therefore, I’m sure I’m learning words that really matter at this stage of my learning process and not learning words that I’ll rarely use.

Conversation Starters

To practice the language with native speakers at meetups, I’ve created a small flashcard game where I can practice common questions and their possible answers. I use it when I want to be the one asking questions to keep the conversation going!

You can find the tool here: Japanese Conversation Starter

Visiting Japan in the future

Another reason why I decided to learn Japanese is that I’m planning to visit Japan again. I enjoyed my stay there so much, and I miss it dearly! I’ll leave this image here as motivation, reminding me of how happy I felt while staying there.