We invited Ms. Priya Mu, an Architecture student at The University of Tokyo from India to share her experiences on learning Japanese, excerpt from the interview below.

Q. How was your experience living in Japan? When did you start learning Japanese and what is your current level?
A. I moved to Japan over a year ago but I have been leaning Japanese for a year before coming here, But leaning the language while living in Japan has been a very fruitful experience. Getting to speak to the locals and trying to read the signs and advertisements on the trains helps improving my Japanese, My current Japanese proficiency level is N2 (JLPT).

Q. What motivated you to learn Japanese even though you were not in Japan?
A. I love Japanese literature and also a few Japanese movies including animations. Natsume Soseki is my favorite novelist and my all time favorite novel is “Botchan”. I am not a big fan of reading but I can read this novel over and over again. I also like movies by Kurosawa and Koreeda and I absolutely love Studio Ghibli movies. Rather than the stories themselves, there is something unique about how these stories are told and I find the Japanese way of story-telling very inspiring. This drove me to liking the culture first and eventually inspired me to start learning the language so that I can imbibe the culture with more authenticity.

Q. Did you take Japanese language classes or did you learn it on your own?
A. I did take a few informal Japanese lessons online, but mostly I learnt it on my own.

Q. Could you share the innovative methods you came up with that aided in the process of learning Japanese?
A. I was able to speak the language quite easily as the grammar and sentence structure of Japanese is strikingly similar to my native language which is Tamil. I picked up the vocabulary from the movies I watched and I had few close friends who were Japanese with whom I practiced my Japanese. This helped me pick up the language faster. Speaking Japanese was easy, but learning how to read the kanji was quite daunting at first. But I think the best way to learn kanji is to find your own way. I have a strong visual memory, so I organized all the kanji and grouped them together based on the similarity in shapes and learnt them in groups forming stories with the shapes (Similar to the Heisig’s Method). I also like organizing stuff so I enjoy sorting the kanji, I believe this is the best way for me because I remember them much better while having fun at the same time.

Q. How did learning Japanese make you feel closer to Japan and broaden your understanding of the culture?
A. The more I read kanji, and the formation of words, the more I understand the basis of Japanese culture. For example, the Japanese word for teacher is Sensei. In the other languages that I am aware of, the word “Teacher” is synonymous to the words “Master” or “Expert”. Whereas in Japanese “Sensei” is formed by the kanji Sen (先-previously) and Sei (生-student) which can infer that a Sensei is just someone who was preciously a student. Learning words like this and how they are formed makes me understand the roots of the simplicity and humbleness of Japanese people. Most words are formed like this and this gives me a new understanding of the word itself. I feel like learning philosophy when I learn Japanese kanji and I believe, this is one of the reasons why many people around the world are drwwn to this beautiful language and culture.

March 5th, 2019
Edited by: Meguro International Friendship Association(MIFA)