Meet People
- Befriend Japanese (or other) international students, many of whom have never been invited inside a North American home.
- Talk to the waiters and/or chef in the Japanese restaurant you go to.
- Join a local ESL Talk Time for international students. These informal conversation opportunities are hosted by schools, churches, and other groups such as International Students Inc. (ISI). Check their website for more information.
Seek Out Ministries to Japanese People
Get involved with Japanese people by contacting a local representative of one of these ministries. Well, OMF Japan probably won't be too local for you... unless you live near us. :)
- OMF International Japan: Our friends and colleagues. We love them. Visit the website to get more information about OMF International in Japan!
- Reaching Japanese for Christ (RJC): We're involved in this one too. This organization focuses on reaching Japanese in North America.
- Japanese Christian Fellowship Network (JCFN)
Eat Japanese Food
- Eat Japanese food at a local restaurant. Talk to the waiters and/or chef if you can. I suggest En in Vancouver. (Any other suggestions?)
- Learn to cook Japanese food yourself. There's some good resources on the internet. My favorites are Just Hungry and Just Bento--both are excellent websites written in English by a Japanese ex-pat who carefully explains all the details for the benefit of westerners. Food is really important to Japanese--one of our teachers at language school told us that appreciation for Japanese food was key to being a good missionary.
Learn the Language
Here are some resources we have found to be helpful.
Books:
- Yookoso!: a book for the hardcore self learner. This is a textbook that introduces you to basic grammar, vocabulary, and Kanji all at once, and is a good reference.
- Minna no Nihongo: a textbook mostly in Japanese. You will need both the textbook itself and the translation and grammar notes book. It forces you to think in Japanese, but you will probably need a Japanese speaker to check your pronunciation and grammar and practice conversation with you. (This is always a good idea!) The OMF Japanese Language Center, where we studied, uses this textbook.
- Remembering the Kana and Remembering the Kanji: If you want to learn Japanese writing, we cannot speak highly enough of James' Heisig's books. The reader learns to use imaginative memory to remember each character. "Kana" are the two basic syllabic writing systems (hiragana and katakana) and "Kanji" are the characters borrowed from Chinese. Remembering the Kanji organizes the kanji by their component parts and goes through the basic 2,000 kanji which students learn by the time they finish high school.
- Anki: a great free flashcard program that contains hundreds of Japanese flashcard sets (as well as many others). It has downloadable kanji sets, basic to advance Japanese sentences, and even Japanese listening flashcards.
- Reviewing the Kanji: This is a website which is intended to be a companion to James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji book. On this site you can drill yourself on new kanji, and review them at set intervals.
- Japanese through Anime and Manga: a surprisingly well thought out and formal website that uses an online interactive manga to teach vocab, grammar, and cultural points. You can change between kanji, hiragana, and romaji. Particularly helpful is the "Character Line-up" that compares 8 styles of Japanese from formal old samurai language to present day child language. Warning: the stories are intentionally cliche.
Suggestions? Comments? What's been helpful for you? Send us an email.
