Yokoso!
Welcome to the If you are interested in learning spoken Japanese in your free time and at your own pace, then this is the class for you. The following links will take you to various lessons on Japanese. I will try to keep the graphics down to a minimum to make it easy for you to download, print out and put in a booklet without stressing your printer too much. This too, like the rest of my "ventures" will have to be an ongoing project. It may take some time to get a number of lessons developed and published to this site. Have patience. Practice, after all makes perfect and you should have plenty of practice time before the next lesson comes out. Sensei's Personal History: Many people here in Japan ask me why I came to Japan and how I got to be able to speak the language. I always tell them the following true story.
In a nutshell, I can speak Japanese today because I read a work of fiction yesterday. The Classroom: This is your virtual classroom. The lessons will proceed at your pace, fast or slow, as deep or shallow as you wish. Whenever you feel like sitting in on a lesson, just come on in. There may be hundreds of other studying with you at the same time, yet you have the peace and quiet to proceed at your own pace. If you wish to have your name listed in the class registry for group study purposes, we can do that. You are on your own, you will not be monitored. If you have particular questions regarding any of the lessons, please contact sensei by writing to info @ japanippon (dot) com for details. The Lessons: The purpose of the FREE! Japanese Lessons is to provide you, the student, with a basic understanding of the Japanese language. It is not meant to replace formal study at an institute of higher learning. Not everything can be covered, but I will do my best to provide language tips that will help you develop your Japanese language skills. I will not be teaching reading or writing in this course; it will be mainly "conversational" in nature; something that you can use right away in certain situations. In order to truly become fluent in any foreign language it is always desirable, if at all possible, to immerse oneself in the language and culture. Coming to Japan will do wonders for your language ability. I understand that this is not feasible for most people, so I will strive to do my best to provide you with current lessons and examples for study. When I find the time I will work on these lessons and then post them to this site so bookmark the FREE! Japanese Lessons and pop in from time to time to see if a new lesson is available. If you wish to study with us, feel free to download any or all of the lessons and proceed at your own pace. I will try to keep the theory down to a minimum, and make the lessons short, interesting and of relevance to daily life events. I first began learning Japanese through Teach Yourself Japanese by Hellen Ballhatchet and Stafan Kaiser, an excellent self-learning pocketbook that was written for the western student. It is this textbook, in its newest manifestation that I will be borrowing heavily from in my lessons. I will do my best not to plagiarize the work but because it is so good it will be hard to change it. If you would like to purchase this book yourself and continue studies at a pace different from our classroom, you should look for it in a bookstore near you (ISBN 0-8442-3807-4). Important Note for Power Students:
Whenever you see this graphic, it means that you can download the pronunciation of a word or sentence and listen to it on your own for practice. To be able to do this though you will need to download a program first. Many years ago I chose this format as it produced very small audio files (this was before mp3 was easily created). Qualcomm had a copyright problem and shut their Pure Voice software down for a while, but they are back in action! So, I will give you the new link to access the Pure Voice software (very small file) that will allow you to listen and practice once again these lessons. Many thanks to Vincent Beers who wrote me to ask if there was "anything I could do" to get the sound files running again... Download Qualcomm Pure Voice Here (html page where you choose the format you need; you can also read more about it by visiting their other pages). (2008/07/30) Lesson One: I have sent out hundreds of FREE! Japanese Names to people who have sent in requests. Now it is time for all of you to learn how to pronounce that foreign language that I sent. This lesson will teach you how to pronounce the sounds in the Japanese language, and give you a bit of history on the language itself. Lesson Two: Finally after getting over 800+ FREE! Japanese Names done I have put together the second lesson in the extremely popular FREE! Japanese Name series. This lesson helps you to make simple sentences (e.g. This is a pen) and then make questions, negatives, and possessives out of the same simple sentences. It is the foundation for Japanese structure. Due to the length of this lesson, I will be omitting aspects on culture. Lesson Three: Now that you can say, "This is a pen.", your next question is probably, "Why the heck would I want to say such a stupid thing anyway?!?" Don't fret. In this lesson you will learn how to add adjectives to simple sentences so you don't sound like such a moron. After you master this lesson you will be able to wow everyone by saying things like, "This is a red pen." I am sure that your friends will be very impressed. Oh yeah, it should also help you if you want to make an emergency dash to the restroom. The Culture Pocket is back again and this time we are talking about daily life, schedules and how to adapt a little quicker to living in a foreign country. Dozo! Lesson Four: I think, therefore I have. I am, therefore it is. Whoa! This isn't philosophy class. If you want that, you should be taking a walk on the Philosopher's Way. Since you are here, you are here to learn Japanese, and by gosh and by golly, I am going to give it to you! In Lesson Two, you learned how to say what things are. Now you are going to learn to say it in a slightly different way. Now you are going to learn to say things like, "There is a pen", "You have a cat", and so on. Wow! Stepping into the big league here. You will be a pro in no time flat. In the Culture Pocket, I will be telling you a little bit about greetings and what people say when they visit another person's residence, work, etc. Lesson Five: Face it. We all need to forget who we are now and again. It is a natural progression in life. It is a way of saying, "I'm me! Everyone hear me and know that I have the right to do as I please!" And then the next day, with the worst hangover of your life (your first hangover perhaps) and vomiting all over the place everyone laughs at you. But you grew up just a little bit more. Good for you. In this lesson, I will show you how to ask for things ("May I have a beer?"), suggest things ("How about another beer?") and generally enjoy yourself at a public establishment with friends. Good news, yes? In the Culture Pocket, I will be philosophizing over food and the Japanese mind. Sounds heavy? Well, read on! Lesson Six: Recently I traveled to Beijing, China for a business trip (October 1999). I found my communication skills severely lacking and had to rely heavily on my partner for getting about town. I dearly wished I had some basic communication skills even just words or numbers to get me what I wanted at the time. On the way home I met a woman who was doing just that. She and her husband are being transferred to Japan this October. She had a theory that she shared with me: Learn What You Need Now. The Rest Will Follow Later. This is Thiri's Theory and I believe it is a darn good theory. In this lesson I am putting all grammar aside and will be giving you a list of words and phrases that you may find helpful while traveling on holiday or coming to live for the first time in Japan. I am sure I cannot cover everything so if you are in a similar situation and would like to know how to say things that you feel may be very helpful, contact me. I will be glad to help out. Also, if you have your own suggestions for helpful words and phrases, send them to me as well. The Classroom is a dynamic two-way system that benefits everyone involved; the teacher as well as the students. This lesson is dedicated to all the Thiris out there in the world who are looking forward to their new challenge with vim and vinegar. Bless you all! Lesson Seven: Well, two lessons in one night! Amazing. But if you notice, there is less humor and more straight, dry stuff. Think of it as a change. I just came back from Italy! It was unbelievable. All you white people out there, this is your roots! This is where we all originated from (except maybe the Russians.... no offense of course). There is so much to see and do. Everything has style and class. Everything including the traffic jams. The men and women are fantastically stylish and gorgeous (yes it is true). The food is wonderful, the sun, the green, the old buildings, the canals of Venezia, everything. I didn't want to come back. Well, I wanted to come back and make this lesson for you. When you live in a foreign country, you often have to tell people about yourself. It is good to have a few tricks up your sleeves. Here, I give you some of those tricks. Just a few. Hopefully you will be able to build up your own vocabulary list as time goes on, and develop your own banter. Remember to add humor here and there. Even if they don't get it. For your own sanity. Just to make you laugh after you have explained for the 328th time why your eyes are blue, and not brown. But enjoy it. And while you are at it, remember to make sure the audience also responds. Have them introduce themselves in English. Make THEM sweat for a change. Enjoy the lesson. It was a really long time in the coming. So sorry for the delay. Has it really been TWO years that you have all been waiting for lesson Seven to come along? Sheesh! What a slack-off I am. Lesson
Eight: What the heck? Another lesson? Unbelievable! After nearly five years I finally came back to do one more lesson. What happened? I got an email from a woman thanking me for all the fun lessons and asking me if I will ever do a new one. How can I turn that down? Let me introduce you to the woman that is responsible for this lesson.... (Click on Lesson Eight and learn more about her!) Last Updated: July 30th, 2008 |
QUALCOM PURE VOICE IS BACK!!!!