時間 – Make Time to Study Japanese without Eliminating other Activities
Everyone has 24 hours a day but not everyone has those hours allocated evenly. Sometimes you have to be creative to make time to study Japanese. You have to be even more creative if you want to do it without eliminating the things you already do. Here are some suggestions to get more time out of your day to improve your Japanese:
Visual Method, using your Environment
-Sticky Note Method
-Cheatsheets
-Labeling Things Around the House
-Computer Screen Saver or Desktop Wallpaper
Multitasking by Listening
-Listen to Japanese while doing other things
-Watch Stuff on Netflix with Japanese Subtitles or Audio English
Taking Notes in Japanese
-Write down English Words to Translate later
-Shopping Lists or Personal Notes
Searching the Internet in Japanese
Change your Language Settings
Notifications and Triggers in Japanese
-Set Reminders on your Phone
-Create a Habit to Review after some Event
looking around method
INDEX
Visual Method, using your Environment
Sticky Note Method
All you do for this method is to write a Japanese word on a sticky note. On the back, you write the English translation. Then find a wall or some surface you look at often. Paste the sticky notes on that surface. Then whenever you are around your sticky notes you can passively look at the words and review.
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If there are words you don’t recognize you can flip over the notes and see their translation. When you feel you know a word well enough, just take off the sticky note. That’s it!
Cheatsheets
This method is pretty straight forward. Write down different Japanese grammar rules you are trying to learn like a cheatsheet. Then paste it on the wall where you can see it often. Whenever you are in the same room as the cheat sheet you can passively review. After a while, you will start to remember many of the rules.
Labeling Things Around the House
This is simple. Just paste sticky notes on things around your house. Then write down the Japanese words for those things.
You can also take this to the second level. Instead of just writing down 窓（まど、window）you can write down other words that are related. Such as verbs, adjectives, or even phrases:
開ける(あける、to open)
閉める(しめる、to close)
綺麗な風景 (きれいなふうけい、nice view)
Computer Screen Saver or Desktop Wallpaper
For this, just find some images with Japanese words, cheat-sheets, or anything you want to learn. Then set your computer or phone background to that image. Whenever you look at the background you will have a moment to review.
If you can’t find any good images then make your own. You can either type what you want to learn in a text document and take a screenshot or take a picture from your notes by hand.
You can also make a folder of all the images of things you want to learn. Then set your desktop to rotate through those images periodically. You can also set the same images to by your computer screen saver.
Multitasking by Listening
Listen to Japanese while doing other things
This is probably the most common method. Whenever you are cooking, cleaning, or doing some other task where you don’t need full attention you can use it to listen to something in Japanese.
This does not only need to be audiobooks or audio language courses. Anything you can get in audio form would work. If you want to learn vocabulary you can download files of vocabulary words at forvo.com.
You can learn grammar even. Just record yourself speaking about what you want to listen to and you are all set. Or, you could even make example sentences using the grammar rules you want to learn. Anything is possible.
Watch Stuff on Netflix with Japanese Subtitles or Audio
This does not only need to be Japanese programs on Netflix. If you want to watch a program in English, check if it has Japanese subtitles and put them on. You can even set the audio to Japanese and add English Subtitles or whatever you want to do.
Taking Notes in Japanese
Write down English Words to Translate for later
When you hear a word in English that you are curious about taking a quick note. You are not learning Japanese at that moment but you are priming your mind to be ready later. Decide on time later to take your list of words and look up there translation. This is an effective learning method because you can learn vocabulary that is specific to you.
Shopping Lists or Personal Notes
Writing personal notes, shopping lists, and so on can help you learn Japanese by doing something you would be doing otherwise. You don’t need to write full Japanese sentences. Just write your notes in English and replace the words you know with Japanese words. This helps you to learn better by forcing you to pull the words out of your head and actually use them.
Searching the Internet in Japanese
If you are getting more comfortable with your Japanese reading ability you can search full website. If not, instead whenever you need to search for an image of something try searching for that term in Japanese.
Change your Language Settings
Be careful that you know how to change your language settings back before you try this. For your phone or various popular websites you can change your language to Japanese. For Twitter for example you can even set your trends to show Japan’s trends.
Notifications and Triggers in Japanese
Set Reminders on your Phone
Basically all a reminder is, is a text that says something that will ring at a certain time and date. For this just set a bunch of reminders with Japanese words or phrases. Then set when you want to be reminded. Wherever you are then when your phone rings you just take a look and you can quickly review your word or phrase.
Create a Habit to Review after some Event
This will take a little more work but it works the same as setting a reminder on your phone. To create a habit, decide on some task you already do now. For example get a drink of water. Every time you get a drink of water then you will do something quick to study Japanese. It could be try to receite a sentence you are trying to learn in Japanese, it could be to write down a Kanji character, or it could be anything.
Look around and Name things
This method is a more active method. When you are driving around, sitting in the car, mowing the lawn, going for a job, or in a boring meeting at work make it an opportunity to review your Japanese. Just look around you at things in your environment and try to find something that you know the equivalent word in Japanese. If you see a bird fly by you could say to your self, 鳥 (とり、bird) or even 飛ぶ (とぶ、to fly).
If you would like some more ideas on how to learn Japanese, there are several other Learning Methods I wrote about. Good Luck on your Japanese Studies! がんばって！
If you want to learn more Japanese I reviewed a dictionary of grammar series which I personally recommend and use myself.
I also have several other posts on various topics on Japanese Universe if you are interested.
