Japanese The Hard Way

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but
they are no less difficult. Winston Churchill
Japanese is difficult. If anyone tells you otherwise, theyre probably lying to you
or trying to sell you something. If you choose the easy way, you might learn
something for a little bit, but itll all come crashing down eventually (i.e.
youll quit). Learning Japanese the easy way is so easy to do, but if youre
thinking long term (as in, if you want to learn Japanese and become fluent) it
wont help you very much.
Despite what it might seem like, its so much better to do Japanese the hard
way. In fact, its a lot easier overall, strangely enough. Its still going to be hard,
and youll still have to do some work, but youll get to the finish line before
everyone else (and be better than everyone else too).
Heres the deal, to learn Japanese, there are certain things you have to do. There
are certain things everyone has to do. A lot of programs gloss over these things,
as if skipping them will really help you out (itll make you feel like youre learning
more Japanese than you are, for sure, but youll figure out that youre being
tricked eventually). If you take a Japanese class, on the other hand, they tend to
actually do a pretty good job covering the hard stuff. The problem is, even
though theyre also taking you the hard way they also tend to take you the dumb
way too. Its like climbing a cliff (not that I know anything about climbing cliffs,
come to think of it), but instead of climbing up with ropes and picks and all the
right tools, the leader is having you climb only with your left hand while youre
upside down. It just doesnt work that well and you still tend to fall.
Instead, youre going to do the best of both worlds. Youll learn Japanese the
hard way, to be sure. Youll learn the things you need to learn so you can get
better and eventually become fluent in Japanese. At the same time, though, youll
be incredibly smart about how you learn these things. Ill provide you with all the
best tools, ideas, and ways of learning (very innovative and effective ways I think
too) that will make the hard way the easy way (while still getting all the benefits of
learning something the hard way).
So, no gimmicks, no shortcutsjust the hard way done right.

That being said (and Ive said this a lot), I hope youre prepared for some work. In
fact, the first few chapters are designed to weed out those who just arent ready
to learn Japanese. If you make it through, then you have a pretty good chance. If
you dont make it through well, I hope you come back later when youre ready
(or you spend all that excitement and energy learning something else, because
learning is pretty great, no matter what you learn).

Lets not draw this dribble out any longer. Lets get started. The first things youre
going to do will help steer you for what comes ahead. Well do everything we can
to make sure youre ready for the long haul. If you quit, we both lose, so lets put
a little time in now to make sure that doesnt happen.

Preventing Failure
The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.
Sven Goran Eriksson

Youve come a long way, and youre (probably) ready to start learning Japanese.
Learning a language is actually a really big step and can definitely be exciting.
However, the adrenaline rush (ha, its fun to have adrenaline rush and
language learning together) of deciding to do something new and different often
makes people dive in too deeply right from the get go. The first step is to prevent
that by taking the proper precautions before you begin (thinking long term,
yeah?). Dont worry, it wont take too long, and youll be able to learn a lot faster
and a lot more effectively later on because of it.
The first rule of TextFugu (is to never talk about TextFuguwait, thats Fight
Club) is to try and keep you inspired and motivated to keep studying. TextFugus
made for self-learners, after all, and if it didnt help with things like staying
motivated and keeping with it it wouldnt be a very good textbook for self-
learners at all. So, of course, it covers these things too. I can only do so much for
you, though. You have to put in the effort too I can only help you get there.

Still, if you end up getting demotivated and quitthat means we both failed, and
Id rather that not happen.

So, thats why were doing some precautionary steps right now. 90% of Japanese
self-learners quit in the first week or two. Thats pretty mind-boggling to me, since
I think its usually the resources fault when this happens.

There are a few things I want you to do once you do them, youll be way less
likely to quit. Its not 100% or anything, but itll help a ton.

First up is a couple of easy questions. I just want you to answer them. Itll help
you figure things out as you move forward. They will also help you to stay
motivated when times get tougher. I dont want you to be in that 90% quitter
group. Lets make those percentages a little bit better with you, aye?

Questions Before You

Start
The only real failure in life is the failure to try.

Before continuing on, find yourself a piece of paper (or open up Word / Google
Docs). Were going to write something down. These steps are surprisingly
important, even though they may seem a bit silly or unnecessary right now.
 Something as simple as writing your goals and intentions down can make a huge
difference (especially later on, if you start struggling). Once you write something
(especially by hand) it suddenly becomes real (at least more real than if its just in
your head).

There are two BIG questions I want you to answer (then a couple smaller ones).
They shouldnt take you much time, either.

Task: Get out a piece of paper (preferably) or open up a text editor on your
computer. Were going to be writing a few things down in a moment.

Alright! Lets answer some important questions!

Question #1: Why Are

You Learning Japanese?
Try and fail, but dont fail to try. Stephen Kaggwa

Youd be surprised how many people decide to do something as big as learning

Japanese without knowing the answer to this question. I bet you 90% of people
who start studying have no idea why theyre doing it (which ahem happens
to be the same percentage of people who end up quitting, might I add). Now,
when I say these people dont know why theyre learning Japanese Im also not
counting generalities. Answers like because its fun and because its cool are
okay for a little while, but they wont hold out when the going gets tough. Im
looking for a specific answerthings like:

I want to be able to talk to my Japanese grandmother in Japanese

I want to travel to Japan and walk the 88 temples of Shikoku
I want to live and work in Japan, doing marketing for Sony
 Im an anthropologist and want to study the Ainu people
I want to appear on Japanese television one day as a comedian

When you know what youre working towards, you end up having more drive. You
also end up having more focus, as well, which really helps. When you think
aw I dont want to learn any more today your reason for learning Japanese
will kick in and respond with but what about those temples!!? and youll keep
going (and eventually love yourself for it). TextFugus going to help you make
nice and steady steps forward, but you need to have something to walk towards
otherwise its aimless wandering.

Now, I also understand that answering this question can be hard. But, you should
really think about it. Maybe you really are just trying new things, and dont have a
reason. If thats you, just continue and work hard. Youll figure yourself out soon
enough (i.e. youll figure out if you want to keep going or youll figure out if you
want to spend your time somewhere else). Nobodys judging you here, you
should do the things that make you happy :)

But, you should really try to answer this question. I guarantee that those of you
who can answer this question will be way more likely to succeed. Those that
dont well, you still have a decent chance that youll figure out your reason
later. Just keep thinking about it.

Task: Answer the question: Why Are You Learning Japanese?

Once youve figured this out, move on to the next question. Are you already a
member? If so, head on over to the TextFugu forums and share your reason and
post up an introduction to say hello! The forum is full of helpful, supportive people
just like you who are happy to help you out if you need help (of course, Im also
here to help you out of if you need it). Youre not the only one using TextFugu, so
its fun to go and get to know fellow TextFugu-ers as well!
Task: Introduce yourself on the TextFugu Forums. These people will help you out
in the future (and youll probably help out a Japanese newb or two as you get
better too!).

When youve answered the first question and (optionally) introduced yourself on
the forums, move on to the next question. Youre almost ready to get started
here.

Question #2: What Excuses

Hold You Back?
No one ever excused his way to success. Dave Del Dotto
Maybe absolutely nothing is holding you back (and thats why youre here right
now), but chances are there are a few things that youre either afraid of, or you
have a few excuses on why you shouldnt study Japanese (I know, right!
Blasphemy!). But, weve all been there, myself included. Anytime youre making a
big change or decision in your life (get used to Japanese language learning as a
big life decision, because it is!), why I should / shouldnt do this thoughts start
popping in your mind, totally out of nowhere. No matter how rational (or irrational)
you are, theyll come up sooner or later, so its best to do a preemptive strike
while youre still excited and ready to go go go.
Here are some possible excuses that could hold you back, though youll be
figuring out your very own here in just a minute. I just want to give you a little
taste of the excuses I hear a lot. If you prevent them before they even pop up,
youll find yourself in a lot better shape a few months from now when life starts
getting crazy and youre looking for something to cut from your schedule (even if
its temporary).
1. Im Too Busy: Boo-hoo-dee-doo. This is probably the most common excuse
out there, and I think its a terrible one. If you dont have time, its only because
your priorities tell you that you dont have time. If you want to study Japanese,
then youll make time for it. If you dont want to study Japanese, then youll make
time for other things. This is one of the reasons why you thought about your
reason for learning Japanese. If you have a reason, and a goal you can work
towards, it is likely that your priorities will shift towards studying Japanese. Just
by knowing that this excuse exists (and that theres a good chance it will pop up)
will really help you to avoid it later on. Tell yourself right now: Time isnt the
issue, and then think about how youll make sure that Japanese is a priority (and
therefore you can make time for it).
2. I dont have the money: This is another common excuse. Okay, TextFugu
isnt cheap, necessarily, but considering what you can get out of learning a
language, its not all that expensive either. Even if you cant afford TextFugu, if
you want to learn Japanese you should use something else that is free or you
 can afford. It wont be the same but money shouldnt be something that holds
you back. Heres some ideas for making some moolah, though, if you need it:
You can make enough money by using Amazons Mechanical Turk to
complete small jobs for people.
Sell stuff on Craigslist/eBay. I did this recently too. Simplifying your life by
getting rid of your things is a great way to clear your head, too. Its difficult at
first, but youll feel so much better once you get all this stuff off your hands.
Stuff is distracting and not worth the headache, in my opinion.
Ask a friend or relative for an investment (not a handout). If they really care
about you, theyll be excited to help you succeed just be sure you dont let them
down! (This is also a great way to stay motivated, because you want to show
your investor(s) that youre achieving great things!).
Dont go out to eat once or twice this month. Its easy to save money if you
cook your own food using fresh ingredients, plus its healthier too (and when you
feel healthy, its easier to study!). Put that money towards monthly.
Still in high school? I had a friend whod go buy candy in bulk, then sell
them for 50 cents each at school. Not sure if he was supposed to be doing that,
but hed make way more than $20 a month. Now he works at Google. Pretty
smart guy.
Anyways, Im just saying that money shouldnt be an excuse. No matter what,
you should get started (even if its not with TextFugu). The sooner you get
started, the more youll know 6 months from now.

3. Ill end up burning out or quitting: I hope you dont! Like I mentioned earlier,
TextFugu was built around the foundation of keeping you motivated. Burning out
is the most common problem that self-teachers like yourself face, and it happens
so easily. You can see how this first chapter is already tackling a lot of those
problems, but what are some things that you can do to prevent it yourself, even
before it happens? Even just saying Burning out isnt a valid excuse to yourself
right now will help prevent this excuse from doing anything to you in the future.
Its funny how your mind works like that!
4. Im not very good at learning languages: Yet for some reason youre here,
reading this? I dont know if anyone is actually naturally good at learning
languages. Do you know whats pretty cool? You can learn to become better at
learning languages. Very few people are naturally good at anything, to be
completely honest. Everyone practices and gets better. You can make a choice to
get better at it. On top of that, Im sure youll find TextFugu to be a lot different
from any other textbook youve tried. Its way down to earth, easy to understand,
and makes things nice and simple. Whenever Ive had bad language learning
experiences, its usually been because the resource does a poor job at
explaining things (theyre so good at what theyre trying to teach, they have no
idea what its like to learn anymore!). I hope you dont let this be an excuse.
Every time you try to study, you are getting better at studying, which means youll
be pro in no time, as long as youre consistent!
Now its your turn, though.
What excuses hold you back? What excuses can you think of that might hold you
back in the future?

Task Write down a list of excuses that might hold you back. These can be
things youre worried about now and things you think you might be worried about
later. Feel free to use some of the excuses listed above if theyre the same. Stick
this list on your wall. Remind yourself every day that the excuses up there arent
valid excuses, so you might as well not think about them anymore (if you need
them, theyre written down, so get them out of your head). For the excuses
holding you back now, look at them and figure out solutions. Will it really
be that bad? I think probably not :)
Now that you have absolutely nothing to fear, its time to move on to the next
step. You have a few more prep-steps to go, but once youre done youll have
laid a really good foundation for yourself and be ready to study some Japanese!
Setting Yourself Up For Success
For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned. Unknown

What does your work / study / desk area look like? Does it feel open and
relaxing? Or, like the image above, does it feel kind of crowded (and stressful?).
Is there even an area in existence that you would consider to be a work-only
zone? Do something really quick for me. Take out four pieces of paper and put
them together (in any combination square, long ways, etc). Using any layout,
can you put these four pieces of paper together in any one area of your desk? If
not, then its probably time to do some cleaning (or, your desk is really really
small, which is okay too). I used to have a pretty crowded desk, and without me
knowing it my productivity suffered. Each and every piece of debris is a
distraction (no matter how little it is). How many distractions are on your desk?
One thing you should do before you start learning Japanese is create a great
environment for learning / working. Like I keep saying I dont want you to quit,
no matter how you end up learning Japanese. The first thing you have to ask
yourself is where will I study Japanese? For the most part (unless you need to
mix things up a bit, but well get into that at some point later on) youll want to
create a great study space for yourself, and associate getting things done with
that space. For example, sitting in front of the television might be a tough place
for you to study, because your brain has already associated that place with
watching television.
Task Decide what space is your Japanese Study Space.
So, why are we doing this? Do you know the difference between productivity
heroes and everyone else? Honestly, its not much. In general, most people
(believe it or not) have a similar amount of self-discipline. Lets think of the
amount of self-discipline you have as SD points. Lets also assume everyone
has approximately 100 SD points. If you use all your SD points in a day, then you
have no more self-discipline. You can no longer do things youre supposed to do
(surprisingly, this is actually really close to how it actually is think about it next
time you use some SD points out there in real life!).
Now, the difference between productivity heroes and everyone else isnt that they
have more SD points. Its that they dont use the SD points they have when
theyre doing a lot of things that normally use those SD points up. How do they
do that? They make things into rituals and traditions. To apply this concept to
Japanese and this chapter (which is about your work space), someone who is a
productivity hero would say when I sit in this space, I study Japanese. Or, they
might say when I get home, I study Japanese. Take note how its slightly
different from when I get home, I will study Japanese. Its something you do
no, its something you always do. Its not a task, its a ritual. Rituals and traditions
dont take up SD points.
So, when youve decided on your Japanese Study Space (wherever that might
be) I want you to start thinking about traditions as well.
 When you sit here, you study Japanese.

When you come home, you study Japanese.

When you finish dinner, you study Japanese.

No questions no ifs no buts its what you do. Decide right now on one or
two traditions like this. It wont be a tradition today, but if you do it enough it will
become a tradition. It will also make Japanese studies a hundred times easier,
especially on days where youre running low on SD points :)

Also, a side-note. In your special space for learning Japanese, you should avoid
other distractions as well. Its best to:

Avoid music, movies, etc., while youre studying. I dont care who you are,
multitasking isnt a good way to learn something (quickly).
Try to only study Japanese here. I understand if its a multi-purpose area,
like a desk, but the more you can associate Japanese learning with this area, the
better!
Dont allow yourself to get on Facebook, Twitter, Farmville, etc., while you
study. At the very least, wait until youre between things!
Turn any notifications off on your computer / phone (this includes e-mail,
Twitter, text messages, and so on).
Finding a great place to study is going to be easier for some of you and more
difficult for others. The main thing is that you try to pick a nice spot to study at.
This spot might even be at a particular coffee shop. Feel free to be flexible. Just
try and be consistent!

And remember make that spot part of your ritual. Your SD points will thank you
for it!
 Not Telling People About Your
Intentions
Our intention creates our reality. Wayne Dyer
Believe it or not telling people youre going to learn Japanese isnt the best thing
you can do. This page used to be about hey, you should tell people that youre
learning Japanese so they keep you accountable. Now, however, its the exact
opposite. Just a good example that shows how things change on TextFugu as I
learn more about learning (this change was made with the help of a member who
sent me a bunch of info on this, actually!). Point is, TextFugu isnt a doorstop that
never gets updated :)

Want the long (only 3 minutes, actually) version? Watch the following TED Talk
(TED Talks are amazing, by the way).

Want the short version? Here it is:

1. Dont tell people your goals (at least not right away).
2. Why? Because it tricks your mind into thinking that your goal is already
partially complete, making you less likely to follow through with your goals.
3. If you talk, it becomes part of your social reality. If it becomes part of your
social reality it feels like youre farther along than you are, and you end up
thinking you dont need to work as hard (and I want you to work hard, please!).
Really, though, you should watch the video, Its quite good.

So, there you have it. Keep your secret (for now) and surprise everyone with your
skill later. I know it might seem odd, but every little thing helps, especially early
on (when little things make such big differences!).
 This page used to have a Tweet it button to encourage you to tell the world.
Now it doesnt. That being said, you should feel free to say hello to us on Twitter
or Facebook because we like it when people say hello! Makes us feel all warm
and fuzzy, you know?

TextFugu On Twitter
TextFugu On Facebook
After youve kept your mouth shut, move on to the next page. Youre almost
ready to get started with Japanese moments away, really! Just think of how
ready youll be, too!

Task Can you keep a secret? Good. Keep that secret as long as you can until
Learning Japanese actually becomes a part of your identity!
Alright, only one more thing to do. Lets get it done!

Creating A Japanese Language

Learning Log
The greatest worth is self-mastery. Buddhist Quote
You know how in school theyre always telling you to take notes for the test?
Well, this is kind of like that, but now youre taking notes only for yourself and
your own self-mastery (no tests here just real knowledge). One really great
way to keep track of your studies and figure out where you need to focus (as well
as figure out what youre really good at) is by creating a Japanese language log.
Every time you study, you should post things like

What you learned.

How you felt about what you learned (was it frustrating? Easy? etc) so you
can figure out what causes you trouble and focus on fixing that.
 What you need to work on.
What you want to learn next.
etc.
Ill give you prompts for a little while when it comes to your learning log, but
eventually itll be up to you.

Now, theres several ways to keep a log, and several things you can use, but
here are my suggestions. Its up to you, though.

Create A Blog: Blogs are really easy to create now-a-days. Services

like WordPress (my fave) and Blogger are super simple to create (not like you
need anything fancy, either) and will allow you to post things up daily. Plus, its
out there on the interwebs, meaning you might spend a little more time on it
(which means you get a little extra study from it as well).
Evernote: I think this is probably the best choice (but really, it comes down
to your own style). Evernote lets you take notes, tag those notes, and search for
them later (best search function of all the options here by far). It really is an
amazing study resource, and if I was in school Evernote is probably the only
thing Id ever use. If you use Evernote, Id recommend titling each note with
[DATE] [SUBJECT] so its easy to find later. Then, just make sure you tag things
really well (tags will be your friend later on, as you have more notes in there).
gDocs, MS Word, Notebook: Then theres also Google Docs, Microsoft
Word, and a regular old pen and paper notebook. Theres something nice about
writing things with your hand, for sure, though it does take a bit longer. I still
recommend Evernote as #1 (you dont even have to get the premium version of
Evernotefree is good enough) because of its awesome search abilities.
Pick one of these note-taking devices and head over to the next page. You can
even add your excuses list and reason(s) list here, just to solidify them a little
bit more. When youre ready, its time to get started! Youre all prepared for the
worst (though I think youll find that the worst isnt all that bad, when it comes
down to it).

Getting Started
The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not
getting started. - Dawson Trotman

Believe it or not, just getting started is the hardest step. Luckily, youve probably
made it easy on yourself. You know why youre studying, you have a great place
to study Japanese, and youve kept everything a secret. Also, youve set up your
language log and youve come up with all possible excuses ahead of time so you
dont have to worry about them later. Really, not much should stand in your way.

So, enough set-up. Its time to actually do this thing! Were going to start off by
learning about the different Japanese alphabets available to you, as well as a
little more information on how were going to learn them in the coming chapters.
Im really excited for you to get started! Its going to be a lot of fun and I think
youll be surprised at how quickly you are able to learn using TextFugu.

By finishing this chapter, youve made preparations for your Japanese learning that will greatly increase
your chances for sticking with it! Now its just up to you to put in the work, but if you want it, surely good
things will end up happening!

Alrighty, the next chapter is waiting for you!

Why?
One is not born a genius. One becomes a genius.
Simone de Beauvoir

At the beginning of each chapter, I like to ask why?

Why is this helpful? For one, it tells you why youre doing something. Nothing is
more terrible than a teacher who answers all your questions with because thats
the way it is, okay? This will also give you some idea as to where youre going
and where you came from (and makes it so you know what you need to work on).
The other thing, though, is that it actually makes sure that Im staying on track as
well. If I cant explain why youre learning something, then maybe its not time for
you to learn that thing. So, it helps both of us, though in the end it mostly helps
you. So why this chapter right now?

This chapter is all about the Japanese alphabets. Youre about to learn what
they are, but the reason why youre learning them is because youll need to be
able to differentiate between them moving forward (as you learn them). Youre
going to start by learning hiragana (starting next chapter) so its important to
know what hiragana is and when its used in comparison to the other alphabets
youll be learning later.

So, in this chapter you should focus on learning to differentiate the alphabets.
You dont need to learn them or anything like that right now (that would be
impossible) you just need to learn the characteristics of them, and how theyre
different from each other. Ready to get started? Okay, move on:

The Japanese
AlphabetsAll Four Of
Them
When I was having that alphabet soup, I never thought
that it would pay off. - Vanna White
There are going to be a few people out there (most likely not you) who are going
to immediately say the Japanese dont use alphabets, they
use syllabaries, duh!

Before you do that, let me talk about something really quick. This also gives me a
great opportunity to talk about something interesting about learning and
education (as well as how TextFugu is different).

The Curse Of Knowledge is when someone knows too much about a subject. It
causes teachers to make too many assumptions about what people know (and
dont know), which then causes them to be abstract and confusing. Heres an
example.

When youre a kid, you learn that electrons circle the nucleus just like planets
circle the sun. The thing is, they dont do that, they exist around nuclei in
probability clouds. Now, dont ask me what that means, but the point Im trying
to make is that sometimes you have to teach people things that are technically
incorrect in order to get them closer to the accurate information. Imagine telling
little kids about probability clouds. They wouldnt understand a thing, and would
come away frustrated and confused.
That being said, Im using the word alphabets to describe the syllabaries that
make up the Japanese language. Its so important to use and associate new
information with things you already know, which is something youll notice
throughout all parts of TextFugu. In this case, Im (assuming) you are like most
other people and dont know what syllabaries are. So, instead of using something
abstract, Im using something you already know, and thats going to give you
progress (rather than leaving you in the dust).

TextFugu is all about associating new knowledge with things you already know about, whether they be
common knowledge or something you just recently learned via the Text. When it comes to memory, this is
how your brain works, so lets take advantage of this in order to make your new Japanese language
memories stick longer and faster.

Speaking of progress, its time for you to learn about all the
Japanese syllabaries alphabets all four of them. Yep, theres a lot, but its
not quite as bad as you think. In fact

Heres the good news: You already know one of them (or youre only pretending
to read this text)

Heres the bad news: You dont know the other three, and they will take some
time and effort (of course, you already know that. Why else would you still be
here?).

The first step is to be able to identify the four. You dont have to know them all
yet, I just want you to be able to recognize them. Once you can do that, well start
learning our first one. Read on to find out more!

Romaji (Romaji)
Romaji is completely useless. Dont learn it because you already know
it - Koichi
Romaji is the Romanization of Japanese. If you are reading this text, then you
already know romaji. Basically, its just the English alphabet, and although there
are some funny rules when using it to write in Japanese, its actually pretty self
explanatory oh, and did I mention pretty much useless to learn?

Fun Fact: You can break Romaji into two pieces. Roma () is Rome in Japanese. Ji ()
means character or letter. Combine the two, and you get , which literally means Rome
Characters. Makes a lot of sense, right?

But, this is Japanese were talking about. Theres pretty much no reason to learn
too much more about romaji since a) it isnt really that useful for learning
Japanese, at least in the long term, and b) you already know how to use it for the
most part. Take a look at some examples:
Karate, sake, sumo, sushi, sashimi, bento, etc

Theres a good chance you knew a lot of these words. Theyre still Japanese,
the only difference is we wrote them using the English alphabet.
 Unfortunately, romaji is actually pure evil, so I wont waste your time with it.
Although this text will be using romaji for a few chapters more, during that time
youll be hard at work learning the next Japanese alphabet, hiragana so we can
ditch the useless romaji. Trust me, romaji might help you learn Japanese faster in
the (very) short term, but if youre actually serious about learning Japanese, youll
want to spend your valuable time focusing on hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

Really Common Question: But I just want to learn how to speak Japanese. Why learn the other
alphabets when romaji could theoretically teach me how to do that? Answer: Although thats technically
true (you dont need hiragana, katakana, and kanji to learn how to speak / understand Japanese)
it will help you out a lot to learn these things, even if your focus is on speaking / listening. The ability to
write in Japanese really shows and breaks up sentence structure and grammar, and also helps a lot with
vocabulary. Basically, learning how to read and write really shows you how the Japanese language works.
This text is all about showing you why something is the way it is. Going purely with romaji would be taking
the pure memorization route, and straight up memorization works for almost nobody (unless youre Rain
Man, in which case you probably dont need TextFugu, and should ask for a refund).

Want more specifics on why we arent spending much time on romaji? Here you
go:

1. There are too many different ways to write romaji. Ive seen around
five different schools of thought on how romaji should be written. With all these
differences, it makes it hard for beginners to know how to pronounce certain
things when written this way. Hiragana, katakana, and kanji on the other hand,
are nice and consistent (oh, and did I mention useful?).
2. Romaji will slow you down, in the long run. Only so much you can do
before romaji will actually become a handicap to your Japanese learning.
3. Youll miss out. There are so many potential Japanese study resources out
there that require you to at least know hiragana. If you cant do that, youre
missing out big time.
4. People dont use romaji in Japan, so neither should you. Sure, youll see it
from time to time, but 99.9% of the time youll be using anything but romaji.
5. Romaji will hurt your pronunciation. The English alphabet wasnt made for
reading and writing Japanese. If you use it, there are some things that dont quite
mesh right, which means your pronunciation may be hurt.
 Anyways, now that weve spent all our time learning why you shouldnt learn
romaji, lets spend some time knowing about things you should learn. Next page
is all about hiragana.

Hiragana ()
Hiragana is feminine, curvaceous, and lovable - Gakuranman

Hiragana is going to be your main phonetic alphabet, and its also going to be
the first thing that you learn. By learning hiragana first, youll get a lot of benefit.
Some people learn romaji first, but as you now know, thats a big waste of your
time. Not only that, but were going to learn hiragana real fine (say that in a thick
Southern accent for better effect), and spend a little extra time with this
curvaceous, lovable, alphabet. Why would I want to make you suffer more right
now (dont worry, its not actually that bad) so you can laugh in the face of
Japanese later? Let us count the ways.
1. Hiragana first means learning your Japanese pronunciation early. This will
help you sound less like a foreigner.
2. Hiragana will help you understand how Japanese works, on a deeper,
technical level.
3. Hiragana gives you a great foundation for learning Japanese. Its a
splendid place to start.
4. By learning hiragana now (and learning it well), youll really speed up what
youll be able to learn later. Since almost all of our initial learning will be in
hiragana, the faster you get over learning it, the faster youll be able to focus on
whats actually important (you know, everything else!).
5. I want you to suffer a little bit. Think of hiragana as a test if you cant do
this, then you probably dont actually want to learn Japanese enough. So, my
question to you is do you want it? Okay, whos still left? Great to have you!
So, how is hiragana used in Japanese? Theres a few different ways, and youll
experience all of them pretty soon, but its good to get an idea now so that you
can expect these things later on, as youre learning the hiragana itself. Hiragana
is used in

Difficult kanji: Youll learn to love this one. When a kanji (kanji are the
Chinese characters, youll learn about them soon) is too difficult (too many
strokes!), a lot of times its better, easier and more common to write things out in
hiragana instead.
Words with no kanji: Sometimes theres a word that doesnt have a
kanji so, you get to use hiragana instead (or katakana, depending).
Particles: In English, this basically means all those little words that
connect other words together. Things like and, or, etc. When it comes to
things like this, youll be using hiragana.
Suffixes: A lot of Japanese words end with suffixes. One big example is
names. Maybe youve heard this before? At the end of a name youll often see
the suffix -san attached. Its a nice little honorific, and its something well talk
more about soon, so you dont go and insult somebody.
 Verb & Adjective Inflections: Its not something you need to understand
right now, but hiragana is also used to give context to verbs and adjectives. The
hiragana attached to a verb is what tells us if a word is past tense, present,
negative, and more! Well learn more on this later as we get into verbs and
adjectives, so dont worry about it now, just know that it exists.
Theres plenty more to be done with hiragana, but before we do that, we should
take a look at the remaining two alphabets really quick. We wont dilly dally,
either.

Katakana ()

Katakana is a bit of fun. In general, katakana is more angular, sharp, and full of
corners. It has the exact same sounds as hiragana, though the symbols are all
different. Sounds great, right? Essentially, youll be learning the same exact
alphabet twice (what fun!) but write each symbol differently. For example:

Hiragana: , pronounced ah

Katakana: , pronounced ah

And theres plenty more where that came from.

 That might make you wonder why you even need to learn katakana (besides the
fact that you need to know it to read / write in Japanese). So, how is katakana
normally used and what makes it different from, say, hiragana?

1. Foreign Words: The Japanese use a lot of borrowed words. This

includes things like foreign words (for example, the word for bread in Japanese is
pan which was introduced by the Portuguese, who say po, which probably got
converted to the French Pain, therefore its written in katakana). Basically,
borrowed words are converted into Japanese sounds. Sometimes they sound
similar, sometimes they sound nothing like the original word. Youll see more
what I mean as you begin to learn the sounds available to the Japanese
language.
2. Scientific Words: A lot of scientific words are written in katakana. Luckily
for you, this textbook wont be focusing on these kinds of words.
3. Onomatopoeia: The Japanese love their onomatopoeia (words that
imitate actual sounds, like boom or roar!). These kinds of words are often
used in Japanese daily language, and once youre able to use it casually in
conversation, youll know youre pretty good at Japanese then. Well spend time
covering onomatopoeia in future chapters, though it wont happen until youre at
a more intermediate / advanced level.
4. Emphasis: Its kind of like when you italicize words in English. Instead of
italicizing things, you can just write them in katakana instead.
5. Food: Sometimes youll see food items on a menu written in katakana.
This is a pretty good thing to know if youre visiting Japan and dont have enough
time to study properly. You can study katakana, and then youll be able to know
what youre ordering at a restaurant (around 30% of the time, perhaps,
depending on what kind of restaurant). Its a good little hack if youre doing some
last minute studying before a big trip. Well be learning katakana a bit later (in
Season 3). Youll have a ton of fun learning it, Im sure. Speaking of which, did
you know the Japanese dont really understand sarcasm?
Anyways, just enjoy your katakana-free lifestyle while you can, its coming (cue
Jaws soundtrack).

Kanji ()
The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days
of ease and comfort. Paulo Coelho

Kanji are the Chinese characters that make up a very large part of the
Japanese written language. To get by really comfortably in Japan, youll want to
know around 2000 kanji (2500-3000 if youre going into academics there). Thats
like learning a very very long and complicated set of ABCs that consists of way
more than 26 letters.

When it comes to studying and learning Japanese, kanji is what most Japanese
scholars, such as yourself, often come to fear the most, and there are plenty of
reasons why kanji can be terrifying. The main reason, I think, is the variety that
goes on with each individual kanji. Each symbol probably has several
pronunciations attached to it, making kanji a lot more complicated than just the
symbols themselves. Heres what happened:

Kanji was introduced to Japan via China multiple times over the course of a few
hundred years. One Chinese dynasty would pronounce a particular symbol
(kanji) one way, and another would pronounce it another way. Various Chinese
dynasties kept on taking over China, thus exporting different kanji pronunciations
to Japan over the years (depending on which Chinese dynasty had the most
influence). Japan thought hey, instead of replacing pronunciations, lets just use
all of them! thus giving each kanji multiple ways to pronounce them. On top of
that, the Japanese also applied their own (Japanese language) on top of kanji,
which means theres almost always a Japanese pronunciation for each kanji too
(on top of multiple Chinese pronunciations). This makes kanji learning really
tough and complicated for most people.

Basically, youll have a lot of work to do. Feel free to cry on my shoulder if youd
like, you big crybaby.
Kanji is made up of nouns, adjectives and verbs. Basically, anything you could
consider vocabulary probably is written at least partially in kanji, which is why
you need to learn so many of them.

Now, hopefully I havent scared you. Kanji learning is only terrifying when you
learn them like a Japanese school kid (thats right, Japanese people dont know
how to learn their own language). Not to toot our own Fugu-horn, but TextFugus
kanji learning method is one of the best out there (and one of the only ones that
actually makes sense). Youll be learning kanji using TextFugu faster than you
ever thought possible. If youve ever tried to learn kanji before, youll really notice
the difference. If you havent well, consider yourself lucky.

Youll start to learn kanji soon enough, though, so lets just forget about it for now.
Right now I want you to focus on hiragana, which is what the next chapter is all
about. OKAY!

Accomplishment! By finishing this page, youve read about and learned about the four Japanese
alphabets. Now that you know what all four of them are, you can start learning them (then figure out how
they work with each other to create the Japanese language).

Mr. Ando of the Woods

Now that you know the difference between the Japanese alphabets and how /
where they are used, its time to start learning the first one (hiragana not
romaji, right?). This is going to help you build a great foundation for your
Japanese learning and pronunciation. This will probably be the most painful bit of
Japanese learning, but once its over itll be smooth sailing.

Before you get started, though, take a look at this video, about a man pretending
to be a penguin. I mostly hope you enjoy it (dont worry about studying every
single moment of the video), but I did want to point some things out in it to show
 you some of the stuff you just learned in action. Plus, youll be using this video
again a little later, so itll be good to familiarize yourself with it.

Here are some of the things in the video that you kind of know about already
(thanks to this last chapter). Its okay if you didnt catch any of them, I just want
you to know that they exist!

Lots of Onomatopoeia (do you remember which alphabet is used most

often when doing onomatopoeia?). See if you can find these.
o Pero Pero Pero is the sound of licking.
o Buru Buru is the sound/feeling of his cell phone buzzing.
o Peng Peng (actually pen pen) is the sound they use for penguin
sounds. Not sure if its actually an official penguin sound (need to hear a
penguin making sounds first), but its more of a play on the word Penguin where
it uses the first part of that word as the sound that Penguins make You know,
kind of like how pikachu says pikapika.
When they talk to Ando-san, they use san on the end of his name. Do
you remember which alphabet you use to write name-suffixes like that? Ando-
san, Koichi-san, [yournamehere]-san.
Pengin is the Japanese word for Penguin. It sounds suspiciously like
the word penguin though, and thats because its a loan word. What would this
(foreign) loan word be written in?
After that relaxing break hanging out in the woods with Mr. Ando, its time to
review. On to your first practice page! Good luck!

Practice
Energy and persistence conquer all things. Benjamin
Franklin
 Hey, welcome to your very first practice page. Whats a practice page? Basically
its an opportunity to put all your reviews, new cards (you dont have any yet) and
everything else in one place. The goal is to make sure you know what you just
learned and then to make it even better before you move on. At the end of most
chapters there will be a practice section. Take your time with these and make
sure you complete everything. All the practice pages have important stuff in
them, so if you skip them youre going to find things getting harder and harder as
you move forward (and thats no fun).

Questions
This practice page, however, is particularly short and easy. Just a few questions
to make sure you know the differences between the alphabets. You dont have to
know the alphabets yet (or at all), I just want you to have a general idea of what
they all do so you know what youre learning as you move forward. Here are the
four alphabets, just for reference:

Romaji
Hiragana
Katakana
Kanji

1. Should I bother to learn romaji? Click For Answer

No, its pretty much useless.

2. Which alphabet is used to write all the vocabulary words. Answer

Kanji

3. Where did kanji come from? Answer

 China! Bonus: It came from China from people reading burnt turtle shell cracks
as messages from the Gods.

4. Which alphabet do you use to write foreign words? Answer

Katakana

5. Which alphabet tends to be more boxy shaped and rigid. Answer

Katakana again!

6. Do Hiragana & Katakana consist of the same sounds? Answer

Yep!

7. Which alphabets are you going to learn on TextFugu? Answer

Hiragana, katakana, and kanji

8. Which alphabet would you use to write the Roma in Romaji (Roma =
Rome) Answer

Katakana, since Rome is a foreign word imported to Japanese

Language Log
Since you have a language log set up, we might as well make use of it. Make
sure you write notes on the four alphabets in Japanese. It depends on how
solid youre feeling right now, but heres some suggestions of things to write
down.

A quick summary of what each of the Japanese alphabets do.

How you felt about this chapter (i.e. did you have trouble anywhere? Did
everything just connect? Did you feel focused, unfocused, etc?
 Write more about the one(s) you are having trouble remembering. Try to
pretend youre teaching someone else about them, as thats an awesome way to
sort out any speed bumps in your own mind (and a great way to remember things
better).

Mainly, focus on what gives you trouble. Those that focus on the trouble spots
are those who get ahead. I know its hard to do things that are difficult, but if you
do the difficult things, then only easy things remain!

Once youve gotten through everything, move on to the next chapter. Youre
going to start to learn hiragana (remember which one that is?).

Why?
There comes a moment when you have to stop revving
up the car and shove it into gear. David Mahoney

In the following chapters youll be learning about Japanese pronunciations (i.e.

the sounds that make up the Japanese language). Were using hiragana (which
you learned about last chapter) to learn all these sounds (since hiragana makes
up most of the sounds available to you in Japanese).

Youre learning the sounds of all the hiragana before you learn the hiragana
themselves because pronunciation comes first (I believe). When you learn
hiragana, it will be a lot easier because you know the sounds that they make
(learning the sounds helps you to wrap your head around the kana, which will
help you to learn the kana faster, overall).

So, youre learning the sounds of hiragana now so you can learn how to read and
write hiragana more effectively later (though not that much later pretty soon, in
fact!).
In this chapter you should focus on being able to make all the sounds. You dont
need to know which sound goes with which character (yet), but it will be great if
you can make all the sounds correctly and understand the patterns behind the
sounds. Pronunciation is key this chapter.

Japanese Pronunciation
Using Hiragana
Teaching reading IS rocket science - Louisa Moats

Before you start reading, and before you start writing, youre going to learn how
to pronounce nearly all the sounds of the Japanese language. If you cant
pronounce anything, you wont be able to read or write anything either. If you
learn how to pronounce something while youre learning to read and write it,
youll run into overload. By learning pronunciation first (without knowing how to
read or write anything) youre essentially breaking the process up into smaller
pieces and ultimately saving yourself a lot of time.

In order to learn the pronunciation, though, were going to use hiragana. For the
most part, by learning the pronunciation of all the hiragana letters youll be able
to learn most of the sounds in the Japanese language. Its like hitting two birds
with one stone. First, you get to learn hiragana, and second you get to learn
pronunciation of the Japanese language.
 So, lets get going, eh?

Making Tasks Actionable

Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck
because the doing of them has not been defined David Allen
The first thing you need to do before you start studying some actual Japanese
is to learn really quickly about actionable tasks. Everyones created and used
some kind of to-do list at some point in their life (I assume so, anyways), though
most people dont actually get a lot out of them. Either the list becomes so
overwhelming that you just end up throwing it out, or the things you put on your
list just arent actionable. Here are some of the most basic problems people end
up having with to-do lists:

1. You add everything to your list, which really means you have nothing. Too
much is just too overwhelming, and not useful at all.
2. Your list contains too many generalities. Study Japanese is an example
of something that is too general.
3. Goals are too long term. Really, you dont want to look more than a week
or so ahead, otherwise you arent focusing on things you could do right now (that
will get you closer to said goals).
4. You spend way too much time working on your list when that time could be
spent doing things on your list.
Anyways, you get the picture. All that being said, though, I think to-do lists can be
really important, as long as theyre done right. The reason I bring this up now is
because hiragana requires you learn a lot of different pieces. When you have a
lot of pieces, its good to have a way of keeping track of what you need to work
on next (in order to get closer to learning hiragana). After youve practiced your
list building skills with hiragana, youll be able to use them on everything else in
 your life as well (including more Japanese studies!). Lets take a look at what
makes up a good to-do list.

1. Actionable Tasks: Every task on your to-do list should be actionable. This
means you can take some kind of physical action upon it, right now. These are
tasks that, when you complete them, youve (visually/physically/etc) moved
closer to whatever your main general goal might be. These are not general
goals like learn Japanese. Thats to-do suicide right there. These have to be
things you can actually act upon. To prevent generalities, its best to spend a
couple of minutes planning before you start something. Whats the next thing you
can do (do is the important word here) that will get you closer to your goal of
learning Japanese? When you come up with ambiguous to-dos, it causes you to
freeze and stress out over your to-do items, which means nothing actually gets
done. This takes away from your focus and makes it very difficult to do anything.
Examples of good actionable tasks include: be able to read and write the
hiragana characters , , , , and consistently in any order. This is a
specific thing you can do, and you know what you need to do to accomplish it.
2. Stay Short Term: You arent a time traveler or psychic. You dont know
whats going to happen two weeks from now. You do, however, have a somewhat
decent idea whats going to happen today, so plan short term and make
adjustments as you go along. As long as your tasks are actionable and working
towards a bigger goal, youll make it there when you need to. Think about what
you can do today, not two weeks from now.
3. Do Two, Maybe Three Important Things Daily: Be honest, you probably
dont do more than three important things every day. I know I dont. Everyone has
a certain amount of energy to get things done with. Everything you do takes up
energy. Try to focus on two or three things to get done per day, not a hundred. If
you choose to do a couple things, youll get them done (and feel good about it).
Then, worst case is that you have more time, and you can add one more thing to
your to-do list. Remember, these two or three things are important things (i.e. if
you could only do three things today, what would they be?).
Starting on the next page, youll begin to learn hiragana pronunciation, and well
be using some of these to-do list lessons to help you learn more effectively. Well
break the fairly big task of learning hiragana up into smaller pieces and help you
focus on one part at a time. Consistency is really going to be the key here,
though. Its so much better to study 30 minutes a day than it is to study 8 hours,
only on one day. Lets get started!

More On Hiragana
On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no
failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness
will protect you from the greatest fear. Krishna

Hiragana is the first step towards your Japanese education. It may sound like a
lot for me to ask you to learn an entire alphabet so soon (especially one that
has 46 letters in it, and thats not even including the combination ones, youll
learn about these later), but its all for the best. Trust me!

Well focus a lot on learning hiragana perfectly in as little time as possible. By

learning hiragana well now, youre setting yourself up for better pronunciation and
a better understanding of how the Japanese language works. Ask
almost anyone who is learning Japanese. Learning hiragana early is the absolute
best route to take if you want to save time in the short, medium, or long run.

The big question, however, is how do you learn it?

There are plenty of ways to go about it, and I cant say one way is right and
another is wrong. Really, the best way to learn hiragana is to utilize a variety of
resources. The main concern at this point is burn-out. Learning hiragana is
boring, and the light at the end of the tunnel is tough to see. It takes a little while
to learn, too. The reason you should use multiple resources to learn it is in order
to prevent this.

Im going to take you through everything step by step to hopefully alleviate burn-
out and get you through this as quickly as possible. Well be using worksheets
made specially for TextFugu, as well as some other (free) sites that do a great
job drilling hiragana, combining to create a really effective method. Basically, in
order to use TextFugu you have to learn hiragana, so Ill take you most of the
way.

This chapter focuses on the first half of hiragana: the pronunciation of it. You
dont need to know how to read anything yet. First, pronunciation and patterns,
second is reading the characters. Lets get started.

Hiraganas Magical
Pattern
I have no idea what Im singing, they give me the
pronunciation Melissa Rich

There are a lot of hiragana to learn. Certainly more than the 26 letters of the
alphabet in the English language. That being said, theres a magical pattern that
you can take advantage of, though. Basically, if you learn five kana really well (in
terms of pronunciation), youll be able to pronounce almost everything else pretty
well too. Were going to focus on that pattern first so that everything else is a lot
easier later on.

The first thing were going to do is take a look at the pronunciation of each
kana. A kana is basically one of the letters (if you want to be technical theyre
not actually letters, but that doesnt matter at all and its so much easier to
understand them in this way) of the Japanese alphabet (its technically not an
alphabet either, but like I said, so much easier to associate abstract things with
things you already know). There are a ton of hiragana charts out there already, all
with similar layouts, but none of them do a great job when it comes to
pronunciation. Ive made my own hiragana chart which I think will do pretty well
for our intents and purposes.

TextFugus Hiragana Chart

Open the hiragana chart (and print it out, if you can) then look at the first column,
starting in the top right. In written Japanese, when you write vertically, you read
from top to bottom, right to left. When written horizontally, its read like English,
left-to-right, starting at the top. I dont want you to worry too much about this right
now, though. Most likely, 99% of the time, youll see Japanese written left-to-right,
just like in English. This hiragana chart is more of an exception than anything
else, and its written top to bottom because its easier to organize that way.

Anyways, take a look at the top right column. You should see the following kana,
listed top to bottom.

a
i
u
e
o

This is the magical pattern I was talking about, and I hope you spend some
extra time learning it. Once you learn these five kana, everything else gets to be
ten times easier.
Now, when you pronounce these five kana, you dont want to pronounce them
like you would in English. This is key if you want good Japanese pronunciation,
and another reason why romaji will throw you off (and why we need to get you
knowing hiragana as soon as possible).

Lets take a look at the first five, first.

Before you move on: Write down the five kana that make up the magical pattern. Leave some space
around them so you can take notes and write other things nearby. Its going to be so important you really
get these five down. Go ahead and write them in both hiragana and romaji (use the list above for
reference) then move on to the next section, where well learn to pronounce these five.

Pronouncing The First

Five Hiragana
Shame is the leading cause of death of the potential
for actualizing giftedness. - Maria Rocamora

The first five hiragana are the most important five to learn. They set the
foundation for every other kana in the entire hiragana alphabet. If you learn these
five well (and properly), youll learn the rest of them well (and properly). If you do
a bad job learning these five, itll hold you back for a long, long time. That being
said, you should spend some time on these five.

Lets take a look at them, one by one.

a (a)
a is pronounced like the a in car.
a (i)
i is pronounced like eeee, or the ey sound in key. Think of it like youre
saying the letter e (not pronouncing it, but reading the letter).

a (u)
u is pronounced ooh, like saying ooh ahh when fireworks are going off.

a (e)
e is pronounced eh like the e in egg or elephant

a (o)
o is pronounced oh like in oh my gosh

Before you move on, Id like you to be able to do the pronunciation of these five
kana really well. I dont care if you can associate the actual writing part of it. That
doesnt matter right now. I just want you to be able to look at the romaji (the a, i,
u, e, or o) and then pronounce it in Japanese, using the audio provided above.

Every other column after these first five follow the same pattern (youll see once
you jump to the next page), so learn these well now so everything else can be a
lot simpler for you.

If youd like some extra practice, heres a video you can follow along with.

Make sure you can pronounce the five kana above, from memory, before moving on. Go ahead and look
at a kana and then try and do the pronunciation. After that, play the sound and see how you did. Make
adjustments as you need to in order to replicate the sounds above. Once you have them all down,
memorize the five as a group. You should be able to say all of them (a, i, u, e, o) all in a row, one after
another (kind of like in the video above). This will help you remember and learn the pattern that you need
for the rest of the columns. Continuing The
Pattern
A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to
a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. Jiddu
Krishnamurti
Now that you have the first five kanas pronunciation down really solidly (right?),
its time to move on to the next column in the hiragana chart to learn how the
pattern holds up.
To the left of the first five (a, i, u, e, o) you should see the next column: ka, ki, ku,
ke, & ko.
Notice something? Theres a definite pattern here. The ka-column (which is
what well call ka, ki, ku, ke, ko) has kana in it that consist of two parts:

Consonant (thats a letter thats not a vowel. In this case, its K)

Vowel (specifically from the a, i, u, e, o column)
In hiragana, except for the first column (a, i, u, e, o) and one more exception (n),
every single kana consists of a consonant plus a vowel, just like we saw in the
ka-column. Basically, most kana in the hiragana alphabet consist of two English
letters to create one Japanese one. This might be weird at first, but youll get
used to it (and itll make a lot more sense in the next chapter, when you start
learning how to write it).

Lets take a closer look at the ka-column now to see what Im talking about.

ka This is just K + (a), therefore it has a kah sound.

ki This is just K + (i), therefore is identical to the word key in English
ku This is just K + (u), therefore has a koo sound, like kublai khan
 or cool.
ke This is just K + (e), therefore has a keh sound, like kettle
ko This is just K + (o), therefore has a koh sound like comb.
Do you see the pattern here? If we go from right to left on the hiragana chart,
youll see that the pattern continues.

(a), (ka), (sa), (ta), (na), etc (all of these are a sounds)
(i), (ki), (shi), (chi), (ni), etc. (all of these are i sounds)
and so on. Take a look at the hiragana chart and see the patterns created
in all the other rows, too (u, e, and o).
If you look at the i row that I laid out above, youll notice a couple of weird
exceptions (like shi & chi instead of si and ti). There are going to be things that
arent 100% perfect with what youd expect (like the examples I just gave), but
theyre all going to be close, which means they wont be too difficult to learn.

On the next page, were going to look at these exceptions and get them out of
the way before you go on and go through all the rest of the hiragana. That way
when you run into said exceptions, youll be able to breeze through them instead
of breaking your concentration.

Before you move on, make sure you understand how the pattern works. All hiragana letters use the a, i,
u, e, o sounds, except for the one exception, n (youll learn about him soon enough).

Hiragana Pattern
Exceptions
With the possible exception of the equator, everything
begins somewhere. C.S. Lewis
There arent a ton of weird exceptions in the hiragana alphabet, but there are
enough to throw you off a bit if you dont see them coming. Luckily, all of the
exceptions still make quite a bit of sense, and with a little practice (which youll
get plenty of in the next chapter) these will just become normal instead of
exceptions.

Lets take a look at all of them. All you need to do is read these and take notes
(possibly in your Japanese language log?)

(shi): This is the first of the exceptions. Instead of pronouncing shi like the
other columns (youd think it would be pronounced like see instead of like shi),
youre going to pronounce it like you would the word she (as in she went to the
store). In romaji (at least on TextFugu), youre going to see it written as shi.

(chi): This one is a lot like shi from above, but this time instead of a ti
sound you add an h in there to make it chi. This is pronounced like the chee
in cheese.

(tsu): Instead of going with the pattern and pronouncing this one tu you need
to add an s in there, pronouncing it tsoo. This sound is unlike almost anything
in the English language, so in order to learn this one just refer to the next page
which will lay everything out for you.

(fu/hu): This particular kana is a bit weird, because it can be pronounced two
ways, either fu or hu. Most of the time youll see it as a fu sound, but
depending on the word it can go either way (especially when you add foreign
words into the mix). When just reading the character on its own (i.e. from the
hiragana chart) its best you pronounce it with a hu sound. As this comes up, Ill
be sure to make a note of it so you can see when its pronounced hu and when
its pronounced fu.
The entire (ya) column: The entire ya column is a bit weird in that its
incomplete. Instead of following the pattern and going ya, yi, yu, ye, yo there
are two kana missing from it. For this column, all you need to learn is ya, yu,
yo, and yi and ye dont exist. When you learn the pattern it almost becomes
hard to forget and omit kana, but youll figure it out with practice.

(ra) column: Although this column isnt really an exception, it is the column
that gives people the most problems, in terms of pronunciation. On the next page
well be going over the pronunciation of this one in great detail. Its the subtlety
that makes it tough, but I think TextFugu has one of the best explanations out
there.

(wa) column: This column only consists of two kana, and one of them (/wo)
is only used as a particle, which well learn more about later. (wo) isnt
pronounced with a w sound, either. Its pronounced almost exactly like (o).
You can pretend the w part doesnt exist and pronounce wo like o..

(n): n is the only consonant-only kana, and has an nnnnn sound, like the n
in man. Every other kana is a consonant plus vowel, using two (English) letters
to create one kana. (n) is the only consonant-only kana. Its really easy to
pronounce and use once you see it a few times, but when it comes to patterns it
doesnt really fit, making it an exception.

So, thats all of them! Considering how much hiragana there is, these arent all
that bad. Remember, you dont have to learn everything all at once. Well practice
these exceptions over the next couple chapters making it a lot easier and a lot
more manageable.

Before you move on, be sure to read the exceptions list a couple times. You dont have to learn all the
exceptions that would be a bunch of wasted time and memory space. Just become familiar with them
so that when we actually learn them (next page) youll be able to remember that oh yeah, this is an
exception, and this is how you do it.
 Main Hiragana
Pronunciation
This is where the fun starts. Take a moment to go back and review the first
column (a, i, u, e, o) and solidify the pronunciation of those first kana before
moving on. Were about to take a look at the pronunciation of all the rest of the
kana, and itll be important that you still have those first five down nicely.

Before you move on and practice the pronunciation of all of these, lets take note
of a couple things:

1. You dont have to be able to read anything.

2. Keep thinking about the pattern as you go through everything. Most
important thing is that you make the connection between kana that are a part of
the pattern (most of them are).
3. Go through each video at least three times, unless specified otherwise.
4. Pay real close attention to the pronunciation of each kana and try to copy /
replicate them. Anything thats difficult (at least when it comes to native English
speakers) will get extra explanation.

Were going to start at the beginning and go through all the hiragana
pronunciation, starting with the a-column and ending with n. Other things
(such as dakuten and combo-hiragana will be covered in the next couple of
pages), so dont worry about them right now. Lets get started!
Column 1: Pronunciation
Column 2: Pronunciation
Column 3: Pronunciation
This video contains exception (shi) in it. Instead of saying si, we add an h to
it and pronounce it shi like she went to the store. Make sure you practice this
column until you feel comfortable with shi instead of si.
Column 4: Pronunciation
This video contains two exceptions in it: (chi) and (tsu). Chi is a
pretty easy one to handle, but tsu sometimes gives people issues. Its
almost like saying su but you add a little t sound right at the beginning.
Repeat the video until you feel comfortable with this sound. If you feel like
youve plateaued, take a break and come back a little bit later, when youre
feeling fresh (and are actually physically able to improve). Just make sure
you can replicate this sound before moving on to the next chapter.

Column 5: Pronunciation
Column 6: Pronunciation
The only strange thing about this column is (hu). It can be pronounced
two ways (in the above video I do a breathy combo-hu/fu sound), hu and
fu. Most of the time youll hear it as fu, though with foreign words
(remember katakana?) it can really go either way. If you only want to learn
one right now (and just keep in mind it could be both), then go with fu

since thats going to be more common. Column 7:

Pronunciation
Column 8: Pronunciation
If you remember from the exceptions page, this is the first column with
only three kana. Theyre pretty straight forward in terms of how the
pronunciation goes, just remember that there is no yi or ye.

Column 9: Pronunciation
This is the hardest one for most people. Its really important that you pay real
close attention, because the difference is very small to the untrained ear, but
fairly big to the trained one. Make sure you dont make the mistake of just
thinking you have it down when in actuality youre not pronouncing it correctly.
Go through the steps and practice, trying to get closer and closer to the correct
pronunciation. Ive even broken it up into steps for you so that you can be
perfect.
1. Make the English da sound. Do this approximately ten times, and pay
attention to how your tongue is shaped and where it ends up as youre saying it.
Your tongue should be pretty flat against the top of your mouth, with the tip of
your tongue pushing against your top front teeth. Your teeth should be lightly
touching both the top and bottom of your tongue. Say da ten times.
2. Now, make the English la sound. Continue to pay attention to your
tongue placement and mouth shape. Really exaggerate this sound and curl your
tongue back so the bottom of it is touching the roof of your mouth. Notice how
your tongue flicks forward when you say la. Do this ten times as well, taking
note of everything as you do it.
3. Both la and da should have been nice and easy for you. Now, I want
you to go back and forth between the two, saying la da la da la da la da twenty
times. Really exaggerate and enunciate both sounds.
4. Now, youre going to do a combination of the two. You should have a really
good idea where you put your tongue for both la and da. Youre going to make
an R sound by putting your tongue in a spot right between the la and da
locations. This is the magic sweet spot for pronouncing the Japanese R. With
all this in mind, and with your new knowledge of R placement, lets practice ra,
ri, ru, re, ro.
The Japanese ra, ri, ru, re, ro is kind of a mystery for a lot of people, and heres
why. The Ra-column is made up of multiple sounds. Its part R (Id say around
75%), part L (Id say about 20%) and strangely enough, part D (Id give this about
5%). Combine these together and you have the Japanese R. By doing the
exercises above, you should be able to get the R & L sounds. The subtle D
sound should come naturally with those things, though its not as important as
the R & L.

Go through the video above, and think about your tongue placement with each
one. Listen to the video and try to copy the sounds. You dont want to be too R or
too L. Something right in between is pretty good.
If youve ever had any experience talking with Japanese people, youll notice
they have a really hard time distinguishing Ls and Rs. This totally makes sense,
since their R-sound is a combination of the two.

Before you move on to the next column, be sure to practice the r-column extra. Pay close attention to
your tongue positioning, and if you need to go back through the steps that get you to the right
pronunciation. With practice youll get it down right but more importantly, you have to practice the right
thing, so make sure youre thinking, too!

Column 10: Pronunciation

(wa) is fairly standard. (wo) is a bit weird, though. Instead of pronouncing it
with a w sound, you drop the w and pronounce it like oh/o. (n) is the only
consonant-only kana, and its placed after any other kana. For example, (a) +
(n) is (an), (ra) + (n) is (ran), etc. Well get more into that in the
next chapter, though.

Make sure you feel pretty good about the above pronunciations (especially the ra-column). You dont have
to be able to read any of them (just the romaji part, right now), but you should be able to pronounce
everything. Why not go through all the videos one more time, just to solidify everything down one last time
before moving on?

Dakuten
Extraordinary things like this occur frequently to most
of us, but we disregard them, because of our lack of
understanding, and we think they are mere
coincidences. Roger McDonald

Now that youve learned the pronunciation of the main hiragana, there are a
bunch of kinda-sorta subsets you need to learn. One of those is called dakuten
(see your hiragana chart to find the dakuten section).

Its really easy to know when youre looking at a dakuten kana. Basically, dakuten
are hiragana you already know plus a little quotation mark or little circle next
to them. By adding one of these little dakuten to certain hiragana, you change
their sound and pronunciation, meaning you essentially double (or in a few cases
triple) the usefulness of a single kana.

For example: (ka) is just ka, but when you add a dakuten to it, becomes
(pronounced ga instead of ka.)

But, were focusing on pronunciation right now, not writing, so that doesnt matter
too much until the next chapter. The important thing is that you remember what a
dakuten is (just a little quotation mark or circle placed next to a kana to change
its pronunciation).

Now lets look at the pronunciation. Just follow along like you did last chapter.
These will probably be easier to take down, in fact.

Before applying dakuten to these kana, they used to be ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. Now,
with the quotes next to them, they are ga, gi, gu, ge, go. Very similar sounds (ka
vs ga) but also different, all because of a little dakuten.

Dakuten 2: (za ji zu ze zo)

Pronunciation
The only weird one in this column is . Instead of pronouncing it like the others
(zi), we make a (ji) sound instead. Simple enough to pronounce, as long as you
are aware of it.

Dakuten 3: (da dzi dzu de

do) Pronunciation
and are somewhat difficult to pronounce for some people, but luckily they
are very rarely used. You wont see these very often, but even so give the
pronunciation a shot. Its a combination of a D+Z sound. Practice this column
extra if you need to, but dont spend a ton of time on it. In terms of how much
youll need to use it, and how much time you (could) potentially spend on it, its
not worth it right now. Keep thinking about it and practicing it as it comes up, but
dont obsesss.

Dakuten 4: (ba bi bu be bo)

Pronunciation
Theres nothing weird about this one yet. Wait until you get to the next set,
though. Exact same kana, but different dakuten.

Dakuten 5: (pa pi pu pe po)

Pronunciation.
These dakuten are only applied to the ha, hi, hu, he, ho column, and you wont
see them anywhere else. Theyre small circles (instead of quotes) and they turn
ha, hi, hu, he, ho into pa, pi, pu, pe, po. Pretty easy to pronounce, you just
have to remember what sounds they are in the first place.

Before moving on to the next section, make sure you go through and solidify the pronunciation of the
above dakuten kana. Nothing up there should be too tricky for you, its just important you are sticking with
(and continuing to think about) the pattern so that theyll be easy to apply to your reading and writing
studies (coming up).

Combination Hiragana
Believe nothing. No Matter where you have read it, or
who said it, even if I have said it, unless it agrees with
your own common sense. Buddha

Combination hiragana are technically two separate kana combined into one
(which is why Im calling them combination hiragana), but since theyre so
common, and basically counted as one sound I thought it would be good if you
went over the pronunciation of these.

Essentially, combination hiragana consist of two parts.

The first part is the i-row. Dont confuse this with a column, Im talking about all
the i-sound hiragana, as in: i, ki, shi, chi, ni, hi, mi, ri When you are working
with combo-hiragana you start with something from the i-row. (P.S., make sure
youre pronouncing the i in i-row correctly!).

The second part is either ya, yu, or yo. When written, they are written smaller in
order to indicate theyre attached to the previous kana (i.e. something from the i-
row). You dont need to know much about this right now though you only need
to learn how to pronounce them.

Lets take a look at some examples, and then youll practice pronouncing them.

a = kya.
With this one, I combined ki plus small ya to create kya. You could do the
same with the yu and yo as well. Ki + yu = Kyu. Ki + yo = Kyo.

a = jya.
Just like kya above, Im combining ji + small ya to make jya.

a = nyu.
Ni + small yu = nyu. Just like the other ones, we drop the i and combine it
with the Y sound, which comes from the small-ya/yu/yo.
a = myo.
Mi + small yo = myo.

a = rya, ryu, ryo

Your worst nightmare. Remember how to pronounce the R-column? Good. Now,
apply that to combination hiragana and practice practice practice!

I imagine youll be able to pronounce most of these just fine. Keep doing what
youve been doing in the previous pages in order to learn the pronunciation.
Since the examples above didnt cover all the possible sounds, please refer to
the video below (as well as your hiragana sheet) and practice before moving on.

For the most part, youve now mastered the pronunciation of all the kana. Theres
some other funny things (like long vowels and small tsu), but well talk about
them when we start reading and writing hiragana (itll be a lot easier to do when
you can actually see it in action). Now that youve learned pronunciation, reading
and writing will be a lot easier for you. Im not saying its going to be easy, but
easier? Yes.
The sooner you start reading and writing, the better. Its going to help with your
pronunciation (well keep practicing!) and youll be able to continue making
progress.

Lets move on to the next chapter! Now is a better time than any!

Why?
Minds are like parachutes, they function only when
open. Unknown
Now that you know how to do all the sounds, its time to associate those sounds
with the various kana (you probably already did this just a little bit from the last
chapter but its okay if you havent).

You really need to learn hiragana (at minimum) to start learning Japanese, and
thats exactly what youre going to do here. If you dont know hiragana you really
dont know how the Japanese language works and how it is set up. By learning
hiragana a lot opens up to you and it allows you to start learning kanji as well
(also important). Really, though, if you dont know hiragana itll be hard to
function, so I think its important to get that out of the way as early as possible.

In this chapter, focus on learning the kana. Learn how to read (most important)
hiragana and write (not as important, but still good to know) hiragana. Future
chapters will have hiragana as well (after Season 1 its only Japanese!) so learn
it now. Even if you arent fast or fluent at reading it (understandable) make sure
you can read it so that you can continue with future lessons!

Reading, Writing, and

Memorizing Hiragana
I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants
often consult me. - Noel Coward
This is the first chapter that really takes advantage of your head-organ. Although
TextFugu tries to keep straight-up memorization to a minimum, hiragana is one of
those things that you are in fact going to have to memorize (sorry!). I will,
however, guide you along step by step so that you can be as efficient as possible
at learning how to read and write hiragana. What Im basically saying is that
it could be a whole lot worse. Remember how long it took you to learn to read
your own native language back when you were a kid? Well, hopefully hiragana
will only take you a few weeks (versus a few years). Youre smarter now, since
(Im guessing) you arent a kid.

So now that you know the pronunciation of hiragana and how that works (as well
as the pronunciation of 90% of the entire Japanese language), its time to look at
turning those sounds into usable symbols, which you can read and write. This
chapter is going to be all about helping you learn hiragana through a combination
of lessons, TextFugu resources, and outside (free) resources as well. Well also
continue to practice your pronunciation as we learn how to read and write, that
way youll continue to get better at that too. If you just follow along and do whats
suggested in this chapter, you should come out the other end with a fairly good
understanding of hiragana. You wont be perfect (thats definitely not expected),
but youll be able to read and write hiragana well enough that you can start using
your new knowledge in the real world (as well as in future TextFugu lessons,
which use hiragana in them as well).

To start, I want to take a look at some Japanese words you already know. This
way youre not putting too many abstract things together. By using something you
know in a lesson with things you dont know, youre suddenly giving your brain
something to latch on to, which means youll be able to memorize things a lot
more effectively.

And our first word is?

a Sushi
Sushi /n./ Known to the rest of the world as Bait.

Despite what you might think, reading and writing Japanese (at least when it
comes to kana) is actually really easy. Its not like English at all (which is tough)
and things are generally written the way they sound, and sound the way they are
written (though, of course, there are some exceptions).

To illustrate this point, were going to look at some words you already know, the
first of which is of course sushi.

The word sushi consists of two separate kana: SU + SHI. Take a look at your
hiragana chart and see if you can find the kana for both of these (su & shi). What
are they? Just for the sake of letting things sink in, go ahead and copy the
characters su and shi in order to write the word sushi out.
This image is taken from the hiragana chart were using, and Ive circled the
correct characters. Now, on the sheet they arent in the correct order, but when
you write out (su) and (shi) together, you get (sushi). Writing in
hiragana really is that simple. Its amazing, right?

Now, unfortunately, there is a kanji for this word as well ( = = sushi), but
you dont need to worry about that at all right now. Were focusing on hiragana for
the time being.

Did you understand how we wrote the word sushi using the kana from your hiragana chart? How easy
was that? All you need to do is find the right kana and create the word. Make sure you understand what
happened on this page before moving on to the next word.

Easy, right? What else can you spell?

Sake
Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of
worth eat and drink only to live. Socrates

Do you recognize this word? Depending on how you learned it, you might not. In
English, this word is often pronounced like saki, rather than the correct sake.
Click the play button up top to hear the correct pronunciation.
In case you havent figured it out yet, sake is Japanese rice wine.

The word sake consists of two kana. I bet youve guessed it already (and if you
havent, you should give it a shot).

(sa) + (ke)

Take the time to look at your hiragana chart and find these two kana, then write
them down (with your hands, please!).
Are you starting to see how hiragana can be combined to create Japanese
words? I think it makes a lot of sense when you use words you already know.
Lets look at one more word like this.

Karate
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who
have had years and years of training can, using only
their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in
the history of the world. Dave Barry

Just like (sake), this word is often mispronounced by English speakers. I bet
you know this word when you see it, but do you pronounce it correctly or do you
pronounce it more like the incorrect karadee? Lets find out.

Take the word karate and break it up into its individual kana parts (Ill give you a
hint, theres three parts). Find those three kana on the hiragana chart and write
the word out. Pronounce the three individual kana to find out the correct
pronunciation of the word karate. Did you get it right? You can hear the
pronunciation up at the top of this page by clicking the play button left of the
word.
When you write karate out in hiragana, it comes out to . This is really
really easy, right? Reading and writing hiragana is actually very simple once you
learned all the characters. Now, I know you dont know how to do that (quite) yet,
but were getting there. Youll be reading and writing words like karate with no
problem soon enough.

Once you feel comfortable turning the first three words (sushi, sake, and karate) into hiragana (using your
hiragana chart) its time to move on to learning the hiragana itself. Be sure you understand how hiragana
works and how words are put together first, though, as well be using that as you learn to read and write
hiragana!

Learning To Write Hiragana

Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you
believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you
finish. John Jakes
Now that you understand how hiragana technically works (i.e. you can see a
simple word in romaji, then find the right kana to write down that word in
hiragana), lets start reading and writing.

Before you start, though, I have to be clear on something really quick. Learning
to read and write hiragana isnt easy. Theres almost no way that it can be.

That being said, its probably going to be one of the biggest hurdles you end up
facing in your Japanese learning journey. You could look at this and say oh no,
this is horrible, or you could look at it and realize how much youll end up getting
out of it. This is the main wall keeping you from learning an enormous amount of
Japanese. If you can learn hiragana, you can learn anything.
Even though this is probably one of the hardest things youll have to learn, also
realize that its actually not that bad. I just want you to go into it knowing youll
have to put some work and time into this in order to learn it. You already knew
that, though, Im sure. This is an entire language were talking about, not a simple
nursery rhyme. As you go through learning hiragana, though, just remember why
youre learning Japanese and think to the future. See the light at the end of the
tunnel, and keep working hard. If you do that, youll get through hiragana quickly,
enjoy it, and come out a lot smarter on the other end. Hiragana is a fun puzzle to
get through and the prize is big when you finish it.

Learning to read and write hiragana is a multi-pronged assault. You cant really
come at it from only one side and hope to feel really good about it. Its important
you use multiple resources and multiple tactics to avoid burnout as well as to
help you remember what youve learned (and review it too). Really, the best way
to practice your hiragana is to actually use it. In order to be able to do that,
though, you have to learn it well enough first. The goal is to get you to that point
so that you can move on to other TextFugu lessons where youll be able to use
(and practice) hiragana in a much more interesting environment.

Lets get started.

Anki
A brain is a society of very small, simple modules that cannot be said to
be thinking, that are not smart in themselves. But when you have a network
of them together, out of that arises a kind of smartness. Kevin Kelly
Anki2 has been released! The decks on TextFugu will work with Anki2, though there are some small
changes between the two. Please read about the changes. I do plan to upgrade the decks to work with
some of the new Anki2 features, but in the meantime the decks should work with the new Anki.

The first resource youre going to use (its a resource thats used a lot alongside
TextFugu, so you might as well get used to it!) is Anki. Anki is a fabulous
flashcard application that works on all computer operating systems, is open
source, free, and (most importantly) really good at helping you to memorize
things (that would otherwise be tough to remember). It knows when you should
study something and how often you should study. Basically, it tells you what to
 do, and as long as you follow along, good things will happen. To start, youll have
to download the application:

1. Go to Anki and download the version thats right for your computers
operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux, etc).
2. Optional: Go to AnkiWeb and create an account. If you have multiple
computers / devices, you can use this to sync your flashcard decks so no matter
where you go, you can start right where you left off.
The next thing youll need to do is download your list. Right now, youre about to
learn hiragana, so Ive created a hiragana list for you. Id recommend taking
these steps to get ready:

1. Create a folder somewhere on your computer for all your Anki files.
2. Download The Hiragana Anki list and unzip it.
3. Move the Hiragana-with-audio folder to your Anki folder (the one you
created on step 1)
4. Double click on the file Hiragana.Anki to add it to your study decks.
When you do that, Anki should open (if its not open already), and it should give
you the option to start studying your hiragana list (or any other lists you have).

With that, you should be all set! Now its time to start learning the hiragana. Lets
go ahead and get started, actually, just with 5 kana. Its always good to get
started on things (because thats the hardest part), and will help propel you into
the next page, which is a bit longer.

Start by opening up Anki, and choosing to study the Hiragana list. When the
flashcards start up, youll be shown a kana with a blank under it. Look at it, and
decide whether or not you know it. Feel free to look at your hiragana sheet if you
dont. When you know the answer, hit show answer.
 Heres the interesting part. After you answer, youll be given a few options:

Soon (you didnt know it at all, pretty much)

Hard (you had a tough time with this word)
Good (it was pretty easy, but youll maybe forget it later)
Easy (you knew the answer like it was your own language. Bam!)
Be honest when you choose these, because itll help Anki know what to tell you
to study. If you dont know something so well, it will bring the card back sooner so
you can study it again. If you know a card really well, itll show that card to you
later, so you can study things you dont know as well right now. Either way, just
be honest and think long term. Its okay if you dont know something, because
that means the Anki will be able to help you.

For now, just go through the first five or so. Youll want to click on the
timeboxing option to limit your session to 5 items (just for now). When youve
added that in, go through those five items until you feel semi-comfortable when it
comes to recognizing them. Then, its time to move on to the meat, so to speak :)

P.S. In case you need it, heres the visual version of the last few paragraphs:

How To Study Hiragana

It always seems impossible until its done. Nelson
Mandela

Anki isnt the only thing well be using to study hiragana. There are a ton of other
great resources as well, including some from TextFugu, that will help you to learn
hiragana very quickly and efficiently Hopefully it will make things fun for you as
well (progress is always fun!).
Youve already started by learning how to recognize your first five to ten hiragana
using Anki (and in the process, you kind of learned how to use Anki as well).
While Anki will indeed be a big part of your hiragana learning career, there are
other resources you should be using as well. Instead of throwing a bunch of
resources at you and hoping for the best, Ive created a sort of study schedule.
The schedule isnt time based, which means you could complete this in one day,
or one month, or one year. Instead, its based on accomplishments. So, when
you finish X, you should start on Y. When you finish Y, you should start on Z, etc.

Im not saying this is the only way to do it, and some of you who are more
advanced at learning Japanese (or those of you who only need a refresher on
hiragana) will probably want to do something a little different, and thats okay.
This is only one way to do it (though I think its a great one), and if you follow
along, and complete everything in order, youll come out the other end knowing
hiragana more than well enough to move on to the next chapter.

If I were you Id bookmark this page (or copy and paste the list into your
Japanese language log) so you can quickly and easily access it whenever you
want to start studying. The easier it is to know what you need to do next, the
more likely it is youll study when you dont want to! :)

First 10 Hiragana:

1. Study your first ten hiragana using Anki

. One thing youll want to do from here on out is to delete whatever you put
under Session Limit (Questions) within the timeboxing tab (if you dont know
what this is, go back to the previous page). You need to do this because it will
also now be giving you items to review, depending on how you did. Youll want to
study on Anki until you reach the kana . Think of it as part of your training to
watch out for this kana (youll probably end up learning it in the process). After
you answer , stop studying on Anki and move on to the next step.

2. Go to Drag n Drop Hiragana, and only drag the first ten hiragana (a-column
and ka-column) into the right spaces. By only doing these ones, youll have to
find the right hiragana amongst all the other hiragana (helping you differentiate
them) and secondly force you to remember what they look like. Try this twice
(refresh to restart) and see if you can do it faster the second time!

3. After you feel so-so about the first 10 kana on Anki / Drag n Drop, its time to
put some of that into practice. Complete this worksheet and try to cheat as little
as possible.

First 10 Hiragana Practice

Hiragana 11-20:
Of course, its important that you review the kana you just studied while youre
learning your new kana, so well make sure to do that here.

1. Start by writing out the ten kana that you know and try to do it from memory
(starting with and ending with ). Ive even created a worksheet for you to
make it easy. Start in the top left corner, and write (horizontally) , , , ,
in the boxes provided. Then, go to the next row and put in , , , , . If you
have to, feel free to use your hiragana chart to help you (but try not to!).

Personal Kana Sheet

2. Now write out the ten new kana (sa-column and ta-column). These are the
kana youre about to study. Notice theres a dakuten section to the right. You
can ignore that for now. From your Personal Kana Sheet pinpoint four new kana
you think you can learn and recognize (right now). They have to be kana you
dont know, but they can come from anywhere in the first twenty kana. Perhaps
they have a shape thats easy to remember, or perhaps something just sticks.
The important thing is you try to learn to recognize four new kana right now
before moving on to the flashcard part. You dont have to be able to write them,
just recognize.

3. Go ahead and open Anki back up again and start up the hiragana list. If you
havent had to already, youll might have to tell it to review early (since it tries to
tell you when to study things). Thats fine if you do, it wont hurt anything (as long
as you arent moving faster than you can learn). Itll review the kana you didnt
know too well before, and then move on to the new kana. Stop studying when
you reach the kana (to). Once again, take advantage of looking out for it and
learn the kana while doing so.

4. Visit RealKana and check the four columns of hiragana that you know already.
Click on the katakana tab, and make sure everything here is unchecked. You
dont want to be learning katakana quite yet.
If youre feeling adventurous, click on the Options tab and check all the different
fonts. Just like English, there are different fonts and writing styles out there.
Some things are slightly different depending on the font, and this is one way to
get used to a lot of the different things out there.
Now, use Realkana to go through the first 20 hiragana characters until you feel
comfortable with them (i.e. you can recognize all of them). Even better if you can
do it with all the different fonts, too.

5. After you feel fairly decent about the first twenty kana (especially the new stuff)
complete this worksheet to really solidify that knowledge, and practice writing
them.

First 20 Hiragana Practice

Hiragana 21-30:
Youre actually past the halfway point for the main hiragana now! Just keep
going, youre making good progress!

1. Write down your ten new hiragana on your Personal Kana Sheet with the
other hiragana, so you can have them for reference. Choose two of them from
each set of five (na-column and ha-column) and try to remember what they are.
Just like last time, all you need to be able to do is recognize them. Once you
think you can recognize four of them, move on to the next step.

2. Open up Anki, and complete the next ten hiragana, up to . Youll have some
review from previous kana too, which is good. Make sure youre honest with
yourself in terms of what you can and cant recognize!

3. After feeling okay about the next ten, complete this work sheet, which helps
you practice reading and writing the individual kana.

First 30 Hiragana Practice

4. Visit RealKana and check the six columns of hiragana that you know already.
Click on the katakana tab and uncheck anything thats checked (you dont want
to learn katakana yet). Finally, try out the different hiragana fonts under Options.
Now, hit the practice tab and go through the practice a few times, until you feel
good about reading this kana (you should be pretty good, by this point, actually!).
Hiragana 31-46:

Youre almost there! In terms of the main hiragana, this is the last of it. After
this, youre just learning things you already kind of know (like dakuten and combo
hiragana), which means youre pretty much all the way there. Just a few loose
ends to tie up after this.

1. Write down your new hiragana on your piece of paper, along with the romaji,
for reference. Pick out five new kana you think you can recognize and try to
memorize them right now (dont spend much time). Just pick the five easiest
shapes and try to be able to associate the sound with them. When you think you
can recognize five new kana, move on to the next step.

2. Start up Anki and study until it gets you to . When you get to , stop and
move on to the next step.

3. Go to RealKana, and this time only check columns , , , , , & .

Youre learning more this round, so I want you to focus it a little more on recent
kana. Heres an image to show you what to check (make sure you uncheck the
katakana columns in the katakana tab too, if you need to).
Go through these a couple of times until you feel comfortable with them.

4. Complete this worksheet, which focuses on through columns.

Hiragana

5. Head on back to Drag n Drop Hiragana. In theory, you should be able to

complete the puzzle now (rather than just little bits of it). How fast can you get it
done? Record your times and see if you can get done in under three minutes. If
youre really good, you might be able to get it done in under two, but dont fret if
you cant.

Dakuten:

In theory, these should be easier than what weve been doing so far. You already
know the main characters (which dakuten use) and all you have to do is know
what little symbol to put next to them (hint: usually its a quotation mark). That
being said, Im going to give you more things than normal to study in this section.
You should be better at studying hiragana by now, and you should also know the
symbols above (minus the dakuten part). I wont say this section is easy, but it
should be easier than before.

1. Start up Anki and go through the dakuten hiragana. Dont remember what
dakuten are? You can get a refresher, here. Youll want to stop when you get to
(po).

2. Complete this worksheet. This worksheets goal is to help you remember what
a column will change to when dakuten are added to it. Focus more on
remembering that S goes to Z or T goes to D rather than focusing on
individual kana themselves.

Dakuten Practice

3. On RealKana, lets practice dakuten hiragana as well as the original kana from
which the dakuten came. Check the , , , , , , , , & columns.
Heres an image to illustrate:

Make sure you uncheck any katakana columns that might be checked as well.
Go through the drills like this until you feel pretty comfortable telling them apart.
Can you write them out on your own now? If I said things like

What do K-sounds turn into? Answer

What do H-sounds turn into (two answers here) Answer

What do D-sounds turn back into? Answer

What do Z-sounds turn back into? Answer

Could you answer all these questions? If not, be sure to drill RealKana a little bit
more so you can learn the differences. Really, just learning these differences is
the secret to learning dakuten, so if you can do that, you can do dakuten!

Combination Hiragana:

& Columns
You probably remember a little bit about combo-hiragana from the last chapter.
It might not have made too much sense at that point, but now were going to
actually see it and use it in action. Sometimes, certain kana can be written
smaller. When placed next to another kana, it can modify the way it sounds.
Dont worry, though, because the modifications actually make a lot of sense. For
example:

+ small = (which sounds like kya). Its almost like saying KIYA, but you
drop the i sound.

+ small = (which sounds like byu). Its just like BIYU, but you drop the
i sound.

+ small = (which sounds like sho). Its like SHIYO, but you drop the i
sound.

Youll understand better when you start using the flashcards, too (since they have
audio). There are other combo hiragana as well, though youll learn about them
more when you move on to katakana. For now, though, its pretty easy and
straight forward, I think.
1. Fire up your good ol buddy Anki, and go through all the combination hiragana.
This should take you through to the very end of the hiragana deck. You should
know all the characters being used at this point (even in the combo hiragana), so
use this opportunity to review as well. Be honest with what you did and didnt
know, too, because when you finish this deck, there will still be review for you to
finish, depending on what you clicked.

2. Now lets practice writing them. Remember, the for these are small
. If you dont write them small, they are just regular sized, and pronounced
normally. Its the difference between:

(kiya)vs (kya)

Those are two different sounds and you cant switch them out with each other.
The difference is important! Use this worksheet to practice:

Combination Hiragana

At this point, you should feel at least so-so about hiragana (and possibly fairly
good). You dont need to be perfect, nor do you need to be at 100%. Thats
definitely not expected at this point. Itll take a while before you read hiragana
nice and fluidly, but luckily theres going to be plenty of practice for that as you
progress through future chapters of TextFugu. Ill also make a point of giving you
opportunity to practice hiragana specifically as you go through the lessons.

Before you move on to the next page, make sure youve gone through everything above. Like I said, your
hiragana doesnt have to be perfect right now, but as long as you can stumble through all your hiragana
without cheating much, youre ready to move on to the next step.

Long Vowels
There are moments in business and in life when you
have to say, Failure is not an option. Donny Deutsch

There are two purposes for this page. First, this is a good excuse to continue to
practice your hiragana. Second, long vowels are something youll run into a lot
(and are actually pretty hard to understand right away). I feel like its good to talk
about them early so that as you run into them you can make mental notes and
get better.

Now, the reason long vowels give people trouble is because the difference
between a short/regular vowel and a long vowel is pretty subtle. Lets take a
look at some examples of words that have long vowels in them so you can see
what I mean.

a (ko-u-i-chi)
The long vowel in this name (its my name, actually) comes from the (ko-u)
part. As you can see, the (u) is placed after the (ko) in order to extend the
vowel sound.

a (o-o-ki-i)
In this word, there are two long vowels. (0-0) and (ki-i). In both cases,
you just extend the vowel sounds of o and ki to make them longer. Of course,
you dont want to make them too much longer, though, otherwise itll sound like
youre singing or something. will always love
(translate that into romaji for some fun).
a (i-i)
means good in Japanese, and is pronounced like one long sound.
You just extend whatever the last vowel sound was with the second vowel sound
(in this case, theyre both ).

a (so-u), (do-u), (mo-u)

All three of these are similar. They are o-column sounds with an extra on the
end. The funny thing about adding an to an o-column sound is that it really
doesnt sound so much like an extended as it sounds like an extended -
sound. Its pretty subtle, but if you listen you should be able to hear a mixture of
an + sound making the vowel longer.

To help you out, Ive put together a list of patterns that show up with common
long vowels. Its so much easier to look at the pattern than it is to look at all the
possible combinations out there.

-Column + examples:

-Column + examples:

-Column + examples:

-Column + examples:

-Column + examples:

*-Column + examples:

*Sometimes -column kana can be extended with as well (though youll see
extending -column kana more often).

As you move on, youll see more and more of these. Part of it is knowing they
exist, and the other part is just getting enough experience working with them
(dont worry, TextFugu has you covered). Before you move on, I only ask that you
understand how long-vowels effect any particular kana. Take a look at the long-
vowel patterns up above. Its really not too hard to remember, the only weird
one is -column. Other than that, all kana-columns are extended by the vowel
(either or ) in their own column, making it really easy to predict.

The Small Tsu

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every
experience in which you really stop to look fear in the
face. Eleanor Roosevelt

Theres one last weird thing you need to learn before youre finished with
reading and writing hiragana. Do you remember the hiragana (if you dont,
you should probably review a bit really quick!).

That is the hiragana for tsu from the column (ta-column).

This tsu, however, is different. Its a small tsu (kind of like the small , , and
we learned about for combo-hiragana) and it does something really, really
different. First, lets look at the size difference, just in case you dont believe me.
 vs
See how one is smaller than the other? Good, lets roll with it.

The small tsu creates double consonants (this means two non-vowels put
together, like tt or kk or pp). In Japanese, youll remember, theres almost no way
to create a double consonant unless you are using n (but lets pretend that
doesnt count). Each kana is either a vowel on its own (a, i, u, e, o) or its a
consonant plus a vowel (ka, mi, ha, fu, ko, etc). That means no matter how you
put these together, you cant have the same two consonants right next to each
other, no matter how hard you try.

kakakakaka (nope)

kokokoko (nope)

mimimimimimimimimimimimi (nope again)

aaaaaaaaaaa (still no double consonants)

With a small tsu, however, you can create a double consonant. Lets see how it
works, looking at a couple examples.

In romaji, this would be spelled ipun. This is not a word, and without
the small tsu, it can never be correct. The correct version of this word is actually
ippun. See how there are two ps next to each other (well go over the
pronunciation of this in a second)? In order to make that work in hiragana, you
add the small in right before the consonant you want to double up. So, in this
case, wed write ippun as .

The Small Tsu goes right before the consonant you want to duplicate

a Nippon
For this word, Nippon, the small tsu shows up right before the . The consonant
it shows up right before is the P part of po, meaning the P is what gets
doubled, making this word nippon.

Pronouncing Small Tsu

Now, pronunciation for small tsu is also a little different and may take a little
practice. Lets take a look at the two words weve already done, and
.

When you pronounce a small tsu, you want to break the word up. Its almost like
youre putting a little space in between the consonants of the double consonant.
For example:

ippun ip_pun

Although the space isnt written in, if you think of it this way, it will make your
pronunciation a lot better. Its like you end the first part with a p sound, and
begin the second part with a p sound. You kind of pronounce both consonants,
separately.

nippon nip_pon

In the case of , youd pronounce it like nip (space) pon. You dont
want to leave a really long space there, obviously, but just a little bit to separate
the two pieces out. Listen to the recording for nippon to see what I mean.

To pronounce the small tsu, imagine that you are separating the consonants from each other and
pronouncing them each individually

One more good way to think about it is by looking at the English word thats.
Now, this isnt quite the same thing, but it does a good job showing you how to
pronounce the small tsu.
Go ahead and say the word thats out loud. Notice how theres a small space
between that and the s? Thats the kind of space you want to create between
the double consonants in a small tsu word. You could even look at some other
words that are like this. cats, dogs, mitts, etc. The list goes on and on. The
important thing is you understand the small space between consonants so you
can pronounce the small tsu correctly.

Lets take a look at some more words to really get it down as well as practice
using and writing small tsu into words.

1. Can you write yatteimasu in hiragana? Answer

2. Can you write Yatta! in hiragana? Answer

3. Can you write yappari in hiragana? Answer

Ive also created an example video to help you practice with. Go through the
example words (and more) using the video provided below.

The more you study Japanese, and the more that you read, the easier this will
get. Its really important you understand how small tsu works before you move
on. You dont have to feel incredibly comfortable with it, you just need to be able
to say yeah, I can read / write something with a small tsu, even if it takes me a
bit of thinking.
The last page of this chapter will tell you more about how youll continue to study
hiragana as you work through the TextFugu text. The good news is youre not
expected to be perfect at it yet. Theres going to be plenty of opportunity to
practice and get much, much better at hiragana.
How To Get Better At
Hiragana
If I miss a day of practice, I know it. If I miss two days,
my manager knows it. If I miss three days, my audience
knows it. Andre Previn

If youve made it this far, then big kudos to you. Learning hiragana as much as
you have is really tough, and almost everyone quits before this point. Youre
doing well.

As Ive said many times, youre not expected to feel totally comfortable with
hiragana yet. If you have to look things up sometimes, or if you have to struggle
to remember a few of the kana, thats okay. The rest of Season 1 should help you
solidify your hiragana and help you to become a hiragana master (because
Season 3 is when you start katakana dun dun dunnn).

Throughout the rest of Season 1, there will be worksheets scattered around

various lessons to help you with hiragana. Almost all the lessons will be in
hiragana (so youll have to practice) and you will be given every opportunity you
need to get better. Just think about how hard it was to learn your own native
(presumably English?) alphabet. It probably took years to feel comfortable
reading at a decent speed with English. Just keep thinking about that, because
hiragana will definitely not take you that long. Despite what they say, kids dont
actually learn languages better. The trick is learning something the right way so
that things are much easier to remember and learn, and thats just what youre
doing.
So, before you move on, all Im asking is that you feel decent about your
hiragana. Not good, not great just decent. I expect you to need to practice it
more, and thats just what well do.

So, heres to you getting good at reading and writing, itll happen faster than you
think!

Why?
Much better to be crazy provided you know
what/where sane is. Luis Villalobos

Studying things you enjoy will help you to enjoy studying. Thats a given.

This chapter is all about doing just that I want you to incorporate things you like
while learning Japanese. Youll not only learn more Japanese and be more
motivated, but youll also learn how to look things up and do some research on
your own (eventually this will be a very important skill for you to have!).

So, I want you to study what you enjoy because you enjoy it (and then attach that
to your Japanese studies).

Studying Your Passion

The passion, the competitiveness,
the swinging for the fences, it adds
up. - Donny Deutsch

One thing that sets TextFugu apart from the rest is our passion (and puns,
apparently) to keep you studying Japanese. If you quit for any reason at all
(unless you find that you just really hate the Japanese language), then weve
failed. In the end, its motivation that gets people to keep doing what theyre
doing, which makes it a big part of our focus.

Im almost 99.9% certain that learning Japanese isnt your passion. In fact, its
nearly impossible to truly be passionate about something youre just starting to
learn. Nope, Japanese is just a hobby (at the moment), but well slowly cultivate it
into something youre passionate about. Since Japanese isnt your passion, we
will want to tap into something you are passionate about. What do you love to do
more than anything? Maybe its snowboarding, maybe its building miniature
battle-ships and testing them out in bathtubs, maybe its competitive eating.
Only you will know that. Now, if you cant think of something that youre
passionate about, thats okay. Keep reading and well get to you.

As you go through TextFugu, there will be lessons that incorporate the things you
are passionate about. This may include vocabulary learning, grammar practice,
and more. This chapter is a prep step to get you ready, so dont skip it!

Boo. Sad Face. I Dont Have A

Passion
Great dancers arent great because of their technique; they are great
because of their passion.
 Its not uncommon for someone not to have something theyre passionate about.
In fact, the younger you are, the less likely you are to have something like this
something you could do 12 hours a day and not get bored (video games and tv
dont count!). There are a number of ways to figure out what youre passionate
about, though most of them arent really short term. In the meantime with
TextFugu, though, you can just use things you really, really like. If you dont
have a passion in life yet, then this should work (almost) as well. That being
said, though, here are some tips on finding something you can be passionate
about in life. Totally unrelated to Japanese, but I wholeheartedly agree that if you
dont have something like this in your life, youre missing out. Life isnt that long,
you know.
1. Your passion doesnt necessarily have to be something youre good at. It
doesnt even have to be something youve done before. The main thing is that
 you love doing it. Once you find this thing, youll know. Love at first (or second
possibly third) sight.
2. Try a lot of different things. They can (and maybe should) be totally
random. Theres no shame in jumping from one thing to the next in order to find
the thing you love. As soon as youre doing something you love, itll click. Stick
with it for a little while longer, and it could become your passion!
3. In order to find a hidden passion that you didnt know existed, think: What
do I love doing in my spare time? What skills come naturally without much effort?
What things energize you (versus drain your energy)? Are you an expert in
anything? If you were shopping on Amazon, what section would you go to first?
What do you value most in life? What do you want to achieve in this lifetime?
My main advice to you is that you shouldnt rush it. Now, dont confuse this with
taking your time, because you shouldnt do that either. Go out and live a bit. Try
new things, and if you dont like what youre doing try something else. Savor
each new moment, and youre bound to narrow it down, and finally find what
youre passionate about.

If you dont immediately know what your passion is, dont give up. Keep thinking about it, and start trying
new things to see what you like! Living a life without a passion is something nobody should have to do.
Go out and live!

What Are You Passionate

About?
Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished
without passion. - Hebbel

I know weve already talked about this a little bit, but if you havent already, try to
answer the question what am I passionate about. If you already have
something, then thats fantastic. If you dont (or you just dont have a passion)
 pick something you really really like. Youre free to change your mind along the
way, if you need to.

The goal is to find something we can associate with your Japanese learning.
Something that you already really like that you can use to keep yourself
interested in Japanese, long term.

Once youve figured out what it is youre passionate about, lets move on to
step number 2.

Your Top 20 Vocab

A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for
the desire of the end will point out the means.
William Hazlitt

To start things out, Id like you to download the following worksheet. It will help
you to create a list of words associated with your passion.

Heres what you should fill out on this sheet right now:

1. Your Passion (or the thing you really like, if you dont have one). For the
sake of this exercise and the point of this exercise, Japanese shouldnt count as
your passion, even if it really is. If thats the case, then picking something else
wont hurt you, and will only help.
2. Come up with twenty vocabulary words associated with this thing (for
example, if you chose baseball, you might write down baseball glove, dugout,
etc). You can include a mix of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, though its probably
best to get a little heavy on the noun side of things since well be focusing on
nouns, first (nouns are people, places, or things).
3. You do not need to fill out the In Japanese and reading sections (yet).
Thats coming soon. Its important that you figure out 20 vocabulary words
associated with this subject. If you cant figure out 20 things right away, try
moving a step out and include more secondary objects as well. For example, in
the case of baseball I might pick vocab like hot dogs or fans.
After youve filled these portions of the worksheet out, move on to the next step.

Looking Up The Vocab

Nothing great in the world has been accomplished
without passion Georg Wilhelm

Now that you have twenty vocab words associated with your chosen passion, its
time to look them up in Japanese. Thanks to the internet, looking up Japanese
has never been easier. For most Japanese dictionary needs, well be
using Jisho.org (jisho means dictionary in Japanese, makes sense, right?)

Doing this will do a couple things. First, it will allow us to look up the words we
need to look up for your passion list, and second it will give you some practice
working with a Japanese online dictionary (an awesome skill to have if youre
studying Japanese).

Before we get started, though, theres a couple of things to know.

1. Common Words Only: When searching for something, 99% of the time youll
want to make sure this box is checked, otherwise youll be getting hundreds of
somewhat related (but totally weird) results.
2. Kana As Romaji (only for a little while, if you have to). Because Im supporting
romaji (yuck) up until the sixth chapter, Ill tell you about this. You can check this
box and all the kana / hiragana will show up as romaji. I would prefer if you didnt
check this box, though, if you can (and, in theory, you should be able to if you
followed along through all the lessons before this one).

3. Multiple Common Words: When youre searching, there may be multiple

common words that show up. Its no different in English we have multiple words
for the same things a lot of the time. The problem right now, though, is that you
dont know which common word is the best common word. To fix that, Im going
to show you a little trick.

If there are multiple common words, and you cant tell which one is better, try
copy and pasting the (Japanese/kanji) version of the word into Google. Hit
search, and look for the number of results. In general, the higher number of
results, the more likely your word is a really common word. Compare multiple
words this way, and youll be able to tell (for the most part) which is the best word
to use.

Another way to figure out which words are the best is to search for the word (just
like we just did) and then view the images tab in Google. Depending on the type
of word, images can literally show you which word is best for you.

Use these tricks, and youll surely be able to find the right words for your passion
list.

After youve filled out the worksheet, lets learn how to actually study and learn it!

Creating Your Study List

Rest in reason; move in passion Khalil Gibran

Now that you have all the words written out on your list, you should
actually learn them. Well be using them throughout TextFugu to practice
grammar (and other things) so this is the first step. Also, its good to learn how to
make your own study lists to study, no matter what. Of course, well be using Anki
to do this.

Its pretty easy to use lists other people have created, but creating your own lists
might be a little trickier. Heres a quick screencast Ive made that shows you how
to add your own words to Anki.

At this point, go ahead and input your passion list into an Anki list. I wouldnt
worry about kanji, at this point. Just learn the words themselves (in hiragana).
Youll be learning kanji separately and via a very different method, so learning
any kanji now will actually throw that off a bit.

Before you move on make sure you create your own passion list on Anki (and study it a bit!). Well be
using this more later. By finishing this page, youve come up with a list of vocab youll be studying, and
youve learned how to create a list in Anki!

After youve created your list, why dont you start studying it? You dont have to
finish it or anything (yet). Just go through the first ten or so words (theres only
twenty, total) to get started.

Why?
Never, never, never, never give up. Winston Churchill

Youve learned hiragana. That means its time to do something with it and learn
your first bit of grammar. Youre learning about in this chapter, and the
reason youre learning it is because it will lead to several other grammar points
you can learn, like , , , and (dont
worry if you dont know what these are yet, you arent supposed to). also
allows you to work with nouns and make very simple sentences sentences that
will grow into bigger more complicated sentences and eventually turn into
something that will help you to learn adjectives and verb grammar patterns as
well. is kind of like the mother of all Japanese grammar points. Learn this,
and youll open doors to almost anything and everything else.

Basic Japanese Grammar

With Yoda
Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
Hrrrmm. Learn Japanese, you will, says Yoda to Luke.
But I want to learn the ways of the force, Luke whines back.

Maybe you dont remember that particular scene, but chances are youve seen
Star Wars and its little green Jedi dude, Yoda. Did you know that George Lucas
(director / creator of Star Wars) was a big fan of Japanese film (and got the
inspiration for Star Wars from Japanese director Akira Kurosawas The Hidden
Fortress?). To show his Japan-love, he made Yoda speak kind of strangely.
But did you know that the way Yoda speaks mimics very basic Japanese
grammar? Its great for you, though, since were going to use it to make learning
Japanese grammar so much easier for you English speakers out there.

In this chapter well start learning Japanese grammar in its most simple form. For
most non-Japanese speakers, Japanese grammar is a bit of a challenge.
Everything is, how should we say flip flopped. Hopefully you have seen Star
Wars and know how Yoda speaks. Were going to mimic that (er minus the
grumbly voice). When it comes to basic Japanese grammar, Yoda is a perfect
parallel of how everything works, at least in the beginning. When things get a
little more complicated, though, well have to ditch our little green friend for better
things, but hell be a great foundation to work off of, plus you can skip a lot of the
confusing issues that most Japanese learners end up going through. See, we
make your life easier here!

How Does Yoda Talk?

Luke: I cant believe it. Yoda: That is why you fail.

Just in case you dont know how Yoda talks, or in case you need a refresher,
heres a couple videos to get you into the groove of things.

Dont even know who Yoda is (No way!)? Let Weird Al teach you.

Dont know who Weird Al is? Well, I cant help you there.

Now that weve gotten that out of the way, lets take a look at some very simple
sentences and translate them into Yoda-grammar. When you do this, youll be
learning Japanese grammar as well. Crazy, right?

Speaking More Like Yoda

Size matters not Look at me. Judge me by size, do
you? Yoda

Yoda has a funny way of talking (but you already knew that). Lets take a look at
some very simple examples which will soon turn into learning some very simple
Japanese grammar. First, well look at how Yoda would say something in English.

English: It is a pen.

Now, how would Yoda say this in Yoda-Grammar?

Yoda: Pen, it is.

Whoa? See how your world just turned upside down? Lets look at a few more
examples to make sure you understand.

English: It is a doctor.
Yoda: Doctor, it is.

English: It is a Dog.
Yoda: Dog, it is.

Now lets have you try.

English: It is a monkey. Answer

English: It is a hairpiece. Answer

Do you see how that works in English? Now lets see how this works in
Japanese. Well make it easy on you and focus only on the grammar. All nouns
(persons, places, or things) in the sentences will be English for now, and the
grammary parts in Japanese.

Pronouncing Desu /

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no

difference. Being busy is a form of mental lazinesslazy
thinking and indiscriminate action. Tim Ferriss
This is the last chapter that will use romaji. Make sure you finish learning your hiragana by the time you
finish this chapter. If you dont, things will start getting harder. Hiragana is so important, so just go and get
it done!
The very first thing were going to do is to learn desu. To be honest, right now,
the concept of desu is like looking at a gooey blob on a tree stump. You dont
know it right now, and its totally abstract. I would never ask you to look at a
gooey blob and ask you to just learn / memorize it thats ridiculous, right? Same
with desu, were going to connect it with something you already know and
understand to help you learn it.

First things first, though. You need to learn how to pronounce it. You know the
various pronunciations of hiragana from the Pronunciation With
Hiragana chapter, which would probably make you think this word is pronounced
something like des-soo. That, however, would be somewhat incorrect. In
general, you want to pronounce desu like dess. That means no u sound at
the end. This happens a lot with words that end with u sounds, where the u
sound is dropped. There are exceptions everywhere, of course, so experience is
going to be your best friend on this one, but for now, I just want you to remember
that desu is pronounced dess.

When youve learned the pronunciation of desu you can move on to the next page, where you will learn
how to use desu to create your first sentence!

Bounty?

Using Desu
People who fear cant genuinely give. Susan Jeffers

You know how to pronounce desu now, but what about its meaning? For our
intents and purposes, were going to say that desu means it is.
Ill tell you a secret, though. It doesnt technically mean it is (pretty hard to
translate desu, actually), but it is will help you learn desu and learn how its
used, especially now that you know how Yoda talks. Desu is going to come at the
end of sentences or phrases, and is of neutral formality, meaning it can be used
in all kinds of situations and is very versatile.

Desu means it is

Anyways, I think the best way to learn it is to actually see it in action. Do you
remember how Yoda talks? Good. Do you remember what were associating
with desu (it is)? Good. Lets take a look at this in English and Yoda-Speak, first.

English: It is a pen.

Yoda: Pen, it is.

Now, what does desu mean? You remember, right? Did you just have a little
epiphany? I hope so.

Look at the sentences above, specifically the Yoda one: Pen, it is. Theres the
it is part! What does desu mean? You got it, it means it is! Yoda-speak is a
lot like basic Japanese grammar, so all you have to do is take the it is part in
the Yoda sentence and replace it with desu. Lets take a look.

Yoda: Pen, it is.

a Japanese: Pen desu.

Based off that, can you guess what pen desu means? You got it, It is a pen.
Of course, with this knowledge, you can say anything, really. It is a bus. It is
a cat. It is a dog. It is a monkey. It is a flamingo The list goes on and on. All you
need to do is replace the noun with another noun, and you can essentially say
hundreds of thousands of different things The cool part? You only had to learn
one thing, desu.
Lets try a few more examples.

Yoda: Monkey, it is.

Japanese: Monkey desu.

Yoda: Dog, it is.

Japanese: Dog desu.

Yoda: Cow, it is. Answer

That should be simple enough for you, so now lets take one more step forward
and replace the English nouns with Japanese ones.

When you understand how desu works (i.e. when you understand the above examples) you can move
on. Youve learned how basic Japanese sentences work! How cool is that?

Adding Japanese To Desu

Knowledge is love and light and vision. Helen Keller

Instead of using English words for the nouns like we have been, youll now
replace them with real Japanese words. You dont have to learn these words right
now, thats not whats important here I just want you to focus on the grammar
part (the desu part) and continue practicing.

Hiragana Romaji English

budou grape(s)

banana banana

saru monkey
Hiragana Romaji English

ichigo strawberry

kabocha pumpkin

There will be a series of images (including the word in Japanese), and Id like you
to follow the directions provided with each image.

Budou (grapes)

1. Write budou in hiragana. Answer

2. How would Yoda say It is a grape?Answer

3. How do you say it is in Japanese? Answer

4. Replace it is from Yodas sentence with the Japanese word for it is. Answer

5. Now replace the word Grape with the Japanese word for grape. How do you
say it is a grape in Japanese? Answer

Great job, now for another picture.

Banana (Banana)

As you can see, the Japanese word for banana is banana. This means that
the Japanese word for banana is really just a foreign word in disguise. Do you
know what Japanese Alphabet you would use to write banana in, since its
a foreign word? Look it up if you cant figure it out on your own.

What would "Banana" be written in?

1. Using your katakana chart, figure out how to write Banana in katakana.
Remember how hiragana and katakana share the same sounds? Find Ba, na,
and na, and write them in katakana. Answer

2. Now that you have banana in katakana, how would you write it is a banana
in Japanese? Write everything else in hiragana. Use your hiragana chart if you
need to. Answer

3. Did you notice how in the previous answer there were no spaces between
(banana) and (desu)? When it comes to written Japanese, there are
actually no spaces, which is another reason why kanji is so important! Its used to
separate words from each other, otherwise it all gets mushed together. Ill be
separating words out for a little while in this text, though, as it will make things
easier to read while we dont have any kanji to break things up for us.

4. Say banana desu out loud. Dont pronounce banana like you normally
would in English, this is incorrect! Use the sounds we learned in the hiragana
chapter.

When youve made it through the questions above, and you understand everything there, move on to the
next page where you will practice desu on your own, with a little less hand holding

Practicing Desu
Always act as if success was guaranteed. Unknown
Now that youve learned how to create sentences with desu, were going to
practice. Using the images and table below, see if you can answer the following
questions!

Hiragana Romaji English

budou grape(s)

banana banana

saru monkey

ichigo strawberry

kabocha pumpkin

Lets get started. First monkey!

Translate: It is a monkey. Answer

Now write it out 5 times in hiragana (use your sheet if you have to) Answer

It is a Strawberry. Answer

Write the answer in hiragana five times Answer

Translate: It is a pumpkin. Answer

Write the answer in hiragana and then say it out loud. Remember how if you
combine a small , , or to a kana in the column it modifies it? (chi) +
small (ya) = (cha). Heres the pronunciation for pumpkin in case youre
unsure: a

How are you feeling so far? Do you think you understand the pattern? Lets do
one more thing before you move on to the next grammar chapter.

Using Your Passion List

(Desu)
Its not the will to win that matterseveryone has that.
Its the will to prepare to win that matters. Paul
Bear Bryant

Remember that list of vocab you created for your passion list in the previous
chapter? Go ahead and whip it out, were going to use it to practice and then
solidify the grammar point desu. Heres what well do.

Using your passion vocab, write it is a ______ in Japanese for each one of them, in hiragana. So, if
one of the things was baseball () youd write . Youre writing it in hiragana so you
can practice it, and get some good repetition writing desu (or should I say ?), since its so common
and useful.

As you go through this, youll only want to use the nouns in your list. Verbs are
definitely off the table, and adjectives (because theyre pretty weird in Japanese)
are probably off the table too.

When youve done this, move on to the practice where well work on (as well
as some other things).
 Practice
An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of
preaching. Mohandas Gandhi

Welcome to your first regular lesson practice page. Within these pages, you
should get all the resources, review, and (future) practice you need in order to
learn the concept you just went over as well as concepts that came before it. You
may even (unknowingly!) start learning future concepts as well. The practice
pages are going to be pretty cool that way. This practice page has a bit of
housecleaning to do, though, so its a little different from other practice pages.
Shall we get started?

Sentences Anki Deck

TextFugu Anki decks are broken up into a few main sections:

Sentences (what youll be creating now)

Vocab (well start adding to that soon)
Kanji (well also be getting that soon)

There are a couple exceptions (like kana) which youll only study for a little while
and then hide from your decks list, but these are the main ones youll have. As
you go through lessons, youll be importing deck pieces (which youll be able to
download) into your main decks so you never have more than a few things going
at once. Ill be sure to let you know when you need to do any of these things.

So for now, just go ahead and download your first sentences deck you wont
open it quite yet, but you will pretty soon:

Sentences Deck
There really is almost nothing in this deck (yet), but eventually itll contain
thousands of sentences that youll learn and know. The idea is to get you in front
of as much Japanese as possible so that you start absorbing the things youve
learned into your long term memory. No longer will it be something you learned
itll instead become something you know. Sentences will help you to do that
and well very slowly build up sentences with things youve learned so you can
achieve fluency sooner rather than later. Go ahead and put that aside for now
were going to look at the sentences themselves, first.

1-6 Sentences
There are only ten sentences in this chapter (this will grow exponentially as you
learn more), and the words in the sentences are either words from this chapter or
words you probably already know (sumo karate etc). Start by going through
the sentences right here, making sure you can say and read them all. Try to
shadow and mimic the audio provided here to start developing your (awesome)
accent (or lack-thereof). This exercise will be difficult at first. Take your time,
theres no rush! In fact, make sure you spend some quality time on this, because
the better you do now, the more likely you are to get faster and faster at this (and
better, as well). A little time spent now will make a big difference later.

a
 a

The meanings of the above sentences arent here on purpose. I want you to
practice reading hiragana (so you get better at reading it) and I want you to get
better at speaking like Emi (with a deeper voice, if youre a dude). The above
sentences are nice and short, and a great way to get started. Once again, take
your time!

When you can read and say all the above sentences, crack open Anki. Its time to
import this bad boy. Even though this is the very first deck to make up your
TextFugu Sentences deck, you still need to import it into Anki (rather than just
opening it) because this prevents any media/audio issues from coming up later.
So, youll want to open up Anki, and click File >> Import then import the
TextFugu Sentences that you downloaded earlier. Make sure you unzip it first,
though. Lots more info on Anki and how to use it can be found here.

IMPORTANT! Make sure you have the Japanese Language Support Plugin
installed on Anki as well. This deck uses that plugin, and really, if youre learning
Japanese you ought to have this plugin installed. Its great and gives you lots of
features to really help you learn. This deck requires this plugin as well, so make
sure you have it before you begin!

This deck has a few data points in it that will be displayed to you (dont worry, its
not too complicated once you get the hang of it!).

1. Expression: This is the sentence in Japanese

2. Reading: This is the sentence in Japanese, with hiragana (to tell you the
reading of kanji, when you get to that point)
3. Meaning: This is the English meaning of the sentence. Its the translation.
4. Audio: This is an audio file that plays so you can practice listening and
speaking. Repeat after it for better practice!

Now, theres also a certain way I want you to study. Its set up like this already, so
you shouldnt have to change anything, but its probably interesting to know the
background of this.

Right now, the TextFugu Sentences deck is set up so you learn Recognition
rather than Recall (or both). Recognition means you look at the Japanese word
and then have to recognize it and its meaning. This is a lot easier than seeing the
English word and then recalling the Japanese for it. Im not saying recalling isnt
important, but for now, it isnt as important. We will circle around to recall later,
but for now I want you to focus on recognition. The decks are all ready for you to
add the recall cards in if need be, but theyre currently hidden so you can focus
on whats most important right now.

Alright, lets get to studying this deck!

Studying Sentences On Anki

Not all practice pages will be so informational! Promise! Thisll just get you
started with everything so the next practice pages can get right to the point :)

But, that being said, lets get started with Anki. Make sure youve gone to
File>>Import to import your first TextFugu Sentences deck (itll ask you to name
it, and Id recommend TextFugu Sentences because thats what Im going to
call it, but youre free to name it whatever you want). Then, select TextFugu
Sentences from your list of decks on Anki (it might be the only one) and then click
review to get started. You should see something like this come up.

Now, your job is to come up with the answer in your head. Say it out loud, too.
Know what it is? Cant figure it out? Doesnt matter hit the Show Answer
button.
Now you get the answer. You need to be honest as to how you felt about it and
then click the button that best matches your feelings. Id say they go something
like this, but this is my own opinion!

Again: Didnt get it right or made a mistake (Im strict with myself, usually)

Good: Got it right wasnt easy or anything, but got it all right.

Easy: Not a problem.

Very Easy: Knew it too well. Why is this card even in my deck?

Youll see other things come up too for example Hard will be in there
sometimes, which you can click when you got it right but it was difficult. Just be
honest, because if youre not then Anki stops working properly. If you are honest,
you get the cards when you need to see them and you dont see the cards when
you dont. Its really quite magical that way.

When youve gone through your sentences deck, move on to the next section.
Congrats! Youre learning some sentences, and you probably got pretty good at
while you were at it (and learned some words, too). Much more
learning to come, this is only the beginning :)

Hiragana Practice Sheet

I also want to make sure youre getting lots of hiragana practice in (even more!).
Why? Because the moment youre good at hiragana, you can start learning kanji.
Also, I want to make sure you can focus on kanji when it comes (soon!) because
kanjis way harder than hiragana is. I dont expect you to be fluent or perfect at
hiragana yet, but I do want to make sure I give you plenty of opportunity to
practice until you are fluent and perfect at it!

Download the following worksheet. You can print it out and write on the page or
you can write the answers down on your own piece of paper. If youre particularly
printerless or tree-friendly, you can even just answer them all in your head, just
make sure you check if youre not sure about something!

Practicing Hiragana Sheet

When you get through this worksheet, you should be ready to move on to the
next chapter. Just in case, though heres a before you move on to help you
out.
 Before You Move On
Make sure you can read all the hiragana characters. You dont have to be
perfect at it or even particularly fast at reading but make sure you can
read everything one way or another.
Make sure you can read the ten sentences for this chapter.
Make sure youve downloaded and gone through the sentences for this
chapter on Anki (go until it tells you to stop). Also make sure you can set the tags
up right (more info here on using Anki, if you need it)
Go through the Hiragana Practice Sheet to get better at hiragana (its a big
deal in terms of building a good foundation!).
Make sure you understood all the concepts from this chapter.

All ready for the next chapter? Its a review making sure you know everything as
well as telling you what to expect from here on out. Youre just getting started,
and theres so many more cool things to learn (and some particularly great ways
to learn them!). I hope youre ready!

(*)/:**:(*)

Why?
A journey of 1,000 miles must begin with one step.
Chinese Proverb

By this point, youre well on your way to learning hiragana. That means its time
to start to learn kanji. You wont be learning kanji just yet, but you will be
learning how youll be learning kanji on TextFugu (its quite different from the
normal fare).
This chapter will be more useful to those who have tried learning Japanese /
kanji before, as it explains whats different compared to regular resources.
Those of you who have never tried to learn Japanese or kanji wont find it as
useful, though it will help you when you start learning kanji in Season 2. You
wont remember everything written here, but youll have an idea as to what youll
start doing soon, so that way it doesnt come as much of a shock.

You dont have to take notes, do any practice, or anything like that with this
chapter. Just read through it, absorb what you can, and move on to the next
chapter (which happens to be about kanji radicals). So, sit back and relax and
read!

How You Should Learn

Kanji
What information consumes is rather obvious: it
consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a
wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and
a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the
overabundance of information sources that might
consume it. Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize
When you decide to learn Japanese, everyone and everything will tell you that
kanji is absolutely horrible. Its hard, its confusing, its plain ridiculous While
this might be true, it really doesnt have to be that bad. When it comes down to it,
people who tell you this are just using resources (or have teachers) that are just
too lazy to make it easy for them. Now, Im not saying you wont have to put in
some work to learn kanji, thats definitely not true. TextFugu will, however, make
kanji learning so much simpler than kanji learning has ever been before (and
youll still be learning just as much, if not way more, than anyone else).

Yes, kanji learning on TextFugu sounds like an As Seen On TV ad Too good

to be true (though I gotta say that brownie maker that makes every piece an
end piece brilliant!).

But, as always, Im going to spend some time explaining why this method works.
After that, youll put this all into practice, so you can see how amazing it is for
yourself.

On TextFugu, kanji learning is a little lot different. Before I can tell

you how TextFugu does kanji I should show you how regular people do it first,
including Japanese school kids (most methods follow their example when it
comes to learning kanji because theyre the masters at kanji learningright?
Hmmm, well see.). Lets learn more.

Learning Kanji The Way

Japanese Kids Learn Kanji
(Is A Terrible Idea)
If at first you do succeed, try something harder. Ann
Landers

Almost every teacher, student, textbook, and resource has you learn kanji the
same way as Japanese school children. At first glance, this seems like the most
common sense thing to do. If you take the time to look at it more closely, though,
youll see that it doesnt make any sense at all.

There are two main parts to learning kanji. First, theres how the kanji looks.
Each kanji is basically its own picture/image/logograph. Each kanji looks
different. The second part of this equation is the meaning of each kanji. Since
every kanji looks a little bit different, each kanji can have its own meaning
associated with it. When learning kanji, you need these two parts whether youre
a Japanese school kid or a 75 year old gorilla trainer.

When it comes to Japanese school children, though, they have to learn kanji by
learning the kanji with the simplest meanings first. This actually makes sense (for
them, not you), because theyre little kids and they need to learn vocabulary
words (and they cant do that if the meaning is too difficult). Its like this in
English, too. You probably knew the word to drink before you knew the word to
chug (that is, unless you grew up in a frat house). One meaning is just more
complicated than the other meaning, even though the word chug has fewer
letters in it.

This means that with Japanese school children, the most important thing that
they take into account is the complexity of the meaning of the kanji, and not so
much the kanji itself. This concept is probably easiest to get across visually.

Take a look at the kanji above. None of them have more than three strokes to
them. Despite this, these kanji are considered advanced, so Japanese school
kids would learn these much, much later. The reason is because the meanings of
these kanji are more difficult.

Now, take a look at this next set of kanji. Notice how much more complicated
they look?

Despite how many strokes they contain, and despite how difficult it would be for a
beginner like you to have to learn something like this, these kanji are considered
to be pretty beginner (in regular circles, at least). You would learn these kanji
approximately four years before you learned the first set of advanced kanji I
wrote above.

Now, dont worry if you cant read any of these, thats not the point. The point is
most people have you learn kanji in a way that would teach you the bottom set of
kanji before the top set of kanji, and to me thats just ridiculous.
Heres the thing. If youre learning Japanese as a second language, you probably
have a pretty good handle on English (or some other language) already. That
means the meaning of the kanji isnt the problem. You understand concepts and
words that little kids dont, so meaning of the kanji shouldnt be taken into
account when deciding order. Instead, the complexity of the kanji itself should be
what you base your order of learning on.

So, that right there is the problem, and thats also one of the reasons why
TextFugu does kanji so differently. Now, thats not the only thing well be doing to
make kanji a lot more pleasant, continue reading to learn what else youll be
doing in order to become a kanji learning master.

Takeaway Just because Japanese school children all learn kanji one way, it
doesnt mean its right for you (someone whos not a Japanese school kid).
TextFugu will be teaching you kanji in order of simple complex (the kanji itself,
not the meaning), where each kanji builds on the last in a way that makes
learning a new kanji very easy. Instead of spending 6-7 years learning the
suggested 2000ish kanji, youll spend less than a year and spend a lot less time
with each kanji. Its all about the method, not the memorization.

When youre ready to learn more, head on over to the next page.

Focus Is On Reading, Not

Writing
If you can read this, thank a teacher. Anonymous
Making this decision was particularly difficult, but as always, Im going to let you
know why (so important to know why youre doing something, especially if youre
self-learning Japanese) youre doing this. On TextFugu, at least when it comes to
kanji, the focus is only going to be on reading the kanji, not writing it. If you want,
you can still practice writing kanji, theres nothing stopping you there, but there
 are some pretty specific (and good, I think) reasons why reading should be your
primary focus.
Most writing in Japan (or anywhere, actually) is done via a cell phone,
computer, iPad, or some other electronic device. Typing in Japanese and
converting what you type into kanji is incredibly easy. You do, however, have to
be able to recognize and read kanji to do this. In reality, though, even Japanese
people in Japan are forgetting how to write kanji by hand (its called Kanji
Amnesia, look it up) because almost all writing is done via typing on some kind
of keyboard. The ability to write is becoming pretty unnecessary.
I want you to do me a favor and think about effort as something a little
more tangible. For our intents and purposes, you can spend 100 effort points
every day. Now, you could spend 50 points on learning to read kanji, and 50
points on learning to write it Doing this, lets say you were able to learn 10
kanji. On the other hand, if you had spent 100 of your effort points just on
learning to read kanji, you (in theory) could have learned 20 kanji. You wouldnt
be able to write them, but since reading kanji is infinitely more useful, youve
spent your time way more wisely. If you really want to learn to write, Id
recommend you do it afterwards. Its not doing you much good right now.
All that being said, I dont want you to worry too much about being able to hand
write the kanji you learn. Traditional kanji learning approaches do in fact have
you write kanji over and over and over again to help you remember the kanji.
Luckily for you, TextFugu isnt the traditional approach. For the time spent,
repetition doesnt actually help you to learn things (you may think it does, but Im
willing to bet it doesnt help as much as you think). Youre going to focus on using
really great (and simple) memory science to help you remember kanji. Your time
is important, and if you eventually have to tackle 2000ish kanji, somethings gotta
get better somewhere.

Takeaway Learning to read kanji is way more important and useful than learning
to write it. Although the ability to hand write kanji could be important, being able
 to read it is so much more useful that spending your time there will get you 1000
times more bang for your buck.

The 80-20 Rule

Give me the fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its
own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.
Vilfredo Pareto
If youve spent any time looking up kanji in a dictionary,
researching all the many pronunciations, and finding all the words that use a
particular kanji, youll know that kanji learning can be incredibly complicated and
time consuming. Even worse, if youre a beginner at Japanese, in these
instances you have no idea what is important and what is not. Should I learn
these three meanings? Or do I only really need to know one of them (because its
used 99% of the time, and the other few are so archaic and unused you wasted
your time learning them)?
This is where I introduce someone particularly remarkable. Meet Vilfredo Pareto,
an economist who did most of his work in the early 1900s. He came up with the
80-20 Rule (i.e. the Pareto Principle), which states that 80% of the efforts of
something come from roughly 20% of the causes. Start looking around your life,
and youll see it happening everywhere.
20% of people make 80% of the worlds income.
Microsoft found that by fixing the top 20% of most reported bugs, 80%
of all problems were fixed.
20% of your time spent gets 80% of the results done (at work, school, etc)
In the United States, 20% of health patients use 80% of health care
resources.
and so on. These are some pretty big claims, but I think youll grow to love this
concept. Well be using the 80-20 rule all throughout TextFugu, especially the
kanji section. Heres what I believe, when it comes to kanji:
20% of kanji makes up 80% of all that is written, therefore were going to learn
that 20% first, so you can start using your reading abilities in real-life situations
as quickly as possible (which is really the best way to practice, anyways).

Luckily, a lot of this work has been done for us by the Japanese government.
They have compiled a kanji list (called the Joyo Kanji List) which contains the
2000ish kanji youre supposed to learn in order to be able to read (newspapers
also use this list to make sure they try and use only these kanji in their
publications). This Joyo Kanji List on its own is probably around 20% of kanji
you could learn out there, and in reality, it probably actually makes up 99% of all
kanji used.
TextFugu takes that a few steps further, though. The goal is to get you reading as
soon as possible, as well as to help you study the things that will be useful first.
Now, each kanji has multiple pronunciations (onyomi and kunyomi, which you
will learn about soon) associated with them. Sometimes there will be 6, 7, or 8+
pronunciations for one kanji. Thats absolutely ridiculous, right? You could spend
eight times the effort learning all the pronunciations or, you can use the 80-20
(or 90-10, or 95-5, as the case may be) rule and learn just one or two of the
available pronunciations, and still get nearly the same result (except now you can
spend all your extra time learning other useful things).
Lucky for you, TextFugu does almost all that work for you. When youre learning
kanji on TextFugu, youll very rarely have to learn more than one onyomi and
kunyomi pronunciation. Ive gone through and removed anything that isnt all that
useful (so, so, so many things really arent, too) so that you can focus on what
really matters. With kanji, the 80-20 rule is absolutely everywhere.

Takeaway Youre going to be extremely smart about what you learn. TextFugu
helps you pinpoint that 20% which gives you almost all the benefit. This means
youre spending less time and getting way more out of the time you do spend.
Luckily, TextFugu has done all this work for you, so if you just follow along, youll
be doing the right thing!

Knowing What Kanji Is

Made Of
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and
hang on. Franklin D Roosevelt

Sadly, kanji is not made up of unicorns and rainbows, though it might as well be.
Learning kanji the traditional way basically puts you in the dark when it comes to
this. Ask 99% of people learning Japanese what they think kanji is made up of,
and theyll probably say strokes. Sure, this is technically true, but I can tell you
from experience how terrible it is to learn kanji based off of this. This means that
simple kanji are simple (1-2 stroke kanji is so easy, hooray!) and complicated
kanji are, well, complicated (14 strokes? Oh crap).

It really doesnt have to be this way, though. Lets take a quick field trip to see
how normal people learn kanji (youre not normal, but its good to know what
they do).

How Normal People Learn

Kanji
When will you understand that being normal isnt
necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of
courage.
Normal isnt always good. Sometimes it is, but in the case of kanji, youre just
jumping off the bridge with the rest of the world. Theres a pretty specific way
normal people learn kanji, and it looks something like this:

Step 1: Look at a kanji (probably feel confused and overwhelmed because its
too complicated for your level).

Step 2: Try to memorize ALL of the individual strokes, one at a time. Some kanji
dont have many strokes, sure, but once you get to 5, 6, 7+ strokes your brain will
revolt. The magic number for your short term memory is seven, so once you try
to store more than that ouch! Not to mention if you want to learn another kanji
after that

Step 3: Learn the many different ways to read the kanji (there are usually 4+
ways to pronounce the same kanji. If strokes werent terrifying, this will get you
for sure). A lot of people dont filter what they learn by useful or not useful.
This means you just end up having to try to learn everything, even if youll never
use it in your lifetime.

Step 4: Write the kanji over and over and over and over and over and over and
over never realize that this isnt helping very much, especially when compared
to the time you just spent writing the kanji over and over and over and over and
over again.

Step 5: Hit your head on a curb until it feels better (it wont, so dont try it).

Step 6: Forget the kanji a few minutes later, because youve only stored bits and
pieces into your short term memory (and youve hit your head on a curb,
whoops).

Step 7: Repeat.
 Now, this method has been around for a lonnng lonnng time, but when you look
at people learning kanji, youll notice that they spend years sometimes 10-15
learning what should take them less than ONE year to complete. Its not their
fault. Its not that theyre stupid. Its just the method theyre using is stupid, which
in turn doesnt help them learn anything. Its kind of the heres what you need to
learn so learn it method, and that just doesnt make any sense at all.

So, how will you be learning kanji? I can tell you now, it involves fewer curb
headbutts.

How YOU Will Learn Kanji

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. The Dalai Lama
If youre using TextFugu, youre probably not a normal person. Youre not old
fashioned or old school and youre willing to try something new (and maybe
nothing else worked?). TextFugus kanji method will seem pretty weird to people
who havent tried it before, but if you spend some time with it youll definitely fall
in love.

The reason that most kanji methods / teachers teach kanji the old way is twofold:

1. They are native Japanese speakers: Now, I dont want to put a downer on
native speaker teachers, because theyre great the problem, however, is that
they have absolutely no idea what its like to learn Japanese. They learned it
before they could even remember learning it. They have no idea what you are
going through, plus they learned kanji by memorizing it as a kid in school.
So, obviously this is the best way for you to learn, right? (wrong).
2. If they are not native Japanese speakers, then at this point they have
probably been studying Japanese for so long that they also cant remember what
its like to learn something like kanji from scratch. On top of that, they probably
learned the old way too, which means they will pass that on to you, too.
TextFugu, on the other hand, has really taken kanji learning apart (and actually
thought about how it should be done). So, stick with me here. Other Japanese
learners will look at you funny, but theyll convert over at some point, when they
see how much youve learned in such a short amount of time.

Heres how youll be learning kanji on TextFugu.

Step 1: Learn the radicals (youll learn about these soon). Radicals are like
pieces of a kanji kind of like how the letters make up the words youre reading.
Instead of learning kanji stroke by stroke (which is dumb), well put together
radicals to create bigger, slightly more complicated kanji. You cant spell dumb
without the letters D-U-M-B, right? Basically, were doing away with the notion
that kanji should be learned stroke by stroke. Instead, youll be putting radicals
together, like pieces of a puzzle, which means youll be able to learn kanji faster
and more effectively (especially from a memory standpoint).
Step 2: After youve learned the radicals, well start putting them together to build
kanji. Using mnemonic devices, youll learn the pronunciation of each kanji as
well as how to read / write it. Well also learn common words that use these kanji
in them. With the 80-20 rule, too, well cut the fluff (i.e. anything
you probably wont end up using 99.9% of the time and there are a lot of
these).
Step 3: Continue to progress in this way. Instead of focusing on starting with the
simplest kanji meanings, well focus on learning the simplest kanji (from a
number-of-strokes standpoint). By starting with easier kanji and working our way
up to more complicated kanji (i.e. kanji with more strokes), well be able to use
kanji you already know to build more complicated kanji later on. Thats fewer
things for you to remember, which means you wont have to strain your brain as
much.
Step 4: Youll use practice worksheets, unconventional memory tricks, and the
best tools out there to study these new words and get them into your long term
memory. Once you get a kanji into your long term memory, itll be there for a
while. With everything we do, thats going to be the goal. Thinking ahead and
focusing on this will help you learn much more quickly.
All that being said, Id love it if you got started. Learning kanji radicals will be your
foundation, so its important you do this step well. Think of radicals as your
foundation. If you dont have a foundation, theres nothing solid to build on.

Radicals are the first thing you will learn about kanji, so youll need to spend
some time getting familiar with them (thats what the next chapter is about).
Radicals arent usually taught in traditional Japanese classes, though they really
should be. It might seem like extra work right now, but theres so much carryover
between radicals and kanji that the time you save by learning them first will be so
obvious once you get into kanji as well.
Anyways, no better way to get started than to get started. Lets move on to
radicals!

Why?
Dont say, If I could, I would. Say, If I can, I will.
Jim Rohn

In this chapter, you will learn about kanji radicals because it will show you
exactly how youll be learning kanji. Youll learn the basic concept of radicals
(because its not something commonly gone over in Japanese lessons) and youll
learn how to put them together to form kanji. It will get you ready for learning
radicals as well as kanji (which starts at the beginning of next season). Its the
last thing you have to do before you can begin with that stage of your Japanese,
and the sooner you can start, the better.
Youll use the info in this chapter to help yourself to learn kanji later on simple
as that.

Just sit back and read the chapter no practice or anything like that just a
chapter that needs to be read and absorbed as much as possible. Youll be taken
through kanji step by step when you get there (soon) but knowing how things will
go beforehand will make sure theres less to think about when you do get started
(that way you can focus on whats important).

An Intro To Kanji Radicals

To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than
despair convincing - Raymond Williams
Before you start learning actual kanji, theres some groundwork you have to lay.
You cant start building a building without a foundation (unless you want it to
crumble), and its the same with kanji as well.

Kanji radicals are where were going to start. They are very rarely taught, but are
incredibly useful. If you want to learn kanji, and you want to remember it for a
really long time, radicals are where you should start (and youve come to the right
place).

What Is A Kanji Radical?

You got to be careful if you dont know where youre
going, because you might not get there. Yogi Berra

Weve been talking about kanji radicals quite a bit up until now, but we havent
really clearly established what a kanji radical is.

First off, think of it this way:

Kanji radicals are like the A-B-Cs of kanji. Theyre like the letters that make up
our words. For example, the letters K-A-N-J-I are put together to make the word
kanji.

When you write the word kanji, you dont think of it as being made up of
individual strokes, lines, and dots, right? That would be way too hard. Instead,
you learned 26 letters of the alphabet, and are able to put them together to form
bigger words.

Kanji radicals are a lot like that. Theyre smaller pieces that you learn and then
put together to form a kanji. Most Japanese textbooks or resources will have you
put together kanji using strokes and I think you can already see why that way is
so much harder. Remembering strokes (sometimes 15+ of them!) is really tough,
and forces you to try to remember so much more. You can avoid that stress (and
time sooo much time) just by learning your radicals first (yet almost nobody
seems to do this).

Lets look at an example. Think about this kanji as a put-together puzzle. Well be
breaking it up into its puzzle pieces in a moment.

This is the kanji for walk. To the untrained eye (yes! We will be training your
eyes!), this just looks like eight strokes of kanji madness (and eight strokes isnt
even all that bad). Go ahead and look at this kanji for 3 seconds then look away
and try to replicate it. Hard, right? With radicals, youd have been able to look at
and memorize this kanji very, very quickly.

I dont expect you to be able to do this on your own yet (well be practicing this a
lot, soon), but heres how you could break this kanji up into three simpler pieces.
Instead of remembering eight different strokes, youre remembering three pieces,
because youre using radicals.

These three symbols are simpler radicals. When put together, they form the
above kanji. The idea is that youll learn these radicals, and then when you start
learning kanji, youll be able to use them to remember your kanji faster than you
ever thought possible faster than other Japanese learners and even faster than
native Japanese people.
Instead of trying to memorize eight separate steps (one for each stroke), you only
have to remember three. Thats 266% simpler than the traditional method, and
youre getting better results, as well. This method caters to the long-term memory
so much better.

How Youll Learn Kanji

Radicals
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. Sun Tzu

Kanji radicals wont be easy to learn, per se, but the time you put into learning
them will save you so much time on your kanji itll be well worth the effort. Plus,
Ill make sure its not too hard, either. Radicals will be your first experience on
TextFugu with mnemonics. Basically, what were going to do is make sure youre
always associating new things with stories or concepts that you already know.
That way theyll be much easier for your brain to remember. Heres a really
simple example of this:

This is the radical triceratops. Nothing too fancy about that, but you can kind of
see why it would be called triceratops. if you imagine these three lines as horns,
youll notice that they form the same horn formation a triceratops would have.

Now, were not doing anything revolutionary here. Basically, were taking radicals,
and associating meanings to them based on how they look (or sometimes based
on their actual meaning there are a decent number of official radicals that
people occassionally use to look kanji up in a dictionary, but thats about it). Later
on, when we need to put together a more complicated kanji, we can use these
associations to help build it up. When you see that the kanji is using the
triceratops radical youll be able to retrieve only one memory (the triceratops
one) rather than trying to remember the kanji has three separate strokes (plus a
bunch of others). It just simplifies things and really helps you to remember any
kanji you know the radicals for.

Were going to start by learning one-stroke radicals (since theyre the easiest)
and then move up to two, three, four, etc., until weve gone through all of them.
Heres some good news, though. 2-stroke radicals are going to build upon 1-
stroke radicals. 3-stroke radicals are going to build upon 1 & 2-stroke radicals. 4-
stroke radicals are going to build on 1, 2, & 3-stroke radicals, and so on. Well be
using smaller radicals and put them together to build bigger radicals, just like
were doing with kanji. That means the more radicals you know, the easier it is to
learn more of them. Its quite the snowball effect.

Dont worry if you feel overwhelmed with all this info right now youll be taken
step by step through these things until you get the hang of it, at which point well
let go of the bicycle and let you ride.

You: TextFugu, dont let go, okay? Keep holding on to the bicycle!

TextFugu: Dont worry buddy! I gotcha. I gotcha!

*lets go of the bicycle*

You: Dont let go, yahear!?

TextFugu: Im not holding on, youre doing this on your own!

You: What!? What!? No! Wait Wait, Im doing it! Im riding my bike!
 *this becomes your most cherished childhood memory.

Anyways, lets learn a bit about how youll use mnemonics to learn your kanji,
mmkay buddy? Wont be letting go of the bicycle just yet or will I? Dun dun
dunnn.

Mnemonic Devices
Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away
food. Austin OMalley

Lastly, in order to learn these radicals, well be using a number of really great
mnemonic devices (i.e. memory tricks . . . though calling them tricks doesnt
do them justicetheyre quite good) to help you get these radicals (and kanji)
into your long term memory. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to
remember these for a really long time, almost with no effort at all. If youve spent
a long time trying to memorize abstract things, youll know how hard this is.
Heres how well be making kanji learning a lot more effective for you.

1. Take advantage of flashbulb memory: Flashbulb memories are

essentially thisthink back to a very traumatic or shocking moment. Maybe its a
disaster, maybe its the death of someone close to you, maybe its something
 completely different. For some reason, our brain remembers these things a
lot more vividly than other memories. For example, I have a very clear memory of
my first big earthquake. I had just put my shoes on, and opened the door to go to
a violin sectional practice. A family friend was standing right outside, because he
was going to drive me there. All of a sudden, everything started to shake, and I
laughed while the family friend said cmon, cmon, dont just stand there, cmon!
I can remember the trees, the sunlight, the sounds of the earth rumbling, and the
expression on his face. In fact, I think I can almost remember the smell. This is
what is called a flashbulb memory, because its just like taking a picture.
Cheese!
2. Make things ridiculous: The more ridiculous/scary/crazy something is,
the better you will remember it. How often do you remember the ordinary? I know
I dont. Well come up with little stories that are absolutely wild, and youll find that
you are remembering these kanji a lot better.
3. Use Multiple Senses: Youll have to use your imagination on this one
pretend that a particular kanji has a smell, or perhaps a feel. The more senses
you use, the better and longer term your memory will be. They say that smell is
one of the best ways to trigger a lost memory! Strangely enough, well be using
this to our advantage!
4. Put together memorable stories: Using flashbulb memories, well make
up stories that are associated with each kanji. The stories will be ridiculous, use
key words that will help you retrieve memories that will help you remember the
pronunciation of the kanji, and more. The little stories will be very important, and
utilize points 1-3 to help you remember them more easily.
5. Practice: Kanji learning will be integrated into the Japanese
grammar/lessons section of TextFugu as well, which means youll have the
opportunity to practice what youre learning and make these kanji second nature
(rather than using the mnemonic devices for everything, which in the end will
slow you down a bit if you rely on them completely).
Youll be starting your radicals in Season 2 (thats like right now, almost). First
theres a quick review (a very quick one, theres not much to review) and the start
of Season 2 Chapter 1 to get through. I think youll be surprised at how easy it is
to remember and learn the radicals. I cant wait until you try it for yourself!

Anyways, lets move on to the last chapter of this season. Its a quicklyjust read
through and move on to Season 2, where youll get started (that was fast,
yeah?!).

Season 1 Review
The successful person makes a habit of doing what the
failing person doesnt like to do. Thomas Edison

Go ahead, look over your shoulder

Looking over your shoulder, I think youll find the last few chapters have gone by
pretty quick. I imagine youre still in the honeymoon phase of learning
Japanese, which is great (ride it out as long as you can). Youve learned hiragana
and youve started grammar. The ___ grammar you just learned will take you
a really, really long ways, actually. That alone is the foundation that will hold
Season 2 up for you.

Also, youve gotten Anki started and hopefully youve learned how to use it fairly
well (and hopefully youve gotten into some sort of habit that involves you using it
on a daily basis keep that up).

And lastly, on top of it all, youve learned how well be covering kanji. You dont
know any kanji or radicals yet, but youre all ready to start learning them. Well
get started immediately when you move on to Season 2.

When we get to Season 2, youll start learning some less basic things things
that are branches that come off the foundation of (which will turn in to other
things which will turn into other things). The idea is that nothing from here on out
should ever be a total shock. Everythings built on something else, meaning you
never have to learn more than 50% (or so) of a new concept (youll already know
the other 50%).

This is also the last free chapter (sorry!) meaning youll have to be a member to
move on. Make sure youre pretty good at hiragana before you do move on,
though thats what well be using from here on out (as well as kanji and
eventually katakana too!). When youre ready, and you have a pretty good grip
around all the Season 1 stuff, though, you might as well get started on Season 2.
It reinforces everything youve learned here and teaches you a lot of new stuff
too!

Why?
 The only way to start is to start. Anonymous

In this chapter, youll be learning how to ask questions in Japanese. The reason
youre learning this now is because it adds right on to the grammar you
learned just previously. In fact, all it consists of is a little add-on that you place on
the end. It will teach you how to ask questions (incredibly important) but it will
also make sure youre learning something new that includes past knowledge so
that you dont have to touch anything thats 100% abstract.

Youll also be learning the first set of kanji radicals at the end of this chapter.
Why? Because youll need them to learn kanji a couple chapters from now, and
kanji is important so you can read stuff. No fun to be illiterate, I imagine.

Season 1
1. Japanese The Hard Way 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
2. The Japanese "Alphabets" Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 Practice
3. Japanese Pronunciation With
Hiragana Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
4. Reading Hiragana Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
5. Studying Your Passion Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6
6. Japanese Grammar With
Yoda Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Practice
7. An Intro To Kanji Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8. An Intro To Kanji Radicals Why? 1 2 3 4
9. Season 1 Review Pages: 1

This is the end of the free lessons: What Happens When I Become A
Member?
 Season 2
1. How To Ask Questions In
Japanese Why? 1 2 3 4 5 Practice
2. Negative Tense Nouns Why? 1 2 3 4 5 Practice
3. Before You Begin Your Kanji Why? 1 2 3 4
4. Past Tense Nouns Why? 1 2 Kanji 1-1 4 5 Practice
5. Combining The Past And The Negative Why? 1 2 Kanji 2-
1 4 5 6 7 Practice
6. Your First Particle, Ha Ha Ha! Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kanji
2-2 Practice
7. Developing A Sense Of
Identity Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Radicals 3 9 Practice
8. This, That, & That Over
There Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 3-1 Practice
9. Counting And Numbers Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 3-
2 Practice
10. Why So Possessive? Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 3-
3 Practice
11. Season 2 Review Why? 1 2 3 4

Season 3
1. Making Time To Study 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2. Learning Katakana 1 2 3 4 5 6
3. Particle Wars vs. 1 2 3 4
4. The Things That You Love 1 2 3 4 5 Kanji 3-4 Practice
5. The Things That You Hate 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Radicals
4 Practice
6. Have You Reached The Dip? 1 2 3 4 5
7. Doing Something (Part 1) 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kanji 4-1 Practice
 8. Doing Something (Part 2) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 4-
2 Practice
9. Japanese Sentence Enders 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 4-
3 Practice
10. Keeping Up With Everything 1 2 3 4 5

Season 4
1. Adjectives 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 4-4
2. Adjectives 1 2 3 4 Kanji 4-5
3. Adjectives Conjugation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Kanji 4-6
4. What Do You Want? 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kanji 4-7
5. Adjectives + Verbs = Adverbs 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kanji
6. When THe Going Gets Tough 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 4-8
7. Colorful Adjectives 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8. What You'll Go Do 1 2 3 Radicals
9. Social Learning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
10. Season 4 Review 1 2 3 4

Season 5
1. Being Casual Part 1 (Nouns) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Kanji 5-1
2. Being Casual Part 2 (Adjectives) 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kanji 5-2
3. Being Casual Part 3 (Verbs) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
4. The Purpose 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kanji 5-3
5. What You Expect 1 2 3 4 5 Kanji 5-4
6. Past Tense Dictionary Form 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 5-5
7. If 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Kanji 5-6
8. Too Much 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kanji 5-7 8
9. Negative & Past Negative Casual
Verbs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 5-8
10. Experts And Amateurs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Radicals 6
 11. Plans & Conviction 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kanji 6.1
12. What You Will Become 1 2 3 4 5 Kanji 6.2

Season 6
1. The Particle 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Kanji 6.3
2. What Do You Think? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
3. The Particle Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 6.4
4. To Have And To Exist Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kanji 6.5
5. While Why? 1 2 3 4 5 Kanji 6.6
6. Let's Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Radicals 7 Practice
7. Nominalization
Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Practice
8. Transitive & Intransitive
Verbs Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 7-1 Practice
9. Being Passive Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Kanji 7-
2 Practice
10. Here, THere, And Over
There Why? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Practice
11. Season 6 Review 1 2 3

Season 7
1. Te-Form Verbs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 7-3
2. Please 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kanji 7-4 Practice
3. Trying 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Radicals 8 Practice
4. But But But... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kanji 8-1 Practice
5. Want You To Do Lesson Kanji 8-2 Practice
6. Being Progressive With Your Verbs Lesson Practice
7. From Lesson Practice
8. Because Lesson Practice
9. Giving & Receiving Lesson Practice Yaru Kanji 8-3
 10. Giving Actions Lesson Practice Kure &
Yaru Choudai Practice
11. Season 7 Review Review

Season 8
1. Time Lesson Kanji 9 Time Concepts
2. Time In Years Lesson Practice
3. Time In Months Lesson Practice
4. Time In Weeks Lesson Practice
5. Time In Days Lesson Practice
6. Days Of The Week Lesson Practice
7. Time In Hours Lesson Practice
8. Time In Minutes Lesson Practice
9. Time In Seconds Lesson Practice
10. Time For
"When" Lesson Nouns Adjectives Verbs Practice
11. Season 8 Review Lesson Practice

Advanced
Emi: Growing Up In Japan Emi talks about what it's like to grow up in
Japan in this advanced lesson.
Kaiju Love (Coming Soon) The bigger they are, the harder they love.