My Japanese Learning Plan

This upcoming December will mark the 12th anniversary of my beginning studying the Japanese language. I started learning Japanese back in December 1999. It's been nearly twelve years later, and I am unfortunately still not fluent in the language. To make a long story short, I actively studied the language between 1999 and 2005 and even attended a Japanese language school named Sakura Gakuen from 2003 to 2005. However, I took a sort of break during my undergraduate career at Cal Poly due to the demands of my coursework. But, upon getting an offer to do an internship at Fujitsu Labs in Japan, I started to take Japanese much more seriously. My Japanese skills improved dramatically during my time in Japan in 2010, and since I've returned to America I have spent a good chunk of my spare time studying Japanese vocabulary and kanji, as well as watching Japanese dramas and movies and also browsing Japanese websites (with the help of Rikaikun).

My goal is to become fluent in Japanese in 2014, which is around the time I should be finished with my PhD program. I am interested in working in Japan after I graduate, either in an industrial research lab or perhaps at a Japanese university (although I have a lot to learn about how academia works in Japan). Of course, I would need to be fluent in Japanese in order to qualify for a full-time research position out there. Suppose I become a professor at a Japanese university, for example. I would need to be fluent in Japanese in order to convey the course material effectively to my students.

Below is my study plan for the foreseeable future (not in any particular order):

• Finish Remembering the Kanji I, which is a book that covers the basic 1,945 kanji taught in Japanese public schools, as well as some additional characters.
• Study the "Core 6000" deck, which is a deck that consists of the 6,000 most commonly used Japanese words. I am almost done with studying the Core 2000 deck, which is the top 2,000 of these words (I only have about ~250 words remaining in my deck; I should be finished studying it next week).
• Study All About Particles, The Handbook of Japanese Verbs, and A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar. After I pass JLPT Level N2, I plan on purchasing A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar and studying it.
• Read the stack of manga, magazines, novels, and other Japanese books that I bought while I lived in Japan.
• Continue watching more Japanese movies and dramas.
• Study for the JLPT. I plan to take Level N2 of the JLPT in December 2012, and Level N1 of the JLPT in December 2013.
• Take a trip to Japan on vacation sometime in 2013 (okay, so this isn't exactly "studying" per se, but I will get a chance to use my Japanese again).

Hopefully this works out!

Words with Similar Meanings in Japanese

Right now I am studying the Core 2000 Japanese vocabulary list, which consists of the 2,000 most commonly used words in Japanese. I have been working my way through the vocabulary list for almost a month; I spend about 10-20 minutes or so a day studying the list via a flash card program called Anki, which is an excellent program for studying Japanese (or any other language for that matter). While many of the words that I've encountered are words that I was already very familiar with, there are other words that I did not know until I encountered them when studying the vocabulary list. Right now I have gotten through the first 513 words in the collection; many of those words I am now comfortable with. I should be finished studying the word list by the end of the summer.

One very interesting thing I discovered through my studies is that Japanese has a lot of words that are very similar to other words, but have a slight variation in meaning. For example, back when I was at Fujitsu, I learned the difference between 完了 and 終了, which both mean "to finish" but have slightly different connotations (the former implies that a task was completed, while the latter implies that something ended [but not necessarily completed], e.g., プロジェクトを完了しました [I completed the project] and プログラムが終了しました。[The program ended]).

Here are some additional groups that I noticed:

考える (to think, consider) vs. 思う (to think) vs. 検討する (to consider)

仕事 (work, job) vs. 作業 (work)

完了 vs. 完成 (both meaning "to finish, complete")

去年 vs. 昨年 (both meaning "last year")

変える vs. 変わる vs. 変化する (all meaning "to change")

大統領 vs. 社長 (both meaning "president")

開く　「あく」 vs. 開く　「ひらく」 (both meaning "to open"; notice that they are written exactly the same but pronounced differently)

行く　「いく」 vs. 行く　「ゆく」 (both meaning "to go"; same situation as above)

見せる vs. 示す (both meaning "to show")

閉める vs. 閉まる vs. 閉じる (all meaning "to close, to shut")

必要する vs. 要る (both meaning "to need")

It would be very interesting to see the differences between these words.

お先に失礼します and お疲れ様です: Two Important Phrases When Working in Japan

I've been interning for Fujitsu Laboratories in Kawasaki, Japan for three months. During my three months I've noticed many interesting things about the Japanese workplace. For those of you who don't know Japanese or are unfamiliar with the Japanese workplace, in Japan it's considered a badge of honor to log very long hours at work. When the shift is over and the end-of-day bell rings (yes, Fujitsu has bells that rings that indicate when a shift begins, the beginning of lunch, the end of lunch, and the end of the day; I don't know if this bell system is standard across Japan), most people do not begin packing; instead they are still working. My work ends at 5:40pm, but I'm usually in the office until 6:00pm-6:30pm on average; I rarely leave at 5:40pm, and the latest I've stayed was 7:30pm when waiting on a coworker to return to a meeting to ask some work-related questions before leaving (but staying this late is very rare for me). And while I leave at about the same time as other people in my group, I'm never the last one to leave the office, although I'd venture and guess that most people are gone by 8:00pm or so at Fujitsu.

Anyway, if you are leaving the office at the end of the day and there are still other people in your group, you say to them 「お先に失礼します’ (osaki ni shitsurei shimasu). It literally means "I'm being rude for leaving before you," but it is the standard greeting for leaving work before other people. When somebody says that to you, you reply with 「お疲れ様です」(otsukaresama desu), which literally means "You must be tired," but it also has the meaning of "Great job!" or "You worked hard!" and other similar connotations.