Jeff joined Japademy's Japanese Online Private Lessons in May 2022. Despite being initially hesitant about how difficult learning the language could be, he managed to excel during his lessons and as a way to keep himself motivated, he started a YouTube channel sharing his progress and experiences learning Japanese.
I am attending graduate school for a Master's in public health and want to take a trip to Japan after I graduate. My hope is that by studying Japanese for two years I’ll understand enough to enjoy my trip more than I would without a Japanese language background.
My only hesitation about learning Japanese was that it’s known as a very hard language to learn. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Japademy instructors are at teaching the material. I don’t feel overwhelmed at all and am learning a ton.
I’ve been learning Japanese for almost half a year now.
The biggest challenge I’ve encountered is remembering vocab words. I’ve focused a lot on mastering hiragana and katakana as I feel learning the writing system used in Japan will allow me to more effectively learn the spoken language.
It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to sound out Japanese sentences while reading hiragana. I’ve seen hiragana in random places and have been able to sound out the words even if I don’t always know what they mean. Being able to pronounce words that aren’t written using the Latin alphabet is really fun.
In order to stay motivated I started a YouTube channel called ‘Jeff Learns Japanese.’ Knowing that there are people who are subscribed to me that want to see me succeed inspires me to keep going so that I don’t let them down.
If you’re interested in learning Japanese, it is incredibly important that you get a tutor. Having a tutor is the single best thing I did for my studies.
At the moment I’m only planning on visiting Japan for two weeks in summer of 2024, but I’m keeping an open mind about the potential to stay longer.
I love Japan. I especially love their film industry. Films such as Spirited Away and Seven Samurai are two great examples of well written Japanese films. As a fan of film, I’m looking forward to watching more Japanese language films in the coming years.
I did a trial lesson with Kanami-san, the founder of Japademy, and immediately I knew it was the right program based on how fun the lesson was. If you have a good time learning a language you’re going to do well.
I’d recommend Japademy to everyone. The program has incredible instructors who will make learning fun.
