“I can understand anime, but I can't order food in Japanese”

Hey KoreKara Squad,

I’m in Japan for the holidays right now and I just got a flashback of when I first came here as a study abroad student.

Do you resonate with this?

”I can understand anime, but I don’t know how to properly order food in Japanese”

That was me when I first started out learning Japanese.

I had been grinding Anki-ing hard, 10-30 words a day, immersion for 2-4 hours a day, and doing my best to talk to natives where-ever I could.

I thought I was already “beyond” beginner Japanese, given the fact that I could already watch my favorite anime shows in Japanese subtitles and mostly follow the plot. Sure there were still a lot of words I didn’t know, but I could figure everything out from context… at least that’s what I thought. I had outgrown r/learnJapanese and all the other language learning discords. Studying abroad should be np.

But the first day I came here as a study abroad student, I was hit with some serious language shock. I decided to study abroad in the countryside so I could maximize my Japanese usage. Maybe I should have started out in Tokyo, I thought.

I was staying in Tokyo for few days but was going to meet up with my friend near a station outside of Tokyo.

「ライン！」My phone screamed.

I looked at my phone. He sent me a screenshot of the station map with the station circled.

Station name: 霞ヶ関.

Shit. I can’t even read that. How do I even look this up??

1 Japanese conversation later, I made it there. I was feeling good about my Japanese. Didn’t even get nihongo jozu’d.

My local friend brought me to this ramen store, but not the type you’d find in Tokyo.

Imagine the tiniest ramen store you can think of, but maybe even smaller than that. Salarymen and students were coming left and right. 6 seats, handwritten menu, and a ramen chef behind the counter. My friend started to take off his jacket and sat down. I did the same.

I made eye contact with the Japanese guy behind the counter.

「〇〇っすか？」the guy behind the counter said to me.

Huh? I looked at my friend.

「え、はい!」He said.

Ok easy, I got that part. My friend then proceeds to place his order

「…で, カタメで…」He said.

Uhh what did that word mean again again.

「〇〇〇〇、お願いします」

Was that Japanese?

「あ、〇〇も〇〇ます。」

…what?

Now they both looked at me. My brain was overclocking. The pause was too long. Everyone in the restaurant glanced up from their ramen bowls at me.

「あの、同じです」 I blurted out.

Boom. Can’t go wrong with that. Just gonna order the same thing so nobody hears struggle in Japanese.

That was my first day. I had thousands of words in my Anki deck, yet I could barely order food in Japanese. I couldn’t read half the menu and the best I could do was to just order the same thing as my friend. Chances are, even if you do hundreds of hours of immersion and Anki, you’ll have a similar experience.

This is something that most people miss when they study Japanese.

They truth is that just immersing, just watching anime or dramas won’t get you fully to the point of fluency. Your ear simply does not have enough practice, and you have not seen similar contexts enough times.

In real life, people are not mic’d up. The music is blaring in the ゲーセン as the employee explains to you how the machine works. The ラーメン chef is slurring all his words while turning away from you making ramen. The コンビニ店員さん is behind a mask barely enunciating after saying お袋がいりますか？for the 8000th time that day, making it sound more like 「おふーろいりーあすか？」

If you can understand anime but you don’t know how to order food in Japanese, it means you haven’t tried doing so. Nobody can really teach you how to do that. You just have to do it for yourself and you will improve each time.

If you’re in Japan, it’s ideal because you can see other people do it. Maybe this time you pay attention to the specific words people use, next time you pay attention to the intonation, etc.

By the end of my stay in Japan, I had been to that ramen store enough times that I could order in 15 seconds just like everyone else.

There is no better way to acquire Japanese than to use it. To use a language means to do something through a language. Ordering a pizza, arranging plans with a friend in Japanese, writing a book summary, hopping on discord calls, going on dates, making videos, tweeting tweets… etc.

Listening and watching content is passive. You aren’t doing anything. You are reviewing words, that’s it. Its not enough.

Go out and try to use your Japanese.

P.S. Here’s a photo from my trip 🙂 

Alright see you next week.

Eric