Japanese Tips 5: Learn Japanese By Watching Anime | Guidable - Your Guide to a Sustainable, Wellbeing-centred Life in Japan

Japanese Tips 5: Learn Japanese By Watching Anime

By Tony Tao Oct 22, 2020

Learning Japanese By Watching Anime

This article on “Learn Japanese By Watching Anime” is one of Guidable’s series of guideline articles on “Tips For Studying Japanese” Learning a new language may be challenging at first, but persevere. The results of all your hard work will be worth it!

Check out the best Japanese language learning Apps!

Or, you prefer to have an enjoyable time after work with YouTube? Check out the best YouTube channels, which could help you improve your Japanese!

Where to Watch Japanese Anime?

Anyone who has ever attempted to learn Japanese by watching anime knows that this can be a little tricky. You will need to pick the suitable streaming site for any anime you’re going to watch because all your favourite anime shows are not always in the same place. 

Fortunately, this problem has become easier to overcome in recent years with the growth of streaming websites. 

Here are several sites where you can legally find anime to watch (usually for a monthly fee):

NetflixHulu and Amazon: these three streaming sites may be best known for their shows and movies, but they all have a pretty impressive collection of animes, also. 

Crunchyroll: This is perhaps the most well-known online anime site. It has hundreds of anime from which to choose and also simulcasts anime (releases them at the same time as they are distributed in Japan). 

Anime-Planet: This platform partners with other streaming sites, such as Netflix and Crunchyroll, to offer a wide variety of anime to fans.

Check out TOP 5 Ghibli Studio Best Movie!

The Benefits of Learning Japanese By Watching Anime

Are you tired of studying Japanese with those boring textbook? 

Get yourself out of the way you practice your language by falling into anime!   

Grab yourself popcorn and relax, switch on the subtitles and enjoy your favourite anime series while still being able to improve your Japanese language! 

But first of all, there are a few notes that you should bear in mind!

Disclaimers About Learning Japanese with Anime

Japanese is widely recognized as a formal language with a variety of ways to speak. You have to change the way you talk to others, depending on the relationship, but it has to transcend the distinction between formal and casual. Your language can vary between talking to a friend, a family member, a coworker, a boss or a client. 

In the meantime, anime characters use a lot of slang, daily language, informal pronouns, and even wordplays.

Your favourite anime characters will leave you communicating like a kid or a disrespectful street punk, but you may never know the true meaning of your words and tone. Thus, you need to be careful of the kind of Japanese you’re going to absorb in the world of anime. 

How to avoid common mistakes when learning Japanese with anime

To prevent Japanese “anime” learning problems, you can follow these two different approaches: 

– Combine anime routine into your language learning process right from the beginning. You will be aware of the language used in anime as you learn about the formalities and distinctions of Japanese.  

– Wait until you hit the intermediate level of Japanese to use anime as a learning technique actively. When you have a strong base to work with; you’re not going to be confused by casual tone, slang, and vocabulary. 

There are a few more distinctions that need to be considered between Japanese anime and Japanese real life:

– Do not write down and memorize a new vocabulary from an anime unless you know its real meaning and purpose. Some of those “anime” terms are meaningless to most Japanese native speakers. –

– Don’t expect real-life Japanese to sound like in the world of anime. Many anime fans believe they already know the proper Japanese speech before they formally study the language, but this is often not the case. 

 

Wait a second — if you hit this til this part, you may think that anime is a terrible learning tool. As long as you consider all of the above caveats, and entirely devote yourself to learning proper, real-world Japanese, then anime will be a powerful tool!

Why You Should Learn Japanese With Anime

Now that we’ve got all the disclaimers out the way. Let’s see why anime is considered as one of the most effective Japanese learning techniques! 

Improve Your Listening Skills 

Despite some noteworthy differences, the Japanese anime is, clearly, real Japanese. This means that you will have the ability to improve your listening skills for vocabulary, grammar and speech patterns. 

Learn more about improving Japanese listening skills!

Discover Japanese Culture By Watching Anime 

Anime isn’t just something children watch – it’s a cultural obsession. As you walk the electric streets of Tokyo, anime characters come out of every direction. There are sculptures, drawings, posters, billboards, commercials, fluffy animals, and crowds of people dress up anime-style in downtown Tokyo every week. The artistry and storytelling that characterizes anime permeate every part of modern Japanese culture. 

Watching anime will bring you closer to understanding the different facets of Japanese culture and society.

In fact, anime comes in all imaginable tastes: drama, adventure, battle, fantasy, comedy, sports, historical — you name it, there’s an anime in that category! 

That means you can choose whatever you want to watch the most fun!

Learning Japanese By Watching Anime

As long as you consider all of the above caveats, and entirely devote yourself to learning proper, real-world Japanese, then anime will be a powerful tool! However, please keep in mind our notices before deciding to learn Japanese by anime! 

The Guidable team does hope that you found this article as a helpful piece of information! After all, all of our activities are aiming for a better life for foreigners in Japan! So, stay tuned and follow us!