The other day, John Sensei of Manga Sensei contacted me and invited me to do an interview for his podcast.
At first I hesitated, feeling a little nervous since this was the first time I would be giving a voice interview, not to mention that part of it would be in Japanese. But in the end I accepted, knowing it would be a great opportunity to talk about studying Japanese.
Before I did the interview I listened to a few of Manga Sensei’s previous podcast episodes to get a feel for who guests were and what they talked about. I also listened to a few podcast interviews by native Japanese speakers.
The interview was just posted, you can listen to it here (it’s about ~37 minutes, roughly 15 of those in Japanese).
Listening to myself speaking (I previewed the final recording before it was posted) was a little embarrassing, especially when I found several mistakes in my Japanese, not to mention a bunch of stuttering. But it was a very rewarding experience, and I hope some people will learn something from it.
This experience motivated me to do more interviews in Japanese someday (partially to improve my Japanese in such situations, but also because it’s fun), either as the interviewer or the interviewee. If you know anybody who is interested, let me know (:
I got into japanese due to my mother saying if your going to watch so much anime why dont u learn the language.
As for how i got exposed and stayed interest by moving on to manga to korean drama then back to manga then to light novel and now I’m at web novels.
I couldnt get into japanese drama except for like three then i went into korean drama (end up stop learning japanese for a while) but end up dropping it when i started to realize a pattern plus viki advertisement.
As for japanese literature how did you get into that. I’m not sure if u said how u got introduced to japanese literature
I agree, Japanese dramas can get pretty repetitive, though if you look around you can find some great ones (ex: Nodame Cantabile). But even if the story is so-so, it’s a great way to learn more Japanese phrases (and also to practice listening).
I got into Japanese literature by wanting to read Haruki Murakami books in Japanese, and read “Kafka on the Shore” when it first came out in Japanese (it too me a while though…). I’ve since moved onto other authors but want to thank Mr. Murakami for being my ‘doorway’ author (:
It’s so good to listen to you talk about Japanese. I loved the podcast. Thank you for sharing it! 😀
Thanks for listening (: