Japanese by self-study or far away from a face-to-face class

Suppose you wish to learn Japanese language but your school or community
does not offer it. Where can you turn to pursue your aim?
This page gives some answers, divided into three headings.
Send your own experiences and advice to the Center for Japanese Studies, below, to help improve this page!

Language learning | Cultural background information | Miscellany

Japanese language learning leads

Social background and cultural familiarity (visual landscape of faces, places, arts and events) are at least as important as writing
and speaking the language. The people who train our diplomatic staff monitored how long it took staff to reach intermediate level
ability in the 25-30 major languages they teach. Based on this they ranked them with ones closest to English at level one, and
ones hardest and most distant to English habits ranked at level four. These last include the 3 East Asian ones: Chinese, Japanese,
Korean, as well as Arabic. The reason it takes longer is not necessarily the syllables or the script used to write in, the main reason
is culture; that is the mind-set and way of seeing the world and identifying one's belonging in the society.

Upshot: A person should dive into all sorts of social and cultural information (movies, anime, manga, photo books and websites,
maybe some novels translated into English, too). This kind of visual and English-language content makes a nice counterbalance to
the skill practice for speaking, listening, writing.

In Michigan there is the annual springtime Japan Bowl quiz competition (usually the first Saturday in March in Ann Arbor on the
U. of Michigan central campus, confirm at umcjs@umich.edu). There are also the sister state exchanges with Shiga-prefecture, with its
large freshwater lake, Lake Biwa: high school student exchanges (applications available late November: www.msu.edu/~gifted/shiga/ ),
citizen exchanges (Michiganders go to Shiga late July of even-numbered years; Shiga folks arrive for homestays in odd-numbered years).
Some cities have sister-cities in Shiga or other prefectures, too; as do some middle and high schools.

Around the USA there are numerous summer, semester and full year exchange programs, too: Youth for Understanding (www.yfu.org
has many summer scholarships), American Field Service (www.afs.org) has a long-standing program of exchanges, too. And in some
communities the 4-H exchanges with Japan's own LABO youth organization may be convenient. And even if you aren't ready to spend
time overseas, you can be a host to an exchange student from Japan. Some colleges and universitys have "friendship families" to
coordinate monthly activities with international students with nearby families so they can learn from each other.

for a comprehensive list of Japanese language learning links, try: http://www.sabotenweb.com/bookmarks/

grammar tables for intermediate to advanced students, http://www.thejapaneselanguageresource.com/

online newsreader (pronounces the Japanese text for you!)
[email posting 8/16/05] ...an interesting browser called "WebUD" for Windows.
WebUD can read Japanese text aloud with synthesized voice. (It still sounds like a computer, but good enough to figure out how kanji compounds are
pronounced.) In addition, it can insert furigana, change font size and color combination. WebUD (UD stands for universal design) is developed by Fujitsu and it is free.

In order to take advantage of various features of WebUD, a web site has to be compatible with WebUD. The number of such sites appear to be growing, but the most notable one for us is www.asahi.com. WebUD can read about every text there. When you open asahi.com, look for "???????" (moji kakudai and onsei) link at the top right corner of the page. It will explain what WebUD is and how to download it.

online enrollment (as of July 2005) includes,

+Online Center for Japanese Studies - The Yamasa Institute, Okazaki, Japan, http://www.yamasa.org/ocjs/english/index.html

+Virginia Satellite Educational Network (VSEN), www.vsenvirginia.org.htm

+World Wide Learn Language Learning Center (lists several online programs), http://www.worldwidelearn.com/language-courses/learn-japanese.htm

+YesJapan.com www.yesjapan.com

+Mesa Community College, AZ offer JPN101, 102, 201 and 202 online using the Yookoso textbook. They offer them every spring and fall semester.
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~emiahn/internethome.htm

+Also Irasshai at Georgia Tech has distance learning courses - http://www.imtc.gatech.edu/projects/culture/i-irasshai.html

+Japanese 1 & 2 (at least) taught online through the Indiana Academy at Ball State University in Indiana.
http://www.bsu.edu/academy/dl/
Cathy D. Whaley, Assistant Director of Outreach Programs
Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities
Ball State University
Muncie, Indiana 47306
765-285-6004 (phone) 800-316-3163 ext. 22 (toll-free phone) 765-285-3248 (fax)

+Brigham Young University offers high-school Japanese 1 and 2 as on-line courses:
Sample Culture Guide for Japan's Shinto religion, http://kennedy.byu.edu/student/InternationalOutreach/CG-Shinto.pdf

Asia Society has lots of great webpages, including Japan-related ones: www.asiasociety.org (and the
education branch, http://www.askasia.org/). And the free news headline service (click on hotlink to get full text)
is nice there, too. A free weekday service at www.japantoday.com is informative, too.

There are about a dozen National Resource Centers like ours that serve people from all corners of the USA.
The listing is sorted by world region here: http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CLACS/resources/nrc_lrc.html#easia It is worth
looking at these from one semester to another since they have exhibits, resource link pages and so on that may be
of interest to your son. For Japan, there is also the National Clearinghouse for U.S.-Japan Studies, too, with
rich topical briefs on a range of subjects. Likewise, the feature stories found in the thrice-yearly magazine,
Education About Asia (www.aasianst.org/eaa-toc.htm) are worth browsing. Really, really serious seekers of
social & cultural information may even wish to locate a copy of the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan in hardcopy
or on CD-rom (or online, www.ency-japan.com/).

1) Joy Hendry has written an number of society/culture books.

2) also, in January 2005 Jennifer Robertson's book came out, A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan.
Here is the brief description: "...attempts to retire stale and misleading stereotypes of Japanse culture
and society both past and present."

3) www.cnam.com (Center for New American Media) produced a documentary, The Japanese Version (1990),
with 9 or 10 short episodes that show what happens when foreign ideas/items come to Japan and fit into
Japanese life/society. It is humorous, but also serious at the same time (about 45 minutes).
The full transcript is at the website, too.

4) A collection of popular culture essays would be eye-opening for many students, too.
>>>>> or Search google.com with "Japan"+"popular culture"

5) Good discussions would come from looking at the news digest http://www.crisscross.com/jp/ once a
week, or one of the online newspapers (in Japanese, and in English).

6) Good discussion would come from some of the feature stories found on National Public Radio archives, too.
Try a keyword search at www.npr.org/programs/ (Japan + controversy; Japan + society; Japan +environment;
Japan + economy; Japan + gender; Japan + technology).

Also, Material World (This has 50-60 countries, rich and poor with 4-5 pages that show the "stuff" owned by each
family/household unit, including entries for USA and for Japan). This was followed by Women in the Material World.
Softcover may be available used at amazon.com or check interlibrary loan. More recently, Hungry Planet.

8) Japanese The Manga Way is a great approach to structures, patterns and grammar through the manga extracts
and commentary offered, www.stonebridge.com,
Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure by Wayne Lammers

9) There is a nice online album of an elementary school (6th graders) at www.tjf.or.jp/shogakusei/
And a set of profiles/albums of 7 Japanese teens is at www.tjf.or.jp/deai/

__ compiled summer 2005 by ______________
Guven Peter Witteveen, wittevee@umich.edu
Outreach Coordinator, Center for Japanese Studies
1080 S. University Ave., Ste 3659 SSWB
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106

+1-734-764-6307 (or 764-2302 direct)

More resources for students, http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/resources/student.html