You don’t have to be into costume play, manga, or karate to want to

learn Japanese. Con-trary to what you might think, Japanese culture is not reserved for the geeks. (Rather, con-trary to what you might think, there’s a geek lurking inside of you!) Admit it, you used eitherto play Nintendo or collect Hello Kitty stationery.

It’s true that most of our first impressions about Japan come from quirky things. After all, Ja-pan is the country that introduced the world to Pokemon, sushi, and cheesy 80’s ninjas, notto mention game shows where contestants are suited up in Velcro suits and thrust via tram-poline upon sticky walls. But there’s obviously more to a country that has consistently heldsuch a vast influence on global pop culture which arguably is Western at its core.

Teaching yourself Japanese is a rewarding effort that will connect you to one of the world’stechnological and economic leaders. And not only is Japan renowned in these fields, butthey are also famous for their characteristic arTeaching yourself Japanese is a rewarding effort that will connect you to one of the world’s technological and economic leaders. And not only is Japan renowned in these fields, but they are also famous for their characteristic art, music, literature, and fashion. For travelers like me, Japanese is an important medium especially in going to beautiful provinces in Japan where people are non English speakers. Having visited Japan for many times, the experience has taught me to value their language and culture as well. Japanese these days are trying to learn the English language and it is important that foreigners to their country will also learn as well. This way, communication becomes easy., music, literature, and fashion.

If can’t figure out how to learn Japanese, you can start by familiarising yourself with the way it sounds. Watch a quirky Japanese game show. Have your fix of Naruto or Dragonball Z.There’s plenty of media on the internet that you can use as secondary resources. It won’ttake long before you figure out how Japanese sounds even if you still don’t know what thewords mean. You will also notice the conspicuous absence of "L" and similar sounds; this ex-plains why Japanese speaking other languages can sound a particular way. Anyway, with alittle practise and attention to detail, it should be easy for you to distinguish Japanese fromthe similar-sounding languages of China and Korea.

Teaching yourself Japanese characters is also a fun way to get learn Japanese. If you wantto learn how to speak Japanese faster you will also have to learn Japanese writing. Japa-nese writing follows three basic systems—kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Kanji is based onthe Chinese system and is used for words borrowed from Chinese and for Japanese wordswith similar meanings. There are over a thousand official Kanji characters. The Hiragana andKatakana systems, on the other hand are based on syllables, not on words, and in total uti-lise less than 200 characters. Hiragana and Katakana are usually the systems introduced tobeginners; their beauty being that once each written character is learned, a student will alsohave learned all the possible sounds used in Japanese speech, which are relatively feweven for an English speaker.