After many months of using anime as a tool to learn Japanese, I thought I’d share some tips that have been useful for seeing real improvements in my Japanese. Here’s my Eightfold Path to Japanese Enlightenment through Anime:

1) Right Mindset. If you like watching anime for fun, it could be a good tool for you to learn Japanese. Unfortunately, you will not absorb the language through osmosis — you have to put in the effort. That means being active, not sitting on your butt. More on this below.

2) Right Anime. Be aware that depending on the anime characters you try to imitate, you could end up speaking like a 17th century samurai, a yakuza enforcer, or worse — a shinigami. There’s lots of ‘slice of life anime’ where the characters don’t call each other temai or slur their words like yakuza. Bakuman, Kino’s Journey, and Working are good places to start. Also Death Note, despite its Shinigami theme, has characters that speak relatively normal Japanese.

3) Right Subs. Meaning, No Subs. Once you’re past a certain point in your Japanese level (say you’re around N4 – maybe earlier), you need to axe the subtitles. When you read English subtitles, you’re effectively telling your brain: hey brain, you know, you can stop thinking now, it doesn’t really matter if I understand the Japanese dialogue.  So turn off the subs and exercise your brain. For watching online, where everything is subtitled in English, I put a 2” wide black piece of cardboard against the screen where the subs would be – think of it as watching anime in widescreen. For show links, I recommend animecrazy.net.

4) Right Repetition. Some of my Japanese friends have noticed an improvement in my pronunciation recently. I attribute this directly to the way I watch anime. While watching, I try to repeat whatever was just said by a male character (there’s a big difference between male and female Japanese – I prefer not to sound like a girl). I usually end up only repeating the first and last parts of the sentence, but it has definitely helped. Warning: if you do this while watching anime with a friend, you may notice your friends start to distance themselves from you.

5) Right Dick. Dictionary, that is. If you’re passively watching, you’re not learning – you’re just wasting time. You need to be actively picking out new words, pressing pause, looking them up, reviewing them, and trying to use them in your conversations with friends. If you’re skipping any of these steps, you may as well be watching Glee on FOX.

6) Right Study. Anime shouldn’t be your only method of studying. I’ve seen my biggest improvements when I’ve been able to confirm my understanding using a grammar book or dictionary examples. Recently I’ve been using Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese for sentence patterns (free and highly recommended) and iKanji to learn new Kanji (a few bucks, but worth it) – I enjoy being able to read, too.

7) Right Practice. I know it might sound a little wacky, but you need to actually practice the language with other people. Preferably live, native speakers, though other L2 learners will do in a pinch. Some people suggest Skype chat. I suggest get out of your house and meet people in real life.

8) Right Blog. My blog. Okay, just kidding. I couldn’t think of an eighth.

Have experience learning Japanese through anime? I’d love to hear it. Otakus of the world, unite!

It’s time to honestly look at the results from the Power Of Less Habit Challenge in February. Because as fun as it is to pat yourself on the back for a job well done, it’s often more rewarding to look at why we didn’t achieve our goals.

For the first half of February, I did great. I read at least a half hour of French every day, without missing a day. I had great reading material (L’Alchemiste, French Motorcycle Magazines and National Geographics), and looked forward to my study time each day. Week three, however, my momentum dropped. I got busy, and missed 3 days. Then, the last week in February, while I was on vacation, I only studied 3 times, for a total of 2 hours clocked. Not so good.

A few reasons why I think I didn’t succeed:

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“I’m going to quit smoking, lose 20 pounds, give up drinking hard liquor and run at least an hour every day.”  How many people out there have ever actually succeeded with New Years Resolutions? Why does it always fail? My theory is that it’s too much all at once. It becomes more painful to continue with the extreme lifestyle makeover than the short-term pleasure you would get reverting to your old habits.

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My friend Josh recently wrote a blog post about learning Spanish — what has been working, and what hasn’t — and asked for strategies from his readers. When I sat down to write a comment, I realized I had too much to say for just a short paragraph, so here it is. These are strategies that have helped me (and people who I have recognized as effective second language learners) pick up a new language quicker than average — not because we are smarter, but simply because we focus on time-efficient and effective strategies.

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