The date is September 17th 2024. I’ve been learning Japanese, in one way or another, for over 8 years now and next week we’ll be flying to Japan for the first time. Going to Japan is an amazing feat for many people and I won’t sit here and pretend I’m unique for doing so but it feels fitting to use this time to talk about a summation of how we got here, what this means to me and how I’m preparing for our visit.
I suppose the best place to start is from the beginning. I never liked languages. I did try a number of your usual high school languages including French and Spanish and, while I enjoyed trailing a whole new way of speaking, the famously horrendous language teacher all but squashed my desire to continue. It would be a whole decade or more before I’d even consider picking up another language, but there were other factors that led us here.
My older brother and I have consumed more games between us than would be reasonably considered healthy for a human to play. From the age I could first hold a controller, our Dad would introduce his new favourite titles and we would both build our childhood friendships on a shared love each console as they came out. While in public I had always shied away from discussing games due to their negative stigma, however it was certainly true that they had a big influence on my passions, relationships and even my intelligence. I grew up with Zelda, Resident Evil, Age of Empires and many other strategic and puzzling titles, all of which I attribute for me being smart (Possibly up for debate but I have some sort of capacity for a simple, child-like level of deduction).
My brother, who is easily one of the most diligent and passionate artists I know, went on to work in the games industry, and in no small part. I’m awfully proud and this filled me with joy and a new found confidence that games shouldn’t be thought of as wasteful or childish and could be used to help and entertain people as part of a real career. At this point my Japanese journey hadn’t really started but I had dabbled in developing and drawing game sprites and knew that in some way all the time I’d invested into games were to my benefit not my detriment (There’s always a chance that game dev could return, who knows…).
When I had not long finished my university years I was a little unsure of career prospects. My degree was hard to use (Still hasn’t been used to this day…) so I found a usual 9-to-5 and looked towards my passions for a source of inspiration. One day my older brother lent me a copy of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd. This was the first TV port of the Monster Hunter series I had played and my brain was absorbed into the beauty of the oriental setting, new vibrant monsters and the fact it was only available in Japanese. For the longest time I tried to play through it from muscle memory and, while it was possible, I couldn’t help think about this mysterious language that I was dying to understand.
While I was completely new to Japanese I did what I could to learn the scripts and started to learn and read the description for each item at a time. Hiragana hooked me right away, I was working in a warehouse at the time and would rip off bits of card from the boxes around me and practice my hiragana on each ugly scrap before throwing them into the oversized bins between stock deliveries. I also spoke with other colleagues and showed them how to write the characters, in some cases exchanging their other native tongues for brief and very poorly informed Japanese lessons on the fly.
The more I picked up in Japanese the more passion I built for the culture, history and food. A sushi shop opened up in my local city so I often visited and learnt more about the food, befriending the owners in the process and creating fast friends for life. I read about the history of Sengoku Jidai and learnt about the rules and manners of everyday culture. I quickly picked up a number of entertaining Youtubers focused at life in Japan too, staring in awe at their ability to live in and navigate this mythical country.
Having started with Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, it wasn’t long before I found ways and means to accrue more games in Japanese that were readily available to me. While there was limited access to Japanese releases in the UK I expanded my roster through Steam, PS store and mobile games. It was then around 4 years ago I thought to myself that I could use the methods I had put into practice to again teach others. Via a shoddily slapped together Instagram (arguably it still is in many ways) I came up with a name and a brand and things snowballed.
Games and Kanji was brought to life in 2021, with the website being made in April of that year. It started off with less than 10 scrappily written blog posts and no other features but I remember vividly celebrating 100 views and thinking this was unbelievable. This is even funnier when I look to the current stats and I am baffled that we’re now over 5,000 views and counting. While I was “teaching” prior to Games and Kanji, the platform now has an established plan, methods and user base, with consistent students, both in person and online, and happy testimonials. I’ve also been completing paid translations for over 18 months now, including a credit in an English translation to a published manga and even Japanese only games being remastered into English. We even have merch, never thought that’d be a thing. None of this is to brag, simply to show how this small interaction with a Japanese game has exploded into a daily passion that will hopefully continue to grow.
If you would have asked me 8 years ago if I would be teaching, translating, making content and studying Japanese everyday without fail I likely wouldn’t have believed you. I am pretty self aware, I’m very conscious of how small this is as a platform currently, but it means the world to me and I’ll keep going with it even if it nose dives and blows up because I love it. I will continue plugging away with new blogs, formats and lessons and with any luck it will become my full time job one day.
So I suppose we come back to the modern day. One unfortunate aspect of Japanese is that it has been lonely. While the G&K community is growing, with a handful of students, a Discord and many loving supporters (Thanks Mum), one thing that has been lacking is native or highly proficient speakers to chat with. As such I would be the first to admit that my speaking has been the least practiced aspect of my Japanese. When the time came to book our trip to Japan this kicked my ass into gear to get my head out of the books and actually start speaking to people. I upped the weekly lesson availability, focusing more on speaking practice for my users and dedicated time to reach out to native speakers as frequently as possible. The result, I’m still shy and nervous as hell, but it’s been a hell of a motivator.
It’s not necessarily a weakness that my primary focus has always been games and books. I’m a quiet person and it’s easier to sit, play games and read than it is to either talk to myself or go bother people. My vocab is strong making all things relating to reading passable. This crutch cannot be used in conversation so this means that my main focus when we get to Japan will be to speak to everyone. Needless to say I do still want to hit every bookshop and game store I come across and buy as much usable content as possible, however, what I also want to do is aim to speak with each of the clerks (If they’ll allow me) and have a good handful of meaningful conversations across the whole 14 day stint. I want to avoid English (Except when speaking to my non-Japanese speaking partner who will be with me) as much as possible to get the real immersive experience, squeezing every drop of language learning juice from every interaction.
In conclusion, it goes without saying that I am incredibly excited to visit Japan for the first time. Me being me, this holiday is probably not going to be very relaxing. It’ll be less of a holiday and more of an extended dialogue practice. The most important thing is that I want to be able to help others do the same. This will be the ultimate test that my hard work has actually prepared me for a Japanese environment, and while it is likely and I’m possibly overthinking, without this confirmation it is hard to feel confident. When I’m back I hope to be equipped with the tools to help any of you out there that also want to visit Japan get to a comfortable speaking level.
I hope this won’t be the only time we go too. I have many plans for this brand and what I can build to offer to you all so do watch this space over the next month. I’ll apologise in advance for the flood of posts on Instagram. While there is also a lot to fear, it’s the best kind of fear, and I truly look forward to sharing my experiences on my return. Plans are flooding in for my time prior to, during and after this holiday and I can’t wait to hit the ground running and throw all this inspiration into Games and Kanji 2025!
All of this is thanks to you guys. Special thanks especially to my annoying but incredibly loving and supportive older brother. Look at the trouble he’s caused!
Games & Kanji 