Japanese in context: Ash's Diary 1 (アッシュさんの日記)
Ash's Diary is made to learn how to read/listen to and learn Japanese in context.
Ash's Diary is based on everyday Japanese that's used in Japan in real life. Each video is one story about the character named Ash.
As you go through the videos, the difficulty level goes up. You can follow his stories to pick up new words and phrases along with grammar used in a natural way.
Each story is repeated in one video. The first half is written only in hiragana and katakana for beginners and elementary-level learners. After you master hiragana and katakana, you don't have to keep practicing with random sentences. You can start working on short reading to be able to get into the world of Japanese.
The second half is written in hiragana, katakana, and kanji. All the kanji characters used in each story are the ones every Japanese person needs to know in school to be functional in Japan. You don't see hiragana on top of kanji simply because it's like this in Japan. You'll need to start getting used to reading as it is in Japanese the way the Japanese do.
There's no English translation in this video series because it's important not to translate in your head. You should be able to process Japanese in Japanese. It's an essential ability especially for beginners. If you have a habit of translating every single word, you'll continue to have a hard time learning a new language. You don't need to understand every single word. Instead, focus on getting the gist of it and be happy with it. If you keep knit picking, it'll only result in making you stressed out.
Don't worry. The sentences are simple and relatively easy to guess what they mean. If not, look up the words you don't understand, and you'll get it.
How to use Ash's Diary
1. Play this video.
2. Read the texts as you listen to the audio (pause if necessary).
3. Try to understand what the story is about.
4. Look up the words and phrases that you're interested in.
5. Watch the video again.
6. See how much you can understand.
7. Try it again after a few days to see if you can do better.
For Speaking Practice
1. Play the video.
2. Repeat all the sentence as you listen to it without pausing.
*This practice is called shadowing. This will help you improve your listening and pronunciation along with grammar, kanji, and vocabulary in one go. It's hard at first, but keep trying until your mouth is getting used to Japanese.
For Writing Practice
1. Play the video.
2. Listen to each sentence without looking at it.
3. Write down what you hear/heard.
4. Compare it to the answer.
5. Complete all the sentences in the video.
*This practice is called dictation. This will help you improve your listening, writing, grammar, kanji, and vocabulary in one go. It might be hard at first, but it'll be easy as you get used to it.
If you play one Ash's Diary a day, your Japanese comprehension skills will improve significantly to get closer to being functional in Japanese.
Good luck with your Japanese learning journey.