Slave to the flashcards

I fear I may have become too much of a slave to my flashcards. It`s now three years since I began regularly updating my vocabulary from the Tangorin website into my Anki flashcards. I`m absolutely positive that this has increased my vocabulary substantially, but I wonder if I have relied too much on this and neglected other areas that also need work in learning a foreign language. It`s as if the flashcards have become a distraction, they can lull you into the sense that you are progressing more than you really are.

In order to keep the number of cards in my decks at a manageable level I have been deleting them when they get to around the three month mark. This has enabled me to keep the number of cards ticking over, may have had a detrimental effect on my long term retention of some of the less common words. I`ve begun to notice this anyhow.

I`m also frustrated with my lack of progress with fluency. I was hoping that by now I would be a confident speaker in my workplace, or with Japanese speakers in my life, but this is far from the case. I feel I need to take a different tack to break new ground.

I`m currently taking three lessons a week, so I don`t think this is the problem. More likely that I need to use, or engineer situations where I can use, the language more frequently in my day to day life.

Getting more opportunities to speak: a trip to the barbers

I've been bemoaning of late my lack of opportunities to use Japanese in daily life. This might sound kind of strange seeing as I live in Tokyo, but I don't actually have a circle of Japanese friends that I can meet with regularly and chat away in Japanese with. I do have Japanese friends, but I tend to hang out with them one at a time, and this means we often use English, a) because I get tired of trying to speak Japanese quickly, and b) because more often than not, my friend's English is usually better than my Japanese.

I think it's important to find a group of friends to hang out with because then the conversation naturally tends to be Japanese, and it also means you don't have to be supplying 50% of the input.

Anyway, that's besides the point of today's post. My lack of opportunities for natural conversation emphasised the importance to me of the more manufactured experiences that you can make for yourself like the one that I had yesterday and I want to mention here.

Since coming to Japan I've tended to shy away from using the old style barbers you see dotted around town. I think this may have something to with the fact that when I first arrived here I remember naively walking into one of these barbers expecting at least some basic English ability from the proprietor and suddenly realising that I had to put my measly two-to-three weeks of beginner level Japanese study into immediate effect. This wasn't overly successful if I remember correctly, and may have left a bit of a mental scar.

Anyway, since then I've mainly been using the 1000yen - 10 minute - barbers you find in most train stations around Tokyo. It's quick and simple and doesn't require a lot of communication. Yesterday however I went to an old-style barber close to where I teach in Tokyo for a change, (my last 10 minute haircut was a bit of a disaster prompting me to take the plunge) and I realised I've been missing out on a great opportunity for some Japanese conversational workout these past few years.

The barber was a very friendly older lady— in her 60s I'd say. I asked for a short-back-and-sides, we negotiated over the length of the clippers, and she got down to work. After a few minutes of silence I dived in and asked her how long that particular barber shop had been open. That was all I had to do: we didn't stop talking for the next 40-odd minutes (Well, if I'm honest she did most of the talking, but I got a few questions in, and offered a few opinions on this and that—the Royal Wedding for example). The haircut cost 3000 yen and it took 50 minutes longer than at the station shop, but as far as getting a language workout it was time and money well spent—the haircut wasn't bad either.

Barbers are a bit like taxi drivers I think, wherever you go in the world, they like to chat. So I think I'll be avoiding the 10-minute "fast-cut" barbers from now on, and take advantage of these barbers who despite costing a bit more have time for a good old-fashioned chinwag.