Using Japan’s Free Papers
A lot of people like to talk about what really made them who they are in the language they’re learning. “I learned from J-dramas“, or “Video games were my study method of choice,” or “Anime is the reason my Japanese is where it is today,” or “If it wasn’t for Japanese music…”
I love all of those things, but if any one single thing can be said to have advanced my Japanese in a significant way, it has been the ample Free Papers of Japan. It’s my secret weapon, a constant method and reminder to keep learning and to keep connected, even in travel downtime. Each paper is small, almost insignificant, but make a habit of studying them every day, and you’ll soon be a force to be reckoned with.
What exactly is a free paper?
It’s not an official term, but it is exactly what it sounds like: any type of free publication, often presented to the public on a wire rack at a train station. Job magazines, local maps, restaurant directories, wedding catalogues, political ads, recipe books, non-profit group newsletters, or even children’s stories. Try as I might, I can’t seem to remember a place in the western world where free publications of this quality were so ubiquitous.
A lot of learners seem to focus on finding one big reading material purchase, the one book or novel or comic that will be so inspiring it can hold their attention, that they will pore over page after page. Pages are small, interconnected pieces of a larger, more intimidating whole. Who here has bought a Japanese publication only to run out of steam less than 20% of the way through? As your level goes up, it becomes easier and easier to tackle larger pieces of work, but until then, free papers are a cheap, easy, fun alternative to jump into reading.
Free papers’ free-ness doesn’t just cover their monetary cost, but also time and space investments as well. They’re generally small and light, to make them an attractive thing for commuters to pick up, flip through, and often ditch with no commitment to worry about. Commitment is scary, tiring, and heavy.
But a 20-page free magazine that’s 30% ads? You can estimate its value in the time it takes for your train to arrive, without the “I’m studying Japanese” pressure having time to queue up. Like what you see? Stuff it in your bag! See only one or two interesting pages? Tear them out right then and there! The disposablity of these papers actually makes it easier to jump into studying them, and you can write on, mark up or cut them up guilt-free!
When your reading skill is low, your attention span drops quite sharply as well. Free papers help combat this by offering their content in small, digestable chunks, and by using the layout and typeface creatively to highlight important points for those who are skimming.
I pick up free papers everywhere I go.
It started out as a desperate attempt to feel connected to the community while I was working at my stressful eikaiwa job, but the benefits for studying soon became very clear to me. If I left the house, I would have some type of Japanese paper in my hands, some type of Japanese script entering my eyeballs. It’s OK if I only learn a few words from it occasionally; the greater improvement was in my speed, and the casualness that I developed for reading Japanese.
Taking a trip to Japan?
Free papers might very well be worth their weight in gold to you. They provide a side of printed Japanese that you might never see. Don’t let your family and friends laugh at you when you bring home a stack of job magazines, shop indexes, karaoke advertisements and municipal newsletters! The vocabulary in these is more varied than an equal volume of manga, the advertisements have Japanese-language brevity down to a science, and the format will naturally draw you to skim, reinforcing your extensive reading skills.
Already live in Japan?
You’re probably already inundated with free papers. If not, staff at your local community center (which itself will be loaded with public-service pamplets on cancer screenings, raising children, and flu shots) can probably ensure that the stream of junkish mail coming to your house never ceases by signing you up for local papers and newsletters.
With their help, I started to receive a local ad-riddled newspaper once a week. In addition to that, through no effort of my own, every month I get two municipal newsletters and city council reports, one prefectural newsletter, a water treatment pamplet (more interesting than it sounds) and a lifestyle magazine from the gas company trying to peddle IH cooking heaters.
Are a lot of these papers junky and ultimately boring or useless?
Yes, sometimes. You might only intensively study 5% of the publications that pass through your life in Japan. But consider this: even the act of skimming a Japanese publication to decide whether to throw it away or not builds your skills! When you think of it that way, going out of your way to collect free papers isn’t such a bad idea.
Akebi spends her time playing copious amounts of video games in Japanese, when she’s not learning the craft of making delicious noodles at her part-time job.
Yes!! This is one of my favorite things about going to Japan. My trip last winter, I saw them everywhere and didn’t really grab any. At the last moment, I grabbed a fashion catalogue for one friend and a music catalogue (this was given to me actually when I was shopping) for another friend, and they really liked them. I don’t recall grabbing anything for myself that time.
This summer when I went back to Japan, I had my mind set on grabbing these papers. I grabbed a free manga (牧場物語のまわりコッミク), a magazine which actually has articles (あるく), a brochure for places to go in Kooriyama and Aizu, and a Hula Girl brochure and poster. I ended up throwing away a lot of brochures from the places I went before I came home to America, but I still read them before I threw them away. Even for souvenirs, I grabbed a map for a little boy interested in Japan, the information for a pokemon game for the girl I’m teaching Japanese, and a poster of Abraham Lincoln Zombie Slayer for my dad and they loved what they got. Free papers can be made into good free souvenirs with the proper thought behind the interests of the person. And these free papers are great to lay around the house for easy reading.
Another hint for those who can’t go to Japan yet, I managed to get a travel magazine at a Japanese spring festival in my area in America. So keep your eyes out, you never know.
This sounds like something that I would love to try but I do not live in Japan. I can say that I have felt like this before. I got a new Japanese book and about a week later I got bored of it. The book is really good and has lots of vocab words and example sentences but as you said it does not keep my attention span.
Have any advice for someone that does not live in Japan and has a low Japanese level?
Look and see if you have a large Asian market in your area. I know I had to drive two hours to get to my closest big one…but it had a Kinokuniya, so it had J-Books too. If driving isn’t an option, why not start signing up for random junk mail and get an email address dedicated to it. Just go to all of the most sketchy places and enter your email address wherever you can!
Try googling 「ご自由 filetype:pdf」、& keep the ones you like.
Free paper, sans paper.
And for anyone who lives in the South of England, there is a shop called JPbooks right near Picadilly Circus tube station, London that has a shelf of free papers under the counter. There are also a few Japan Centres in England but I haven’t been yet so I don’t know if they have free papers. (Yes even though it’s right near JPbooks in London – I had to go home, okay)
Often Japanese markets/stores in big cities have free Japanese local papers. In New York City there is a large abundance of them.