My Podcast Interview with Manga Sensei
Recently I was contacted by John Dinkel, who runs the podcast/sites Manga-Sensei and Discover Nihongo. I took a look at his material, liked what he was doing, and decided to appear on his podcast. He is a down to earth guy, sharing his Japanese knowledge daily through his podcast and website in an honest and fresh way, and I wanted to help out.
It was a great fun time, and I think that our discussion could provide some useful information for anyone up for a listen. It’s around 40 minutes long, with the first half in English, and the second half in Japanese.
Some of the topics discussed:
1. The origins of Jalup
2. Not getting cheated on your freelance translation
3. The frustration and struggles with learning Japanese
4. Accepting difficulty
5. The dark side of Genki (?)
6. How I created some of the Jalup Decks
7. Shadowing
8. Kanji
9. How I would restart Japanese
10. Dealing with a lack of confidence and fear of speaking Japanese
Check out the podcast below:
Listen to “Learn Japanese 172: Interview w/ Adam Shapiro of Japanese Level Up” on Spreaker.
Subscribe and give John’s websites a look as well. I’d like to see his audience grow, because I can tell that he is going to continue to bring more and more value to all of the Japanese learners out there.
Also, if you want to hear me talk more in Japanese about everything you could ever possibly want to know, don’t forget to check out the brand new Adam & Yuki audio series on Patreon.
Adam
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Thanks for sharing. Why does he hate Genki so much? Do you think it’s good learning material besides the bad stories/conversations with Mary-san?
John here. The truth is, I had to teach out of that textbook at university, and I feel like it does a poor job of teaching grammar. However, I think it can be a good tool if that’s how your brain works. So it’s more of a personal thing, but it is also one of the reasons I teach grammar an the way I do now; a more in context, deeper, & fundamental way. But again, it’s up to how you learn, so for you it might be awesome, just maybe not for me.
Genki was my one of my first textbooks, and I haven’t looked at it in about 13 years. I have a lot of nostalgia for it, so probably can’t give an unbiased opinion, due to the fond memories of first starting to study Japanese with it
What I can say is I enjoyed it at the time, a lot of universities used it (probably still do?), and it is considered one of the most popular physical textbooks.
I loved the interview and found it really great that part of it was in Japanese!
I didn’t know the podcast before, but I might check it out more regularly.
I like hearing about other learners’ stories and what they value in their studies and spend way too much time on reading up about that. But listening to that in Japanese seems like a good compromise ;)
Thanks!
He does the interview weekly with a Japanese learner (usually), and continues with this half English/half Japanese structure. So there are a lot of fun learner stories :)
I enjoyed the interview. You both sound so nice and like you were having a great time!