If you’re a new reader or have visited my site recently you would have noticed that I’ve updated (kinda) my Japanese Page. Along with some textbook reviews and such I included a primer on CMJS or Conquer My Japanese Surroundings. I want to expand a little on what that entails:

The concept behind CMJS is simple: Take what’s ‘foreign’ around you and learn it. Having studied Japanese for along time I know that there is a school of thought or mindset that you ‘learn’ Japanese basics first- then through magical osmosis that Cell Phone manual, Remote Control, or Junk Mail is ‘revealed.’ However, that was not the case for me when I lived there in ’06 and won’t be the case in ’09. This calls for action up front to learn all this first, then learn the rest in tiers.

Another notion about Japanese studies is that “it’s hard.” I understand whatever I’m saying can be made into a ‘that’s too difficult to setup’ statement. However I don’t buy into that. CMJS can be as easy as taking a photo of your remote, blowing it up big, putting into an SRS, and each time it comes up writing the meanings> readings> or what have you. If you don’t get it the first time- Fail-Up.

The ground work or foundation of CMJS is rooted in AJATT or All Japanese All the Time. The difference is that CMJS prioritizes it into tiers (immediate surroundings, local, regional, national, special). By prioritizing your sentences or vocab into these stages- what you learn becomes immediately relevant and usable. This is as opposed to taking classes about Japanese you don’t use because your friends/boss/town folk/etc speak something else.

The reason why CMJS and not JLPT is another thing all together. I believe JLPT is to us, as Shiken Hell is to Japanese High Schoolers. Somehow wired into our systems or in Japan’s systems is this idea that JLPT Proficiency automatically equals fluency and success. An example I once heard about was there was a friend of mine who entered Welding classes at the local college. He took class after class with his sights on getting a certification of some sort. After (what seemed like) a few years he passed all his classes and got that certificate. With paper in hand he went to go look for a job and what he told me was, every-time he’d go into somewhere they’d ask him to test weld a piece of steel. Based upon what he welded right there determined if he got the job or not. I found that fascinating and telling– While a certificate is impressive, and showing of hard work & study, ultimately it comes down to your ability.

My objective with CMJS is to communicate efficiently. It is in no way to substitute the JLPT, but rather to tackle the broader obstacle..

Whether it’s a success or not completely is up to me and if it works it may be help you too.

~J out

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