I challenged myself to learn Japanese in 30 days

I was enjoying the pre-anxiety of being about to embark on the trip of a lifetime: I'd be going to Japan within the next month. I had already planned the trip itself down to every detail, so I had a thought:

Why don't I try to learn Japanese in a month?

And so I started my self-imposed challenge of learning a new language in 30 days. In order to keep myself accountable, I decided I'd share my journey on social media.

I'm a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker and fluent in English and French. While I'm not new to language learning, it took me years to learn each language. This time, I wanted to be able to communicate at least a little bit in Japanese during my trip.

Some ground rules

At first, I laid out a few ground rules:

1. I had to learn something every single day in the next 30 days
2. I'd post one video per day
3. I'd finish the challenge, even if my videos were crap not good enough

The learning process

To start out, I did what I always do and logged into Duolingo. That's how I've learned French and also dabbed into other romance languages like Spanish and Italian (yes, I might have a thing for learning languages).

However, I quickly realized that the app alone wouldn't get me to where I wanted to be in only 30 days.

So I asked ChatGPT to come up with a study plan for me. While it gave me some good ideas, it was honestly not feasible or realistic enough to learn what I wanted. Then, I decided to identify some of the main themes that I wanted to learn and figured I'd do some research from there.

I broke the main knowledge areas into:

• Directions/buying train tickets
• Communicating language barriers
• Ordering food
• Shopping
• Survival words and sentences (i.e. where's the restroom?)
• Numbers from 1-10

I didn't figure everything out right away. I ended up having to do a fair amount of research and compilation. At the end, I was very satisfied with the results and put it all into the Notes app on my phone.

There was a learning curve on my video-making skills too, which are still a work in progress but I'd consider significantly better than when I started out.

The verdict

I spent a couple of weeks in Japan, most of that time in Tokyo (and a daytrip to Kyoto). While a lot of people speak various levels of English, I did run into a couple of situations where my few Japanese words helped out a lot.

In general, people seemed positively surprised when I spoke some Japanese with them. I was very happy to be understood (I thought maybe my accent would be too far off!) and to have small exchanges in a completely different language.

The focus areas I laid out above were ideal for the situations I found myself on, and I'd consult the Notes app on my phone for a refresher when needed.

Of course there were many times that someone would go a little too quickly or deeply in Japanese, and at that point I'd ask if we could switch over to English.

Final thoughts & lessons learned

I've been asked why I decided to go through the trouble of learning some Japanese if everyone in Tokyo speaks English. I think you can totally get by without speaking Japanese when traveling to Tokyo, but I'd highly recommend getting a data plan to have Google Translate available on your phone for a few situations.

However, I find that learning another language shows respect and allows you to connect on a deeper level with locals. Even if your ability to communicate is limited, I think everyone appreciates the effort of trying to speak another language.

If you'd like to check out my journey and videos, you can find me on YouTube and Tiktok.