Unlocking Japanese FLUENCY: @mattvsjapan's Insights and Experiences in JAPAN

While on holiday in Osaka, I met up with Matt to quiz him about Japanese. In this 1-hour interview, we dive into Matt's journey with learning Japanese. Matt is a well-known language enthusiast known for his mastery of Japanese and his unconventional approach to language learning. In this conversation, we cover his experiences in Japan, his language learning method, and we even answer subscriber questions. If you are looking for an inspiring interview, you have come to the right place ;).

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► References

Matt's channel
@mattvsjapan

Matt's video on Pitch Accent

My video on chatGPT
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[mattvsjapan]

It was awesome to meet you Kevin! Thanks for asking such great questions!! Also, it's hilarious to see the people in the background 😂

[ntrg]

I mostly took matts advice the last 3 years to learn japanese, now im doing korean and damn, I forgot what it was like to be a beginner, in my early days in japanese I had to get the motivation to actually do it every day, but when I got okay enough to immerse, the flood gates opened. Immersion really is king but being a beginner really sucks lol

[humanbean]

I consider myself so lucky to have been told pitch accent was important from matt (and dogen) when i was a beginner. I have a musical ear and I noticed it when I first watched anime, but I didn't know it was important. Without doing intense pitch accent study, just knowing it's important alone is super beneficial. I'll always be thankful for Matt for showing me sentence mining and pitch accent right from the beginning.
I've come so far in 2 years, even with lazy study habits and an old person's brain. Sentence mining is so crucial. Pitch accent too in my opinion. At least learn the pitch accent difference between rain and candy in Japanese as a start just to see how it sounds to you. find that sound difference cause it will be in thousands of words and sound the exact same, and after focusing on it, it will sound as clear as two different words.
Thanks Matt. Also thanks Kevin too. I watched some of your videos a long time ago for motivation. It's been a while but I think I watched you sing too and it was really good.

Also, it was funny seeing Matt on Suspendas stream, especially because I was not expecting it at all lol.

[paulwalther]

I've missed hearing Matt talk about language learning. Great interview. I love how one of his initial struggles speaking Japanese was that he had to dumb down his vocabulary because he was too many big words and it sounded weird. Not a problem I've EVER had speaking Japanese in any situation.

[fwfailed]

Awesome interview. Both of you were enjoyable to just sit down and listen to!

[BriynginJapan-cqjl]

What a super smart guy Matt is, love the way he explains his thought process. Great interview.

[mikeyarnold]

Miss seeing @mattvsjapan on YouTube! Great video! 🎉

[GrandAdmiralZen]

You're a damn good interviewer this was great, even having watched a lot of interviews with Matt I got a lot of value out of this

[exponentzero]

Well I watched the whole conversation over a couple of days, and I'm very impressed with the quality of the audio and video for an outdoor setting, the editing, and most importantly with the the discussion. Kevin, this was very professionally done. Kudos to you for managing it while abroad. Whatever one's take is on Matt, (and to be frank we know opinion can be polarized), my impression is the "real person" Matt is a thoughtful, analytical guy. Over the years he offered a lot of practical language learning advice on his YT channel. He's a very intelligent, perceptive person, and I'm sure we will continue to benefit from his language experiences for years to come.

[little_engine_goes_to_Thailand]

As a total beginner arriving in your target country- you will learn very little. And you probably will feel overwhelmed. Do a solid 2 years and note that even after 2 years - you still may feel frustrated and only learn tidbits from the interactions in 7/11 and coffee shops. Thanks guys for the very good content- much appreciated

[chadbailey]

Great interview. I’ve seen plenty of Matt’s interviews and this one had some interesting things I hadn’t heard him mention before. Thanks for sharing!

[glennkelly]

47:10 I learnt French and dabbled in German before Czech. It then hit me how hard acquiring vocab is when so few words are the same.

[TheFiestyhick]

Excellent interview and good questions

[AleksandarRadlovacki]

Great vid, wanted to see a bit of what his day to day life looks like though (eg. is he working on refold, planning a youtube comeback etc.)

[andybliss]

I saw you yesterday and you just replied to my comment. Great to see you with my other favourite linguist. Two people who achieved their level not during childhood but shere hard work in adulthood

[private-russsinclairsproj]

Wonderful interview. I learned so much and it's great to "get to know you" both. Thank you.

[johnforde]

When I first went to Japan, I enrolled in the YMCA for Japanese tuition. It was totally in Japanese, (many students didn't even know English), but the best way to learn.

[FellowHuman]

44:43 The conversation for a couple minutes here was really important.

[Eternal_Foreigner]

I enjoyed listening to your discussion.
I think Matt is really really lucky that he discovered that resource so early that told him how to use immersion and input. I only discovered recently how crucial this is.

[exponentzero]

Thank you for being open to doing vids on your holiday! I think your audience will really respond favourably to this. Btw, aren't you still suffering from jet lag? I thought you were just in France the other day.