When it comes to improving your Japanese ability – even when the topic is challenging, I recommend something called “continuous muscle training for your Japanese brain”. Just like physical training, I believe you grow by consistently engaging with things that are slightly above your current level, and then talking and sharing your own thoughts about them. This is something I deeply felt through my own experience of learning English.

My English learning journey started quite late, and I was the type who improved slowly. In university, I had the chance to study abroad in the UK, but honestly, my English was just barely enough to meet the requirements. Even when I was there, I spent most of the time anxious about living overseas for the first time, and my skills didn’t improve as much as I expected.

After I started working, I decided to get revenge by continuing to study on my own for an English proficiency exam. But rather than studying alone, the thing I enjoyed most during that time was the free talk with my teacher at an English conversation school. Based on my interests, the teacher expanded on and suggested all kinds of news and topics. I still remember how, little by little, more and more things started coming from inside me, things I wanted to talk about.

Five years later, I stayed long-term in an English-speaking country again on a working holiday. The biggest change I felt was that I began meeting completely different types of people from those I had met during my study abroad. While studying abroad, I mostly talked with other international students or students who were interested in the Japanese language. But on my working holiday, I worked in customer service with customers who weren’t particularly interested in Japan, and I also met friends I could really talk deeply with.

Of course, depending on the topic, there were times I couldn’t understand anything at all. And because of accents and slang, there were moments I couldn’t even catch the simple name of a supermarket. Every day felt like I was using all kinds of different “drawers” in my mind.

I think the important thing was that I was always exposing myself to things a bit above my level. One year after returning from my working holiday, I casually took an English proficiency test, just as a kind of commemoration, and I was surprised at how much my ability had improved. This way of thinking really does feel like muscle training to me, and I believe this “language muscle training” helped me level up.

I feel the same in Japanese lessons. I like Sayas’s style of using a wide variety of topics that stimulate learners’ thinking. It’s exactly the kind of learning method I needed back then. As lessons keep going, learners’ challenges become clearer, and watching them gradually become able to have deeper conversations is genuinely fun for me as a teacher.

In my English learning journey, I was lucky to meet a great teacher after I started working, and it was also a huge help that I was able to live abroad and create an environment where I used English both at work and at home. But I know many people are busy with studying, work, housework, caregiving, and more. For those exact people, I believe conversation lessons have real value. Spending a full hour talking deeply about topics you are interested in, using real Japanese as Japanese people actually encounter as your textbook, and receiving professional feedback – continuing that kind of efficient, focused lesson even only once a week should lead to steady improvement over time.

Writing this article also made me reflect on how little time I’ve been spending on English lately. I’d like to restart my studies little by little. And together with all of you learning Japanese, I want to keep up this “language muscle training”, too.