Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 600, the 600th episode.

What can I say? I'm not much for creative names. Welcome to episode 600. As per usual, every 100 episodes,

we're going to do a little Q&A. This time I took questions from supporters on Patreon. I get too many otherwise, to be frank,

these days. And while I am not always the best about rewarding the people who very generously

give me a bit of extra money for not that much in return, this felt like a pretty obvious way

to go about it. So to my beloved patrons, I cannot say enough how much I appreciate you

all. It is amazing and also a little bit depressing to realize that because of you, I have

better access to resources for Japanese history in terms of secondary sources than I did

when I was actually in graduate school. You are all amazing. Thank you all from the

bottom of my heart. As a side note, one of the most common questions I get, both on Patreon and

other platforms, is about graduate school. What it's like, who should do it, that sort of thing.

I want to answer these, but I've been out of the game when it comes to academia for a little while now.

But fortunately, I am planning an episode with a listener and friend with more recent experience.

Together, we're going to do our best to talk you through things.

So if you sent me a question like that, just know that it is coming soon.

With no further ado, let's get into it.

From patron Sarah, how would you recommend learning Japanese?

Is there a better way than just brute forcing it through memorization?

So I get this question a lot, and I think it's a great question.

Japanese is a really fun language, and just generally I encourage anyone with interest in a foreign

language to learn it, I think it's a really cool way to broaden your horizons and develop new

ways to think about how we communicate. As for any shortcuts on learning, the short version is I

...