How Tokyo Vice Actor Learned Japanese FAST
🇯🇵 Japanese is a tough language to master, but this Tokyo Vice actor went from zero to fluent in just a few months! What is his method? In today’s video, we take a closer look at his insane language skills. And if you’re up for a language challenge, now’s the best time to purchase our Gold or Platinum StoryLearning bundles. 👉🏼bit.ly/2024bundle_discount
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - An offer for $500,000
0:42 - Challenge Accepted
4:20 - Study Routine
5:57 - Shutting Down
8:50 - Immersion and Support
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
• Tokyo Vice - Jake meet...
• ‘Tokyo Vice’ creator J...
• YES MAN - Jim Carrey s...
• Only In Mandarin - Fre...
• Only In Mandarin - Fre...
• Tokyo Vice | Getting I...
• Ansel Elgort Dives int...
• How Ansel Elgort Learn...
• Tom Hiddleston Found H...
• 【流暢な日本語披露】アンセル・エルゴートが語...
• Tokyo Vice’s Ansel Elg...
• Jennifer Garner talks ...
• Jennifer Garner Reveal...
• Tokyo Vice | Getting I...
• « Cœur » or « corps »?...
• Bradley Cooper French ...
• 【トークノーカット】アンセル・エルゴート、渡...
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hes good for sure hes not that good as you guys are pumping him up
Getting in top shape for a role is impressive but learning a language is another level of commitment.
He didn't really learn Japanese, long way to go.
For that kind of money, and given that then is your ONLY job, I'll take that deal any day of the week. I struggle to balance a day job with desperate attempts at learning Japanese, and if those 40 hours a week were taken away for half a year, I have no doubt I'd be running circles around my current level, backwards. It's also, since you address it, why I am WAY more impressed with a regular guy (or girl) getting into killer shape while holding a regular job than with, say, Daniel Craig going to THE best PT in the business and pretty much telling him "this is how I want to look in 9 months, and I have all day during that period". Mind you, hats off to both of them, but still, in their case it's not something they are doing on top of their job - it IS their job.
He has one of the highest motivations to do so. His very livelihood depends on it for the acceptable level on what he is suppose to accomplish. Although he won't likely reach a high level in the language, that is not the goal of the director. He will improve as long as the series continues.
The show is cool because it jumps from English to Japanese all through the episodes. It flows really well in the show.
The actor's Japanese is awful though. At least in the first scene being shown here
@@RiccardoGabarriniKazeatari I would go nowhere near saying he's awful. Ansel's individual sounds may still sound similar to how he speaks English (pronouncing じょう like "Joe," a common mistake with English speakers), he has the idea of the rhythm and intonation of the language, which sells it so much more to me because that's one of the main things that actors can't just copy. They have to study the language and be able to pick up on the inflections and breaths people take to sound fluent. Also, his ぜひ at the end was almost perfect.
It's really obvious how much better and more comfortable of a Japanese speaker he is in the 2nd season even to me, an English only speaker.
His pronunciation was a bit poor to believe he was fluent in the first season. He did more than the others anyway and I was impressed that there were a lot of Japanese lines in the show. Actors have high self-esteem, are not shy and are communicative. This speeds up the learning process incredibly.
hes good dont get me wrong but notice how he says i had to learn all the hiragana, which he doesnt even mention the real hard part which anyone who knows knows
@@user-de1dj9hd7e if you're referring to kanji, it seems like at 4:20, you get a look at what might be Ansel's notebook, which does have it. Not sure if it's actually his or just a prop shot for the video.
@@alexlei2235 right but if he realy knew or knows what is hard he would have said something else which he didnt
@@user-de1dj9hd7e isn't that a personal thing lol?
by the second season his pronunciation sounds much more natural, that hard work was very noticeable
It's still pretty fucking impressive how fast he learned Japanese, a language that's very hard to learn for the average (non-Japanese) person. And he really does speak it (as in understands it), he is not just simply memorizing his lines. Check out this clip where he's on a Japenese type of comic con and the reporters ask him all kinds of questions in Japanese followed by him answering in Japanese.
if he was working on it that hard it wasnt that good but yes it was understandable with what he said
I don't see the clip?
I study Japanese about 4 hours a day as well, and I feel like I make a lot of progress. I usually study vocab and grammar for 2 hours a day, and practice my listening and/or reading for another 2 hours a day. I have to keep it regimented as I'm still in college full time getting my computer science degree so I'm a busy bee studying human language and programming languages.
Very impressive!
Wow, I’m also studying for a degree in comp sci and learning japanese on the side. With everything else on top it’s really hard to find the time even though I love it😢 In summer I’m going to grind 5h+ a day, though, which is gonna be so fun🤩
haha, CS and learning Japanese here too!
As a person who is in the very basic stages of learning Japanese this is actually motivational for me😮.
He didn't really learn Japanese, long way to go.
@@sethaldrich6902 Did he told you?
When actors dedicate this much to learning a skill for a show, you know it will be a good one. I remember watching the very first trailer and reading comments from japenese people saying he is really good, a next lever immersion.
I became completely fluent in French during COVID and now live in France and only speak in French all day, with an accent so good the French often think I'm French. Voila quoi.
Awesome!
How? I've lived in France 20 years and still sound English 😂
Sure you do.
from listening and copying I assume@@jacquelinebye6484
@@jacquelinebye6484 Shadowing for hours per day. We speak very little per day even in our own languages. So just a few hours of continuous shadowing podcasts, audio/videos etc. per day and you can catch up on your pronunciation. But you have to intentionally try to copy the pronunciations, not just repeat the words.
I just started your Chinese Story learning course. I’m enjoying it. I’ve been working on learning for a few years. I’ve learned a lot but was totally stuck on not comprehending what people were saying to me. I’ve got great hope now, that I’ll get through that barrier. Videos like this, showing someone who succeeded in language learning are very inspiring.
Absolutely love the StoryLearning method. Been going through the Japanese beginner course and now have the intermediate courses as well. It's so much better than any other method I have tried and it makes sense! Make more progress on my Japanese in 6 months than I ever have before. 100% recommend to everyone who wants to learn a language
Thanks for bringing it to our attention that season 2 dropped, Olly! It’s fascinating to learn what went on behind the scenes for Ansel to prepare for the role as it’s something I’ve wondered about. Nobody makes content like yours… keep it up!
Dropped… it’s almost over
What a finale, amazing show.
I lived in Tokyo for three years and was just becoming conversational in Japanese by time I left. I was able to read a couple hundred Kanji and memorized katakana and hiragana. It was fun learning the language. It was a challenge. Every day I was better able to communicate. I admire how committed Ansel has been in learning Japanese.
Couple hundred Kanji isn't close to conversational
Conversational means speaking. Vocabulary. Kanji means reading. There’s a difference. I can hold a conversation, even if my knowledge of Kanji was limited.
"I wonder where he got his inspiration" ... well, helloooo, $500K per episode? I would learn 2 of the hardest language for that amount per episode
Exactly, besides motivation, learning some of these languages becomes really accessible with money. As somebody who loves Japanese I know plenty expensive courses where you only speak or write targeting teenagers fluency in a year or two, with money I would book my no return trip to Japan and subscribe immediately to these courses lol
@@oumarroukia254link those courses rq
Just for fun I began to learn Japanese. Now I’m fascinated of the completely different grammar and writing concept.
Japanese is easy to pronounce relative to other languages for English speakers. Chinese would be more difficult. It’s the other elements of Japanese like the written alphabets and the grammatical structure which make Japanese difficult for English speakers.
They are both very difficult!
@@storylearninghe has a very good accent and intonation. Impressive! But I wonder whether he learned to read and write kanji, as well as kana (which is pretty easy)? I had about 3 years of college Japanese, plus I worked in Japan for a couple of years and married into a Japanese family. I found it really easy to pronounce, and I wondered whether that was because the sounds were so similar to Spanish, which I had studied for a couple of years in school. But kanji was my downfall! (I was so envious of friends who seemed to learn kanji easily.) So I went back to Spanish and made inroads on Portuguese after Covid hit. It’s really difficult to get beyond an intermediate level without at least being able to read news stories and such.
@@roxyiconoclastI doubt he can read Japanese above an elementary level if most of his time was spent focusing on spoken Japanese specifically. Even really other proficient learners still take over 2 years of constant study to be able to read fluently.
@@coolbrotherf127agree
@@coolbrotherf127I wouldn’t necessarily doubt it. The ability to read a language will generally come faster than the ability to speak a language, or rather to converse in it, and the ability to write it. Of course we’re talking about a secondary language and not one’s native language where the reverse is more often the case since you know . . . Immersion; but provided you learn a secondary language in school, or are self taught, reading is going to be your foundation for study.
so i just need a life changing amount of money and a lot of free time?
No, you just need to use the time u have wisely. Find the material that suits you best and stick to it. Whatever time you can afford is good enough as long as you stick to it, you'll be fine.
You can use the time that you whine on KZhead 😂
During COVID I managed to go from being completely helpless in Korean to being conversational by the time restrictions got lifted
This video is very inspiring
Wait up!!! 😅 Let me 1'st to learn Deutschland, français, and a little bit Indonesian as well hahaha... Then going with Chinese, japanese und Greek 😂❤ I'm enjoying this video pretty much. Thanks 🙏🏼
This was exactly how I learned Japanese. Most language books are based on grammar, which is much easier and less important than people realise. What you need is vocabulary and sentence structures, so I just asked people how to say various phrases, and extrapolated the meanings, e.g like he says here, if you learn "Is it alright if I smoke?" you know how to say "Is it alright if I .....?" and just substitute in the word you need in the situation.
I learnt Japanese🎉. But it was a long process. Years of listening practice from anime, & studying it at university only got me to basic point. However after living in Japan for the last 5 years, has me pretty fluent with an understanding of several hundred kanji, & kana. I now even think in Japanese sometimes
Fascinating story - very impressive 🤓
Glad you enjoyed it!
A common theme i see among westerners who are conversationally fluent in Japanese is that they spent a considerable time in Japan and learning Japanese is essential their full time job.
Great video!
Glad you liked it!
I started learning Hungarian during lockdown via zoom lessons with a teacher. Really enjoyed it but found it hard to remember things or concentrate which at first I assumed was my age but turned out I had severe Long Covid. I had to drop out eventually. I have Hungarian ancestry so if I learn Hungarian, I could apply for citizenship if I wanted. I'm still not sure if I'm ready to go back to language learning or not.
Being around Japanese people and trying to speak to them was probably the biggest push for him. As someone who's family moved to Germany when I was 10, I can tell you, you never learn a language faster than when you are immersed in it and depend on learning it to communicate with mostly anyone.
I bought your spanish, french, portuguese, german and russian stories. guess I'm learning 4 more languages than just portuguese 😂😂
I’ve really been interested in learning Italian as I work for an Italian company and many of my coworkers in my office are Italian. Question regarding your courses: the gold and platinum bundles look like such amazing values, but is there a way to do payment plans or would you have to bite the bullet on the the one time payment? Not many of have that kind of disposable income, especially in places like NYC where rent and the insane cost of living really limit our finances.
Tokyo vice is one of those shows that transitions really well between English and Japanese
I find the standards also work backward. As a Thai-Chinese native, it was much easier to learn Japanese than to learn French, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German to me. (I have a degree in Western language interpretation, btw, not that I love any self-torturing challenges.) 😅😊😂
Hat's off to Ansel! And great video, Olly!
I'm learning Portuguese with your Portuguese uncovered courses because my son's girlfriend is Brazilian. I can recommend story learning as a method of learning. I love it.
So glad you love it!
During Covid I leaned into learning Mandarin, and the following year wrote, recorded, and released my first album of original songs with Chinese lyrics. Feedback welcomed! Thanks to you Olly for all you do. I have your books in multiple languages 🤘
Would you release a short stories book in Esperanto, please?
Congratulations to Ansel for working hard to pick up the language and immerse himself. I believe one needs to understand your native language and grammar terminology to understand the textbook explanations, i.e. transitive and intransitive verbs, conjugating a verb, etc. Then one is not "stuck" when trying to understand the English explanation of a foreign language. Reading and writing Japanese can be quite difficult.
Just saying at 1min 20sec approx you missed an opportunity to add Joey speaking French from Friends. Great video again!
I've seen him speak on some japanese Tv show, he is truely impressive.
Moved to Okinawa to learn Japanese. Making good progress.
My Japanese hasn't improved since taking the JLPT years ago. However i use it most days to chat with friends. They have gotten used to my broken Japanese so that's good enough.
I have never understood why Japanese (well, Kana and spoken Japanese) is considered so difficult. It's got an efficient and understandable structure.
Japanese is only level 5 if you are learning to read and write Japanese, which is extremely difficult. As far as just learning to speak it fluently, it's fairly easy as far as pronunciation and grammar.
I was working on base in Sasebo, Japan,but was not really picking it up. I got married in the fall of 2019, and started living in the Japanese culture. COVID allowed me time to study. Last year I started using Duolingo to push more vocabulary and lean kana. Now I’m getting into verb conjugation and Kanji. I’m still translating as I go, but I’m starting to think more in Japanese and not have to translate every time.
I've been wanting to try and watch this show. Now seeing his progress from S1 to the next might be my motivator to actually watch. But for those that do watch Tokyo Vice, is it a show you'd recommend?
Yes absolutely. Just finished season 2, incredible show and finale.
Hey, my wife and I were in Japan in March/April of 2020!
I have been living in Japan since 2017 but I had been studying for over 10 years on and off. During Covid I had a baby so I had no capacity to learn language skills other than if it pertained to babies. I want to study again for JLPT so I can change jobs here.
Great 😮😳
Never heard of this show. But I'm a Japanese language learner and I watched Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars and Baby Driver. And so, I'm gonna watch this show to be challenged and inspired.
Ronan O'Gara, La Rochelle's rugby coach, inspires me to not be afraid of speaking a language. He speaks french with the thickest Munster Irish accent ever. Its kinda hilarious
He learned fast cause he's an actor and the show made sure he had the best private teachers
yeah...ansel makes me feel pretty bad. my mandarin classes were shut down and i basically haven't done anything since...is guilt enough motivation?
I discovered my love for Filipino/Tagalog language during the pandemic I have been listening to thw language for yeara but lockdowns put me in that learn it mode
Wasn’t aware of this show, now I’m curious.
Take a look at the work of actor Ken Duken. He speaks German, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Norwegian.
So what are the tips from this video? Please help
During Covid, I started learning Russian. The primary way I learned Russian, was watching Martial Art and Cooking Videos in Russian on KZhead. I did it that way, because I was already familiar with the vocabulary of Martial Arts and Cooking. So, I learned through context. 😊 Now, I watch Russian movies on Netflix and video podcasts on KZhead. :)
Would love to see you do a video on how soccer players learn languages fast idk if you have already but that would be fun
Football and rugby players
I’m learning German (with Story Learning, and a native German tutor who can help me with my pronunciation). True story: I chose German over several other languages that I have dabbled in because the German word for cat is a grammatically feminine noun, and I have a female cat. Odd reason, but I have fallen in love with the language. I am determined to become fluent.
What is crazy about German, is WHO decides whether a German noun is masculine or feminine? WHY is the moon, DER Mond and the sun, DIE Sonne? The moon is traditionally feminine, and the Sun is traditionally masculine, in most cultures. And as a language, German pronounciation is quite precise, yet it contains a word, that is pronounced differently than it is written. Do you know the word for "look" in German is "gucken", but is pronounced, "kucken"? And lastly, native english speakers have a difficult time with the numbers, because they are backwards, i.E.: one and twenty is einundzwanzig.
@@erntefreudeWell it's not the moon that's masculine, it's the word "Mond" that's masculine, so it has nothing to do with culture. That's also why "Mädchen" is "das" and not "die" - it's a diminutive, so the grammatical gender is neuter not feminine even though the word translates to "girl". Technically there are rules to figure out the grammatical gender of a word, it's just that they're so complicated and contain so many exceptions, that learning them makes no sense (unless you're into linguistics and want to learn about the language instead of learning the language). It's easier to just learn the correct article in context together with the word.
Lucky you. I’m learning German only through Busuu and Duolingo, but so far so good. I wish I have a native German tutor. Don’t have the money for it though, but I have fallen in love with learning it. I’m used to learning the feminine and masculine nouns because apart from English, Spanish is also my native language as well
@@erntefreudeI would just accept the way a language is and accept the rules it has unless you want to dive deep into linguistics
As native Polish in my 20-ish years I've learned how to speak fluent Arabic in less than 5 years. Ever since I was watching Anime (it's been over 20 years) I managed to picked up some here and there. With some YT videos managed to learn the basics. Oh, and I also should mention I did learn English and managed to do interpretation from Arabic to English/Polish on-go. Most of my language skills I managed to obtain on my own. I'm looking into Spanish now, loved it after watching Narcos and Queen of the South.
Where can I watch this wonderful show? I was a huge Michael Mann fan but have concentrated on other things.
HBO MAX
One thing i loved about the Tokyo Vice show was that the Japanese actors spoke English with a thick Japanese accent
Except Jason 😊
When people don't have to worry about money, they can definitely achieve everything! They just stop doing everything in their lives, to focus on the 1 activity that pays their lifestyle!
I was an extra in a movie with Jackie Chan and yes- he was given his lines by a coach and he repeated it till they call “action”. So the gap between him hearing the lines and saying them was very close!
As someone who is studying Japanese it is a lot. However, if you make the time and have a genuine "why?" like they say you can learn a language faster. I still have not had my "click day" as it were. It is harder when you do not have the vast resources at your disposal. However, there is a vast wealth of knowledge right here on KZhead. There are no to low cost methods if you look. I see all the salty jealousy in the comments. Yes $500,000 per episode would be a life changing why. Being an already successful actor gives extra resources that most do not have. However, if you have a reason and the will to do something, you make ways not excuses for why not. I did not find this video to be helpful extra motivation. I do still appreciate the sharing of prominent success stories in language learning. Thank you for your hard work.
IMHO the reason Japanese is considered hard is because there are so many disciplines that require a bare minimum amount of study to get good at them. There isn’t a shortcut. It sounds to me like he is conversational at the very least which is a great achievement. However, I wonder to what level he was able to get his reading ability for example. Japanese is one of those languages that makes you realize the deeper in you are how much you still don’t know. Grats to this young man for taking up the challenge and not backing down from the gut punches this language throws at you every step of the way.
I’m currently stationed in Sasebo Japan 🇯🇵 and I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to be that fluent in Japanese.
I started learning languages after covid
Olie, you should be an actor!!!
I've been learning English for 12 years now and still learning, I have the enough level to communicate to others kid of B2 level, I don't know how to get that level in French and Chinese, I dream with the day when I can speak French, Chinese, Japanese and Italian 🙏
"zero to fluent in just a few months" is a bit of an overstatement, no? "he found his why" ... yeah 500k and a job that must be done or else his boss (Mann) tosses him out. Mann's a tough boss.
I don't think he meets any definition of fluent.
@@rsmith02 not according to this video 😂
Exactly. I work so much I can’t even consistently put in an hour a day on the weekday. When they pay you to learn and you have time to attend a 9 hour language class everyday, you can become fluently quickly
People who've never mastered a second language like to throw around the word "fluent" like they know what it means. I really doubt the actor got fluent in 8 months.
Please please make one Video about how can I learn Korean and English with storylearning website. And how to log in and how can I do 7days course. Please make one video about it And I want to learn Korean and English please reply 😢😢😢😢
You can check out our blog for more Korean resources. storylearning.com/learn/korean/korean-tips/ Here's our Korean video playlist: kzhead.info/channel/PLQJscr8iS4eErbbqhGta-C5C8KbI8XFBr.html&si=IMElc8E6Ya_fYCcI
$500k per episode! 😮
I looove Tokyo Vice wow
パンデミックの間に私が日本語の勉強始まった。今頃日本に住んでいます。
How did Tony Revolori get fluent in Hindi for his role in the 2015 Hindi language film "Umrika"?
Japanese,Chinese, and Korean are all the most difficult to write/read and speak because they are the top three languages furthest removed from english. They have not spread to here much, Vietnamese is also quite hard, and all of them share a lot in common but not with english or many germanic languages. Spanish and French are the top easiest languages for most English speakers because they share the most in common with each other, everyone is different so that about summarizes it. |Writing System ✍🏻 Speaking System🗣️ Reading Orientation📖 Grammer Structure Pronunciation and Silent and Sounded Out Vowels, Intonation Time, Effort, and Energy| Don't forget every other subject included in the above as having to be learned/studied in great detail to be as fluent as physically possible.
Korean’s upper hand is the writing system is very easy to adapt to. As it’s alphabet based. Chinese is its very simplistic grammar structure Japanese is its easy to pronounce syllables. But most other things of each language is very difficult for English speakers.
@@JeraldEvans Indeed!
Funny enough, I only picked up the courage to start learning japanese during the pandemic because I had a lot of time I didn't just want to spend it gaming. and I've been on that grind ever since..
sTILL NOT FLUENT, BUT i HAD BEGUN PRACTICE THESE 6 LANGUAGES TRYING TO USE AND IMPROVE THEM EVER SINCE, USING AN ASSIMILATIVE APPROACH
I think Rachel's Nihongo is particularly well spoken.
Oh he plays b-ball at Yoyogi Park! I might start hanging out by the courts there.
Fyi the languages on level 5 are there bec of their writing system
Come on Olly. When will you release some stories in modern Greek? Βιάσου παρακαλώ.
I studied Chinese in college and it was way easier than Spanish. No conjugations... what a relief!
HE LEARNT DIALOGUES in Japanese for the movie rather than the language itself to communicate.
keller was pretty good too
must be excellent if one has na opportunity to travel to Japan and have that experience freely without visas and such things ... just you buy a ticket and fly there.
500k per episode x 20. Worth it
Weird... isn't Romanian a latin language? I don’t know much about it as it's to isolated of a language for me to care, but I remember checking it out and seeing lots of latin grammar Italian didn't even have....
Jim Carrey one is funny ash 😂😂
Covid is what reinvigorated my language learning. It was in covid that I started playing VRChat, met an Israeli in there, and successfully revived my Hebrew. The fun of reviving Hebrew compelled me to study Spanish, which went great. I've now been studying Arabic and German which is going fairly well.
Step One; Be a rich actor and have every opportunity at your disposal.
Or Step one buy a textbook and open a KZhead account grab your bollocks and start learning. Put the effort in and regardless of how much money you have you will be able to speak the language.
The FSI language rank has got to be updated this is not good information. Think of all the people that are deterred from trying to learn Russian Turkish or Tagalog because it has the languages ranked in class 4 when actually class 2 is what it probably really is.
It's weird that level 2 is only German, doesn't make sense to me.
So does that mean he talks to the voice lord?
He's paid to learn Japanese. Very, very, very well. That's it.
I took two month of japanese classes before go to Tokyo,,, and all I could say was " chotto matte kudasai".
I don’t know how Hebrew can be level 4 and Japanese is level 5. I am learning them both, and Hebrew seems a lot more difficult.
500 k 💵💵💲💲💲💰💰💰💰💲💲 Is a VERY VERY GOOD INCENTIVE I'D LEARN 3 Languages
Oh you should see JESSEOGN's What people wear in Tokyo Harajuku video. Ansel hits the ball with his Japanese here
If anyone wants to verify the theory that giving someone half a million dollars (per episode!) is a good motivation to learn Japanese fast, I'd gladly take that challenge 😛 (so far the only thing I managed was a few greetings and how to read individual hiragana 😂)