TV method switching channels

Here's big news from the TV method blog.

As you know, I have watched 549 hours of TV in Chinese. Lately I have been able to maintain a pace of 120+ viewing hours per month. Unfortunately, this has to change, starting now. I have to change focus from Chinese to Japanese and I won't likely break 100 hours per month.

Why the sudden switch?

I have to begin an employment acquisition campaign immediately. I found out 2 days ago that the company I am employed by is folding up. The company was founded eleven years ago and will cease to exist at the end of next month. Since I live in Japan and need an income, I had better boost my Japanese language ability in a hurry. The only way I know to do that is to start watching Japanese TV. I mentioned three weeks ago about my coworker who improved his Japanese speaking ability by watching TV. After I posted that, I asked him about it again. I asked him, "How long did it take?" He replied, "3 months."

What kind of improvement do I expect?

I don't know what to expect, but I hope that I will be able to speak Japanese more smoothly. I want to at least appear to be fluent because no Japanese company is going to hire a foreigner who is not fluent in Japanese during times like these. There are not as many job openings and those that are willing to hire foreigners have raised their standards. So I really need to get used to speaking Japanese. I haven't been speaking it much lately and I still get nervous when going into a situation where I'll be expected to speak Japanese.

So I'm saying I'm not good at Japanese now but I want to get good, like, yesterday. How will you know? I don't expect you to take my word for it, nor do I expect you to trust my self-evaluations, so I want to document it by video. Today I went out and finally bought a webcam. A webcam is one of those little video cameras that sits on top of your computer display and makes you feel self-conscious. What I intend to do with it is to record myself speaking Japanese and put the recordings on YouTube. Then whomsoever desires to judge for himself may do so.

So my TV method for Japanese is going to be like Ramses TV method for Spanish. I already have a high level of comprehension in Japanese. I passed the JLPT Level 2 in December 2006. Every time I look at Level 1, though, I go into shock because of all the vocabulary words it tests on. The majority of the words I do not ever remember seeing before. So I won't be doing only Japanese TV as a method. I'll be speaking as well, at least. Most of my speaking will probably just be for the camera.

To be continued...