Before we look at the survival Japanese that we'll need for our first conversations, let's get psyched about taking lessons!

Taking a language lesson is scary. I think that it's especially intimidating for introverted people, which I talked about earlier in Phase #3. If you look at that section of the guide, there are some tips for making lessons seem less intimidating as a whole. Still, it's unlikely that you'll be able to eliminate your initial discomfort completely. That's OK. Who cares if you're uncomfortable?

Let's say that everything in this circle is in your comfort zone:

It's nice inside of your comfort zone. You feel safe, at home. There's nothing to worry about.

There's one huge problem with this, though: You cannot grow unless you get out of your comfort zone. Disruption is a catalyst for growth. The more you expose yourself to a certain type of discomfort, the more you will adapt to be OK with it.

So let's say you read this guide, and you've decided that you're going to take a Japanese lesson online. Nice! But there's only one problem: Taking an online lesson is way out of your comfort zone. You're not even comfortable having a face-to-face chat online, let alone in Japanese. Agh!

Stepping out of your comfort zone is scary. Luckily, you can just get out of it in small steps, powered by 20-second spurts of insane courage (an idea I got from Matt Damon's character in We Bought a Zoo, and talked about in this Huffington Post article).

Building up to a lesson using 20-second bursts of bravery. Each item only takes a few seconds, and all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage to do each one:

1. Hit the “Schedule a Lesson" button for your chosen teacher on italki or Cafetalk.
2. Open Skype at the designated lesson time.
3. Hit “Answer Call" when your teacher calls you. (You don't even need to answer with video, if you're feeling particularly shy or nervous. Sometimes my Japanese students of English do this, too, so they (the student) can see me, but I (the teacher) can't see them. Little do they know that I'm using a 20-second burst of insane courage myself when I hit the “Call" button to start their lesson.)

That's all you really need to do in order to take a lesson. You don't need this guide. You don't need to know or speak any Japanese. Yeah, I think that this conversation guide will be of great use to you, as well as the lesson preparation tips described in Phase #3. Ultimately, though, you already have all of the tools and preparation you need to start taking online lessons (assuming that you have a reliable, high-speed internet connection).

Once you start taking a few online lessons, you may find that your comfort zone's shape begins to change, and it will start looking like this:

Before you know it, meeting with your teacher won't feel uncomfortable at all. Maybe instead it'll feel closer to something like going to coffee with an old friend. Also, the experience of getting out of your comfort zone will make you better at getting out of your comfort zone in the future. For example, let's say you want to try a new teacher. That might still be a bit out of your comfort zone, but it will still be much easier than the original burst of courage that you needed for your first lesson:

In this way, learning a new language can improve not only your language skill, but also your social skills in general. I know that for me personally, teaching English (which is sort of the inverse of this) has helped me to expand my general comfort zone and improve my social skills immeasurably. It's one of the greatest things that I've gotten out of teaching.

So what are you waiting for? Build up a 20-second burst of insane courage and schedule your first Japanese lesson already.

There's this horrible loop that I have gotten stuck in more times than I count:

The worse I am at language, the more afraid I am of making mistakes in that language. And yet, the worse I am at a language the more I need to be making mistakes in that language.

So in January 2013 I moved to Tokyo.

It was my second time living in Japan, as a couple of years before that I had studied at a Japanese language school for six months in Shinjuku. The thing is, when I left that language school moved back to California, I quit studying Japanese.

Then, here I was: in Japan again. And I met up with some former classmates who had kept studying that whole time, and they were way better at Japanese than I was.

Honestly, I was embarrassed.

And so whenever I went out with them and our Japanese friends, I was hesitant to say anything, because I didn't want them to hear any of my mistakes. I was self-conscious every time I didn't understand something people were saying. I knew that I needed to be making more mistakes, but that's really intimidating when you're surrounded by people who are better than you.

The reason I bring up this story is because, looking back at it now, I had no reason to be embarrassed. I've had these talks again and again with my Japanese students when teaching English, and I always tell them the same thing. I tell them what I tell myself every time I'm afraid of looking stupid, making a mistake, any time I'm embarrassed that I'm not as good as the people around me, the same thing I wrote earlier in Phase #3:

(1) Think about how you feel when you're around somebody who's much better than you at something. Does it make you feel good? Probably not.

On the other hand, (2) think about how you feel when you're around somebody who's not as good as you at something. How does that make you feel? Proud of yourself? Confident? Happy?

Finally, (3) how do you want the people around you to feel? Most likely, you want to make them feel happy, proud of themselves, confident. And you can't do that by being perfect. So don't try to be perfect.

Being bad at something is an awesome opportunity to lift up the people around you, to make them feel awesome.

And you can ask them for help or advice and make them feel skilled and valuable. Stealing an idea from Benny the Irish polyglot, you can tell your Japanese friends that you'll buy them a drink if they correct your broken Japanese five times. You can give your Japanese girlfriend/boyfriend a kiss on the cheek every time she/he corrects you.

In stories, the best characters are flawed. But usually they have a good heart. I'd like to think that it's the same in life, too.

So let's speak some Japanese and look as stupid as possible, yeah? Let's laugh at ourselves and have a good time. To build a bit of confidence, a good place to start is in a controlled environment, such as a lesson with a teacher who will correct your errors… exactly what we're preparing for right now!

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Caveman Conversation Guide

スタート！

Ready or not, here we go. Let's get some basic Japanese in our brain that will get us through our first few attempts at speaking practice in a lesson or language exchange…