The Blind Ass said:

Esp, Eng, JP

One of the best decisions I ever made was to learn multiple languages.
Helps in life, it opens up new dimensions, allows you to make more friends and understand things differently and express the same things differently sometimes better...oh and it helps you make more money.

best jobs I have worked were gotten because of being multilingual .

living in a foreign country to learn the language via immersion helps immensely...because at that point you dont have a choice but to learn.

It helps with memory and you can date a broader range of women too. Living in mexico and japan and america and learning the deep culture beyond the stereotypes was a gift that I am glad to have all 3 countries have fantastic people, great times, perhaps the best in my life were when I was the foreigner and had to rely on people by communicating like a baby that could only speak with its hands, facial expressions, emotions, and a few words.

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The Blind Ass said:

I lived in jp  as a novice monk, which with its very strict lifestyle and very intricate formalities and repetition - like chanting sutras in eng/jp multiple times a day at certain times for specific things like before eating, while eating, after eating, before meditation, after meditation, etc etc was suprisingly extremely conducive to learning quickly), then lived with distant relatives and friends for some time after that.
People mostly taught me through interaction and trial and error, also at the monastery their was a teacher once a week and some of the monks spoke multiple languages - infact most spoke at least 2, a good many knew 3 and some knew 4 or even 5, I was very impressed and everyday we had an hour and a half of free time after lunch and everyone helped me out like I was a brother.  I can't read or write well at all, but speaking and listening is fine, besides all that a good trick is reading children's books with a translation dictionary or watching animation with easy to discern words and a slow-medium tempo of speech and dialogue with easy themes and plots etc - with subtitles, learning the alphabet is a must - just be careful when trying to learn to write...there are multiple very alien like alphabets if your first language is English tongue:

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