I also learned Japanese in a classroom in Japan. At the elementary level, some of the teachers used English to explain grammar and vocabulary, but from the inte

I also learned Japanese in a classroom in Japan. At the elementary level, some of the teachers used English to explain grammar and vocabulary, but from the intermediate level the classes were conducted entirely in Japanese. While some teachers and learners believe strongly in monolingual immersion as a matter of principle, at the school I attended in Tokyo there was a more practical reason for choosing that approach: most of the students were from other East Asian countries and did not understand English. Outside of class, though, I memorized vocabulary mostly using English translations from dictionaries rather than definitions in Japanese until I reached quite an advanced level. That was a mixed bag. On the one hand, it was easier for me to remember Japanese words when I associated them with a particular English word; on the other, the translation I memorized sometimes actually referred to something different from the Japanese word. It took a lot of exposure to real-life Japanese to unlearn some of those mistranslations. Some years ago, I wrote a paper about the use of Japanese-Japanese dictionaries by people learning the language: https://researchmap.jp/multidatabases/multidatabase_contents/detail/232973/865afc786acbcdb8f938fa60541dbc20?frame_id=621150 https://researchmap.jp/multidatabases/multidatabase_contents...