Albaby's Early Japanese Journey

Japanese
#1

I’ve seen a few threads where people give an ongoing account of their learning progress, so I thought I would give it a try. Especially since in a few months, I’ll face a challenge to my motivation - so maybe this will help keep me going!

I came to self-learning Japanese about eight months ago, when my wife and I started planning a trip to Japan with our two children. I wanted to learn some Japanese so that I wouldn’t be a complete American abroad, with the negative connotations associated with it. I didn’t expect to become as fascinated with the language as I did. Or that it would be as challenging as it was.

Those first few months ended up being more “learning how to learn” than expected, also. Or more, learning what works for me. I don’t use any of the tools I started with today. I began with DuoLingo, which I soon learned was pretty useless. I picked up a Genki I textbook and made actual physical flashcards for a bit - because I am “Unk,” as the teens say. Lots of googling led me to The Moe Way, which brought me to CureDolly and Tae Kim and the fundamental importance of immersion in addition to formal learning. Picked up Anki and tossed my physical flashcards. I used the Renshuu app for quite awhile, as well as RingoTan for kanji practice. I’ve dropped all of those.

Today, on days where I have a full amount of extra time to devote to Japanese, my learning is a mix of the following:

  • SRS tools (Bunpro for grammar and vocabulary, Anki deck for Kanji practice)
  • Audio immersion (Nihongo con Teppei/Japanese with Shun podcasts, mostly)
  • Video immersion (anime, natch! Shirokuma Cafe, Kimi No Todoke, YuruCamp, and Freiren right now)
  • Reading immersion and speak-aloud (graded readers, NHK Easy, and some AI generated scripts)

I’ve recently added in Pimsleur language courses at one a day. And I do an hour’s worth of Italki lessons with a Japanese teacher each week (shout out to Rie-Sensei!)

More output than I think many others would do this early in the process. But my goal is to be able to speak at least a little by the time we go to Japan in the summer. It’s been so difficult to get even to the level of “distracted toddler” speaking ability, but that’s part of my goal.

And that’s why I decided to start this thread. When I’m back in the states after our trip, I’d like to keep up my Japanese journey. I’ve invested a lot of time and it’s a very satisfying intellectual hobby. So hopefully, I’ll be able to keep motivated even after this trip is over. Maybe I’ll just need to start planning the return journey…

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#2

Okay, second entry. Studying continues apace, with a mix of Bunpro, Anki, some immersion, Pimsleur language audio (level 1 for now), and one hour per week of Italki sessions. The Pimsleur was a new addition, and I’m very much enjoying it.

I have been a little remiss in my reading immersion - I think because I don’t have a lot of material that is interesting or fun to read at my current level. I enjoy listening to my basic podcasts (Nihongo con Teppei and Japanese with Shun) because I’m able to catch most of the meaning, but reading is a slog. Tadoku readers at my level are very dull, and trying to read the NHK site or other more advanced text is sooooooooo painful. Not sure which is the better choice.

Finally, I took my first N5 practice test here on Bunpro. Pleased to report it was a passing grade:

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…but the listening portion completely destroyed me. There were only about 3-4 questions I really felt comfortable that I know the answer - the rest were a mix of guesses, which I think is reflected in my score. Clearly that’s where I need work. I don’t have any reason to actually take a JLPT exam, but my listening skills aren’t far enough along where I feel like I understand the details of these passages. I can pick out nouns, adjectives, and pick up the stems of the verbs - but without really being able to understand the adverbs and verb tenses in real time, I can only get the general topic of the sentence and not enough nuance to get the meaning. I feel my reading and grammar are there, but listening is way behind.

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#3

Third entry here - I guess I’ll be doing this kind of weekly, at least for a little while, to keep me on track.

About four months away from our Japan trip, eight months into learning. I’m trying to figure out the right balance for how to spend my limited Japanese time. I’m torn between learning new things and practicing what I know.

Learning new things, because I’m roughly halfway through N4 right now - and I can just feel myself beginning to approach that mid-N3 “sweet spot” where immersion starts to be more intuitively comprehensible. I’m already getting little hits of that now - moments when I’m listening to a podcast where I suddenly realize that I’ve completely understood the last sentence or two without translating in my head. It’s so good! Such a wonderful feeling! My understanding is that really starts to happen more when you’ve gotten your grammar and vocab to about that mid-N3 level. And I want more!

But I also want to practice what I already know, because - again - we’ll be in Japan in four months, and I’d like to be sharper in my recognition and output of the things I already have. For example, I already have the vocab/grammar to ask someone for directions to the train platform or how long the tour is going to last - at least, in theory. But I can’t really have that conversation yet. I can’t do the output, and I couldn’t understand someone giving me answers in native-speed Japanese.

To that end, I’m shading away from my SRS time (Bunpro and Anki) and my pure reading immersion, and trying to shift more towards listening/speaking. I’ll still do some reading, but reading aloud to at least work that into practicing speech. I haven’t quite had the time to fit in a virtual meetup, but that’s definitely on the agenda for the next few weeks.

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