Japanese in a Semi-Casual Way

Japanese
#1

Hi Bunnypros :wave:

I go by Synerin and I’ve been studying Japanese since October, so about 8 months now. When I say it out loud, it doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but I’ve had a really fun journey so far! When I was younger, I tried to learn Japanese a handful of times, but I never persevered past hiragana and katakana. I didn’t necessarily want to learn Japanese; I wanted to know Japanese. But these last 8 months of learning have been so rewarding!

Two months into studying, I took a vacation in Hawaii for a week. I didn’t realize that it’s such a popular destination for Japanese tourists, but I saw katakana everywhere! It was so cool to be able to use the little Japanese I knew in a practical way! Usually the signs were also in English, but I’ll take it you know :star:.

I think the biggest thing that has helped me in my studies so far is taking an actual Japanese class through a local school’s program. Each class meets online for 2 1/2 hours once a week for 10 weeks, usually covering about 2 chapters of Genki. I know it doesn’t sound like much for that amount of time, but I find that it helps keep me consistent and lets me practice my speaking in a more comfortable environment. My teacher is also a native speaker, so it’s nice to be able to ask questions about the nuance of a word or the culture of Japan.

Besides the class, I’ve been going through the Kaishi 1.5k deck on Anki and using Bunpro of course! I started off with 5 new Anki cards a day, since 10 seemed like too much, and these days I do 7. I also watch videos on different grammar points or just to practice listening, though I should do that more often than I am :upside_down_face:.

I hope to take the N5 in December, and from there I’ve been thinking that I might like to go to a language school in Japan. I suppose I could try to get a job with an international company based in Japan instead, and continue learning Japanese outside of work, but that doesn’t sound as fun truth be told. Admittedly I am very indecisive and get nervous about big decisions like this :pleading_face:.

I’m wondering what other people are doing in their (more or less) semi-casual journeys with Japanese? Are you interested in going to a language school, or do you want to work in Japan? Have you made any small changes that had a bigger impact than you expected? This one is pretty small, but for me I switched from Hint level 2 on Bunpro to Hint level 1. It makes me think a lot more about the sentence and how it’s structured instead of just thinking “okay this means ‘Is this your room?’ great cool makes sense.”

thamks c:

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#2

I’m a bit less casual these days as I’m planning on taking the JLPT in December, but I have been studying on and off (mostly off) for 16 years. Based on my experience, I can say that I regret neglecting listening practice for most of that time, and for the brief time I lived in Japan, I regret doing more book studying than trying to communicate with the locals in Japanese (as I’m quite shy, even in my native language).

Really the most important thing, I believe, and a thing I’ve repeatedly failed at, is doing things at a pace that you’ll be able to maintain for the (very) long term. It seems like you’re doing well at this, so keep up the good work. It doesn’t matter how fast you cram new material if that leads to you dropping the studying altogether later on lol.

To answer your questions at the end, my plan is to go to graduate school in Japan in the next couple years, and depending on how I like living there in that time, possibly apply for work there. The change that’s made the biggest impact on my studies is immersion. Up until I took N2, I pretty much just did Anki, lots of flashcards and lots of words I knew, but very little ability to actually use Japanese. It was enough to pass N2 (along with the help of Shin Kanzen Master, highly recommended for JLPT purposes), but it’s very demoralizing to be able to read most things you see but not be able to make small talk. I regret not spending more time engaging with native content, even if I don’t understand much and it’s boring as a result, and also just not practicing any output. I know the in-vogue methodology on YouTube or whatever is to not do output until your input is perfect but I just don’t think that’s a reasonable approach for most people to take, and I also think some of the people preaching that aren’t upfront about their background in learning the language.

Edit: I forgot to mention that one mistake I’ve made repeatedly and I’ll (hopefully) never make again is that even if I’m “done” learning something, I’m going to keep doing my SRS reviews without adding new cards. It’ll eventually dwindle down to taking a few seconds a day, and also be the difference between me retaining my progress or having to almost start over with a lot of the brute force memorization if I do pick it up again.

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#3

woah 16 years! It can definitely be nerve-wracking to talk to strangers, especially in another language. I’m working on doing that more in English too.

Consistency is super important! I had my Bunpro Learn queue set to 10 before, but I found that I would often go days without doing any. I lowered that number to 2 (will increase eventually) and now I’m doing it more often than not.

I agree that practicing output even early on is the way to go. For me, it really helps solidify that muscle memory needed to stop translating things back and forth.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

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#4

Long story short, I’ve been at it since June 2017. I passed N4 in December 2019, but haven’t sat N3 yet. My studying time since then has been about 1/3 learning new things, 1/3 not studying to deal with personal issues, and 1/3 playing catch-up.

I’ve gradually made it through Genki and Tobira, and N5 - N3 grammar in Bunpro, and I took lessons for a few years Saturday mornings at a language school here in Toronto for the speaking practice. (Very helpful!)

I have no intention of ever moving to Japan, and I don’t need Japanese for work, so there’s no rush.

With a toddler in the house I won’t be able to take classes again for a while, but maybe once I get caught up again, I’ll start aiming towards finally writing N3.

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#5

I also started my Japanese learning journey in October 2024! My wife and I had just returned from a vacation to Spain and I was quite surprised at how much of my upper-beginner Spanish I needed while I was there. At first I was just talking to waiters to tell them my wife was allergic to milk/cheese but then it became even more essential when I had to talk to pharmacists about symptoms after we both got Covid (not ideal conditions for speaking practice). Regardless, I found it very rewarding to be able to use the language and speak with locals. I decided that since we wanted our next big international adventure to be Japan, I should start learning right away!

I started with Wanikani, but I really didn’t like it and quit Japanese entirely. Then in late December I started up again with LingoDeer (+ Anki to remember the vocab and kanji). LingoDeer was fine, but the grammar really didn’t stick at all and I would have forgotten everything without my flashcards. I completed LingoDeer level 1 and moved on to Bunpro which has been a LOT better. For listening practice I use Comprehensible Japanese.

I think the most impactful things I’ve done have been to choose my own pictures for my flashcards and only memorize approximate meanings for kanji, completely ignoring readings until they show up in vocab. I currently do 8 new vocab words per day, down from 10, and am stunned to see that I have over 1200 vocab in my deck (+ 931 kanji).

I often feel like an unusual Japanese learner, since I have no classroom Japanese experience, have zero intention to take the JLPT, I don’t know anyone who speaks Japanese, I have no intention to live in Japan, I have no need of Japanese for work, and I only started watching anime in the past few months. I simply find the country and culture to be fascinating, love Japanese food, and would like to be able to engage with the people there in a richer way when I visit for the first time.

Japanese has been a very fun cognitive challenge and I’ve found myself forming healthier habits to consistently learn it. I often do my flash cards on the exercise bike, I have far less time to spend reading news or social media since I spend 1-2 hours on Japanese per day, and I even drink less because I know it messes with my ability to learn/retain information.

Thanks for sharing your journey! (and thanks for reading my long post :slight_smile: )

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#6

LOVE the Comprehensible Japanese approach

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#7

I’ve been studing Japanese semi-casually since 2010
I didn’t find bunpro that useful Unfortunately :frowning:

Class 2009-2015 [genki 1+2, work book]
Lingo deer 2017-2018
Genki audio CD 2018-2019
In December 2018, passed n5
Kanji 2020-2022
Jalup (now nihongo lessons) 2021-now
Bunpro 2024, passed N4
As a casual, I studied 1 hour a week 2009-2019,
and moderatly 1 hour a day 2020-now

You can get good as a casual- 1 hour a week might be the minimum tho.
4 years*1hr/day = 28 years * 1hr/week
What kind of time do you have? Hours in a day or years in your life?

I’m on the JET program teaching English in Japan

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#8

I am learning Japanese with relatively low pressure. My wife is Taiwanese. We live in Western Europe. We are in Taiwan around twice a year. Almost every time we are in Taiwan, we sneak in at least some Japan-time since flights from the small airport of her home town are relatively cheap spontaneously. Over time we realized we like being in Japan.

None of us had ever made a serious effort at learning Japanese except for a handful of survival phrases. My wife knew a bit of Japanese from two semesters at her university decades ago and her grandma being fluent in it. This is despite regularly visiting Japan since 2015.

Over time we figured if we keep going to Japan we might as well learn the language “properly” to get more out of it. So here I am.

As for the semi-casual approach: I work a lot. I co-founded a software/data analytics company, we are now 12 people. If you work for yourself, the myth of a 40h week is gone and you somehow end up working 24/7 and you’re strangely motivated to do so since you’re no longer doing it for someone else’s benefit…

My new content on Bunpro comes in bursts and I realized that any commitment (Let’s do N new words and M new grammar points a day) is completely worthless because I notice a very strong pattern between days where I have to mind to do that and days where I don’t.

Counting the days since I registered to Bunpro dividing all grammar points I’ve done so far by the amount of days I’ve been registered, I get to like 2.9 grammar points a day. But the reality is, that some days I skip, some days I do 1, some days I have the time and add 6. Same goes for vocabulary. It appears that I’ve done an average of 9 words a day, but again, some days I add a lot, some days I add nothing. I also notice a strange pattern where on some days I have 90+% retention because I’m focused, relaxed and take my time, and on one days I edge the 60% mark because “I need to rush through the reviews, I won’t have time later today” and am mentally already doing something else. Today is one of those days. My review this morning was below 60% accuracy. But I’m setting aside some time to interact with the new vocabulary I added two days ago a little more, hoping it will improve the current beginner-stage wave.

As for the goal: a former coworker of mine is currently sitting in Japan with a digital nomad visa. I am currently forced to remain on-site due to a government project for the next two years. Afterwards I plan to do the same. Get a digital nomad visa, and continue working for my company from Japan for 6 months. Thankfully I have time until 2027. So my goal is to be well inside N3 territory by then and be able to follow casual conversation. If I proceed at current-speed it should be doable.

Though I’m not following JLPT lists since JLPT is irrelevant to me right now. Not that I would mind getting a certificate someday. But given the possible time-allocation and goal, it seems like focussing on grammar points and vocab by frequency has a higher ROI than going strictly by JLPT.

Another issue is that my vocab is strongly lagging behind my grammar. Learning grammar appears much easier than learning vocab.

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#9

Oh wow! How is JET going? I’d say these days I spend about 40 minutes or so on Anki a day? A little bit of time doing my Bunpro lessons and reviews, and then the occasional video for listening practice.

Once I finish Kaishi 1.5k, I’d like to consume more native content, by reading and/or watching anime with Japanese subtitles. I’ll keep up with the reviews though of course

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#10

JET is great. I teach the seniors T1. As in I make the powerpoints, worksheets and grade their class work. I assign speech topics, and Schedule to balance 3 lessons and speech deadlines so we can finish both each semester.
And I visit some other English classes just to read the vocab list or a short passage.
I teach 8 periods a week and visit 8

I worked a 7-4 for 4 years [2017-2021] to paid off my students loans before I moved to Japan.
2 of my US friends, and many people online are saying a teacher’s salary is not enough to support yourself and pay off students debt.
I am earning half as much in Japan as I did in 2017-2021, but it is easy for me to live because insurance, rent and food are all 1/3 the cost as I paid in the US. Car insurance and maintenance are, Unfortunately, not any cheeper in Japan than the US

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