A long time friend of mine recently made a post on Instagram showing a picture of an N2 study book with the caption “My personal hell.” She has always been the studious type, did well in school, was decent enough at Japanese, but consumes next to no content in it. In fact, she hosts a small, horror themed podcast done in English that requires consumption of plenty of Englsih language movies. Still, she wishes to be fluent to have a back up plan in an uncertain economy. I don’t really have the heart to tell her that there is not a lot of money in simply knowing Japanese, but It really got me thinking.
I’m sure we’ve all been there. Sitting there, looking at the grammar we’ve gone over several times wondering why we don’t have it quite down yet. Looking at a Kanji you’ve seen too many times to count and just can’t recall what it means. Looking at all the meanings of さす and thinking, man, what am I doing all this for? It’s easy to get into an endless loop of studying. When I mean study I mean textbooks, audio lessons, flashcards, graded readers, assignments that one is given, JLPT study texts. Some of those things are things I enjoy quite a bit and have been part of my daily life for a long time. If I’m at the coffee shop, I’m studying. If I’m on my lunch at work, I’m studying. If I’m in my home office outside of work hours, I’m likley studying. But it’s often easy to forget why I’m studying in the first place. I’m studying Japanese so that I don’t have to study it as much in the future, or perhaps not study it at all. And while right now it’s hard to envision my life without Bunpro, Anki, and Japanesepod101.com, the hope or goal is to not need them in the future.
As noted in a previous topic, if there is one aspect of Japanese I feel that I have been neglecting myself of over the past few years, it would defiently be immersion. Since the beginning of the year, I have been doing more watching, listening, and reading. Particualry things I like (anime, videogames, podcasts, light novels) It made me come to a realization about studying because that type of immesion doens’t really feel like studying. Unless I’m activly looking up words, it’s just something I enjoy doing. I feel that what I’m getting out of it is enrichment, something that I was sorely lacking.
I won’t undermine the importance of studying because it is essential. Studying encompasses things you don’t necessarily want to do, but must do in order to gain understanding of things. I may not like learning vocab about the weather, or baseball, or going to the bank, but those are things that are important to know as well. Watching anime and reading manga, I’m learning a lot of things that aren’t used in everyday conversation, and a lot of topics and vocabulary I would rarely use. But it matters to me, and it’s important for me to know it. Just as it’s important for a Star Wars fan to know what a Pyke, or a Wookie, or a TIE Fighter is. A specific Yakuza slang word, a word only used by high school girls when texting, a word that describes people over 80, a specific work out phrase used to describe skipping leg day. These, along with other things are what I feel really enrich one’s Japanese. Make it more than just a list of grammar, vocab words, phrases, and kanji. It truly is the language coming to life, establishing it’s own flavor, it’s own feel, it’s own personallity. The feeling is almost spiritual. It may sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but there really is something about seeing your hard work pay off in a fun way.
Enrichment I feel is a reward for the hard work you put in, but it is also something that I feel should be part of one’s study. And you can read all the graded readers, and text in text books, and easy news articles to your hearts content, nothing wrong with that. But if you’re not watching or reading something you actually like, it becomes stale pretty quickly. With month 2 of my immersion regimin coming to a close, I look back and see some very good things, some frustrations, some dissapoitments, but a lot of enjoyment. The joy that comes out of doing the things I love in the language I love. I’m not fluent yet, but that doesn’t matter, I get something out of the content I consume every day, and the only personal hell for me would be for me to neglect myself of the things I like.
Going into March, I plan to change more of my daily routine to be more immersive. Opting to get my daily news from Japanese websites and watching more Youtube content in Japanese as well.
