May 6th, 2022
Today I completed all of the N4 Grammar！！ パチパチ！！
While my reading comprehension is certainly getting rapidly better, my listening skills are very bad and I can barely watch most anime without subtitles and stay afloat. But with subtitles, I am pretty much good to watch whatever and understand a good chunk of it. I struggle with a lot of random particles and grammar points in which I will have to start keeping track of (Currently some forms of でも and よう really get me). Other than particles, adverbials, and such, I am making decent progress I feel. But then again, with learning Japanese, you’ll feel amazing one day and terrible the next.
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Congrats!
Don’t worry too much about よう でも and stuff like that… also a lot of anime uses slang and plain form… The thing is a lot of the grammar builds upon itself… things will make sense over time… be sure that you have the fundamentals well.
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June 3rd, 2022
Some stats for the month of May, need to put in some more hours into tracked active immersion. I put in more time but I only track my hours late into the afternoon when I have a computer, so a lot of days I am doing plus another hour or so in active immersion yet I don’t count it because it isn’t 100% my concentration. Lately, I have been wondering how to read manga more efficiently, because sometimes I can’t tell if I am just looking at words or if I am reading them as if I don’t know one word in the sentence, I kind of mentally give up on encoding the meaning of the sentence without the word.
Furthermore, I am worried that I am stressing too much about the time I am putting into Japanese and not the efficiency of the time I put into Japanese.
Manga is either easy or hard for me and I am either 100% focused or not at all, which I want to fix. I am thinking about reading a book on how to enter the flow state and deep concentration easier. I am trying to create a habit for meditation currently, and I exclusively use the pomodoro technique when trying to focus deep on anime or manga. I need to get better at focusing on Japanese while I am in my room, which is a common issue with working in ones room. I have currently read around 27 volumes of manga (Mostly Nisekoi and Frieren) and am trying to watch only anime without subtitles (still pretty hard for me at the moment, Ao Haru Ride went well but can’t find another suitable anime for immersion without subtitles.) Currently I am reading Nisekoi and Yuru Camp and have a lot more manga on the waiting list (Please give some good recommendations for manga and anime that’s fun for immersion.)
I was told that learning Japanese is like growing in height, the growth happens yet you do not see it. Currently I am working every day to get better at Japanese and am undeniably better than when I started, yet cannot see any major gains which I account to this. I hope to maximize my efficiency in Japanese by changing little things (like learning to focus) and improving as a person along this journey)
I want to start reading light novels soon (was thinking Adachi to Shimamura for my first), and maybe get to the point where I can watch harder anime without subs at will and pick up vocab through diffusion and listening. I am currently halfway through N3 in Bunpro, doing 5-10 grammar points every weekday.
Thanks yet again for following me on this journey, if you have anything to add or any tips for efficiency then please let me know.
So long, back to immersion I gooooooooooo…
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I’m in my 30s and, just to give you some unwanted life advice, a lot of stuff is like this. From music, to painting, to language, you’re always going to start off learning a ton of stuff and progressing really quickly. Then, slowly, that rate starts to decrease. This is usually when people start to quit because they don’t see their growth anymore and it starts getting difficult.
At this point, you really have to trust/enjoy what you’re doing; don’t focus on passing tests and being amazing, just focus on practicing and improving and passing tests and being amazing will come naturally.
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July 2nd, 2022
I have now completed all of the N3 grammar and have read 40 or more volumes of manga.
The summer is becoming really busy, trying my best to balance between work, college psychology, relationships, and Japanese. Constantly keeping busy feels great and I hope I can stay not lazy for the duration of the summer. Because of this though, my daily immersion hours can vary from half an hour to six hours.
Before the end of the summer, I want to reach the level where N2 is not that hard to read (currently I read mostly N3) and I hope to read at least one light novel before my takeoff (I am thinking Adachi to Shimamura)
In other news, I received my plane ticket and will be leaving for Japan on August 18th and hope to work on speaking and losing the accent a little bit more before my departure. I am incredibly excited as this has been a dream of mine for a while.
Edit 1: If things go smooth with an N3 manga, I can finish it in around an hour and a half if I am focused
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Jeez man you are a train. Lot of people talk a good game but you really are just powering through like it’s nothing. Very happy for you!
July 2nd, 2022
You have to keep in mind with language learning though that sometime I will nearly understand everything and sometimes not understand a thing
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August 2nd, 2022
14 days left until 出発!!!
72 volumes of manga read on top of a lot of anime. A couple of weeks ago I had a dream in complete Japanese where I was having a whole ass conversation with a businessman on a bench in a park in Japan, kinda wacky and like a simulation before my departure lmao.
I haven’t done any speaking practice nor have I even given light novels a try yet, I find that I can just get the gist of tons of things, but never feel like I have proved myself to be good enough to understand what I am reading or watching completely.
Doing my best to work, take Psychology, do Japanese, and maintain social relationships.
Very excited but nervous as well, because of covid the border procedures are incredibly confusing for me. We will see how well I have grown after my 6 months in Osaka (I have no prior speaking practice nor experience)
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P.S. I am going to re-edit everything in order to show the date
Not something that people bring up very often, but a feeling I know all too well.
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So for trying Kanji Kentei, is there a specific site that focuses on that curriculum? Or did you just use sites that let you make your own study sets to study that?
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Kanji Kentei is based on Japanese School Grade for Kanjis, anything that follows that will be valid with Kanji Kentei.
For example books aimed for X grade and such.
For example:
This is aimed for 小学中級から (Middle of elementary school), so that would be around Level 8 - Level 7 of Kanji Kentei.
There’s also websites, mainly aimed for Japanese kids, that have drills based on school grade, those are useful as well, and can be used easily together with Kanji Kentei.
In regards to this, I recently discovered that my method of learning Kanji is very close to one that is already a method of it’s own and that would be:
I’ll put here the Introduction of the book that it explains the methodology:
A TL;DR is:
- You study by exposure, don’t focus solely on the Kanji meaning.
- Kanji can be retained by the vocabulary is used on.
Maybe this is better than Kanji Kentei, since the method is already given to you. Kanji Kentei I have built it myself around it, which is pretty damn similar to Kanji in Context.
You can go through the Amazon sample to read the whole introduction and methodology. While it doesn’t seem to follow School Grade, it seems to be pretty damn close.
I might eventually give the workbooks a go, as it seems like it would be a good reinforcement of what I’m learning in Kanji Kentei.
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Hey @AtlasIG ,
a few words of advice from myself, who moved to Japan 5 weeks ago and went through a similar study path as you did, if you want.
I also pushed hard in the end for grammar but took a small break on adding new stuff shortly before my flight, so to not have all your SRS stack up while you are en route. I understand you are fully motivated, but you don’t wanna begin with a full mountain of reviews 
It sounds like you are also not best speaking wise, same goes for me, but don’t worry about it too much. What I would recommend now to prepare some sentences about what you will be saying here:
- self introduction
- how to order something and add a question to it or something more
- just some small talk about you
- etc
It will help start a conversation and gives you confidence to keep on speaking. Practice it at home, say it really out loud and you will notice quite a difference.
Best of luck in Japan
If you don’t know, its super hot here Make sure you bring clothes that can stand the heat and the sweat. ( i.e.: no blue/yellow/green shirts etc! At least for the summer.)
To add on that. If you can manage your residence registration at your ward office in August, you can still apply for a special BIC SIM campaign. ( Campaign by Big Camera and it’s own sim card service. Advantage is: you can get it from a store right away if you have your address registered and there is no application fee until the end of August.)
Of course you can take any other too but BIC SIM is also a “low budget” plan deliverer with store support. The other low budget provider don’t have a store though, but some provide an english website in exchange for high application fees.
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Thank you for these words of wisdom, I will make sure to stock up on white cotton t-shirts lmao. I will look into making a self-introduction too
Oh, this is awesome! Thank you for sharing, I am interested by the book. I gave up on WaniKani 3 months ago because I was getting burnt out. To supplement not learning new kanji, I had been making quizlet sets of vocabulary from specific topics (body parts, animals, plants, etc.) but this book seems much better!
Also, could you tell me how you know that book is “小学中級から”? Does Amazon say it or is there another source that says so?
Ooohhhh, thank you!
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Wait, how many books specify their level? I went looking through several others on amazon and none specify that
Tsubasa Bunko does it with all their books, not sure about others.
There’s another way to know the approximate level of a book, and that’s by using learnnatively
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I have moved to Japan, staying in quarantine in Tokyo for 3 days then I am off to Osaka. The Semi are as loud as advertised.
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