It has been a week and I have gotten used to speaking Japanese for the most part. I would like to say that I can hold a pretty decent conversation but nowhere near fluently. Generally, if I don’t know a word I can find a way to work around it and get the same meaning across. I still make tons of mistakes in speaking and probably sound terribly like a foreigner but I can get through the day. In terms of school, I can understand the gist of 国語 but not explain it too well, but I have no idea what is happening in 数学, as right now we are doing 確率 and I am completely lost because it would probably be hard even in my native language.
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Even junior high school math lessons in Japan would probably eat most people alive if they weren’t fluent.
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I can speak pretty conversationally to some degree. My accent isn’t too bad but it isn’t too good. My pitch accent is completely off as of now. I have some trouble hearing what others are saying, probably because I study almost completely though manga to some degree. It has been hard to think in English recently as I almost have like two sides of the brain, one English and one Japanese; they are like North Korea and South Korea, they exist as neighbors but things rarely cross the border from one side to another. I want to work more on listening and speaking but I would prefer bonding with my host family over studying. I started reading my first 小説；狼と香辛料, it is hard as hell but I somewhat can comprehend it with a dictionary. I look forward to the fruits of my hard labor these past 10 months.
For those of you seeing this, what I have learned is to have a happy medium. Because I put so much time into studying, I got really good at Japanese but became a more bland person without as many memories as I wish I would of created in the US.
At last the training arc has ended, the only problem is I don’t want to leave in February wwww.
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Hey guys,
Damn, it has almost been a year. When I started I knew only the most common words and could recognize some kanji. A lot has changed and I am glad I put as many hours into Japanese as I did until now.
About a month or two ago I came back from Japan. My time there was unforgettable and beneficial not only for my Japanese but also for me as an individual still trying to understand my identity. I feel as if I have overcome the hardest “hump” in difficulty at the beginning of Japanese, while that doesn’t mean everything is easy, I at least have enough experience in the language to know how far I have to go.
I still have a lot of rough patches that even I am unaware of but I still continue to work on improving every day. Currently, I am doing around 200-300 Anki cards a day, making around 15 cards from anime (currently watching Re:Zero), and occasionally reading manga. I started learning Pitch accent via Dogen’s Japanese phonetics course. From here on out I am going to continue the immersion grind in hopes of one day becoming fluent and then near-native with time.
A couple of things I have learned :
- is to not stress too much about the results of immersion and rather just enjoy the long and treacherous journey and grind there.
- Don’t get unhealthy with your immersion, get good sleep, spend time with friends, don’t stop doing any of these things for the sake of immersion, mental and physical health are by far more important to be happy than learning another language is without a doubt
- Focus on doing immersion that is fun to you, it is going to be really hard to have fun at the start but if you get over the initial hurdle of immersion and immersion is still boring, you haven’t found the content that speaks to you
- Have clear goals or deadlines: Knowing that I would be going to live in Japan for a while and had to get decent at Japanese with a weak foundation within 6 months really pushed me to pursue and really push myself to learn the language
- Understand the importance of consistency, quantity, and quality of study: If you are getting little sleep or are not very focused the efficiency of your immersion is going to drop significantly and your gains are going to be slimmer than if you were to be fully focused. Since this varies from person to person, you will have to experiment with your own strategies and systems in order to get the best out of your time. There is no doubt that quantity and consistency in language learning are huge; if you are studying once every couple of days for only two hours you really won’t get anywhere ultimately. The quantity of the immersion you do is probably more important than the quality of your immersion, so long as you are interested in the TL content and are consistent with studying
Some of my highlights of going to Japan were
- Being interviewed and appearing on NHK (Out of pure anxiety I said 自由 instead of 銃 plus many other mistakes in pronunciation just because I am still learning, please don’t mind that)
- Directly meeting the Head chief consulate of Nagoya
- Passing the exam for Sho-dan in kendo and participating in a tournament with my school’s team
Thanks for sticking with me this past year, I look forward to seeing the same names on this thread in the future as well.
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Congratulations on your journey so far. Japan truly is a beautiful place. I wish I had/could hunker down and study like you did. Truth is I will prioritize time with my family above Japanese study, even tho I’ve lived here for 2 years, I get far less practice than I should.
Good job!
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I plan on taking the N2 test on Dec 3rd. I have already passed a mock N2 exam and think I could possibly have gone for N1 but decided to go with the safe option.
I started listening to more podcasts recently and can have them on in the background and not be focused on them but still mostly understand everything that is being said.
I now can kind of recognize when someone has a strong 訛り.
I completed the anki 4k/6k deck recently.
I occasionally train pitch accent and speaking.
I mostly just watch anime on netflix every day and some youtube, because of work and a huge loss of motivation since I came back from Japan, my immersion hours have decreased a bit.
Not really sure where to go next, I am just watching anime out of habit, I want to branch out to shows but don’t know what is good.
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You’re really inspirational. Struggling with N4 listening comprehension before the test, so it’s really needed.
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Man’s really living up to the name of Atlas. keep it up!
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Thanks man, comments like these make all the struggle worth it
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