4 years learning Japanese

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4 years learning 日本語

It has been 4 years since starting to learn Japanese
So time to reflect on all progress made so far and all things that happened while learning (good-bad)

So how did I learn it?

Let’s start at the beginning of my Japanese language learning journey, for that let’s go back to a couple of weeks before my first trip. I actually had a good friend at that time who knew Japanese quite well. Because in some weeks I was going to Japan I asked her how I could at least read some of the text and that’s basically my start. She suggested TanoshiiJapanese.com for learning the Hiragana and Katakana.

And needless to say, I didn’t really try that hard to learn basic Japanese and when I arrived in Japan I realized that just knowing the sounds of the characters doesn’t mean I understand anything… But it felt good being able to reproduce the sounds of characters I was seeing in the streets, which made me decide to buy the app Human Japanese to start learning some grammar.

I was slowly getting more and more hooked on learning this language. When I left Japan I felt like I had to learn more Japanese and try to get fluent at it. So I actually tried learning the Kana as good as possible and I also started using Memrise.

February 2016

Ooh, where is the time, I had 2 weeks left before I went on my solo trip to Japan and I thought, let’s learn some Japanese so I can talk with people there. SPOILER ALERT: 2 weeks isn’t enough to learn Japanese. It was actually one of my friends who got me started, she recommended the site: Tanoshiijapanese. I used it every day for the 2 weeks before my trip, I did it so I could at least decipher the menu at restaurants.

On my second day in Japan, I bought the app: Human Japanese, and I must say that it is one of the best apps to get you started with Japanese grammar. However, I knew some Japanese and I was able to remember all the Hiragana and Katakana in the first 2 days of learning before going to Japan. I wasn’t serious about it at all. Btw, in the top corner is the video playlist of my first trip to Japan.

But that all changed during my last couple of day’s in Japan, I found a reason to return to that country, kind of a motivation for me to start learning the language seriously. Back then I thought, hmm how difficult can it be? I was so naive back then. ^^”

Back in Belgium

I decided to give Japanese a fair shot to learn it and the beginning was quite wonderful in my opinion. I discovered Memrise and without hesitation, I bought the lifetime membership because I knew I was going to need the difficult words reviewing feature. 2 weeks after I returned I bought my next plane ticket, which gave me even more motivation, however, I soon started to realize that learning Japanese wasn’t as easy as I thought it to be, I gave up a couple of times but kept reviewing at least a minimal amount of words because I didn’t want to give up completely yet.

But that was probably my biggest mistake in my Japanese learning journey. Every time when you are learning a language and you are taking a break, especially in the beginning, you lose so much of your previously gained progress. Taking a small break really started feeling like I was throwing away time so I stopped taking small breaks and set minimum limits for myself every single day.

Then I went on my second trip to Japan, the link to the video playlist of that trip can be found in the top corner as well, and For some reason I got it stuck in my head that I would pick up the language magically by just being there. Because that’s what the generations above me kept saying: You will learn the language just by being there. Well, I can tell you that that is the biggest people have ever told me.

Maybe that works if you have a firm basic understanding and foundation of the language but I wasn’t at that point yet at all!! So while still being there I started practicing more and more on Memrise on my phone. But I didn’t found the Memrise app to be that great on my phone and I was traveling so I didn’t have my laptop to use, luckily I discovered Anki at that moment and it’s so much better to use on mobile than Memrise.

During that trip

I also received my first books for learning Japanese: Minna no Nihongo, but they seemed so daunting because everything was in Japanese. I’m sorry to the guy who gave them to me but some months ago I finally finished them!! I’m the 3rd person to own those books and I will give them to someone else who is also passionate about learning Japanese.

Then I came back from Japan with the thought that I probably needed a teacher if I wanted to learn Japanese more efficiently. So I started looking up Japanese classes in my neighborhood, not expecting much tbh, I live in the countryside of Belgium ^^” But there was one in the nearest city, I was one month late to apply but I already had the basics down so I could still join the class. However, it was only 1 evening a week and the first months they were just busy with learning the kana, something I had finished learning half a year ago.

So during that first year, I was always ahead of everybody. Then the next year I followed Japanese class, but even in that year, I didn’t really learn many things. The pace at which they were going was just too slow for me. But I kept going because I could practice a little and it was fun to be with people who were learning Japanese but they all had different reasons to do it.

In the first year of school

I started using Genki 1 and I looked unsuccessfully to good apps and programs.
Basically, that school year of 1 evening lesson a week, during that time I didn’t improve as much as I would have liked, mainly because I was also busy with work and I kept having to change workplaces quite frequently.

Those classes ended halfway through 2018 because there weren’t enough people for another year. So I was at 2.5 years of learning Japanese and I still felt like I had achieved almost no progress at all. I still couldn’t understand Japanese songs, anime, news, conversations, …. and that’s where I hit my first big low in my Japanese learning journey. I started to feel demotivated, the contact with the people from class also disappeared because most of them gave up on learning the language.

At that moment I knew I had to do something, I had to crick up my motivation to go back at it again! Luckily my grandparents gave me a book of pictures from Japan and going through that I realized again what I like so much about the country and together with my main reason to learn Japanese my motivation was renewed and I went at it again making sure to remind myself often why I am learning the language. For the first time in those 2.5 years, I finally felt like I was making proper progress.

An extra motivation to keep going came in 2019. January to be exact. I set out a goal for myself to get to JLPT N2 by the end of 2019. Well, we all know how that went right ^^” Today is the last exam of the year and I’m here at home instead of the examination center.

The first 5 months were great, I used as many resources as I could find. I started working on plans to make a Japanese learning game for people to learn the language a lot more efficiently. So far, I had been learning Japanese for a couple of years without taking any breaks anymore, everyday I would as a minimum invest 10 minutes. with some days up to 9 hours. But during the summer I started to notice that I wasn’t learning very efficiently myself and after my last trip to Japan I reset all my progress on Anki, added all JLPT words, and I decided to start fresh and learn everything all over again.

Now during this year, I hit my limit quite a lot because some days I was studying 7-9 hours a day but the next 2-3 day’s I was too mentally exhausted to even finish reviewing all the things I learned the day before. I tried putting too much new vocab in at once on both Memrise and Anki, and I finally made the decision to stop with Memrise completely as I felt like it had been holding me back quite heavily to last years. Someday’s when counting the words to review from Anki and Memrise together I had to review around 1500-2000 words a day!! I can tell you, waking up and seeing such high numbers, … It’s a real bad hit to your motivation.

And this is where I am today. I recently had the chance to talk Japanese again for some days and just like on my last trip to Japan. It finally happened!! After almost 4 years of learning Japanese, I can finally have basic conversations and understand a fair bit of what’s being said. However, I still have a long way to go because I want to achieve full fluency but I get the feeling, that it may happen next year.

I am really glad that I haven’t given up on learning this language and I’m looking forward to the time I can have fluent conversations with people. Learning Japanese has really been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done.

What would I do over if I could do it again?

Don’t spend any money

If you sometimes feel like giving up, remind yourself: Why are you learning this language? Maybe think about all the time you have put in it so far. I only started seeing my progress a couple of months ago after more than 3 years of learning. That really made me proud of myself and you should be proud of yourself.

I try to make some video’s every now and then on how to learn more efficiently and about learning Japanese, Recently I finally started working out the game to learn Japanese which I’ve had in mind for quite a long time already if you want to stay up to date, please subscribe and like.
So for all the people who want or are learning Japanese, Good luck, believe in yourself and 頑張ってね
Over-exhausting, discovering limits, fun adventures in Japan and camping, meeting a lot of people, understanding a totally foreign language, country, and culture in a better way.

Do I regret having spent so many years learning Japanese??

Not at all. Do I recommend that you learn Japanese in the same way as I did? Not at all!

I have quite a long Japanese Learning History so far. Even though I realize my progress isn’t as fast as it could have been. It took me some time to find a healthy way to study which wouldn’t exhaust me but which would also not slow me down, I’m still improving in Japanese but also in the way I learn things. I’m proud of where I am right now with my Japanese even though I’m probably not even halfway yet. XD

Resources I used:

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