3 Months in on Japanese

I think since I want to use this blog more anyways, why not talk about my progress here? I've talked about it several times on my 'Now' page, I think this deserves a dedicated post.

One of my few new years resolutions for 2025 is to continue learning Japanese. I think keeping tabs on my progress in the mean time so I can see how far I've gone and set more realistic goals will be helpful.

Why I started (again)

Since this is the first major update I'm giving, I'll start off with my biggest motivator in wanting to pick up the language in the first place.

On top of a general interest in anime and Japanese media, the main thing that got me interested in the first place is admittedly, arcade rhythm games. It's been my main interest for a long time (sans a gap-period 2020-2022) and I think it's safe to say at this point I'm in it for the long haul.

While you don't need to know Japanese for the most part if you want to get into them, I figured it'd be a good idea to gain some level of comprehension for this mainstay hobby of mine. Such as if I want to look into extended media for any of the games I play, given a lot of it is untranslated (fan-slated or otherwise). Or if I want to interact with the wider community, as given how international the RGC can be, it's not too uncommon for the Japanese & English-speaking sides to bump into each other both online and in-person.

The thing is, this isn't the first time I've attempted to learn Japanese for this reason either. I tried before in 2018-19 when I first got into rhythm games, but ended up dropping out due to getting busy with college & feeling like I wasn't making progress (more on that later).

I also think taking on learning and possibly acquiring a new language would be a fun goal to work towards. And it would be a great opportunity to also learn a more about Japanese culture, the media I appreciate, as well a some reflections on my own study habits on the way.

Reflecting on previous failings

Before I started, I sat down and noted my goals with language learning and doing some self-reflecting on my failings from before.

For Japanese, I think the biggest one was going Duolingo only and not doing anything outside of it. Major mistake. While this is based on what I remember it being in 2018-19 (a lot has changed since then), my main issues were:

• A lot of things were presented without context or good explanations. Though looking back, I should've had a grammar guide on hand. Duolingo did have forums at the time, but I didn't engage with them that much (and they've been shuttered since)
• It felt very slow after a while, and I didn't end up retaining much vocab, or any phrases I might've learned even while I was using it
• The format didn't work out & ended with me breezing through some exercises by guessing vs actually understanding, or in some cases being penalized for typos and grammar mistakes in english (A common complaint I've seen. I came to learn Japanese, not brush up on my native language...)
• I should've been looking at external resources like an aforementioned grammar guide, language youtubers, as well as actually trying to make contact with the language via 'immersion' vs putting it off until I felt ready

These are just the issues relevant to me. I'll link Livakivi's videos on Duolingo as it goes much more in-depth with the problems in relation to the Japanese course "Why I'm Quitting the Japanese Duolingo Course (an Honest Review)" , "Duolingo is STILL BAD for Learning Japanese in 2025 (QUIT WASTING TIME)". But with all the drawbacks I had, I wanted to find another method right off the bat.

Another failure I wanted to look at was taking Spanish classes in high school. To be fair, I was taking it as a required credit at the time, and I feel a lot of the issues I had boil down to 'the American education system sucks'. But here's some notes I got from that:

• I don't do well with testing-based settings. I had severe test-related anxiety in high school as is, so having that attached to trying to learn a new language resulted in being too stressed to absorb anything, and what little I did remember at the time was forgotten as soon as the test was over.
• Premature output. I don't think there's much I could've done given this is just a part of the curriculum (or at least the most common ones). But researching language learning again made me realized this wasn't great since I had to string together 'perfect' sentences before being able to understand grammar very well.
• High school overwhelm! Between other homework, classes, band, and hobbies there wasn't energy for extra study.

In the end the the only bit of Spanish comprehension I have left is limited reading, but I think that's less because of active study and more because I follow a handful of native speakers online.

Though the most important part of my self-reflections was well, self reflecting. Looking at my own habits beyond the scope of education. Notably;

• I have to accommodate for my tendencies to hyper-fixate and/or get distracted. Which in the context of study could lead to times I spend 4+ hours a day studying and then for no discernable reason loose all steam.
• I have to make sure I can balance it between my other interests, especially long-term goals. (Especially once I get a job, that's a lot of time I'll be loosing)
• I need to make sure I don't beat myself up over messing up, having 'off days', or missing days, as this can easily cause something to become too much of a stressor for me to continue.

As of right now, I haven't locked into a single approach and have mostly been taking bits and pieces from different sources and applying it as I feel it's relevant to me. I'm looking to transition into an immersion-based approach since from researching language learning, which relies on watching/listening/reading in your target language and letting your understanding of it come naturally through hours of input (as well as vocab study on the side). I like that this way is less about 'rigid' conventional learning, and more about applying what I've learned in context sooner rather than later.

Starting, again

Originally I was going to wait until 2025 to start. But I felt it was better to act on the motivation I had late 2024 than to push it back to an arbitrary start date.

I think I ended up taking about four days to relearn hiragana & katakana? Probably longer than I needed in hindsight. And I spent a few days reading the first parts of Tae Kim's guide to Japanese before moving into Anki Decks.

The more I think about it, the more I wish I just used Anki or any flashcard program the first time. Since while you have to do a lot more set-up of your own and it lacks the tidy presentation something like Duo has, I like that just having flashcards I can mark as "understood" and "needs reviewing" lets me determine whether or not I understood something on my own terms. There's also my main use case for Anki to consider, which is building up and reviewing vocab as opposed to using it as the only resource. I've swapped over to using youtube for reviewing & learning grammar concepts (I've found the late Cure Dolly's videos very helpful recently), as well as carving out time for immersion.

That being said, it wasn't all smooth figuring out a routine (and in fact... I still haven't settled into one). I ended up breaking my Anki streaks a few times and getting side-tracked with other interests. I ended up going through several decks before settling on one that worked for me, which might've contributed to points of demotivation at one point. I had to retire the first one I used early on since the format got too fatiguing for low-energy days, and it also had some 'edgy 4-chan-type humor' for some of the images I wasn't a fan of (I edited them out, but it left a bad enough taste in my mouth to put me off from using it). As of writing, I've settled on using the Kaishi 1.5k deck and suspending any cards I've learned previously as a means to play catch-up.

The one area it took a while to get the ball rolling on was Immersion. I think I ran into the problem of "too many options, not sure how to narrow it down". There's plenty of free resources like podcasts and youtube videos (with many out there that cater to learners). I also have access to a few streaming services through family, probably a few 'unorthodox' options I could use too. And while I compiled a list at one point, I didn't find a means I was interested in until I was about 2 months in.

I was going to start with anime since it has the benefit of having a visual component, and I have a lengthy backlog I want to get through anyways. Though it seems most of the genres I'm interested in... just so happen to be the ones everyone says not to start off with. In terms of anime I tend to gravitate towards sci-fi (one of the main genres people say not to start off with) and psychological thrillers. I did eventually find some slice-of-life shows I'm interested in (for context, that's the main beginner-recommended genre), but I was stuck in choice paralysis for a while.

So after a month of being unsure what to watch, I think I've settled on the fact I should just pick something I know I'd enjoy regardless of how 'beginner recommended' it is. And this lead to the first piece of media I used for immersion / listening practice being... an obscure drama CD for Beatmania IIDX with no subs that I know of...

OK to be fair, Roots 26 Suite isn't the worst option for me. IIDX and by extension ROOTS 26 was my main fixation of 2024, the audios are accessible on Nico video, and I've read fan-slated transcripts of most of the chapters earlier that year. I enjoyed my time with the actual audios, and it was fun being able to get the full audio context & be able to hear some of the character's voices for the first time (Voice acting technically appears in modern IIDX versions, but is removed for U-Region cabs. Likely a licensing issue). Really interesting hearing how different the official VAs sound compared to how the characters 'sounded' in my head. Though I think it was pretty clear at some points that if it wasn't for me knowing the full stories beforehand I would've been completely lost (I ended up pulling up said fan-slations to re-orient myself a few times).

The good thing is, I started. So the intimidation barrier for picking media to use for immersion is lower.

So everything's going alright. I got an anki deck that works for me, I'm less choice-paralyzed about immersion, and I'm remembering to review grammar. Surely I can keep up this routine with no major distractions or revived fixations getting in the way.

...right?

Animal Crossing; my first distraction

So the last two times I broke my Anki streak since I started were because I got re-interested in Animal Crossing.

I expected something like this to happen at some point, as like I mentioned earlier I have a tendency to hyper-fixate and/or get distracted easily. And that lead to revisiting the series being a total distraction on some days where I didn't open Anki at all. (Not even getting sick or going to events last year caused me to break my streak...)

At least the second time around, I was watching videos on grammar & vocab... But yikes. 9 days!

The main reason I wanted to note this in my progress report is because I want to keep track of my tendency to get distracted and try to avoid things like this going forward. While having a hyper-fixation on something can be fun, I also recognize this habit can take away time and energy from other goals, interests and obligations if I'm not careful (Japanese isn't the only area I've fallen behind on, BMS also took a backseat due to spending most of my gaming energy on Animal Crossing)

The thing is, I don't want to leave this as an objectively negative thing, and there are ways I can swing this back in my favor that I have tried out. The first one is lumping Animal Crossing into reading practice.

Originally I was going to use game cube animal crossing for this, since that was the game I first revisited and I've managed to track down a rom for Doubutsu no Mori E+. But I ended up dropping that town pretty fast as reading at my current level ended with this being pretty draining. Ironically the game (by default) being only in kana ended up making it harder as I was used to seeing words I knew with Kanji + furigana. DnME+ does have Kanji support, but after enabling it I just threw in the towel after realizing I need to expand my vocab a lot more.

I did get Bob in my town so I guess that was cool

I think when I've learned a little more vocab and did some reading practice via subtitles, I'll swap over to using New Horizons for this. In hindsight, I should've just used ACNH to begin with. The game has furigana support, plus I can just change my system language & continue playing on my main save. (And also villagers are nicer, so I won't loose all my bells due to mis-clicking something in a villager mini-game so...)

The main issues I can see myself running into is B-lining through all the dialogue after a while, as for things like navigating menus you just need to know how to use them not necessarily how to read. Or getting too fatigued again & swapping my switch's language back to english. But to be fair, I'm coming at playing in Japanese as using it as a study tool, and on the latter I'm pretty sure I played Gamecube Animal Crossing before I learned how to read english anyways (It's the first video game I ever played actually). So I think it's worth experimenting with.

Output... another time

Earlier I mentioned premature output. For my current studies, I'm taking the advice of doing a 'silent period' and not speaking or writing much at the start. I first read about the concept from AJATT guides, and what taking one boils down to is focusing on getting a ton of input first & letting your ability to speak come naturally from it. Whether or not it's as damaging as some guides claim it is seems to vary depending on who you ask. Though the reason I decided on it was less about the concept itself and more about alleviating unnecessary pressure upfront.

Avoiding output isn't something I want to do forever, as part of my goals is to have some level of conversational skills if it ever comes up. But I think if I started with my current mental state, I'd easily get overtaken by perfectionism and social anxiety to the point adding in speaking practice early on would cause a mental roadblock rather than help (think: even with other options my mind would get stuck on 'I have to talk/write' & not do any study at all). I'm also admittedly, very shy online & find myself chickening out a lot when it comes to things like joining group chats or online gaming. It's been a major struggle of mine since I started using the internet & even with me improving on that aspect joining new groups on my own is still a very daunting idea for me.

The thing is, I don't want my anxiety to have this much power over my ability to learn. So I think I want to figure out a way to ease myself into feeling more comfortable doing output practice going forward, rather than avoid it at all costs in the next few months.

What's Next?

In terms of what's next, it's mostly keeping up my personal studies with Anki and immersion, as well as possibly using ACNH for reading practice.

As of right now, I'm still not sure at what point I'd want to be by the end of the year outside of being ready to start writing & speaking practice (if I haven't already). So I think for now I'll focus on smaller goals such as finding a routine that works for me, acquiring more vocab, and knocking a few shows off my anime watch list. I'm really interested and excited to see where this learning journey will take me.