Overview

Quick summary:

I started officially learning Japanese in 2017 when I memorized the Japanese alphabets (hiragana and katakana) in a couple weeks over the summer. I then took about a yearlong break and returned in 2019. I took another two years’ break (sorta) and dabbled on and off in 2020 and 2021, and now it’s 2022 and I’m back again 🙂

But why am I learning Japanese?

Because I like the language (look and sound), I like the challenge of language learning in general, especially one so close to my second language (Chinese), and I’m using Japanese learning as a lab of sorts, to see how far I can go, and to see what I can learn about the learning and teaching process. I’m thinking of teaching languages myself in the future, but I want to have the experience of learning a totally unfamiliar language first.

So far, I’ve memorized around 2,000 vocabulary words based on the iKnow.com frequency list, although with the long breaks, I doubt I remember half of it. That’s okay, the memory is probably still in there somewhere, I just have to dig it out again.

2021 Recap:

I didn’t do any serious Japanese learning in 2021. Actually, I didn’t do any serious learning starting from 2020, as you can tell from the 2020 article. I just watched a bit of Youtube and Rakuten Viki here and there, did a little Remembering the Kanji flashcarding via an anki deck I got from Matt vs Japan, and learned one song (Dakara, Hitori Ja Nai), and that was it.

Oh! And in 2021, I test-started a project idea: Sing and Learn Japanese, where I write little mostly-English songs to help myself remember new vocab. Based on the iKnow.com vocab list, which I painstakingly copied over into an excel spreadsheet (not done yet). I wanted to see if I could use music to remember better, like I used music to learn the multiplication tables and American presidents when I was a kiddo.

Inconclusive results, as that attempt has been abandoned (hopefully temporarily). I’d like to get back to writing little SlJ songs this year, but we will have to see…

One more thing: Sometime (a few months?) before June-July 2020 (I know this date because that’s when I moved houses), I took a sample N5 test, and actually did alright on it, to my surprise, considering… (81.8% on vocab, 62.5% on grammar, 54.17% on listening. Not surprising, since I focused on memorizing vocab).

Unrelated, but I also took the TOCFL (Taiwan version of the Mandarin test) and did relatively alright (Got a 80% on reading, and a 76% on listening, weirdly enough).

I know these scores because I kept my red spiral notebook with all my Chinese and Japanese learning stuff.

This year:

So apparently in 2020, I’d written that my goal was to finish memorizing the iKnow.com vocab list (total 6K words, 1K+ down already), to grasp basic grammar and increase my listening and reading comprehension so that by December I could understand easy spoken Japanese and read picture books without having to look up words.

Yeah. About that…

Clearly didn’t happen.

So this year I’m not going to go too crazy with this goal setting stuff, especially since I have a few other MAJOR projects going on.

(I’m working full time as a course creator for a company, doing course creation for two of my own companies/projects, and also working through music production learning, and possibly about to take on an art course. Didn’t want to rush it so soon, but they’re raising the price in two weeks >.<, so I don’t have much time to decide…)

Instead…

My strategies:

In November 2021, I bought a Japanese course from my favorite Japanese Youtubers, Ryu and Yuma of RyuuuTV. The nice thing about this course is it’s a little bit of a twofer–they’re teaching Japanese, in Chinese. So while I’m learning Japanese and linguistics, I’ll be keeping up my Chinese as well. Yay for multitasking!

A few other things:

I want to include more input (it has to be effortless, yet interesting enough to keep my attention even if I re-watch it over and over)
I need more focus (no jumping around from YT channel to YT channel, looking for ever more resources)

So for now, the plan is:

Active learning = Go through 7-module RyuuuTV course, and when that’s finished, if I have the inclination to keep going with Ryu and Yuma, I’ll review their free YT learn Japanese series
Input = listen and re-listen to the Japanese version of In Time With You (esp. the second episode), just to get my ears used to the sounds of the language.
If I need more input = listen to the Comprehensible Japanese YT channel.

In the future:

I’m interested in possibly taking Dogen’s pitch accent course. Definitely not before March 2022, though, maybe not even this year. Of course, the sooner the better, because one never knows how long these things last, but I seriously can’t take on too much more right now.

How I’ll know if I reached my goal:

No hard core goal/results for now. I will know I’ve reached the goal if I’ve done the steps, that is all. Oh, and also I want to try to update this blog as I learn, too.

Monthly Updates

January

Stated goal/strategies for this month: Go through the RyuuuTV course. They’re releasing it module by module through March, so this is my priority, Japanese-wise, for the first quarter of the year.

Actual updates:

220117 Well, I just went through the first module of the course, and talked through the worksheets. Thoughts: So far, pretty easy, because they’re going through the basics (a, i, u, e, o and basic greetings). But there were some handwriting brush strokes that I got wrong. Not super important, so I might not try too hard to remember it. (Youtube video below)

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220118: Originally I wanted to go through all of Module 2, but ended up doing just the first three lessons, which took about an hour (well, more, as the YT video below shows), but ah well. I had to get ready for bed so I stopped there.
In the first three lessons of module 3 we learned some basic “A is B” sentences and -i and -na adjectives, using convos you might hear at an airport and a restaurant as the backdrop.
I like how this class has some summary worksheets and homework questions at the end of each lesson. The homework questions are straight to the point, maybe a bit too few, but too many questions isn’t necessarily ideal either.
You can really tell Ryu and Yuma put a lot of work into this course with the art and video editing, etc.

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February

Stated goal/strategies for this month: Continue going through RyuuuTV course.

Actual updates: