Haruto Uzumaki
渦巻ハルト
- 24 Apr 2022
- 382
- 470
Long time no see, Jref family 
I'm finally back after a long break from Jref (which isn't the fault of you guys). I guess it's been about 6 months, possibly even more, and I'd like to formally return and catch up with everybody in this new thread here! I also want to share my experiences for the past 0.5+ year and also explain why I disappeared, even though I didn't want to.
So far, I think I am now just about capable of passing an N5 JLPT exam. I probably will just barely pass though
I've been working extremely hard the past few months especially to expand my vocabulary, kanji recognition and understanding of grammar, which is mainly the reason why I ended up basically disappearing. Basically, before I took a break, I was on here trying to do what 文太郎さん called "dictation practice". It was an awesome method at first, but I felt that I should be doing something different after a certain point. My intuition basically told me it's time to use other methods to progress my learning, but I didn't want to reject the learning methods that I was taught here, so I basically just decided to study on my own. Before, I could barely even visualize hiragana and could barely read them, let alone write them. Well, I still am not that good at writing, cause my new methods of study don't focus on that, but when it's time for me to write I don't feel I will have any trouble. My goals shifted a bit as well which is why writing is definitely the least of my priorities right now. I personally feel I have almost mastered the art of reading hiragana, which is a small feat at first glance, but I find it to be an amazing accomplishment considering all the stuff that makes learning hard for me. I can pretty much read them instantly without thinking about it now; it's second nature which is really good for me (at least for short words, although long strings of hiragana cause my brain to switch to a different processing mode which reads each character separartely, so it takes longer). I also recently learned katakana about a few months ago, and with the help of the Tofugu kana quiz, I was able to learn it in less than 3 days. I haven't mastered it yet cause I still make some mistakes occasionally, but even katakana has become second nature and funnily enough, I sometimes even think in katakana and english loanwords. The good thing about individual character syllables is that you can just drill them day and night into your head, and you can make insane progress that way. I found that out through my own discoveries with learning. I got much better at finding the best learning styles for me. I still have a long way to go overall, but I think I'm making huge progress and I've come a long way. I want to thank you guys for being helpful and encouraging me!
I'm now currently drilling kanji (words, words that use a kanji in it, and sometimes have kana attached to them), which works a bit different because there are meanings attached to the kanji, usually many, but I've found that drilling works best for words that relate to me in some way. Words that I see a lot, words that I like, such as 説明, 新しい, etc. Just unique looking kanji that look cool to me stick out, as well as those I use frequently or see frequently.
I also find that writing songs in Japanese helps a lot, as I'm probably about 10x more likely to remember the words that I used for the song. I already finished my first song (although I have to admit, I used translation software a lot), and after some revision from Japanese natives to make it perfectly natural as possible, I have something I can always go back to for memorizing words: a 2 minute song with over 100 words that could be useable in everyday context! And since I made the song myself, I know the lyrics by heart, and by nature, the meanings
it's an awesome feeling, and I plan to make many more songs to form a whole album soon. It's a great way personally to supercharge my learning. I don't know if other people will experience a similar thing, but I feel like using creativity leads to the most unique and helpful approaches to learning, which work well for the individual, rather than a general population. Next I want to focus on mastering grammar, but I need to find a good way to master it quickly if there is another way than just practicing talking to people. I'd like to drill creating grammatically correct sentences, and advanced concepts and complex semantic sentences with multiple particles, etc.
I also participate in lots of "deep submersion" to force myself to learn. Before I go to sleep, I always try to turn a podcast on in Japanese (not those "learn japanese in your sleep" videos) and keep it on throughout my entire sleep cycle. I know some people will say it doesn't help but I find a lot of benefits that make it worth the simple action to turn one on before going to sleep: You will be awake for a certain period of time before going to sleep, so you can take that time when you're not doing anything, to just listen to it until you fall asleep. It's a good way to go to sleep easier too. It sets your mind to focus on words you may or may not know, and when you wake up, the podcast (hopefully still playing) will provide even more benefit as the first thing you hear when awake, and as long as you stay in your bed, you will get to absorb potentially even more Japanese. As for the benefits during sleep, people tend to say it has absolutely no effect but that's usually incorrect, I'd say for most people. Personally the sounds that happen near me in real life have a large influence on my dreams or if I even have dreams at all, which explains why I've been having dreams much more often now. When I dream now, often it's entirely in Japanese. Even if I don't have a clue what's being said consciously, I think it's really good because it shows my brain is processing the audio from the real world even as I dream, which means there is an effect, which I find to be beneficial. I've found it also helps to consolidate spoken words I've already learned before. If it weren't for listening to these podcasts during my sleep, I wouldn't have nearly as much of the "automatic" processes that I have. I believe it contributes to much of that. I wouldn't have expected to have any level of unconscious thinking by now for Japanese, but it's already starting. Of course it'll take a lot longer to have nearly everything be automatic, but I like the speed it's coming along now. I do wish I could make more progress faster of course, but I guess I'll have to accept that I'm going pretty much as fast as I can until I discover another lucrative method that works for me. I'm sure after a certain point, the learning rate will exponentially increase!
I still unfortunately have little to no conversation skills, but hopefully being able to use Japanese through text more will give me better conversation skills, and a good sense of grammar and how to respond to what people say to me.
As for the final thing everyone's probably wondering about (I say everyone as if anyone even cares about what I'm writing at this point
), I still plan to move to Japan permanently. There's been some difficulties planning it out, mainly because I don't have some small thing for each possible way I could path to stay in Japan permanently, but I'm working on seeing if I can get into a language school now. It's not the one I wanted to go to (ARC Academy Shinjuku) but I'll take anything if it means I get the chance to make my dreams come true. I've already aggressively saved $12,000 from pure hard work at my job for over a year, which caused a lot of physical damage to my body (and overall damage to my life), but I've got nearly enough money to last a good while in Japan, granted I live frugally (and before anyone says "it's not cheap to live in ____", I live in the city with the most expensive housing costs in America... Even in the heart of Tokyo an average apartment would only match the cost of an average apartment here (although it would be much smaller I guess) so it won't bother me a bit, in fact I will challenge myself to find even cheaper apartments than ones I could find here).
That about sums everything up at the moment, and though I'd love to discuss more potential ways that I can permanently get into Japan, I first want to catch up with everyone, so how's everyone doing? Anything new in happened that you'd like to tell me about? I want to hear about it! I also want to know how the opening of the border is going to affect your life it personally has no effect for me, since I would only be able to stay for a maximum of three months anyway.
Waiting to hear everyone's response!
(P.S. 1: Sorry for writing a whole essay, it's been a long while
)
(P.S. 2: I'll be posting some creative work somewhere around here in the forum soon! Stay tuned!)
I'm finally back after a long break from Jref (which isn't the fault of you guys). I guess it's been about 6 months, possibly even more, and I'd like to formally return and catch up with everybody in this new thread here! I also want to share my experiences for the past 0.5+ year and also explain why I disappeared, even though I didn't want to.So far, I think I am now just about capable of passing an N5 JLPT exam. I probably will just barely pass though
I've been working extremely hard the past few months especially to expand my vocabulary, kanji recognition and understanding of grammar, which is mainly the reason why I ended up basically disappearing. Basically, before I took a break, I was on here trying to do what 文太郎さん called "dictation practice". It was an awesome method at first, but I felt that I should be doing something different after a certain point. My intuition basically told me it's time to use other methods to progress my learning, but I didn't want to reject the learning methods that I was taught here, so I basically just decided to study on my own. Before, I could barely even visualize hiragana and could barely read them, let alone write them. Well, I still am not that good at writing, cause my new methods of study don't focus on that, but when it's time for me to write I don't feel I will have any trouble. My goals shifted a bit as well which is why writing is definitely the least of my priorities right now. I personally feel I have almost mastered the art of reading hiragana, which is a small feat at first glance, but I find it to be an amazing accomplishment considering all the stuff that makes learning hard for me. I can pretty much read them instantly without thinking about it now; it's second nature which is really good for me (at least for short words, although long strings of hiragana cause my brain to switch to a different processing mode which reads each character separartely, so it takes longer). I also recently learned katakana about a few months ago, and with the help of the Tofugu kana quiz, I was able to learn it in less than 3 days. I haven't mastered it yet cause I still make some mistakes occasionally, but even katakana has become second nature and funnily enough, I sometimes even think in katakana and english loanwords. The good thing about individual character syllables is that you can just drill them day and night into your head, and you can make insane progress that way. I found that out through my own discoveries with learning. I got much better at finding the best learning styles for me. I still have a long way to go overall, but I think I'm making huge progress and I've come a long way. I want to thank you guys for being helpful and encouraging me! I'm now currently drilling kanji (words, words that use a kanji in it, and sometimes have kana attached to them), which works a bit different because there are meanings attached to the kanji, usually many, but I've found that drilling works best for words that relate to me in some way. Words that I see a lot, words that I like, such as 説明, 新しい, etc. Just unique looking kanji that look cool to me stick out, as well as those I use frequently or see frequently.
I also find that writing songs in Japanese helps a lot, as I'm probably about 10x more likely to remember the words that I used for the song. I already finished my first song (although I have to admit, I used translation software a lot), and after some revision from Japanese natives to make it perfectly natural as possible, I have something I can always go back to for memorizing words: a 2 minute song with over 100 words that could be useable in everyday context! And since I made the song myself, I know the lyrics by heart, and by nature, the meanings
it's an awesome feeling, and I plan to make many more songs to form a whole album soon. It's a great way personally to supercharge my learning. I don't know if other people will experience a similar thing, but I feel like using creativity leads to the most unique and helpful approaches to learning, which work well for the individual, rather than a general population. Next I want to focus on mastering grammar, but I need to find a good way to master it quickly if there is another way than just practicing talking to people. I'd like to drill creating grammatically correct sentences, and advanced concepts and complex semantic sentences with multiple particles, etc.I also participate in lots of "deep submersion" to force myself to learn. Before I go to sleep, I always try to turn a podcast on in Japanese (not those "learn japanese in your sleep" videos) and keep it on throughout my entire sleep cycle. I know some people will say it doesn't help but I find a lot of benefits that make it worth the simple action to turn one on before going to sleep: You will be awake for a certain period of time before going to sleep, so you can take that time when you're not doing anything, to just listen to it until you fall asleep. It's a good way to go to sleep easier too. It sets your mind to focus on words you may or may not know, and when you wake up, the podcast (hopefully still playing) will provide even more benefit as the first thing you hear when awake, and as long as you stay in your bed, you will get to absorb potentially even more Japanese. As for the benefits during sleep, people tend to say it has absolutely no effect but that's usually incorrect, I'd say for most people. Personally the sounds that happen near me in real life have a large influence on my dreams or if I even have dreams at all, which explains why I've been having dreams much more often now. When I dream now, often it's entirely in Japanese. Even if I don't have a clue what's being said consciously, I think it's really good because it shows my brain is processing the audio from the real world even as I dream, which means there is an effect, which I find to be beneficial. I've found it also helps to consolidate spoken words I've already learned before. If it weren't for listening to these podcasts during my sleep, I wouldn't have nearly as much of the "automatic" processes that I have. I believe it contributes to much of that. I wouldn't have expected to have any level of unconscious thinking by now for Japanese, but it's already starting. Of course it'll take a lot longer to have nearly everything be automatic, but I like the speed it's coming along now. I do wish I could make more progress faster of course, but I guess I'll have to accept that I'm going pretty much as fast as I can until I discover another lucrative method that works for me. I'm sure after a certain point, the learning rate will exponentially increase!
I still unfortunately have little to no conversation skills, but hopefully being able to use Japanese through text more will give me better conversation skills, and a good sense of grammar and how to respond to what people say to me.
As for the final thing everyone's probably wondering about (I say everyone as if anyone even cares about what I'm writing at this point
), I still plan to move to Japan permanently. There's been some difficulties planning it out, mainly because I don't have some small thing for each possible way I could path to stay in Japan permanently, but I'm working on seeing if I can get into a language school now. It's not the one I wanted to go to (ARC Academy Shinjuku) but I'll take anything if it means I get the chance to make my dreams come true. I've already aggressively saved $12,000 from pure hard work at my job for over a year, which caused a lot of physical damage to my body (and overall damage to my life), but I've got nearly enough money to last a good while in Japan, granted I live frugally (and before anyone says "it's not cheap to live in ____", I live in the city with the most expensive housing costs in America... Even in the heart of Tokyo an average apartment would only match the cost of an average apartment here (although it would be much smaller I guess) so it won't bother me a bit, in fact I will challenge myself to find even cheaper apartments than ones I could find here). That about sums everything up at the moment, and though I'd love to discuss more potential ways that I can permanently get into Japan, I first want to catch up with everyone, so how's everyone doing? Anything new in happened that you'd like to tell me about? I want to hear about it! I also want to know how the opening of the border is going to affect your life
it personally has no effect for me, since I would only be able to stay for a maximum of three months anyway.Waiting to hear everyone's response!
(P.S. 1: Sorry for writing a whole essay, it's been a long while
)(P.S. 2: I'll be posting some creative work somewhere around here in the forum soon! Stay tuned!)
I live in Florida which is a high tourism state, but here they pretty much act like everyone else except they just might not know certain things that natives would know about here, such as they might drive a lot differently (which contributes to the bad driving here) and they might speed in areas where is Floridians know to never speed 
not even the grind that I'm dedicated to, but I'm so dedicated to achieving my goal in Japan that I'll do anything, so I can make what seems impossible, possible again!
)
I'll see how far I can go before some paywall appears, cause I'm skeptical that it could be completely free 
", which basically tells me "alright, that's enough for now!" and that also pretty much explains 
I live exactly as the definition describes it, that's how I was able to save so much money with a low pay (and living with my parents (which I don't want to do)). I would have no problem being next to homeless either in Japan, if that's how I had to live to stay there long enough and become a citizen. 
I barely even like to see pictures with my vocabulary but I'll deal with that at least. I'll keep listening to my ポッドキャスト every day and I'll be watching lots of videos and trying out many apps to find the best ones for me! 
)
oh well I guess...
