I like Tokyo, just too crowded hahaha I’m enjoying a good life, but busy. In my country (Spain) everyday was quite and calm. Here, on the other hand, it feels like a nonstop… Too crazy hahaha But the children… they’re wonderful! I really like my job here too and, well, just because of my preschool students I can get used to not understand most of what people says to me and earthquakes without running away back to Spain haha
Hope everything is ok in the US 
Oh yeah I bet! I’ve never lived anywhere like that. As fun as that seems like it could be, it must get a little overwhelming or stressful too. I have the opposite problem, having only lived in rural Indiana – nothing to do! Honestly I’m pretty tired of it, and I especially wish I could live somewhere where driving wasn’t necessary to go literally anywhere. I think in the next year or two I might at least be changing where I live within the US, though. I think I’d like to try a new country some day but that’s not gonna happen any time soon. The pandemic and other recent events have made me a little tired of this country generally but I’ll avoid getting into that much, heh.
Teaching little kids sounds nice! And I wish I could visit Spain too, looks beautiful. I guess there aren’t too many places I don’t wish I could visit, haha.
While I’m here, might as well say: I just hit the beginning of level 5! Staring down 86 lessons right now, hoping to tackle at least ~40 today and see how I feel then. No big updates otherwise. On we go.
Indiana! Must be a beautiful, quiet place. I never left Spain but coming here, so I need to see more world,… I can’t wait! But first, I need to be rich hahaha Spain is nice, tho,… just for vacations.
My Japanese is going so wrooooong ToT I can’t touch level two because the reading of the kanji I studied before are all but the ones Wanikani’s teaching me. It’s good! Because I didn’t memorize them and are the only left for me to learn… but I always get confuse and write the other readings haha Been stuck for three days already. It’s frustrating when I can speak nicely and understand TV but cannot memorice that 上 is reading as じょう…
Yeah I haven’t been outside of the country either, except for a brief trip to Canada! But that was more of a visit to a person and we didn’t really go out and see the sights. Indiana is quiet at least. I’m not a huge fan of the look – certainly some of it is pretty, but it takes some effort to go seek out the parts that haven’t been paved over or turned into corn fields, haha.
Oof, good luck with your learning. Maybe I’m lucky to have a blank slate, in that way. That and, honestly, while there are subjects I can’t handle, I seem well adjusted to sort of school-style memorization learning. Which might make the transition to more natural language acquisition, necessary and exciting as it is, somewhat harder for me than other people. But while I’m on the stage where I have to sit and use flash cards and memorize, I guess I’m in my element. Really hope you can manage to detangle all of those readings soon.
On that subject, any time I’m already here, I figure small progress updates might as well happen. I did 45 lessons to start off level 5! A lot of those were words using readings I already know, and radicals, which tend to be a bit simpler, so I didn’t feel too bad about pushing it like that. Hopefully I can blow through the 41 other lessons tomorrow, and my reviews later won’t be too rough. I can tell even the radicals are getting somewhat less intuitive and weirder.
Speaking of weird radicals, Wanikani calls this 斤 “axe” and as soon as I read ““This is a strange looking axe, I know. But think of it this way: the letter “T” is in the cliff.” I had an a-ha moment. Oh, a climbing axe! They aren’t actually shaped like that but that’s ok, great. …then the explanation went on to say some things about Mr. T. “What is the “T”? Of course it has to be Mr. T, who’s super awesome. Think of Mr. T wielding a terrifying axe, running after you screaming, “I pity the fool!” while trying to chop you down. That makes for a pretty terrifying axe.””
I don’t even know what’s going on with that mnemonic, but I think I’ll remember it fine my way, haha.
Congrats on your progress so far! It seems like things are going pretty well!
Just a warning, though, doing 40 lessons in a day is a lot to do at one time, especially since those reviews are going to come back at the same time for each apprentice stage, then guru, then master, then enlightened, then for their burn review… So you have to be really careful in order not to create future problems for yourself months down the line. Getting a surprise 40 reviews coming due in one day after you’re fully in the thick of it with a few hundred normal reviews can be a little overwhelming.
It might be fine in the earlier levels to rush through and do lessons in huge batches, but this can quickly become fairly unsustainable unless you have a massive amount of time that you can commit to WK each day. It’s also a good idea to make sure that your WK schedule allows you time for grammar study and reading. If it gets to a point where kanji reviews alone are taking you 2-3 hours a day, it can be hard to fit in other study.
My recommendation would be to decide on a set number of lessons to do each day (depending on the speed you want to complete WK at, and your ability to retain the information) and stick to that number. Even if you’re going full speed (which is a big time commitment!), there are ways to spread out the lesson workload over several days, which can help prevent burnout. If you haven’t read it yet, The Ultimate Guide to WK gives a lot of detailed advice on this matter. Personally, I’m going at about half full speed, which should let me complete WK in a little over two years (I’m hoping to finish MNN 1+2 in the same timeframe so that I can be ready with a foundation of both grammar/vocab and kanji knowledge to be in a good position to start reading intermediate manga!)
Of course, if you go too fast and things start becoming a problem, it’s always possible to stop doing lessons for a bit and just do your reviews until things slow down! But it’s easier to stick to WK if you can make it into a consistent habit, and that’s easier to achieve if you’re spending roughly the same amount of time on it every day.
Totally fair, I appreciate the advice and it’s the kind of thing I’m doing my best to watch out for. If they really pile up at later levels I can ease off, as you mentioned, but I have far too much time on my hands right now that one way or another is going to be spent on Japanese. I also figured I’d probably have to slow down in the future when the kanji likely gets more complicated, words get less directly related to meanings, etc. But so far I’ve found even on days when I get hit with ~100 reviews, I make my coffee in the morning and breeze through them pretty quickly. I know it’s going to be beyond 100 for sure; just saying that amount is nowhere near an issue so far.
I’m making sure to simultaneously hit other Japanese studying, yeah. Most days I’m doing some sort of Genki studying for grammar, whether that’s new stuff or working through all exercises. I also think I’ll naturally slow down on WK more as I get more able to read/listen – I’m not ignoring that stuff right now; I’ve found some simple Youtube channels and graded readers that I do spend a little time with, but there’s only so much of it at near-comprehensible level when I’m at the end of month 1. Speaking would be cool to practice too, but I don’t think it’s quite time for that, and that would push me to slowing down here as well. Shifting more of my attention in the direction of WK and the grammar feels like the right call until I have a bit of a better handle on this stuff. Like, I do have a consistent schedule in that I check all of this stuff every single day (and roughly at the same time) but I don’t want to limit what I do because time isn’t too much of a concern currently. Like, I’m not worried about burning out at all currently, but if I did, I think I’d be much more likely to burn out from frustration at not making enough progress than from giving myself too much to do, y’know?
I hope that doesn’t sound too dismissive! I appreciate the advice, and I think the time I can devote to this stuff currently is definitely uncommon for most people so I totally get where you’re coming from. Or maybe it’s just one of those walls I can’t see until I hit it for myself once, haha.
Yeah, right now it’s probably fine, but the problem is when those 40 reviews come back months later, on top of all of the other reviews that you have that future day. When things are going full speed for me, I’m going to have like 130 reviews daily, and that’s just with me doing a pretty regular 10-13 lessons a day for several months. If I was going faster, that number would probably be double (and if I wasn’t doing a set number of lessons a day, it would vacillate a large amount from day to day instead of being consistent). The main concern isn’t really your schedule right now, but your schedule six months from now, which can be harder to predict.
Of course, it’s still up to you how you prefer to manage your schedule, but sometimes when you’re new, it’s hard to realize just how much the decisions you make at the beginning will affect you in the long term. If your life gets crazy six months from now, or you start to experience the early warning signs of burnout then, you might regret going so fast right now and having huge batches of reviews coming due all at once. Or even if you’re able to manage it, you might have to start cutting grammar study and immersion time out of your schedule just to keep up with WK, which isn’t ideal.
Just some things to keep in mind!
Update time! I just finished reading through and watching the supplementary videos I like to use for Genki 1 lesson 12, the final lesson. There are exercises to do, some reviews (I do use the workbook as well), etc, but in terms of initially learning stuff… I’m done with the first Genki book and theoretically roughly N5! Exciting stuff. I’ve recently been repeatedly reminded that when it comes to native material, this is nowhere near enough, but one step at a time. Hopefully I can make the leap more fully after Genki 2.
I also finished all the lowest level Tadoku readers (that I have? it’s a lot anyway) a little while back and I’m rapidly closing in on finishing the second, level 1. Admittedly, I don’t agonize over these very hard – treating them as an extensive exposure where I read what I can and move on. That said, if the next level proves to be too much and I can’t find other good material to fill in my time, maybe I’ll do closer readings of this past level. We’ll see.
Cruising through early-mid level 6 of Wanikani. A few words are tricky (the uses of にち vs じつ in day words trip me up a lot), but still, loving the WK method, no complaints at all.
The biggest monster in my eyes by far is the grammar, but I’m getting by. Case in point, Genki ends lesson 12 with an example that doesn’t have an English translation along with it, including the line:
まだけっこんしたくないんです
まだ is fine, but the meat of that illustrates how grammar points that are easy in isolation stack to be really tricky. One issue was I couldn’t stop seeing けっこんした – the past form of “to get married.” I may have spent a literal minute or two on this, but I did puzzle out alone that it is using negative たい (たくない) plus んです. So like “I don’t want to get married yet (which is an explanation/reason/etc).” Proud that I could manage that.
I also remember weird hanging んs (as in, んです) getting me hung up and confused when reading the first chapter of the absolute beginner book club manga, so I already recognize I’m better equipped to handle that! Exciting.
Be careful. Once you get used to したい and したくない, it’ll be nearly impossible to get caught up on the した part!
That’s encouraging! Just gonna take more exposure. たい was only taught in the previous lesson of Genki, and I haven’t done the workbook stuff yet for that one because I stagger it to get my own pseudo spaced practice reminder, so besides not having much real world exposure, I haven’t even really seen たい all that I plan to in the textbook! So I’m calling it a victory to even recognize what’s happening at this stage, haha.
I just finished my reviews that put me at level 7, and in addition, I reached 10% of the kanji Wanikani teaches! Having a great time with that. I’m sure it’ll get tougher, but kanji has consistently felt like the easiest part of Japanese for me personally. Maybe I just click with the Wanikani method well.
I’ve been sticking to my general study plans well, not slacking off on the grammar (working on the second lesson in Genki 2) or reading either. Besides struggling through Ayumu in the absolute beginner book club, I’m doing level 2 Tadoku graded readers now, and it’s pretty smooth! Feels great that in its somewhat “safe” form, reading is getting more or less comfortable. There are some words I have to look up here and there, but I’m usually on the cusp of totally following, so I go for it, where I used to not bother as often. Sometimes I take a look at this site with N5-specific articles I saw someone share recently (I forget who, sorry! But thank you!). I wish it didn’t put spaces between words, but it’s nice to have another resource I know will mostly only contain things I know. If I feel like pushing myself, I open the NHK News, but that’s still pretty tough. Lots of word lookups and just trying to follow the general gist, there. But I remember first hearing about NHK News and thinking that for “Easy News” it looked terribly intimidating, so that’s progress!
Mostly, I’m just happy about a few tiny observations. I mentioned it in the “most recent word you learned” thread, but I had my first instance of deducing a word in part by the kanji with 小麦粉 (こむぎこ) – (wheat) flour. Thanks for teaching me the first 2 of those 3 kanji, WK. I also learned a grammar point in Genki and immediately remembered it was in Ayumu, returned to apply it right as I was reading about it, and finally more or less fully understood that sentence. Things are looking up!
If you reeeaaalllllyyy wanted no spaces, and you were reading on a desktop/laptop computer where you can easily access a Javascript console (such as Ctrl+Shift+I on Chromium-based browser, then click on the Console tab), you could paste some Javascript in.
Before:
After:
[document.body, ...document.body.querySelectorAll("*:not(script):not(noscript):not(style)")].forEach(({childNodes: [...nodes]}) => nodes
.filter(({nodeType}) => nodeType === document.TEXT_NODE)
.forEach((textNode) => textNode.textContent = textNode.textContent.replace(" ", "").replace(" ", "")));
(But I imagine they’re too short to go through the bother.)
It should be fun to look back on this a year from now, and see the growth.
Oh cool, thank you! Knowing that shortcut (thanks again) it doesn’t seem too bad; maybe I’ll give that a shot later. Always feels like it’s best to be practicing as close to the real thing as I can manage, and the spaces have even thrown me off here and there. Like, seeing と attached to the first word before 思ういますand the like can be weird.
And yeah, I totally agree on the progress from Ayumu. I use negative sounding words cause I’m prone to exaggeration and spicing up stuff I say, but I’m definitely glad to be doing it. You all are helpful and every small victory, wherever it comes, feels better than just about any other since it’s my main “real” Japanese exposure right now. Looking back at how things are easier is great and feels really important anyway. Even on the small scale I do things like make sure to read Genki’s little example stories before the lessons so that I can have parts I don’t understand, then after the lesson re-read and (usually!) fly through it. Feels good.
Just finished reviewing a bunch of stuff on WK and Anki, and wanted a quick break to refresh myself before jumping back into studying. So, I’ve been wanting to do a post here looking ahead a little, and there’s no time like the present. As for my current progress, I should be levelling on WK again tomorrow. I’m starting level 8 I guess, though the difference in the level you are “on” and your forum level messes with me. I guess you aren’t officially a level (on the forums) until you have actually finished that level, so to speak. With any luck I’m starting on Genki 2 lesson 18 later, which is approximately the halfway point. I’ll admit to moving through Genki a bit quickly, but subjectively the vast majority of it is sticking well when I see it in reading, and these points are going to come up constantly so I don’t think I need to get them perfect right now. I mean, I make sure I understand what their meaning is to the best of my ability, but there are details about how exactly to form an expression I might need a refresher on or whatever, and that’s totally ok. I also finished all of the level 2 Tadoku graded readers! My abilities are progressing quickly enough that the new Tadoku levels tend to feel easier than the previous rather than harder, haha.
I’ve always generally thought the theories about language “acquisition” vs learning made sense, and it’s been my goal to transition to learning through interacting with “real Japanese” when possible. With any luck, that’s going to be the end of Genki 2. I have more things that I want to consume than I could ever get to, so no worries on finding materials. And if I’m learning the language, I’m not picky. For example, Terrace House isn’t the sort of show I’d probably watch in English, but I gave it a quick look after seeing it so frequently recommended, and I’ll probably try it later. Right now it’s very hard to understand, but I figure that’s natural. Luckily, trying to understand the language in itself remains fun and interesting for me, so I’m not hard to please.
With that in mind, I’m thinking about trying Satori Reader when Genki 2 ends. There is a bit of an itch in my mind to get to the most “real” Japanese where it’s not learning content at all, but it’s still a step up from textbooks, and crucially I think it’ll help ease the transition. There’s a whole lot to figure out in going from a nicely laid out book with lessons that build on each other into suddenly totally self-directed learning. I think I’ll be ready to make it work, but along the way I have to figure out how I want to structure my sentence mining cards (and actually learn to make them myself). I have to keep working on looking things up myself, getting a better handle for how confident I can be that I’m truly understanding what I’m reading, working out a new schedule for basically all immersion learning, etc. It’s a lot, so having a small safety net in Satori Reader as early training wheels appeals to me.
That said, it’s not like I’m ever going to stop at just doing one thing, so I think I’ll take some more fun materials to read somewhat more casually alongside my main studying tool, at the start. There are always the book clubs, youtube videos I want to watch, etc etc etc.
Which also brings me to some packages I wanted to share! So, a little while back I discovered Box of Manga and I have to admit that, frivolous as they can be, surprise boxes are kind of fun. Furthermore, I like that someone who certainly knows more than me about the difficulty of a text picks manga to send (there are IIRC 3 tiers of Japanese ability you can select). Knowing that shipping takes a long time, I signed up a little while ago, and just wanted to share what I got.
Right now I’m focusing more on other things, but especially after the textbooks are done, I’ll certainly be back to talk about how reading this stuff goes!
Log out and back in, and it’ll correct itself. There’s some technical reason for this “bug”. Since the forums are hosted by Discourse (the group that writes/maintains the software), WaniKani staff is probably has their hands tied on getting it to update when your level actually changes.
Me on a daily basis: “Do I immerse more Japanese, or get to more English language media I want to read/listen to/watch???”
I’m not experienced enough to say, but I feel a show like Terrance House is like a final boss in a video game. (Not to be confused with the secret boss that’s more difficult than the final boss, Classical Japanese.)
The main plus is probably furthering your ability to recognize how Japanese sounds. Initially, it’s just knowing how syllables sounds (especially the vowel portion), so that you can read it “properly”. But then once you start learning words and hearing them, you’ll start to hear specifically how each word sounds. Then eventually you are able to catch things like how あめ (candy) and あめ (rain) sound different.
I see アオハライド!
Log out and back in, and it’ll correct itself. There’s some technical reason for this “bug”. Since the forums are hosted by Discourse (the group that writes/maintains the software), WaniKani staff is probably has their hands tied on getting it to update when your level actually changes.
Oh, good to know. I’ve coincidentally never noticed it properly catching up or lagging by more than one level, so it never occurred to me that it might not be intended.
Yup, that did it, level 7 for real just in time to stop being level 7 tomorrow.
Me on a daily basis: “Do I immerse more Japanese, or get to more English language media I want to read/listen to/watch???”
Oh absolutely. And now my sort of related dilemma is, as Japanese language content comes around that I’m interested in, do I stick with the translation to relax and enjoy it much sooner, or save it for when it’s useful immersion material and I can experience it in its original form? Have usually leaned towards the latter so far because things I’m excited about will only be even more motivating, but I might be a long ways off from some of them. Like, I’m a big Yakuza games and related series fan, and I’m closely eying Lost Judgment… but that’s going to take longer than the 2 months until its release to be not frustrating, heh.
I’m not experienced enough to say, but I feel a show like Terrance House is like a final boss in a video game. (Not to be confused with the secret boss that’s more difficult than the final boss, Classical Japanese.)
It gets brought up a lot as good learner material so I think I was lulled into a false impression that it would be easy, but I’m realizing the better way of considering it is likely that it’s too casual and off-the-cuff to be anything but difficult, but persevering through that when you’re ready is recommended because it’s loads of exposure to natural conversation. It’s not easy, it’s… hard but practical.
The main plus is probably furthering your ability to recognize how Japanese sounds. Initially, it’s just knowing how syllables sounds (especially the vowel portion), so that you can read it “properly”. But then once you start learning words and hearing them, you’ll start to hear specifically how each word sounds. Then eventually you are able to catch things like how あめ (candy) and あめ (rain) sound different.
That’ll be great to keep in mind. I often only pick out isolated words, but I love to punch above my weight when it comes to video/listening content.
I see アオハライド!
Fantastic! I had no idea that was read in a book club. Huge thanks; that’ll be a helpful reference.
You can always do like I’m doing with Detective Conan: Enjoy it now in English, then by the time I’m good enough to read it in Japanese, I’ll have forgotten most of the material. (You might need to wait at least ten years before memory issues set in, though, at which point you might have mastered Japanese already!)
I currently aim to read things in Japanese that I wouldn’t read in English. For example, I enjoyed reading アオハライド in Japanese. It definitely held me interest, and I wanted to find out what would happen next for the characters. But it’s not something I think I would have read in English.
Almost like reading a manga while going through Genki =D
I can just imagine how great それでも歩は寄せてくる must be for Genki readers because, yay, someone actually speaks with です and ます!
It was an informal book club (for lack of a better term), that is to say, not a main “ABBC” or “BBC” pick. That means there was a smaller number of people reading along (just those interested in reading the series), and therefore less grammar discussion. (Plus it’s closer to BBC range, which can result in less grammar discussion.) But when you get to reading volume one, don’t hesitate to jump in with any questions you have!
I know that Terrace House gets recommended here a lot, but you… might not want to watch the end of it. I’m sort of surprised to see so many people recommending that show without mentioning this, because I think it’s something people should know before starting it.
In 2019, a wrestler named Hana Kimura joined the Terrace House cast. I started watching when she joined because I wanted to see how the show dealt with the existence of wrestling kayfabe, which is very protected in Japan (basically they can’t directly talk about the fact that pro wrestling matches are scripted, even though everyone knows it). It was fun at first to see how it balanced wrestling kayfabe with sort of the Terrace House “kayfabe” (for lack of a better word to describe reality television “reality”), and I liked seeing a different side of Hana than we see in her wrestling.
In 2020, though, things got… rough. I was several episodes behind when this happened, but apparently a lot of Terrace House fans got really mad at Hana and decided they hated her because she was rude to one of the Terrace House guys (the fans wanted them to be a couple). So people started sending her death threats and just absolutely horrible messages.
Because of all the abuse she was getting from fans, Hana ended up killing herself on May 23. According to her mother, the nature of Terrace House and the way the staff handled the show contributed heavily to her death. Basically, the show instructed her to play a heel character (heel is a wrestling term for the bad guy or villain, basically), and she received horrible backlash for it from the fans of the show even though it wasn’t in her control. Wrestling fans were always really kind to her and loved her (even though she was a heel), but the reality television fans didn’t have that same awareness of kayfabe, so people sent her horrible abuse just for doing the job she was instructed to do.
Needless to say, seeing this happen in real time was really traumatizing, and I personally can never watch Terrace House again. The show got canceled because of this, and stricter anti-bullying and anti-harassment laws were proposed in Japan to hopefully help prevent this from happening to someone else. But the show environment of Terrace House was actively destructive to Hana, and personally I’m unable to put that aside no matter how good of a learning resource it might be.
