I got back from Japan today, and I just wanted to write to celebrate my sense of progress with people who understand what its like to learn Japanese (sometimes its tough! x_x)
I also wanted to encourage all the other users who are still in the pre-30 levels that your study really will pay off, maybe sooner than you think ★*ੈ✩‧₊˚
When I was there, it felt like I could read more than 90% of the kanji I would see around and about (except not so much on food menus haha). I was visiting my partners family in Japan, and his Japanese mother would quiz me on my reading ability when we were out and I could totally meet the challenge haha. I could understand so so much more than when I last visited Japan at around level 20.
I had thought that I had to get all the way up to level 60 to start to feel confident reading in Japan, and when I practice reading light novels I still need to look up quite a few kanji, so I was really surprised.
Thanks for the encouraging news. I think it’s similar with Chinese, once you get to ~1000 characters, you can read most signs outside. But still not enough to read literature without a dictionary.
This was really encouraging to me, I’m glad you shared your experience. Were you motivated to learn Japanese before knowing your current partner? I can imagine it’s extra motivation to be able to connect with them & their family more closely.
I’m just after visiting Japan at (level 6 lol) and really could read only a few train station names, find an exit, know what kind of meat I was eating. It’s great to know the not-too-distant future (maybe 10 months away?) promises the kind of competency one can really enjoy. Thanks!
Thanks for your reply! I didn’t really know anything about Japan before I met my partner and I started studying Japanese after first meeting his family. They are a big motivation! How about you, what’s your reason for studying?
It’s great that you are making such fast progress! I think it’s taken me more than two years to get to level 33, I’m slow
I like that you became interested in studying after meeting his family. That is very sweet. Do his family practice any traditional hobbies (like 茶道, 花道, 書道) ? I wonder if you have interest in those.
I study for sumo lol. I am a wrestler who became a fan during the pandemic. The highlight of my trip was when my host asked me to come work for her company giving sumo tours lol. Now I dream of doing it in my retirement
It’s so cool that you study for sumo! That must give you a lot of Japanese cultural products to study with, like videos and articles. It sounds like an honour to be asked to come and do that work!
My partners family doesn’t practice any of those hobbies, but his father recently did a month of helping at a temple in Japan. It was really interesting learning more about the day-to-day running of the temple and the spiritual nature of those places. I find the shinto/buddhist synchronism in Japan kinda hard to understand, I would love to learn more
Would you be able to do a month helping at that temple like your partner’s father did? At the same temple where he can recommend you to them that sounds like it would be a wonderful opportunity. I observed this kind of “apprenticeship” model is how most traditional knowledge is preserved in Japan.
I’m not the best with shinto or Japanese religion broadly. What I’ve learned has usually come by accident while I was trying to learn about sumo lol which itself is a shinto ritual and mixed martial arts syncretism (bleh academic words).
What I can share is shinto is the older tradition. There’s scholarship that humans emigrated to Japan from the Korean peninsula and the animistic tradition (all things have spirits, man is essentially good, world essentially good, evil spirits come from without to mess things up) already existed there in some form. This would evolve into what we know as shinto. A lot of shinto practice is about this tension between the goodness of our world and the evil spirits, down to very small practices like the rikishi (sumo wrestlers) stamping their feet and throwing salt to rid the arena of evil spirits. That’s a generalisation, but hopefully it helps lol
The history of Buddhism is the one that’s a lot tougher for me to grasp like the history of Christianity because there are so many threads lol I’m probably going to look back at this explanation and cringe when I’ve learned more, but to me it evolved more stepwise with individual monks importing new ideas, building temples that incorporated their new ideas, converting many people, then fading in popularity as they were replaced unless they had major staying power like Zen. That’s the trend I’ve observed. I believe the written record is that it initially came to Japan from China after being oberved by Japanese who had travelled there on diplomatic missions. Because of its proximity to China a lot of these new religious movements grew in popularity along Japan’s far western end before spreading east. This is also where Christianity first took hold much later. Its primary concern is the tension between permanence and impermanence, what lasts and what doesn’t. Gravesites in Japan will be attached to Buddhist temples because of this and Buddhism directs a lot of end-of-life rituals in Japan.
OK that’s all I know lol I hope it helps in a small way and that you have the opportunity to ask more knowledgeable people soon
Thank you so much, I’m so grateful that you shared your insights. I didn’t know that, about sumo being a Shinto ritual, that’s so interesting.
I think my Japanese would need to get a lot better before I’d be confident to apply for something like working at a temple, but maybe in a few more years haha. Thank you for the encouragement!
I had a similar experience. First time I came to Japan, I was level 10 or something like that. Now I’m back (level 38) and it’s super encouraging not just how much I can read, but also how much my vocabulary has improved. I actually encounter many of the seemingly random vocabulary words I learned with Wanakani everyday. When Japanese quiz me on my knowledge, I am often surprised myself at how well I know things
That’s awesome! It sounds fun getting quizzed haha. I get so surprised by what words are actually super useful and common in Japan. Like when I was there I saw 迷惑 written on a lot of signs, idk why but when I learnt that word I thought I would probably never encounter it, thinking it was probably some rare version of 面倒
I think 30 is when I stopped making mnemonics and just started putting kanji together like puzzle pieces and figured things out much more smoothly. I know many people don’t reach 60, but 30 is a great milestone to take a leap and start reading native materials. Congrats!
I’m not the person you are responding to, but as someone who lives in Japan, there are many signs with ご迷惑 on them especially if there is construction, or if something is sold out, or if there is a long line. It’s basically the sign apologizing for the inconvenience of having either this specific rule, or limited seating etc etc. Aside from apologizing, I believe another common place to see it is at conbinis if you have a car. I see a sign that says something along the lines of “Idling your car in the parking lot is a 迷惑 to other customers and our neighbors. Please don’t stay for longer than 30 minutes”
