「ようこそ私のソウルソサエティへ」
446 days ago a journey began.
446 days later this journey kinda ends.
The Journey
Everything started with “WHY DID THEY STOP TRANSLATING THIS MANGA”:
This. This was the turning point.
Japanese is the 4th language I am learning and by far the hardest and the first one I’m consciously learning. What I mean by that is that the first two are my mother tongue and the language of the country I was born in and the third is English which I’ve been learning since 3rd grade. They were always there and I didn’t need to study to understand what someone is writing/saying.
So how does one usually start a journey as big as this? Preparation. I’ve googled A LOT.
“What is the best way to learn Japanese? Which textbooks should I use? How does Anki work? Which Template should I use?” etc.
After 2 weeks of just preparing, my resources were:
- Human Japanese (+ Intermediate)
- r/learnjapanese
- Anki
- Jisho.org
- WaniKani
I started with learning Hiragana and Katakana within 2 days and afterwards began the Human Japanese lessons. Every vocab in the app got an (ugly) Anki card.
After finishing the first app, I started to simultaneously use WK to become 上手 in Kanji.
Normally one would say “Stop! You’ve violated the law! Where is the immersion in all of this grammar and vocab?!”
Welllll, we’re now jumping almost 365 days later. Somewhere around level 40 after I’ve bought the Genki books and was thinking “You know what? I am 上手 af already! Time to play Pokemon in Japanese”
Spoiler: I was not 上手…
Pokemon, a children game, crushed me. “How can this be?! Why are these NPCs talking so funny?! What is this wretched curse?!”. And that was the moment I’ve realized how important it is to start immersing oneself as early as possible, even if it means to watch Peppa Pig.
Afterwards, the rest of the journey was quite and just your run of the mill Training Arc.
And thus I’ve mastered the 60 levels of this high tower known as WaniKani.
The Bourney - Journey the next generation
So what comes next?
The following things I am currently doing or will start after my vacation:
- Fighting through Quartet 1 + 2
- Finish Pokemon
- Playing Voice of Cards in Japanese
- Reading 無職転生 ～異世界行ったら本気だす～
- Putting many many new vocabs into Anki
- Maybe try the N4 JLPT or even N3
- Watching anime with jap subs (in the beginning) to increase my listening comprehension
- One day help some scanlation team translating a manga
Tips
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You can read Hiragana and Katakana and some basic Kanji? Now is the perfect time to start reading something in Japanese
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You are never to old to learn something. You’ll become old, but will you have learned something and be old, or are you just old without knowledge?
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Everyone has its own way of doing something and pace. It’s your journey, go at it as fast or slow as you want. Just make sure to enjoy it.
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Never limit yourself to only one or two resources. The internet is vast and full of information. Use it.
And that concludes my level 60 post.
Thank you everyone and thank you WaniKani Team.
It has been a pleasure and I can’t wait to post the “I’ve burned every item” post 
