Master's degree to be a Japanese translator

Japanese Language Questions
#41

I’d say that the first step is to believe you can do it and to try. Look for pronunciation advice online, on Wasabi Japan or even on YouTube. Learn how to pronounce each of the sounds so you can make them with confidence. Start looking for pitch accent information as well so that you will sound more natural, but don’t panic if you don’t get it straightaway. It takes time, even for someone who has studied music and speaks a tonal language (Mandarin) like me. If possible, find something like an anime series that you like and practise repeating your favourite phrases aloud, imitating the tone and pitch variations. Also practise making sentences on your own in order to express yourself, and not simply in order to translate a sentence that already exists, looking up words in a dictionary with example sentences so you can see if the word you’re choosing is appropriate. I personally think that if you can’t even construct sentences in the form of text, you won’t be able to do so verbally, so you might as well start with that. With practice, you will start to be able to express yourself fluidly. Conversely, you won’t be able to do so without practice, because speaking and writing are fundamentally forms of active, rapid recall being applied to a specific structure, and you have to do so without any outside prompting, unlike what you do during reviews on WK. If possible, look for Japanese people to chat with online, like on HelloTalk. If you’re willing, look for a teacher with whom you can take classes, so that you can get corrections and advice while practising. I think these are the most basic things you can do to improve.

If you want to be able to understand ‘anything that [you] read or listen to’, I think you’re going to have to study a lot, so it’s going to take a while, even if progress won’t necessarily be slow. However, do keep in mind that you may not have to be that good even to take a master’s degree, or at least, you will only really need to be able to understand a wide range of things within your area of specialisation. Scientific texts won’t use the same words as literature, and different sorts of literature will definitely use different sorts of grammar and expressions. Therefore, I suggest that, once you’ve covered what’s required for fluent everyday speech, you start to focus on the types of content that you want to be able to understand.

This is simply something you will have to try your hand at, perhaps by reading Japanese academic papers online. There are many of these, and I have read three or four of them about various Japanese grammatical structures. You should take note of the sort of language they use, and aim to imitate it yourself. I also think that if you’re studying at a Japanese university, your professors will not refuse to give you specific advice on account of the fact that you are a foreigner. If you have concerns about academic language use, ask them if it’s appropriate, for example, to use the だ体 while writing your paper, or if only the である体 is acceptable. I doubt they will refuse to answer. These are things that you can pick up along the way through observation and by asking for help. Also don’t hesitate to use relevant experience in your native language, because I think academics around the world is fundamentally very similar in how it attempts to present itself.

My understanding is that only bachelor’s degree students will go for a year of preparation in Japan before starting their degrees. Graduate students don’t have that, I believe. However, you will very likely be able to sign up for Japanese courses at your university, so please do take advantage of that. I think that you should do your best to acquire at least enough Japanese to understand most things in news articles with little effort, and then take advantage of the courses at a university to perfect your understanding of specific sorts of language use that are harder to encounter in the news.

My reason for suggesting Tobira is that I believe it should bring you roughly up to a high N3 level, if not to the beginning of N2. If that was not the case for you, then perhaps I’ll need to re-evaluate my impression. However, whatever it is, here’s what I think you should think about, and what you should try:

  • Do you struggle a lot when you attempt to read normal news? How much do you understand, and what do you do when you don’t understand? My personal opinion is that, if you’re not struggling too much with the grammar in news meant for native speakers, then you should consume as much of it as possible while looking up all (yes, all) the words you don’t know. Don’t just stop at translations: read other example sentences for each one, and think about how it should be used. Ask yourself how you would use the word yourself. Your objective should be to understand each word, not just to memorise a translation that might fail to work in another context. If you’re struggling a lot though, then try reading more ‘easy news’ for now, but apply the same approach. I strongly recommend that you use https://ejje.weblio.jp for this, because it is much more detailed than Jisho, and provides lots of high-quality translations.

  • Do you have something you like to watch or listen to? It can be anime, songs, dramas or YouTube videos. Find some way to regularly integrate these things into your schedule, and do two things with them: firstly, make an effort to listen to them intently and to look out for words you know and don’t know. This will help you improve your listening, and also expand your vocabulary. It can also help expand your grammatical knowledge. (I know or can guess the meaning of almost all the N2 grammar points on Japanesetest4you.com, along with about 50% of their N1 grammar point list, entirely because of anime. I looked up the structures I encountered and learnt what they meant with the help of a dictionary and context.) Secondly, imitate the language use you find in such media. You’ll need to look out for what’s formal or informal, and what’s rude or polite (Tobira should have taught you this), but ultimately, by imitating your favourite phrases, you’ll start to learn how to construct Japanese sentences naturally, and how to pronounce them. In order for this to work, you cannot just memorise what’s being said. You have to understand it and internalise it so those words become yours. There’s no need to memorise lines, but try to remember interesting phrases and sentences so you can fall back on them when you’re unsure about something.

With time and some expression practice (which you can do on these forums, at the very worst), you should eventually start to feel more fluent and have an easier time writing and speaking in Japanese. I, for example, am not yet very good at speaking Japanese, because I’ve had almost no opportunity to do so, but I can feel my writing becoming more fluid each time I send a message to my friend. The words I need come to me more easily each time. That’s how you’ll know you’re making progress.

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#42

nat25, Ah! Your native language is Spanish (I studied Spanish for years, but am not fluent; but I have great respect for my Portuguese and Spanish-speaking Japanese-learning friends. I have a native Japanese acquaintance, HelloTalk ID: Kazubonne, who also has a YouTube channel Terabonne Kazubonne He’s enthusiastic and tries to be helpful. I bring him up, because I had thought that he was working at a language school in Japan, and I had thought perhaps he could help you (but I can’t see that information now).

I’ve been following Jonapedia’s advice as much as possible. He’s been a great resource for discussion on many topics regarding grammar and pitch accent, Vocabulary and learning resources.

@Jonapedia, sorry to hear the ignorance about Singapore factoring into people rudely dismissing your obvious talents! I was once ignorant about Singapore, then I befriended a visiting Masters student getting an international law degree. She was the star of my moot court trial in law school, and her English accent was delicious. Very.impressed. If you are doing voice recordings on HelloTalk, please tell me your ID so I can hear your voice! (In French, Japanese, English or Chinese)

@RoseEater wow, ASAO looks amazing!!! Thx 4 the link!!

@shiruberu, I have a PhD in Chemistry/Biotech. I worked as an international patent attorney for a while. The international clients seeking US patent protection usually provided their English patent translations. Many scientists try to publish in English-speaking journals. I rarely had work to throw to my translation companies because the clients had done their own translations. But I think that it’s great to have that field-specific vocabulary familiarity to offer to make you stand out as unique along available translators.

I have a German-speaking Swiss PhD friend who managed to get a Post-doc in Japan (just as Covid hit) (around JLPT N4 level). She’s taking Japanese classes through the University (and earning while she’s learning). So maybe you could look into possible Post-doc positions for yourself?

That was interesting to see the Japanese language preparatory schools from Meghana

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#43

Thanks for placing confidence in my advice, but pitch accent is definitely one of the things for which I’m not as confident. I don’t know a ton about it, though I do have some idea of where to learn more. I mean, I’ve had my Japanese accent complimented, but my speech is still very shaky for lack of practice, and I still make mistakes since most of what I do is just about what sounds or feels right based on everything I’ve heard: every once in a while, I’ll look up a pitch accent in the dictionary and find that what I guessed was wrong. Some stick more easily than others, and I still don’t really know the rules for changing pitch accents when words connect outside of compounds (e.g. across a の).

Speaking of pitch accent, I think I forgot to add a resource for @nat25: you can put phrases and sentences into this engine from the University of Tokyo in order to see the pitch accent pattern and listen to a computerised example of what it might sound like:
http://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/phrasing/index
It’s called Suzuki-kun. Enter the sentence or phrase and hit 実行 to get the pitch diagram. If you want to listen, hit 作成 to generate a recording, and then 再生 to listen to it. It won’t be as natural as a human voice, but it’ll give you a decent idea. I’ve only seen this engine disagree with current usage on one pitch pattern, for what it’s worth, but it’s not as if I’ve tested it exhaustively. In any case, it’s from the University of Tokyo, which is very respectable, so I think it should be a very good resource.

That’s an interesting story, and good to hear. I mean, I don’t blame people for not knowing very much about Singapore, and grammatical errors or awkward usage are rampant even in Singapore’s press, so it’s hard for me to credibly defend the idea that English is a major language in Singapore. However, well, what irked me as far as that teacher was concerned is that asking that question after she had assessed me (while also attempting to make thoroughly incorrect corrections along the way) implied that she was questioning my honesty. As I said in my analysis on a thread that I started after that mock test because I was curious about how people perceived English speakers who do not originate from mainstream English-speaking countries, if I really intended to trump up my native speaker status in order to gloss over any grammatical or lexical errors, I would have had to be a fool to pick Singapore as my cover story. A better-known city like Hong Kong would probably have been a better choice. In short, logically, if I were truly lying, I would have had to be a really bad liar to make such a decision, which made that assumption all the more ludicrous. Her questioning my honesty was what peeved me, not her ignorance.

I doubt that’ll happen any time soon, and if I do anything for public release, I think I’ll probably try to do it on YouTube and attempt to monetise it (if I have the time to do so regularly and to come up with a plan for everything I ought to convey in order to provide credible and useful information). However, there does happen to be a recording somewhere on these forums that I made due to concerns over my French accent:

I’ve since moved on, and my maths teacher this year told me he was utterly convinced I had grown up in France until he found out I was from Singapore during a teachers’ meeting regarding my class, much to his surprise.

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#44

I just realized I have something relevant to say about this lol. I’m a native English speaker, but in college I did a year long intensive immersive study abroad program in Spain where I took regular Spanish university classes alongside regular Spanish students. I don’t know what admin fluke allowed to to participate in that program because my B1 Spanish was not good enough to be taking college classes in Spanish lol. Definitely don’t be me. Definitely get your Japanese higher than a B1 before taking college classes.

Before I landed in Spain, I’d never read an academic article in Spanish. I’d never even read a newspaper article in Spanish. I’d never written an essay in Spanish or taken a timed exam in Spanish. On paper, I should have crashed and burned spectacularly. But I didn’t. Somehow. Necessity is the mother of all invention, I guess. I threw myself into it and somehow figured out how to read and write in high level Spanish on a very short timeline and my Spanish progressed rapidly. Working with a tutor (not necessarily a language tutor, but someone from my department to help me with content) was a huge help.

I would NOT recommend my approach. Get your Japanese level up as much as you can. But, you’d be surprised at how much you’re able to figure out when it becomes a matter of necessity.

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#45

頑張りましょう！
Good luck!

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#46

Thanks for your detailed insight and advice! I wasn’t expecting to get this in someone else’s thread, but I’ll take advantage of it!
Indeed, I feel like translation in the scientific world is mostly from any language to English, and (at least from what I see in biology) most labs will prefer writing with their own English rather than using a translator.

I agree that having this field-specific vocabulary is great, but I wonder if there is such a high demand for biology-related translation.
Biotechnology and agronomy might be promising fields, but my specialisation is evolutionary ecology and animal behaviour… so this may just be useful in books and documentaries. :sweat_smile:
Anyway, if I ever become a translator, I expect to do mostly non-specialist translation, even if it would be great to use my scientific background.

Indeed, a Post-doc position in Japan would be a good opportunity, and I’m keeping this possibility in mind. But I think one of the main things I’ve learned during my PhD is that the scientific world doesn’t really suit me, hence the rather abrupt change of career plan.

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#47

Well, there are Discovery Science documentaries that have been translated into Japanese, so I suppose that’s one context in which knowledge of scientific terminology could be useful for a translator. That aside, I suppose one could offer proofreading services for scientific articles before publication, though I doubt most labs will take advantage of that (even though the truth is that some papers from non-English-speaking labs do leave much to be desired).

I’m just throwing ideas out there, but yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if the demand for such abilities is relatively small within the academic community.

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#48

@Jonapedia Thank you very much for your explanatory and detailed answer, and also for the links to the different resources. It all has been really helpful. :slight_smile:

From now on, I will try to follow some tips that I didn’t do previously, such as starting to read Japanese academic papers online. I thought that for this I still wouldn’t have the necessary level (and maybe that’s the way it is), but at least I’m going to try it little by little, since that’s one of the goals I want to achieve. This way I hope to familiarize myself with the grammatical structures and expressions that are often used in academia. Do you know any repository (apart from https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/) where I can find articles, for example, of Japanese literature?

As for looking for example sentences of words and understanding them thoroughly, that is something that I have liked to do since I started learning Japanese. I think it is one of the best ways to learn vocabulary. However, as much as I look at different resources to find example sentences, such as jisho, weblio, tangorin, tatoeba, glosbe, reverso context, etc. many times I can’t find example sentences that make me understand a certain word (just for example, 字 (あざ): section of village, from JLPT N1), so I wondered if you know more sites that provide Japanese example sentences even if these sentences have not translation or are translated into a language other than English.

And about internalizing (not just memorizing) the way of constructing sentences as I see it in the anime or in any other video, this is another thing that has helped me a lot. However, there are lots of times when I see constructions that are completely unnatural to me (since that is not the way I would say it in the mother tongue) and therefore, they do not come out of me naturally when speaking or writing.

Just to put a very very simple example:
“Originally, the Olympics should have been held last year, but …”
I would say:
本来は、オリンピックは去年開催されるはずだったが、・・・
However, I heard it said like this:
本来は、去年開催されるはずだったオリンピックですが、・・・

In this case, I would never use a relative clause like in the second case, I would always go for the first one, and also, I have never been taught this kind of arrangement of the elements of a sentence far from my mother tongue. It has always been a simple arrangement with a certain parallelism, so I don’t know in which way I can learn systematically these “unnatural” constructions beyond waiting for them to appear in something I hear or read. And if instead of being a simple sentence like this, it is a long sentence with continually “unnatural” arrangements, then is when I collapse…

Anyway, thank you so much again for your advices! I appreciate them a lot.

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#49

@Shannon-8 Thanks for the link to your friend’s YouTube channel! I will check it out. And lots of encouragement with Spanish if you keep studying it! :slight_smile:

#50

@Meghana Wow, your story is amazing! I suppose your survival instinct was at its fullest lol. In my case, I would rather not take that approach and be more prepared when I step into a Japanese university, but if I’m not, I hope I have the same ability to get ahead that you had.

Partly for this reason I’m very concerned about my level of Japanese and my prior preparation, because I know that right now in an academic (and non-academic) environment in Japan I would fail in doing things (almost everything) and I don’t know if I would somehow get ahead or not even if I try my most. I’ve never seen myself in that situation of being alone in an unknown place without mastering the language spoken there and without having things under my control…

#51

Blockquote
But I think one of the main things I’ve learned during my PhD is that the scientific world doesn’t really suit me, hence the rather abrupt change of career plan.

Sigh, I feel this…so.much.
How might you feel about writing international business contracts? I feel like contract language is SOooo important (every WORD counts in litigation), and every business needs contracts, and probably a bunch of them have to be in English, since it’s the international business language… You could charge lawyer rates for the translation if you were a lawyer… I dunno anything about this, because I never really managed to get a nice chunk of international business like I had hoped. But you probably have to be SUPER GOOD, so nevermind.

blockquote
The average japanese english translator salary in the USA is $126,750 per year or $65 per hour.

Hmmm… Looks like It’s be satisfied with translator rates…Just searched Japanese business contract translation or something. Personally, I found the technical translation to be easier, since it seemed like the more specific the topic (in newer technologies), the more loanwords/cognates. I managed to pass a University-required translation exam in German, even though I only had a 1 semester course “German for reading knowledge” a few years earlier. (My friend who took German all 4 years of high school was mighty angry. I had studied Spanish)

@Meghana OMG!! That’s why I was afraid to study abroad in Spain. I wimped and went to England. Trial by fire. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Etc. Yikes… Glad you powered through. I’m VERY impressed!

Apologies, @nat25, not meaning to hijack ur thread. :pray:

#52

I minored in Japanese at my university, majoring in English literature. While I haven’t gone this route yet, I have also considered working a translation job at some point in the future.

As others have emphasized, I think that outside practice is key. My teacher always emphasized the importance of absorbing as much Japanese content as possible. Japanese is a lot more than what you learn in textbooks and grammar/kanji sites. I’d recommend diving into some lighthearted Japanese manga, or watching an anime in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. I use a VPN to watch Japanese Netflix, and there is also an option to slow down the video so it is easier to listen to. I usually set it to 0.75x speed and it works great for me.

Basically, I am recommending immersion via Japanese media if you can’t immediately go to Japan. I’d also recommend joining a Japanese Language Learning Discord. These are a great way to chat with native Japanese people, either in VC or text chat. You can learn a lot by way of natural conversation, and since the environment is built around learning, stakes are usually low. If you don’t know where to look for servers, please PM me! Most of all, just have fun with Japanese!

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#53

I’m not sure about Japanese literature, but I’ve seen stuff on https://core.ac.uk about Japanese grammar. Honestly though, if you can think of the keywords to search in Japanese, you can just try your luck and look out for university websites. I think the study I read on modern ば usage was from Hiroshima University, for example.

Yes. Almost all monolingual dictionaries provide some. The one which has a dedicated example sentence section is Goo辞書.

For 字（あざ）, however, I can’t find anything on those dictionaries in the way of examples. You might have to try a corpus. I don’t usually use those, however… @rodan, sorry for tagging you out of the blue, but could you give us the name (or a link) to the usage corpus you’ve referred to in the Short Grammar Questions thread previously? I think you used it the time we were discussing how 故（ゆえ）is used. The keywords in the side bar are green, I believe.

Yeah, I understand. It doesn’t come naturally to me to formulate the sentence like that either. Learning how they work shouldn’t be that difficult, however. You might have to try novels or perhaps read the news to get that? There are a few sentences like that in the first few pages of Volume 18 of The Rising of the Shield Hero, for instance, like this one:

I mean, it’s not that unnatural, and probably easier to think of than the example you just raised, but when I first tried to tackle this sentence, I was really surprised by how many embedded relative clauses there were. English and Spanish both put relative clauses after nouns, so it was hard to get used to initially.

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#54

I actually never remember the name but I bookmarked it :slight_smile:
https://tsukubawebcorpus.jp//compare/

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#55

I can contribute with a perspective from a professional translator.

I’ve been translating from English, French, and Spanish into Brazilian Portuguese for almost 12 years now. I do have a Master’s Degree in Linguistics, but that’s not really what got me into the industry. When I started translating, I couldn’t really speak English, but I could read it. And my Portuguese was impeccable. What matters the most is how good your writing in your native language is. In time, I perfected my second, third, and forth language speaking skills, but that didn’t matter for my profession. I was never hired to speak a foreign language, I am hired to adapt and convey meaning from a foreign language into my native language, and that by the means of writing only.

All this to say that if you want to be a translator, translate! That’s what you need to do. Take a novel, something in your level and translate it. Get used to the vocabulary of your field, make sure your writing in your native language is flawless, and in time you will develop the accuracy and speed you need to become a good translator.

And share with us! I’m sure the community will love to read your translation and give feedback!

I hope you can fulfil your dream and become a fellow translator soon :smiley:

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#56

Thanks a ton!

@nat25 You can try using that too, because the examples are organised by type. I still can’t find 字 for the reading あざ though (the only reading listed is じ), but it should still be useful for other words in the future. :slight_smile:

#57

@Jonapedia Thank you so much again for your reply! :slight_smile:

Regarding word search, without doubt from now on I will also try to look up the words in Goo辞書 as well as in Tsukuba corpus.

Yes, definitely sentences like that one or others even worse that have many embedded relative clauses are also hard for me to assimilate, especially when speaking so that I don’t have a visual image of the entire sentences and some time to analyze them. :sweat_smile:

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#58

@tiagobione Thank you so much for sharing your experience and giving me encouragement! :slight_smile:

Yes, this is something that many of my teachers have highlighted a lot throughout my Bachelor’s degree and it’s something I always have in mind.

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#59

@midnightsnack Thank you so much for your tips and your encourgament! :slight_smile:

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#60

Thank you for sharing your experiences, it is really interesting to hear about it because I wanted to become a translator at some point as well and didn’t know how to get there. The profession I used to work for is very secretive and that makes things quite difficult sometimes for newbies.

@nat25
Now I gave up on the whole idea but for younger people with this dream I would like to add something,
because I realized that often people in the forum have the concern that it is absolutely necessary to live in Japan to learn Japanese and it is possible to make a massive step forward in doing so but:

Living in Japan is not necessarily a good place to learn Japanese!

That sounds strange, but if you live in Japan you will feel:

  • Overexposed to the language to a degree making it difficult to really concentrate on studying besides to what else you are doing (living, work, university etc.). Japanese becomes a method for survival rather than a study with a clear structure and defined goal. Even if you want to study you don’t know where to start at some point (Keigo, Kanji, Accent, conversation…) It is much easier to act structured with a certain distance from Japan. The more you already know before you go to Japan the better.
  • Japanese culture is very different from the “West” so if you experience it for the first time it is 100% likely that after a certain time you will experience a massive culture shock and suddenly everything Japanese is not cool anymore and this also is not helpful in your motivation towards studying.
  • Next point is, Japanese adjust their level of speaking to yours in order to be polite (or rarely they speak normal, and in this case most likely you will not understand a lot) so even if you live in Japan you have to manage to level up by yourself - this happens more natural when you are in your home country because you know it is necessary to do the effort by yourself. It is easy to fall into the trap of believing just living in Japan makes your Japanese better.
  • You cannot directly ask people about Japanese like in this forum and you will receive very strange tips on how to improve your Japanese. This is distracting because in the beginning you will believe people because they are native and you think they know what they are talking about.
  • If you are visually sensitive you might loose your love for Kanji if you live eg in Tokyo. The hole city is plastered in three dimensions with text (in weird fonts) that competes for your attention making it difficult to navigate even if you can read already. Until this point (living in Japan for about ten years) I am still looking for the toilet flush button sometimes because there is also an emergency button and for some reason a lot of text explaining what is what and it is everything else than easy to understand.
    There is really a visual information overkill. With this level of overexposure it is not the first thing you might want to do when you are at home to read a Japanese book which seems to be the most important thing after all.
  • The brain works best when you feel calm and safe. This is a condition difficult to achieve when you live in Japan for the first two years.
  • If you go to a language school in Japan you will be surrounded by other foreigners, this condition does not improve your abilities. Eg I started to develop a Korean accent during my last time in a language school.
  • The method in which languages in Japan are taught are questionable looking at how successful they are. (This also applies to universities).
  • Japanese people (also teachers) are very discouraging because they (sometimes but not always unconsciously) perpetually transmit their opinion that a westerner can not become good at Japanese.

In order to learn to speak and to get a feeling for “real” Japanese culture (somehow it seems to me the cultural aspect is very important to translate Japanese) that is not covered in the mainstream media (there are some misconceptions and it is often depicted very superficial) it is necessary to live for a while in Japan (and suffer).
But if the goal is to become a translator maybe most of the work that is necessary towards becoming one can be (better) done from outside of Japan.

(I don’t want to say that living in Japan is just suffering but being exposed to an entirely different way of thinking automatically leads to a mismatch between expectation and reality and that hurts, whatever people may say on social media)

Finally I recommend to stop watching Anime even if you love them, especially if you love them. They do help for learning the language and to learn casual Japanese but to understand the culture (as a whole not only seen from a young persons view) better I recommend to watch eg 深夜食堂, it is on Netflix and I think it gives a quite broad cultural insight. Or movies like おくりびと, たそがれ清兵衛 or 猫のタキシー something not so mainstream entertainment is best for that purpose because these stories of antiheros take a closer and more precise look at society than an idealized movie or drama. Even if you don’t understand a lot just watching it helps to get the atmosphere. A manga useful for that is わにとかげぎす by 古谷実 but it is a bit extreme underground.

To understand Japanese thinking better I found the book もう、怒らない and I think it was 仏教対人心理学読本 from 小池 龍之介 very useful.

And be very careful about which exams or qualifications you are trying to get (or better avoid). I think the N1 is useful for translators (maybe only for translators and people who need it for their job hunting) because it teaches a lot of sentence structures you don’t need in real life. Something like double negations appear a lot and if you want to translate getting a good feeling for such structures helps I think.
But eg you don’t need to take the Kanken exams (it takes an incredible amount of effort to pass the upper levels), they are good at expanding your vocabulary and for handwriting Kanjis but studying them you don’t learn any context so for a translator it might be better to study vocabulary while reading making flashcards with whole sentences or at least a part of it.
In the end it also depends on what you are planning to translate, I had novels in mind but maybe that is not what you are interested in.

Btw. with your attitude I am sure you will learn Japanese fast and efficiently because you know what you don’t know. It is more difficult for people who cannot admit to that. (Speaking from own experience, I had to change my attitude quite a lot in order to improve things)

(Sorry that the whole text is a bit off topic, but I thought I would like to take out some pressure from the idea that is is absolutely necessary to go to Japan based on the experience I had in Japan so far. And most of the foreigners I know in Japan just surrender at some point because learning seems so overwhelming. In this forum there is an entirely different level of enthusiasm compared to the foreigners community in Japan btw. and this helps me to regain some momentum :sweat_smile:)

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