I finally did it… I reached Level 60! And of course, finished all lessons possible. When I started learning the beautiful language called Japanese in 2022, I´d never anticipate what journey would come out of it… A lot of stuff in this thread is really personal to me, but I wanted to take the chance to do a large summary of my whole journey.
Starting the Journey - Language Course
First, it was not guaranteed to even be able to start with that journey. Slots at the Japanese language course at my university were really sparse, so a lottery decided I would be one of the lucky people starting to learn it. I still remember the fateful date, September 19th 2022, when the preliminary intensive course began to run it´s course. We were roughly 30 people in the beginning. When we stepped into the classroom, we were greeted by a 獣 that would gnaw it´s fangs like a wolf that is looking in the eyes of the chicken it is hunting…
It was a (metaphorical) bloodbath. Well, to be precise, there were only 10 people left when the semester started with people dropping out of the introduction course almost every day. The intensive course was rough; I was mentally extremely drained by learning hours of Japanese every day and was really thinking about quitting… To be honest, the course was also kinda awkward looking back, especially because we were supposed to learn Kana on the side and not in the course. In the course, we focused on simple grammar and vocab using Romanji, Romaji (however the fuck you write it, I fucking hate you). Nobody should ever use these.
While it was really helpful to be able to speak our own sentences and do grammar from the beginning, it was also a pain in the ass later to relearn the vocab with Kana and Kanji. For example, we used the word 駐車場 as “chúshachou”… It was hard for me to make the connection of the romaji words to the Kana ones, so I basically had to relearn all of the vocabulary from the beginning with Kana.
After passing the test at the end of the course and starting the semester (at our university you could take the introductory intensive course before the semester + 4 semesters of Japanese following it), it was once again really draining. After working with Romaji for weeks, we now used Kana all the time and started getting Kanji Lists.
But a few months later, I got used to it and that´s were the course really became a lot of fun. Until that point, learning Japanese was really stressful for me and I think without my huge motivation to learn the language and the decreasing workload, I would´ve quit learning the language. But I persisted and I´m proud of that!
I´m still glad I took the course because the teacher was great in itself, except for the intensive course in the beginning. I am convinced that during the introductory course he just wanted to sort out students with low motivation to have a better course and therefore enacted a rough curriculum. No bad blood tho, he really put in a lot of effort teaching us the language.
Wanikani
Shortly after finishing the intensive course and starting regular classes, in November 2022, I started with WaniKani. Why? Because we didn´t learn Kanji during the courses itself but got handed out Kanji lists. I knew from the beginning I´d be too lazy to learn Kanji of some fucking shitass list. As I already made a WaniKani account back in September 22 when looking for Japanese resources, I decided to use it from now on for learning Kanji. It worked wonders and within months I got so good at Kanji that I was better than everyone else in the course.
WaniKani only had the huge disadvantage of me neglecting other means of study, which continued for several years. Learning Kanji on WaniKani has just become so much fun that it felt like a drag to learn anything else. To this day, I still often prefer learning new Kanji and Kanji vocab to actually doing anything else. But well, you can´t put time into everything, right? I suppose I should learn more Kanji after finishing now…ok, I drifted off, gotta eat some 𰻞𰻞麺 going with some 稀代 wine.
Now where was I…
I also gotta share some stats of course! Although there are several breaks in the statistics, I was actually extremely consistent with WaniKani, doing my reviews usually every single day with the only exception being too sick for it (which I was from time to time unfortunately). While I did my reviews almost every single day without exceptions, I did pause lessons a lot tho. Sometimes I was just unmotivated to do the lesson itself, sometimes I wanted to focus on grammar etc. Especially when I went to study in Japan I paused lessons a lot, as I was focusing on my intensive Japanese classes there.
One time around Level 20, I also burned out from WaniKani for a few weeks, probably my only real burnout while learning Japanese. Don´t underestimate the jump in complexity between level 10 and 30!!! It get´s easier later when you got used to the Kanji structure and can guess meanings, but around Level 20 learning Kanji got really hard and stressful, so I paused for a few weeks.
Studying Abroad
In 2024, I went to Japan to study abroad for a year. Once again, this was all but guaranteed. I applied for a very scarce amount of slots, but due to my excellent grades at university, I was selected to go to Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto for a whole year doing nothing else but taking Intensive Japanese language courses. Also thanks to my university that didn´t require me to take any classes for my actual major (I don´t study Japanese actually), I was allowed to take Japanese classes only (with the negative point of me extending my time at university, when you do a no credit study stay you of course need longer lol)
It was great but really intensive, I had classes 5 days a week. However, I learned so much so fast, after the year I felt like I improved leaps and bounds. It really helped being in Japan, because I could read Kanji in my everyday life and talk to Japanese people every single day. When I arrived in Japan, I was only around N4, by leaving Japan I was already heading towards N2. There were classes focused on Listening/Speaking, Writing and Comprehensive (Grammar, Kanji etc.) so I really could improve on almost all aspects of my Japanese. It was also the first time I worked with textbooks, which was also kinda fun, but without a classroom setting I´d be too lazy to do it. I am really glad I took the opportunity, especially because I was able to see a lot of the country. I unfortunately also had health issues and living abroad for so long really drained me mentally, but I still look back at all the good stuff that happened in Japan. I went to Tokyo, Hokkaido, Kyushu including Nagasaki, Fukuoka, and one of my highlights, 種子島 (Tanegashima) were I visited the JAXA space center. It was just damn cool, I just wish I weren´t dealing with health issues like headaches so much.
Also Japanese weather, especially in summer, is rough!
My grievings about the neglection of pronunciation in Japanese language courses
A huge problem of the language courses at university in my home country as well as in Japan was that there is not enough focus (or even no focus at all) on correct pronunciation. Even after years of actively trying, I still can´t properly pronounceらりるれろwhich is extremely frustrating. A few weeks ago, I tried it again with Youtube Videos and Reddit Threads explaining how to exactly place the tongue, but I still can´t fucking do it. It´s probably the one thing about my Japanese I´m the most frustrated about, as except for pronunciation I´d say I reached a really good level where I also can have conversations with Japanese people without much of a problem (except the r´s)
I/We didn´t learn any pronunciation starting from the introductory course, because our teacher said “because of your mother tongue language you won´t have much problems with Japanese pronunciation” … turns out it isn´t that easy after all. We also didn´t get any feedback on pronunciation mistakes, only on grammar. Things like pitch accent are a thing that were mentioned to me only once when getting feedback on holding a presentation in Japanese, but it was never properly introduced or practiced.
So I came to Japan with really bad pronunciation and while I worked on it while being there, I left Japan a bit sad that I still have a strong accent and can´t pronounce らりるれろ. Especially because I was misunderstood almost every time I tried to say simple words such as カレー or ラーメン… For me it would´ve been important to learn that in a class setting, as it´s really hard for me to work on it alone.
Now that I´m back in my home country, I unfortunately went back from speaking with Japanese people everyday to not speaking to Japanese people at all, but I guess that´s life and I just have to concentrate on the abilities like reading I can improve on myself. I would love to talk to Japanese people at some point in the future again tho.
Coming back from Japan – Practice and JLPT N2
Coming back from Japan, I still dealt with some health issues so didn´t focus on Japanese for a few months. Towards the end of the year tho, I was getting back to it, reading a lot of visual novels and watch anime with Japanese subtitles which helped me a lot. Immersion using Yomitan or meikipop is really important! Also some general advice: Whatever you consume in Japanese, you are going to struggle in the beginning, but it is crucial to actually go through the process of reading stuff, it helps connecting the stuff you learn to real Japanese. It is advisable to build a base first tho, I personally think people recommending N4 level learners to read real stuff is more torture than actually helpful as you lookup basically every single word.
I didn´t specifically practice much towards the JLPT N2, and passed with 133/180 points. I guess the textbooks and grammar I worked through in Japan gave me a really good base. My worst section was – as expected – listening, where I only had 39/60 points. Interestingly (or funnily), my best section was reading with 45/60. A lot of people say it´s the hardest section on the JLPT, for me it was the easiest lmao. I really gotta work on listening if I want to pass N1.
The End of the Journey – or the beginning?
The most important thing, after also criticizing myself before: I´m extremely proud where I stand today. I was in Japan, which was a lifelong dream. I passed N2. I can now play games and read stuff in Japanese with help of a dictionary.
However, my Japanese journey is still long not over. I still have a lot of vocab to learn and practice on, I still need much more hours to watch anime completely without subtitles. But I think I will get there, as I am going to continue to put in effort.
I guess I´m just a bit sad it is “over” in the sense of what happened in the last few years. I won´t ever learn Japanese in class ever again or come back to Japan for a long while… (it´s too expensive for a student). I guess some things end in life and other things start…
What´s next
What am I going to do now? I´ll just continue learning new vocab and finish the rest of N1 grammar on Bunpro. I´m also still struggling with certain Grammar so I´ll also refresh some from time to time. Otherwise I will spend most my time immersing and having fun with Japanese content, from anime to light novels to games.
Currently I´m playing Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter in Japanese, which is a lot of fun. I´ll just try to use the language as much as possible, but without any stress in the world. And maybe take the N1 at some point this or next year, but who knows…Maybe I´ll also join a Japanese-English discord server to practice my speaking.
さようなら！Or rather hello, I was too lazy to have a study log or something and actually connect with the surely great WaniKani community. Nice to meet you all! Maybe I should do an after WaniKani study log?
You now sit on the divine throne like those before you have.
