January 17
君の名は , 7 pages.
Being very lazy with adding words to my posts lately, gomen ne.
Super long response to Zakarius
Honestly that actually sounds terrific! I know nothing about Nioh, but it’s definitely something I’d like to play eventually. I really enjoy Dark Souls-esque games. Sekiro is also in my wishlist.
Yeah you don’t know how much I relate to this. It’s something I’ve been integrating these past few months and still am. I think it’s natural to feel prressured to think that after a long time doing something, you would expect a much higher level if you haven’t achieved it by then, and the more time passes the bigger this feeling gets.
I started learning Japanese in late 2014. Anyone would say that after so long I must be very proficient already, but no, that’s sadly not the truth. To be fair, since I started until today, there have been different periods with varying degrees of motivation and commitment, periods when I was diligent studying, and periods when I did so litle I got nowhere. My first three years until 2018 I did them in a language school, and that accounted for only N5 and N4 content. After that, unhappy with the school’s slow pace, I went with the self-study route with Tobira, which I never finished ーI only did 3 or 4 lessons. It wasn’t until I commited to WK that I started taking it more seriously, and even then it wasn’t after finishing WK last year that I started studying properly again… and even then! It wasn’t until recently that I’m happy with my current pace and plan. So one could even say I have barely just resumed the Japanese journey I left back in 2018 when I left the language school.
Having said that, I’m happy I never quit. I barely improved my level, other than learning a lot of kanji, but I kept the interest in the background and refreshing what I knew. Of course I’m just a tiny bit sad that I had gotten nowhere after so many years, but also I don’t think I (or we) should care about past time, because that time is simply gone. What’s important IMO is how we approach things right now. And I think you and I both, and everyone in this challenge, are doing a serious and diligent effort to improving our language knowledge. And I think it’s also worth saying that, despite the pervasive hardcore aura you typically get from Japanese learning communities especially, when it comes to hobbies or interests, there is no deadline at all. Whether someone gets to their destination in 5 years or in 25, it does not matter to anyone else than to the person that enjoys that activity. As long as you enjoy the process and what you do, or get any satisfaction from your efforts, who cares how fast or slow you go? I think it’s important to not lose track of what you are already able to do ーwe’re reading in a compleeeetely different language. But yeah, just know that I understand your feelings a lot, as I feel this way frequently too.
As a last note, video games are just plain hard. Not all of them, of course, but these ones we seem to like playing are a special kind of hard (have I already talked about how ridiculously hard FFXIV can get?). I think it’s natural that we struggle with fiction that is intended for an audience that already has a lot of cultural background and well, obviously, vocabulary. We are in the process of acquiring that cultural background, and especially you much quicker than me, judging by all the things you like to read and talk about in this thread ^^.
If you are ever bored (and with 40 minutes of free time, oof), I watched this video today that talks exactly about learning through playing video games. I liked it quite a bit, it’s a pretty relaxed approach. The channel seems also pretty cool, though I can’t personally vouch for it. I know I discovered it last year when he was releasing the first videos of a playthrough of FF7 Remake, and I redescovered it today. But many people love it, so might be worth to give it a try!