Share your Japanese Learning Journey!

[RyanS17]

Use this post to share your stories of your Japanese learning journey’s. What are some ups and downs you’ve had? Eureka moments. General things you’d like to share, that might benefit people seeing this post.

It helps a lot to connect with other people going through a similar situation. Maybe you’re very competent at Japanese, other people can read your story and see that you had similar issues to them when you were at their level. Maybe you aren’t very competent, you can share your story, and get feedback, and support from others.

This can also be a log if you want to update your progress perhaps.

There’s also no reason to be serious here. This is just for fun, but please refrain from anything negative, and restrict criticism to be purely constructive. There’s no reason to make fun of others.

[ChristianPasciak]

Well, this will probably bore most people, but here goes:

I live in Orlando, Florida and I’m 24. I graduated from undergrad in December of 2017. While preparing to start law school in the Fall of 2018, my parents were pretty strict and made me go to work for their business. I won’t lie: I entered a weird funk. I felt anxious and I think this was because I felt like I was doing nothing but working in a warehouse daily. Then, randomly, I stumbled on Tofugu. I started studying hiragana and katakana.

After a few days of this, I saw WaniKani had their annual holiday sale and I bought the lifetime membership. I was so proud! But I refused to tell anyone in my family. After all, telling people seems like the right choice, but then it takes away from your overall motivation. But still, I couldn’t stop studying. I was hooked. For Christmas in 2018, my parents got me the first volume of Genki. The next step forward!

Unfortunately, I was far too busy to study. I had moved to Miami for law school and that came with a whole host of responsibilities since I was also a graduate assistant for our university baseball team and I was in student government. I still did my lessons, but it’s not easy balancing life, school, athletics, lessons, AND grammar. Luckily, with the advent of the pandemic, I managed to find a silver lining: I had more free time to use Genki!

So yeah, that’s the story of how I’ve been learning Japanese for 3 years and I’m just now in chapter 2 of Genki. Sadly, I had to put Genki down again recently, although my reviews are still going strong. I’ve been getting massive migraines daily and the vision in my eyes has been blurring to the point where I can’t even workout. The doctor has referred me to a neurology specialist for my brain and an ophthalmologist who will look at my eye nerves, and they’re concerned about the seriousness of it. For the first time in my life, I’ve felt anxiety and honestly I’ve even woken up somewhat depressed since my eye troubles are constant. It’s strange and has broken my heart, but I’ve also found a renewed passion for Japanese so I’ve been spending extra time on that. Often times it’s the only thing that can fully distract me from things.

There’s so much I wish I could do right now: meet with others to learn how to speak the language, talk to people who could help me through Genki, compare notes with others and see what more I could be doing. I guess that’s just not in the cards for me right now. But this language has given me so much confidence in my ability to learn and challenge myself. I never would’ve thought I could do this before. It’s a beautiful language, and the people here are incredible. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Here’s hoping it’s meant to be for life!