Heyo, Im Smitty. I want to throw my hat in the study log ring if only to be able to look at to for motivation.
Bit of background for the curious: I’ve been attempting to study Japanese for the past 5 or so years but I kept falling off for some reason or other. I made it to level 4 before I took my longest break yet (~1.5 years). I’ve been on the wagon again for about a week now chipping away at the reviews that were piled up (came back to ~400 or so) and within the next couple days should have it manageable enough to start taking on new stuff. I’m feeling more confident now than ever as it feels like I am actually retaining things and am starting to intuit as opposed to just memorizing the funny little pictures (pog for fully developed frontal lobes I guess???)
Any who, you’ll probably see an update from me a few times a week. Right now I’m just focused on getting the ball rolling again on WK and listening practice.
Welcome to the study log crew! This is one of the best places on the internet and everyone is helpful, so if you have any questions please feel free to ask. Best of luck on your Japanese journey!
Managed to chew through the backlog and am now trucking along to level 5. Ive fully guru’d lvl 1 and 2 but some of this kanji and vocab in level 4 is just constantly kicking my ass lol. Every time i feel like I get one down another one gets pushed out. (Specifically any and every vocab that uses 出).
As far as listening practice goes, I’ve started but also not started. My first idea was to check out a beginner podcast so I checked out some of the recommendations on Tofugu and jumped around to see if any would click for me (#1 contender is Japanese with Shun) but honestly I’m not sure what i should even be listening to with the knowledge I have. Is it better to listen to something like a podcast or would it make more sense to watch anime that I’ve seen before unsubbed due to being able to at least get this gist of whats happening and try to pick things out from there?
Ive also been doing a lesson here and there on bunpo but I haven’t fully jumped in yet out of fear of overloading myself. Is grammar important at this point?