I missed posting yesterday, but I did write a couple of sentences each day. I also read another Marumori grammar lesson out loud, plus I did a lot of singing along (probably very off-key, but no one was there to tell me!) to anime theme songs while driving. I’d like to think that counts as speaking practice.
After writing my sentences today, though, I did realize something - I…appear to keep choosing ‘things to complain about’ as my writing topic. Not sure what that says about me…
Today I’ll write about the sea. I live in Ireland. Because Ireland is an island country, the sea is near anywhere. If you’re in the centre of Ireland, with a trip of less than 2 hours, you can go to the sea.
Among the 5 cities, 4 are are near the coast. Long ago, for the purposes of trade, the coast was super important. Generally, trade used the coast a lot. However, in the past most ports were in the cities, but today’s ports are outside the cities. From the port, imports go to the city by truck. Today, the city’s people use the sea for other purposes. For example, they might take walks on the coast.
In the west (of Ireland), there are fishermen. In the past, there were many. Today, few people become fishermen. For fishing towns, other business has become essential. For many such towns, that business is tourism. This is because the countryside and coast in the west is very beautiful. There’s also many historical places. This is because, in the west, the current population is less than in 1840.
For the weather also, the ocean is very important. To the west of Ireland is the Atlantic Ocean, so there are many storms. In the east, there is the Irish Sea. Compared to the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea is small. Compared to the west, in the east big storms are rare.
Ireland is an island country but seafood is not popular. For fishing, the fish is generally sold abroad. I think it’s strange that seafood never became popular in Ireland.
This is my first time doing a challenge in the Wanikani community, along with the Reading and Listening Winter 2025 challenges I signed up for yesterday as well, so I hope this goes well
My Reasons for Doing This
I took Jap for 5 years in college, (age 14-18) and I just finished graduating, and I don’t want my output ability to fade as I leave my Japanese school hours into the dust. My career involves no Japanese and my goal is to live there, which would be very difficult if I couldn’t even speak the language, let alone know zero scientific terms in Japanese for my career.
Plan
I have 3 main things I’d like to practice everyday.
Speak in the shower to myself
Tell a story into a camera for 5 minutes and watch back/write down words and/or sentences I don’t know and repeat this process a few times with the same story. (Inspiration came from Language Lords).
Shadowing a Japanese Parent and hopefully gain a quite unique way to speak in Japanese that I can follow and will maybe give me pronunciation tips.
Sadly I am way too socially awkward to have genuine conversations with people as I’m too nervous to embarrass myself (which yes, I know, is a part of the process) but am trying to overcome this fear and I hope by the end of this challenge my confidence would have risen and I can go into discord calls or similar to have genuine conversations with people.
Also I would very much like to start practicing pitch accent asap, but I would like to gain more of a foundation for output before I sign up for Dogen’s Patreon or similar as I am EXTREMELY broke and would like to spend my money well.
Writing Kanji has never been a goal of mine as I believe it’s not the most useful skill for Japanese (Sorry to anyone who thinks otherwise) so I likely won’t be doing writing in general as a daily practice, but may write a story or two if I have some free time during these upcoming months.
Jan
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Thanks in advance for any words of encouragement or advice!! I’m a complete beginner when it comes to this so I may mess up some things on the way but I’ll do my best to (hopefully) complete this challenge. Will start on the 13th of Jan as I was on holiday for the last 3 weeks.
Today I’ll write about an incident that occured when I was travelling. From 2010 to 2020, I would go to foreign countries 4-5 times a year. Generally, this was for business trips, but sometimes it was to visit friends. The first time, I was a beginner to traveling. Because I was nervous, I bought a trip with a long transfer. That decision became lucky.
In the transfer, I got lost. In the airport, I picked the wrong the door. I was looking for the toilet, but I arrived at the airport entrance. Because of that, I had to do the security check again. Because it was the New York’s airport, the security check was very slow. If I didn’t have the long transfer, the transfer would have become impossible.
Today I was listening to a Japanese learning podcast. In that podcast, they were talking about business Japanese. One part was keigo, but another part was words taught in textbooks. That podcast was talking about it in comparison to everyday Japanese.
I started thinking about business English. I’ve generally worked in offices. There’s a lot of business words. Sometimes, it’s like another language. “An ask” or “action that” or “circle back” are words used in offices, but outside offices, if you use them, it would be very strange. Those words are called “Business speak”. I have a German coworker that learned English for work. Sometimes she uses these business words in bars. It’s surprising every time. Outside the office, you don’t expect those words.
Had a really bad night on Saturday, so did not post…and then got maybe 3 hours sleep and was exhausted on Sunday. I did do a few sentences each day, though when I re-read the ones from Sunday this morning…they weren’t all that good. I want to check off both days anyway, though, given that I did at least try… And I definitely managed to do normal sentences today!
Today was review day in work. In my company, that comes twice a year. Firstly, you must right your self review. That’s difficult I think. If you don’t praise yourself, the other managers will say “Did araigoshi do [any] good work?”. However, if you praise yourself too much, the managers will say “Araigoshi is too arrogant, right?”. Every time, this day is difficult. Tomorrow my manager will review my review. I hope it’s a good one.
Wrote a couple of sentences specifically using the grammar point from the Marumori lesson I did today ～かというと。I don’t do grammar lessons every day, but that does seem to be a good choice for writing topic on the days I do do one…
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I want to check off both days anyway, though, given that I did at least try… And I definitely managed to do normal sentences today! 