Struggling with motivation, memory, vocabulary and implementing Japanese to my life

Japanese Language
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Hello all,

first things first, my name is Frederik and I started to learn Japanese around February of 2024.
At this time I started with Hiragana, Katakana and then followed up by Wanikani. In addition to that I also pay a private Japanese teacher from one online language school available in my country (she´s native from Kobe, but living in my country).

I have to admit that I don´t have perfect streak on Wanikani, because there were many days that I was simply too worn down from work, on business trip, travelling or sick that I very rarely got 3+ days of reviews in a row.

I want to break this thread down to multiple blocks, so you can only read the ones that you are interested in.

1. Struggling with motivation
This is by far my smallest problem. Even though my motivation varies and is going up and down I always find a way to get back on the train.
For those of you out there who might find themselves struggling here I can only recommend to watch some anime or Instagram reel showing some portion of the life in Japan. It always gets me going.
In case you are motivated by recognition, it is also good motivation to flex on your friends in Japanese restaurants or shops (I just came from short trip in Tenerife, so I felt like superhuman using my broken and very basic Spanish in group of friends who don´t speak it at all).
In case you want to move/work in Japan (which is my motivation), this is usually super-strong motivation factor to last for months and potentially years.

2. Struggling with memory / vocabulary / grammar
As I mentioned, I have a personal teacher but I am little bit ashamed of my slow progress in front of her. I know everybody learns at different pace, bla bla, but it just feels that I am should be getting better faster.
We are going Genki textbook together and I have extremely poor memory for vocabulary, which is a big blocking point advancing further.
I installed Anki and downloaded the Genki decks, but I just dont understand how you guys manage to run through daily Wanikani and then also daily Anki. It usually takes me over an hour to just finish reviews on Wanikani.

  • Is there some trick to it?
  • Are there better decks than those on GitHub?
  • Did you guys learn vocabulary any different way than just mindlessly repeating it on Anki or other app?

I also recently read here on the forum that Minna No Nihongo is good source for self learners.

  • How would you say it compares to Genki?

As for remembering Kanji, I would say I am doing okay. Sometimes I am positively suprised that I remember something complex but obviously there are that feel that I must be seeing this kanji for the first time. I would rate myself at 8/10 here for remembering Kanji, mainly because I combine Wanikani mnemonics with my own, especially with cases where Kanji or its pronunciation is super obvious hint in my language or when the WK mnemonics just does not feel natural.

3. Struggling to implement Japanese to my life
This is my biggest concern at the moment. I come from Slovakia and there are basically zero use-cases for Japanese in daily life.
I would like to use a setup that helped me learn English - play videogames in Japanese, since I am big time gamer.
However, my vocabulary/kanji memory is not yet big enough to get even most basic understanding of what is going on.

  • Do you guys know of any games, reading apps, whatever else that is using very basic grammar and vocabulary that I could use to expand my knowledge?

I recently discovered game on Steam called Learn Japanese RPG: Hiragana Forbidden Speech, which is exactly something that works for me. It only uses Hiragana (it would be nice to have both kana and Kanji) but you are learning new words in steady pace and immediately use it, which is helping me to remember them easier. I highly recommend it

I also found Learn Japanese to Survive! Kanji combat but have not played it yet, so can´t give any opinions.

  • Do you guys have any recommendations for other games suitable for beginners?
  • Or are there some other ways how to be in contact with Japanese more often in my daily life?
    I know of Satori reader but it feels that this is still above my level :frowning_face:
breaker

Shout out to all the people who have red the entire thing. You are the real MVP.

Thank you all for your advice and hints

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Two cents from me:

  • turns out that WaniKani is very time consuming on my routine. I barely can fit a 30 minutes (twice a week) conversation Japanese class while focus on wanikani. I decided that I’m going to finish wanikani and once I’m done I’ll fit something else to time allocated.

  • for reading, I had a great time with Satori Reader. In earlier levels of wanikani I was able to sneak a few small chapters during my kanji sessions.

Overall, I gave up on trying to study other aspects of the language (like grammar or practice listening), and I just focus on wanikani.

I feel that Wanikani is just part of my long journey with the language, so I’m trying to not stress it out while making sure I keep moving forward.

Good look with your journey

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I was in the same situation but I decided to give up wanikani and focus on other things instead. If only we all had infinite time

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Same here, also around the time I hit level 30. I still SRS with anki on its own, where I can do the same study load in a fraction of the time, but everything else has been coming from immersion since I dropped WK.

In terms of immersion. I started out with NES era games since those don’t really have kanji and have very, very limited vocabulary. Famicom was basically seen as a kid’s toy and videogames as a medium in Japan largely grew up with the generation that started playing games at that point. Maybe not only in Japan, but with Japanese games you really see it play it with the difference in language used and how much kanji you typically see in games.

So I started with stuff like Dragon Quest 1 and 2 (torturous in terms of gameplay but still cool to experience them in their original form) and then worked my way up to SNES games. PS1 you’re definitely looking at late to mid teens with the output on there. It’s kind of interesting seeing the medium mature like that and semi-experiencing that growth alongside your own language ability too.

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About getting on-board with native level Japanese, it may help to be learn to grasp basic conversational Japanese on the native speed, or at least, a uniform speed of 0.x native.

Most people would struggle at the beginning anyway, but wanting to understand well is a good thing. The goal is not to sort-of understand, but to understand well; but not necessarily in the timeframe of days or months, but rather years. (What do you mean by “struggle,” anyway?)

Anyway, Satori Reader could be a good resource, as it teaches Japanese further, apart from just let you search for explanatory resources by yourself.

Trick for vocab memory

  • There may be no need to actively memorize textbook vocabularies. “Learn” them well alongside grammar points in the lesson. Turn the page back to vocab list as much as needed.
  • Treat vocab reading and meaning as different games. Reading may be learned very quickly for a familiar sounding ones, by an aid of mnemonics. Meaning learning is a lifelong endeavor that may gradually improve.
  • Mnemonics is just one of the tricks. It’s possible to remember just by a lot of repetition.
  • Vocab memory isn’t point memory. Vocabularies are interconnected, and Kanji is one of such connection.
  • I generally learn vocabularies by also looking up phrases and sentences. It may help to get a good dictionary that utilizes those, like Weblio or monolingual ones. Use Google too.
  • I make hyperlinks in Anki and create an empty field for notes.
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I am at the 3-year mark, and I forget vocabulary all the time. I do prefer the Tori app over Anki as I find that having to type the words helps me remember them better (similar to Wanikani). I would say that listening to beginner-level podcasts helped me encounter and thereby remember vocabulary in the early stages.

I found Satori Reader to be helpful after I had covered N4-level grammar.

Also, (this is something I just recently incorporated and wish I had done before) ChatGPT is your friend if you can’t afford Italki for conversation.

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The first year is the hardest because despite the time and investment, the amount you can do is very little. So I totally get it. Remaining consistent is the hardest part and I think whatever motivates you to study Japanese, even if it has subtitles or a lot of English in it, you should keep consuming it.

I loved watching Risa’s videos about Japan from Japanese101 and other vloggers who talked about their learning journeys. They were very inspirational stories and helped me keep going.

It’s still too early to start consuming native content without training wheels so I wouldn’t worry about playing games or anything like that right now. But definitely consider at least putting audio in Japanese if you can. Try to find the words or grammar you recognize but don’t kick yourself for not having 100% comprehension. Recognizing 1 word is worth a self-highfive.

Material oriented towards new learners is basically endless, so just find what you like an stick with it until it’s not fun anymore and find something else. Any amount at this stage is good. Don’t worry.

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I don’t understand how it takes you over an hour to finish WaniKani reviews. We’re on the same level, and it takes me about 5–10 minutes to do all the reviews in a day. I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or if it has to do with the pace we’re both going at. I currently have a streak of 136 and am almost level 7 on here. I don’t always do new lessons, but I always review my Kanji to maintain my streak. Technically, I would have a streak of over a year, but I restarted WaniKani from level 0 a bunch of times after missing some days, although I don’t plan to do that anymore.

I’ve also had a lifetime subscription to Bunpro for around four years, but I only started using it actively this year. I currently have a streak of 98 on Bunpro, and I’ve memorized 93/126 N5 grammar points and 5/177 N4 points (I only use it for grammar). I use this Genki playlist for grammar points https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjFjJi2bXNa7u-tOOwZ7gxLBhSps2fiNk&feature=shared, and then I look up the grammar points on Bunpro to review them.

I’ve struggled with vocabulary in the past using Anki, but I recently started over. I normally end up getting overwhelmed with the amount of new words I have to recall. Currently, I’m using the Kaishi 1.5k deck, and I’m hoping I don’t have that same issue this time. I memorized my kana a long time ago, but I’m also playing through Learn Japanese RPG: Hiragana Forbidden Speech because I find it fun. I also have the game Wagotabi: A Japanese Journey wishlisted on Steam and am really looking forward to it. Every now and then, I book italki lessons for casual Japanese.

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Some people have different methods of studying with WK. Some people go a lot more in depth, take notes, do writing practice. There’s a number of ways people can take more or less time than others.

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Makes sense. I always thought I was progressing really slowly since I’ve seen others go much faster, though it doesn’t bother me.

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For Torii SRS, do you use lifetime or the free version and how many lessons per day do you do?

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I use the free version and do 20 new words a day. I review at least once a day but twice on a good day.

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Welcome to the forums!

I’m not that far off (Romania) and in a similar situation with no “real” use cases.

An idea popped up just yesterday, although I don’t know that I’ll actually implement it as I’m not the most sociable of people :blush:
However, it might be useful to you:
We happen to have a decent amount of Japanese bars/bistros/restaurants here. Sure, a high percentage are actually run and staffed by Romanians, or by other Asian people that add ‘Japanese’ to their menus along with their native dishes.
But there are some ‘true’ Japanese ones, with Japanese staff. Could be a good opportunity to engage with natives, if one becomes a regular.
Okay, maybe not the least expensive option but somehow to me this sounds more appealing than paying someone specifically to talk to me… :man_shrugging:

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May I know if your Kaiwa class is online or offline face-to-face class or using app or… ?
I think I need to improve more on speaking and conversation other than using shadowing, but not too sure what’s the best way/class/app to do that.
thanks
-wawan-

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I do it online.
I use an app called iTalk, but that’s just the market place to find teachers. There is nothing special about the app, you should be able to find others as well. Otherwise, iTalk works fine for me.

If you are in doubt, just book a few 30 minutes classes and see what you think about it afterwards.

Good luck

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What is your recommendation for beginners level podcasts?

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Nihongo con Teppei for beginners is the one I used for months before moving onto Yuyu no nihongo podcast and The Miku Real Japanese.

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And what things did you start doing instead? What has worked for you?

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I know this might be a weird argument but even though I can see how ChatGPT could be very useful tool for my learning, using AI is multiple times more demanding for computing power and therefore much less environmentally friendly.
I am not sure I would be able to use it frequently without thinking about that :sweat_smile:

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Unfortunately, at least in my area there are only “Asian” restaurants that are usually run by Vietnamese or Chinese and I never actually met Japanese person here. But I might be more vigilant the next time I am visiting some place like that.
Thanks for the tip!

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