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Hi All!
I minored in Japanese in college (graduated 2 years ago), and spent 2 months after graduation in Japan. I was never close to fluency, but I could hold a basic conversation and read pretty well with a kanji dictionary at hand (I read and write MUCH better than I’ve ever spoken; senior year classes were all literature).
However, in the last 2 years, I’ve lost A LOT of it. I can barely hold a conversation with my home-stay mom, and I’d like to keep in touch with her. I also know some native speakers that I interact with on a regular basis (unfortunately, they don’t have the time or inclination to teach, but I can practice speaking with them occasionally).
So…I want to relearn Japanese mostly to talk to Hiroko-san (my home-stay mom); secondarily, to get around better when I visit Japan (which I plan to do every 2-3 years), because I want to be at least bilingual, and last but not least, because it’s an awesome language (and it’d be cool to watch anime without subtitles).
Sorry the intro’s a little long, but I really want to commit and learn as much as I can, so whether or not anyone reads this, it’s kind of the start of my own little accountability cheer section. I hope to get to know some of you and good luck on your own studies!
Katharine
Welcome back! =) I feel the pain of having everything escape when you stop practicing – every time I come back from holidays, I discover I’ve forgotten all of my kanji, even the ones I thought I’d memorised properly years ago…
I’d love to be able to visit Japan every few years, but I have neither the money nor the time. Where was your homestay, exactly?
I attended a month-long program at Josai International University in Gumyo, Chiba, and stayed in an apartment in Togane, about 15 min away by train. My home-stay family (for a weekend during the program, and then I visited after the program ended) lives in Kujukuri, in south Chiba. It’s known for its sardines, I’ve been told :)
I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to go back, but I’m visiting in October for a week. Eventually I’d like to visit somewhere other than Tokyo, Narita, and Kamakura! Kamakura was awesome, but I’d love to go to Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. My main goal, though, is to talk to Hiroko-san on Skype!
Might be already too late, but I’d recommend against using TextFugu. If you’ve been able to hold basic conversation and could read fairly well, this isn’t the course for you; this is for the “absolute beginner”, going up to maybe “middle beginner”, despite what Koichi might say. Since you’ve done it before, that foundation will be there and a lot of it will come back to you soon enough after refreshing yourself and with a bit of practice. It might be a good course for having a look over to jog your memory if it was free, but it’s not. For a much, much better (and free) alternative, I suggest having a look at guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar. Don’t assume you’re starting from scratch, your brain probably remembers more than you might think (which is a little odd considering you *are* your brain) :P
Here’s a nice little video on the subject from one of my favourite YouTube polyglots, Moses McCormick:
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