Well hello. I’m a long time Japanese studier, but I suck, so here I am. I’ve been studying off and on for like 5 years now, but I probably haven’t progressed beyond someone in an intermediate college class of Japanese. I’m here to change my ways, and finally get on a dedicated path to learning a language that I’ve wanted to speak since I was a sophomore in college.

A little about my history with Japanese:
Yes, I have been to Japan. No, I didn’t really utilize the time well in learning Japanese. I spent most of my time goofing off and having a blast. Do I regret it? No. Would I do it again? Probably not.

I started studying using Pimsleur, which is pretty bad in the long term in my opinion. But it was cool. It got me that instant satisfaction, as in, oh hey I can say this and that in Japanese. I soon graduated to Remember the Kanji, and was pretty freaking dedicated for like a year. Then I kind of went off and on that for a while, eventually working in vocab and sentences and then finally importing sentences straight from drama’s. This was the falling off point.

At this point, my grammar was poor, my vocab was off the charts and my kanji was beyond all the Remember the Kanji. The grammar being poor was my down fall. I knew so many words that I never used, and knew so much kanji that I never saw. I was forcing straight Japanese down my throat at a rate that made it tedious and cumbersome every time I learned a new vocab word. Oh hey, it’s a new word, let me go pick it up in sanseido. Well, I don’t know 3 of the words that are in the definition, so let me go pick them up too. And so on, and so on. At this point, learning a new word would create maybe 20 new vocab cards. This died down as time went on, but the grammar part made this almost pointless in retrospect. I knew every word in a definition, but I couldn’t logically put them together with ease because I didn’t know the grammar.

So lesson learned, I was doing something wrong. What it was? I don’t know. That’s what I’m here to find out.

I know one of my major faults was that I rarely wrote or spoke Japanese other than speaking to my monitor or googling new words.

So, my new method is going to be relying on this site’s structure and taking my damn time.

I will not shove another 500 kanji and 2000 vocabulary words down my throat via rote memorization and mnemonics simply to never use them. I will speak, write, read and learn proper Japanese.

It’s really fun every time I pick this language back up, but that fun will not last if I keep repeating the same patterns. I used to cringe every time I would read English to learn Japanese, but not anymore. I will mold my brain, rethink my methodology, cultivate and grow my Japanese like the wild beast that it is. I am a logical person, so I am going to finally do this logically.

Another thing to watch out for is emotional invest. I was so invested in my Japanese that I just couldn’t let it go, even though I was holding on with my fingertips. This time I am going to grab a hold knowing that I have a fingertip grasp, and slowly make that grasp stronger before I try and yank Japanese up and do 100 squats with it.

You can have all the latest and greatest gym equipment (vocab / kanji / grammar) and still be a little skinny nothing. So, I think it’s time to pick up that 5 pound barbell and start doing repetitions, then the 10 pound, then the 20 pound, etc.

Going for the gold is great, and it is what I intend to do. I just need to remember I am not an Olympic athlete, not yet anyway.

See you on the pedestal.