OK, cool, that sounds good, and makes sense. I’ll file that correction under “good to know someday when I have a lot more of the language mastered.”

Thanks!

Hey, that’s an… interesting post!

Actually, that’s a good attitude, and insight. I suppose I’m consuming as much as I can, it just happens to be of the textbook variety most of the time. Still, it’s good to keep this in mind, and see where I can new places to fit “drinking” into my schedule.

@J.J Thanks! That sounds similar to lang-8, but I suspect by your description, the goal is focus on talking with specific people instead of a huge audience. Would you say that’s true? I’ll check it out!

@vlgi – “my biggest problem with programming was I never had anything to write, I had no target or goal of what I wanted.”

My goal was to write games. Because of that I had to write a program to create image files, this is pre-Internet boom, because I couldn’t find any books on existing image formats. To create that program I had to design my own image file format. Once I learned to program, and wrote an application to draw and store images, I had to create a way to implement those images in my games. After that I could finally write a game. Oh yeah, I had to teach myself to program in the process. Doing all of that kept me plenty busy till people started paying me to write applications, so yeah I totally see what you’re saying.

For me, my goals for learning Japanese are the following:

* Play Japanese video games.
* Play Japanese board games/card games.
* Read Japanese Books/Comics.
* Watch Japanese TV/Movies.
* Talk to Japanese people.
* Apply my business experience and theoretical language skills to work in the Asian markets.
* Live in Japan.

Hopefully, all of that will keep me plenty busy. :)

“The fact that it takes a lot of ground work to reach a special happy place where you feel you are advancing is what makes it so hard.”

For real. Japanese requires a surprising amount of up front work to have any level of skill. It makes it very challenging to know if you’re spinning your wheels or not. From the ages of about 4 till 17 I worked every day to learn to draw. I mean every single day. I took many art classes, and practiced like crazy. Eventually, I had to give up. I can’t draw. I’m terrible at it. I want to make sure that I can actually achieve this goal like I did with programming.

“If you only focus on obaasan, then you don’t reach the critical mass on the other parts to explode into a mushroom cloud of learningosity all over your face.”

Obaasan, as in grandmother? I’m a bit lost on this one.

That does seem to make sense. I have a friend who knows less Japanese than I do, and he insists that we try to practice with each other, but I feel like I have to constantly correct him. I think that’s a warning sign about your Japanese if I am correcting you! ;)

Lang-8 has been very helpful, but time consuming. Still, I suspect it’s time well spent.

I have to admit most of this is causing my eyes to glaze over as I try to read it. I can follow Thomas Fullerton well enough, but I am not sure what the rest of you are going for.