It sure has been awhile since I purposefully sat down to think about the journey thus far. The whole journey. Brains can be a bit tricky at times, but I'll do my best to recount as much as I can.
I started learning Japanese in that weird time of life where I'm either still a pre-teen or a newly-forged teenager. I used to confidently say "I started when I was thirteen!", but recent evidence has shown that to be a bit of a lie. I was probably twelve or so when I got into Japanese music specifically and used that as my "way in". I loved music so much at this age, and I had a friend enable me by always getting me music. Totally legally, of course! I couldn't bear the thought of sharing anything suspicious.
Right away, I knew I wanted to be able to write in Japanese. I had always loved the act of keeping a journal or notebook of sorts, just like a sketchbook, so my learning journey started with looking at romaji song lyrics, pulling up a kana table, and turning that romaji back into hiragana and katakana. In a way, it felt like a puzzle to solve. I must have done this for so many different songs at the time, because I was pretty quickly able to remember hiragana. I remember finding katakana a bit harder, so I didn't write them down nearly as much. I had no idea what I was doing exactly, but it was kind of fun. I began to feel pretty comfortable with reading kana, and thus fumbled my way through some online learning sources that didn't always include romaji.
Thankfully, I have had some pretty supportive family in my life. By the time my thirteenth birthday came around, I had talked about trying to learn Japanese enough that my grandfather got me a more structured computer program. At least, more structured than what my baby brain could come up with on her own at the time.
Instant Immersion Japanese v2.0!
I'll be honest folks, I barely remember this due to it being eighteen years ago. I know I learned all the colors and a lot of body parts. This is also where I learned the phrase 「よくできました」. Everything else is super hazy. What I do know is that I was usually on it after school every day while also writing down notes from it. The shoebox my grandpa used to help wrap that gift also became my flashcard box. I'd write them on my own, put them in the box, shuffle everything up, and look through all the cards. I did not know about digital SRS yet at this point. I was just doing what I thought was right and cool at the time!
The five years after this is even more fuzzy in my brain, so I’m just going to list some things that I know happened (probably) in this time frame in no particular order.
Found and used smart.fm (perhaps it was still known as iKnow at the time?)
Attempted kanji flashcards with readings and stroke order on them
Found Kanji Koohii forums and subsequently the RTK/Heisig method
Created word lists in notebooks from song lyrics to learn more vocabulary (kanji learning more fun that way)
Found and began reading the AJATT blog (and 10k sentences would forever be etched in my brain as something cool to achieve)
Learned about Supermemo and the somewhat new Anki (Oh yes.)
Started collecting any books that contained Japanese text
Started watching things in Japanese when accessible
Frequently visited the local anime store my grandpa discovered on my behalf (Good lord the amount of CDs I bought from there…)
I think that’s about it for this time! I was also trying to survive middle and high school, not to mention everything that goes along with being that age. I didn’t necessarily do Japanese related activities daily as I was also very much into art and trying to be a decent student. I actually had a pretty healthy social life too!
Finding things like the AJATT blog and the Koohii forums were kind of cool for me at the time, because I felt extremely alone in wanting to learn Japanese. I had a ton of friends who liked Japanese media to an extent, but they didn’t really feel the same drive to learn the language like I did. The forums allowed me a way to see and connect with other learners and their learning styles. AJATT especially blew my mind, because I was definitely a floundering self-learner. It was intriguing to think I could just spend more and more thoughtful time with the language, the fun stuff too, and still become proficient. Learning about spaced repetition also was exciting, because it meant I didn’t have to go through my shoebox of flashcards anymore. I could just type up all my information and review it in a more sophisticated way!
By the time college time rolled around, I had a pretty cool collection of Japanese media and a very decent foundation of the language. Extremely basic stuff, but the thirst to be able to fully understand the media in my collection was growing daily. I was definitely inspired by AJATT to do as much self-learning in my free time as possible. So now I’ll list what I did during my college years!
Desperately attempted to learn from and consume any and all Final Fantasy X content
Grew my physical media collection further (CDs, books, magazines)
Fluctuated between Anki and Memrise a lot
Memrise competition (this may have been what started my competitive drive…haha)
Attempted the Read More or Die Tadoku contest (30th, not too bad!)
Learned how to create my own subs2srs decks from anime/drama (I was in my j-drama phase)
Started making my own decks despite not being too tech-savvy
Became a frequent reader of the JALUP blog
Began utilizing monolingual definitions and trying the branching method
Became interested in passing the JLPT one day and started using JLPT textbooks
Had a 100 day writing streak in lang8 (have I told anyone lately that I miss the old lang8?)
Took my first somewhat formal class in college. Japanese Art History with a brief language learning lesson weekly. I was a bit beyond the first few Genki chapters by this point, which is about all that was covered!
This is all I can remember for now! I technically had five years of college due to some transferring shenanigans, so it may seem like a lot. I suppose this all is from the ages of eighteen to twenty-three then.
Honestly, looking back on it now, I did some pretty cool things! I was extremely driven by my own greed of wanting to know more about my favorite things in their native language.
But this was also a time period where I was seeing the thoughts of other language learners, positive and negative. I was going through some dark stuff myself during this time and it was all too easy to give in to negativity. I started and stopped learning so many times because I thought I just wasn’t good enough. Other people could do literal AJATT while I couldn’t! Other people were learning faster! I was thinking of when I started to where I was at then, and felt so bad about my own progress. I fell into the trap of comparing myself to others and losing sight of my own circumstances, goals, and desires. This negative mindset was clouding my judgement on most things during this time period, so honestly it’s a miracle I even did all the things I listed above! Younger Manda could have used a kinder self, and I’m glad I can be that for me now.
After graduating college, I was still a bit of a mess mentally. I would remain this way for many years. I’ve cleaned up and organized the mess a bit these days, but 2015 through a lot of 2018 was pretty rough! Without school though, and living where I was working, I had a lot more time I could spend on and with my favorite hobby.
Started trying to actually read some of the novels I had, but just skipped over what I couldn’t understand. I “finished” books this way, knowing I’d re-read them later when I knew more.
Tried playing my first game of Pokémon in Japanese! It was hard, but the familiarity kept me going. Never did finish it…oops!
Learned how to use Aegisub to type up my own subtitles for video game playthrough videos, and thus make subs2srs cards out of games.
Tried working through more JLPT workbooks, never really finishing any of them.
Learned more about sentence mining and sentence banks! Life changing honestly.
Became a hoarder of Anki decks (see #5 in the list)
Spoke in Japanese for the first time outside of a classroom environment or to myself in the shower
This time period is kind of hard for me because there’s just a bit of a black hole in some of the years here. There’s a lot I don’t remember even outside of learning Japanese. But I think this was still an important time because my learning became even more geared towards native content and I was immersing more than before. Typing up subtitles is a bit tedious, but I always saw it as immersion time with a few more steps. Back then, finishing subtitles took very long because I’d have to use jisho to search for unfamiliar kanji with the radical search (because lord help me I could not draw them with my mouse). As per my last post, this action of creating subtitles is something I’ve recently started working on again!
My next time period is late 2018 to early 2021. I had just gotten into a serious relationship (just had our 5 year anniversary teehee), completely changed my life by moving in with the man, and was still a bit of a mess. It was one of those situations where I was like “clearly changing my environment will solve all my issues, right?”. I certainly learned quickly that would not be the case! So what all did I end up doing?
Started playing FFXIV in Japanese. I was on PS4 so I had to use jisho to look things up.
Briefly worked a job where I could utilize some of my Japanese language skills and cultural knowledge
On and off Anki usage
Blog started for accountability
…?
I definitely had other times like this, but this time period especially was mostly me being surrounded by Japanese without a lot of active participation. I had a lot of grand ideas but completely lacked discipline and motivation. I’d play FFXIV in Japanese for awhile, sure, but I wasn’t looking things up frequently. I knew how to play the game already and where everything was located so I never really struggled. I was just kind of hoping osmosis would work here. I used my sentence bank to keep fun sentences alive in Anki and feel like I was learning, but I wasn’t really mining too much. Looking back, everything felt kind of passive and my blog posts felt like a desperate attempt to be the person I wanted to be without putting in the work and time. COVID was in full force and I was just gaming, hanging out with my boyfriend and friends, and just trying to be as strong as I could mentally on my own.
When my grandfather died in February of 2021, something in me just kind of dinged. “He was your earliest supporter, but never got to see you meet your goals”. That thought honestly kind of broke me. So I had a ton of feelings in me and I didn’t quite know where to put them all, so I got serious about learning Japanese. I told myself that I’d give myself almost two whole years to study for the N1 and take it at the end of 2022.
This one should be in a proper order since it’s the most fresh in my brain…
Found a video on sentence mining with Notion while also utilizing Anki. Began sentence mining again in earnest (with a new deck!)
Started to read a lot more news
Lost access to my Anki in a freak bed bug incident on the way back from Grandpa’s memorial
Started using JPDB instead
Started reading web novels while also utilizing their respective JPDB decks, all on my old kindle
Joined language-learning related Discords to have a sense of community and to be inspired by others
Went hard on the grammar grind for about 3 months- anything labelled N3 all the way to N1.
Turned my grammar notes into Anki cards since I had access again
Used JPDB to find books to read and also learned about book clubs in the community to join!
Finally downloaded yomichan after thinking I was too stupid to figure it out for years
Finished my first book with high comprehension, then another, and another, and another…
Became active in all Tadoku competitions, falling in love with the new format because it meant I didn’t have to use Twitter anymore
Started tracking my progress in my own spreadsheet to be able to visualize improvement and general progress better, as well as accountability
Completed workbooks relating to all sections of the JLPT
Utilized audiobooks of books I had read already to aide in listening comprehension
Became a YouTube enjoyer - curated my algorithm better so it’s almost all Japanese now
Took and passed N1
Finished reading over 130 books in Japanese, all with good comprehension
Became a visual novel enjoyer!
Reset my JPDB progress and switched back to Anki to have total control of all my learning/reviewing
Limited my social media to have an overall better headspace, for the rest of my learning journey and for all other aspects of life
Realized I had the power to succeed all along, I just had to believe and put in the time and effort
Goodness, I hope that was everything! It’s been an incredible journey so far. I have stopped and re-started so many times along the way that starting over again this year has honestly been kind of comforting. Thinking of my new Anki journey as a “New Game+” has been really fun! It also helps that this was something I did not out of necessity or depression, but purely because I wanted to start fresh with a better mindset. Everything I need is in my brain, and everything I’ll ever want to know can go right into my beautiful Anki collection.
It’s kind of cool to think that my Japanese learning journey hasn’t just opened my eyes up to a new language. There’s a few other skills I learned along the way as well! In trying to get Anki exactly how I wanted it, I did have to learn a little bit of basic CSS. I bought the original template for my cards here, but I wanted to have more fields. This has further caused me to want to create my own template for any future decks I make!
Setting up Morphman for Anki also used to terrify me, so I just never tried. This year, I finally decided to figure it out. With the help of a friend and some good guides online, I found my way. So now I have my little “JPDB at home” setup! I can see my morph count at any time, and better organize my Sentence Bank. Most of my cards are mined from native content these days, but sometimes I want a full sentence audio for a card. Morphman made it easier to find a good sentence.
I do think all the Googling to figure out technology for Japanese learning reasons over the years has just made me a better Googler in general. If I really want something, it’s hard to stop before it’s figured out now. I used to be such a defeatist before!
I talked a bit about this in my previous post, but I think having some wins to point to from my Japanese language journey has given me hope for other goals too. I’m currently in a weight loss journey (that I don’t like to talk about too often because it can be a triggering topic) that’s actually going really well. And I knew it could go well, finally, because I’ve seen that I can do things like pass the N1 and read books in Japanese. Becoming healthier is no longer in the “impossible zone” in my head. It’s not exactly quick or anything, but neither was this journey. So I’m just going to be more mindful and accept that time really will tell.
Remembering back to little Manda, a pimply teenager alone in her room with a notebook and a vague dream, fills me with a lot of emotions. I almost feel disconnected to that person now, but I guess that’s just because I’ve grown so much. I sometimes will have the thought trains of “Oh I wish I had just learned about such-and-such at that time, then I surely would have succeeded earlier!”. I have to actively stop these trains just because it’s not helpful and it’s actually not definite. I genuinely don’t believe I had a mindset to achieve what I have now at the time, even if I had the knowledge. At the time, I was told I don’t have to actually and literally be doing Japanese all the time to succeed, but I thought that since I couldn’t, I would fail. I was told school was more important and to focus on that, but still I thought of it as a burden. I knew yomichan existed. I knew Morphman and guides to set it up existed. A lot of what I use today, existed back then! And I knew it! And I decided to just fail myself before trying. I knew doing Anki and trying to read everyday would be a benefit, and still I resisted. To put it simply, I just didn’t want it enough and also had other things going on.
Here’s one of my favorite AJATT blog posts. One that I very much read at the time and chose to have a negative personal reaction to. “This can’t possibly apply to me…”.
Those who have the skills didn’t just want to be good, they decided to be good.
I wanted to be good my whole journey, but I finally decided to get good in 2021.
That was a wonderful walk! Thank you for joining me. Perhaps we’ll do this again some time!