Learning Japanese From Zero

[golyplot]

I've pretty much just been playing Magic all the time lately, so I haven't had time to study Japanese, beyond keeping up with Wanikani. Today, I was hoping to finally get back to Japanese. I started watching an episode of Hilda in Japanese, but I couldn't get into the mood, so a couple minutes in I gave up and decided to go back to Magic after all.

[golyplot]

Merry Christmas everyone!

I still haven’t managed to make time for non-WK Japanese study in the last week, and WK is still kicking my ass, but I did take another crack at making a Japanese Christmas cake today, and the second try went a lot better.

[golyplot]

Today, I finally managed to return to studying Japanese. In particular, I read through Japanese for the Western Brain, and watched Hilda eps 3 and 4 and K-On! ep 5.

One bit of Japanese for the Western Brain I found interesting is a section at the end where it it talks about things that are crazy in English, and one of the examples listed is use of past tense to mean the present in polite phrases with the example sentence “I had wondered if you were planning to go tomorrow…”. The crazy part to me is that that immediately stood out to me as weird and ungrammatical, despite being a native speaker of English. Maybe it's a regional thing or something. (I would however readily accept the past progressive tense here, e.g. "I was wondering if you were planning to go tomorrow").

In K-On! ep 5, there was a brief shot of little turtle and rabbit statues side by side adorning a bannister at school. It made me wonder if it was a reference to the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, or some Japanese folk tale or something else.

Also, in addition to K-On!'s tendency to cut to still scenery even in the middle of conversations, there were also two scenes in this episode where they randomly showed the characters' feet. It made me wonder if this was an attempt to save on the animation budget. If it was an artistic choice, it was certainly a very strange one.

Hilda ep4 also had an oddity - in this episode, David listens to a light rock song throughout the episode, and unusually, the song was dubbed into Japanese. Normally, dubs will just leave music untouched - in fact, there was a song in episode 2 which was left in English in the Japanese dub. Out of curiosity, I did a quick check of the other dubs, and the French dub also dubbed this song, while the Spanish and Chinese dubs left it in English. I wonder why.

Lastly, I finally unlocked the last vocabulary lesson in Wanikani! It's crazy to think about how after nearly a year, all this is finally over. No more lessons on Wanikani, ever again. Now all that's left is to keep doing reviews until my subscription runs out. Without new lessons constantly adding to the queue, the total review load should rapidly start going down, though I expect it to still be pretty high just from old items combing back up for review.

[vonPeterhof]

In K-On! ep 5, there was a brief shot of little turtle and rabbit statues side by side adorning a bannister at school. It made me wonder if it was a reference to the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, or some Japanese folk tale or something else.

It's most certainly a reference to Aesop's fable, both in-show for thematic reasons (although the show's theme seems less "slow and steady wins the race" and more "it's okay to go through life at your own pace") and in the real life (former) school building that served as the model for the school in the anime.

Also, in addition to K-On!'s tendency to cut to still scenery even in the middle of conversations, there were also two scenes in this episode where they randomly showed the characters' feet. It made me wonder if this was an attempt to save on the animation budget. If it was an artistic choice, it was certainly a very strange one.

It is very much an artistic choice and pretty much the director's trademark. I couldn't find the specific interview right now, but Yamada Naoko has stated that she considers showing a character's legs a good way of showing their emotions, since people are usually less deliberate in posturing and positioning their legs than their hands or facial expressions. Besides, in TV anime "animation budget" has a much smaller effect on animation quality than most fans imagine, especially in the case of Kyoto Animation, who actually pay their animators salaries and never hire freelancers.

[golyplot]

Today I finished my fifth go through the Noriko podcast, although this time I skipped all the interview episodes. The problem with interviews is that it's inevitably hard to hear the interviewee due to varying volumes and sound quality. I also think that it's a lot easier to understand Noriko when she's speaking to the audience, since she's presumably making more of an effort to be comprehensible.

I started listening to the Teppei and Noriko joint podcast for the first time. Sadly, it suffers from all the same issues mentioned above. For some reason, conversations recorded in podcasts inevitably involve participants with wildly varying volumes so you often can't hear both sides without blasting your ears out. Also, the podcast has intro music which is much louder than the actual speech, although mercifully, it's at least short and doesn't cover up the content like Teppei did in his own podcast.

Edit: Looking back on my previous posts, it seems like my previous entry disappeared. I'm pretty sure that a couple days ago when I watched K-On! ep 6, I meant to write an entry to the effect of "I counted at least five shots of the characters' feet, along with one where their butts are shown for some reason. I guess now that I've started paying attention to it more, it's everywhere." I'm not sure if I am just imagining things, or if my browser swallowed the post or what. Oh well, it's not like it matters much anyway.

[golyplot]

One year update

It's now been exactly a year since I started studying Japanese. It's crazy how much has happened in the last year. Overall, I'd say I was "humbled" like I feared in my OP. Japanese has progressed a lot more slowly than I expected, despite considerable time and dedication. I have a new appreciation for how hard it is to learn non-FIGS languages.

On the other hand, it's not like I haven't made any progress. Obviously, I'm a lot better at Japanese now than a year ago, or even a couple months ago. I've gotten to the point where I can mostly understand Noriko's podcast. Grammar is still a huge challenge, but I can often get the gist of things when reading or listening, just from recognizing content words.

As far as studying goes, I've tried all sorts of different things. However, I've spent the vast majority of my time on Wanikani, watching anime, and listening to podcasts and Japanese music in the background. I've tried to study grammar and practice reading, but those have proven boring and frustrating, so I haven't devoted quite as much time to them to date (which is not to save I've neglected them or anything - I went through Bunpro twice, as well Lingodeer, Tae Kim's Guide, and so on).


JLPT
Obviously, I couldn't take any real JLPT tests, but I took a bunch of practice tests yesterday and today to gauge my progress. I took the the 2012 N5 and N4 practice tests here, as well as parts of the N3, N2, and N1 tests. (There are two sets of tests on the site, but I already took the newer ones a couple months back).

Unfortunately, the practice tests don't come with any score weighting or cutoff information, but overall, I think I'm at the point where I could probably pass the N4 exam. Of course, there's some variation - I'm at N1 in terms of kanji knowledge thanks to Wanikani, while I'm still only N5 in grammar ability.

Here are my scores in more detail - note that these are just raw number of questions answered and missed, since there's no weighting information available.

N5:
Vocabulary: 29/33
Reading and Grammar: 26/32
* Grammar: 20/26
* Reading: 6/6
Listening: 20/24
* Task-based comprehension: 7/7
* Point-based comprehension: 5/6
* Utterance expressions: 3/6
* Quick response: 6/6

Overall, I struggled with the grammar questions and the Utterance Expression listening questions and aced everything else.


N4:
Vocabulary: 28/34
Reading and Grammar: 17/35
* Grammar: 11/25
* Reading: 6/10
Listening: 22/28
* Task-based comprehension: 7/8
* Point-based comprehension: 7/7
* Utterance expressions: 3/5
* Quick response: 5/8

I did very badly on the grammar and the first half of the reading section. However, I've heard that the latter questions are worth more on the actual test, and I got all six of the last six reading questions, so I think I'd probably have still passed. I wish there was a way to know what the actual standards were though.

N3:
Vocabulary: 21/33

I got 21/33 on the Language Knowledge (Vocabulary) section, including 13/14 on the kanji knowledge questions and 8/19 on the vocab questions. N3 is where the limits of my vocab definitely started to show. I had to guess on the earlier levels sometimes, but I was guessing a lot more here. However, thanks to WK, I still aced the kanji questions.

I also tried taking the N3 Listening section (I didn't bother at all with Grammar and Reading for obvious reasons). However, I gave up after the very first question. I don't think I'm anywhere near ready yet for N3 level listening questions, since they're a lot more tricky than the N5 and N4 ones.

N2 and N1:

To push the limits of my kanji knowledge, I decided to answer the kanji questions on the N2 and N1 test. Despite not knowing most of the vocab and having no idea what the sentences in the questions even meant, I still managed to do very well. I managed to get 9/10 on the N2 and 5/6 on the N1. I was actually pretty astonished by that, since the tests are so far above my level. I guess this shows the power of Wanikani for learning obscure kanji readings and the like.



Wanikani

The big news is that I finished Wanikani. A year ago, I decided to speedrun Wanikani, and though it took incredible time and dedication , and many exhausting nights at the end (towards the end, I was averaging over two hours a day just doing WK reviews and lessons!), I made it. I hit level 60 on WK just 353 days after I started. You can see my celebratory post here.

Podcasts

Lately, I've been spending several hours a day listening to Japanese podcasts in the background. I play them whenever I'm eating, cooking, going for walks, or basically anything. Of course, I rarely manage to focus on it, or pay much attention, but I figure it's still helpful. By far my favorite podcast is Learn Japanese with Noriko. I've found it to be the easiest to understand and would recommend it for Japanese learners.

Anime
As planned, I've watched a fair bit of anime (as well as the Japanese dubs of some English shows) to try to practice Japanese. Learning via immersion is a lot slower than I expected, but I'm sure it did help.

In case anyone wants recommendations of what I've watched for entertainment purposes, I'd say my favorites were K-On!, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K., and Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online. I was a bit disappointed by BNA: Brand New Animal and Cannon Busters. I also didn't like Beastars at all. I watched Beastars with English subtitles, so that's not on the list below, but it's still worth warning people away from.

Shows watched:

Currently watching:
Hilda (18 eps)
K-On! (20 eps)

On hold:
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. (20 eps)

Complete:
Carmen Sandiego (24 eps)
Cannon Busters (12 eps)
Cardcaptor Sakura (70 eps)
BNA: Brand New Animal (12 eps)
The Dragon Prince (27 eps)
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online (12 eps)

Abandoned:
Polar Bear Cafe (1 ep)
One Piece (4 eps)
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (1 ep)

Future Plans
Obviously, I still need to work on my grammar and reading abilities. (Well, really I need to work on everything, but those are my biggest weakpoints right now). I'm planning to try doing Bunpro again next month. Sadly, I haven't found any good ways to study grammar or practice reading yet. Doing Bunpro or Tae Kim is a good way to learn about grammar, but it just doesn't stick without extensive reinforcement, and intensive reading is just too frustrating and difficult, even with beginner materials.

[golyplot]

Not much to report since I haven't been doing any Japanese lately besides Wanikani and podcasts. Try as I might, I just can't seem to rekindle the excitement and motivation to learn Japanese.

I finished the Noriko and Teppei pod cast last Thursday night or so and started going through Noriko's podcast yet again. I did notice one bit of interest this morning. She said something about how her bathroom has a kagi but the bedroom doesn't, which confused me, since I'd learned that kagi=key, but it obviously meant "lock" in context. I looked it up, and sure enough, Jisho says it can also mean lock. It's definitely odd to me, seeing the concepts lumped together in one word though, since English splits things different.

[golyplot]

Today, I learned something interesting from Noriko's podcast: She talked about how in the West, it is traditional to let women go first, while in Japan, custom is the opposite, leading to a major culture shock. That was pretty interesting to hear about.

It's also notable that I'm now on my sixth time through Noriko's podcast and I'm still running into bits that I never noticed before. I think it's mostly because I'm rarely actually paying attention to the podcast. I have a lot of trouble focusing on podcasts. Even when I'm not doing other stuff, I'm still almost always distracted by my own thoughts. Also of course, even when I am focusing on it, sometimes I can't understand what she's saying (especially true in the past - I've gotten a lot better at understanding Noriko over time).

[golyplot]

Today, I learned a new word that not even Jisho knows about. Noriko was talking about tachou and tadoku, reading and listening a lot. I already knew that tadoku meant "extensive reading", so tachou clearly meant "extensive listening" from context, especially when I remembered that one of the "listen" kanji has the reading chou. However, I looked it up in Jisho afterwards anyway and was surprised to discover that Jisho apparently doesn't know about this word at all!

[devilyoudont]

That's interesting... according to google, 多読 is about an order of magnitude more common than 多聴 so maybe that's why.... even in Japanese 多聴 is too uncommon. 多聴 is also missing from the Japanese monolingual dictionary at goo.ne.jp!