100 days of Japanese

[Liz]

Hi everyone! Time for a new log, on the new forum this time... I joined HTLAL years ago but haven't been active in a while.

I've already had a few rounds of trying to learn Japanese, starting in 2013, but the final years of uni were intense. All done now, so I have more time after work. Things were going pretty well about a year ago, but then exam time came along and ate my life, and I haven't had the energy to stick to any Japanese study plan over time since then.

Now it turns out I might be able to go to Japan for 2 weeks at the end of February The 13th is the earliest I can possibly get there, which means I have about 100 days to learn as much active Japanese as I possibly can. I'm still not sure how I'm going to do this, but will figure it out as I go along. For now, I'm just going to try to do something useful every day that helps me towards my goal of being able to speak at some level - I don't even know where to set my goal yet because I only found out this week that I might be able to do the trip, so that particular idea is new in my mind.

I have no idea what level I'm at. But I know there's a lot of passive understanding hidden in my brain somewhere. And when I stopped working on my Japanese last year, I was starting to feel like things were coming together and starting to make sense, which has happened with other languages as well. My active abilities are much more limited now, which tends to happen when I stay away from a language for months.

Since there's a time limit here I'll be focusing on any approach that helps me produce Japanese actively. I'll be shamelessly using romaji if possible, just because it's helpful. I'll start using Remembering the Kanji again later, along with Koohii which was useful for reviewing kanji - but not now.

I have a JapanesePod101 premium membership, which is a pretty decent learning tool. Not sure how I'll use it yet but I'll try to find a way to make it more active. It's done a good enough job with helping me learn to understand things though. Back in August I started working on how I could use an SRS for more active learning, so I'll be experimenting with that too. I'll also be doing a lot of listening, mostly interviews on youtube. I suspect JP101 (in various forms), SRS and lots of listening will be my main learning tools, at least in the very beginning. And lots of music, of course - I've only just started getting into Japanese music (One Ok Rock and similar things, not jpop) and I'm sure there's a lot more great stuff out there, just need to find it.

I'm sure my approach will change as I go along, and I will probably start using websites like italki. Not sure when. Right now I just need to get started. Any advice about how to learn quickly would be appreciated of course I'll try to post regularly about what I've been doing.

So I guess today is day 1... I'm recovering from the flu at the moment, so I'm starting off with some relatively mindless stuff like passively listening to interviews on youtube and putting in some SRS cards from JP101's word of the day, as well as reviewing some cards out loud. Will try to make some sort of plan when my brain is back to normal again. Not sure how much I can achieve in 100 days but it'll be interesting to find out, and I'm sure my Japanese will be much better by mid-February than it is now, which I'm pretty excited about

[iguanamon]

Welcome to our new forum, Liz. It's good to see you here. I look forward to following your progress.

[Liz]

Thanks iguanamon

Day 2: Still recovering from the flu and my brain isn't really back online yet, so I've mostly been doing flashcards during the day, as well as making new ones from sample sentences from JP101's word of the day. There's audio for most sentences, so I'm trying to pay closer attention to the intonation details when I practice pronouncing each sentence. I think my pronunciation is passable in general and certainly should be understandable enough, but there are definitely things that need to be worked on so I don't end up sounding too 'flat'. Practicing a few times and then speaking at the same time as the recording seems to have some sort of useful effect so I'll keep experimenting with that.

[Liz]

Day 3: Mostly flashcards today, including making some new ones. I'm hoping I'll be able to do more active studying soon, but don't want to push too hard when my head is still foggy from the flu. I think for the time being, the most important thing I can do is spend a few weeks focusing most of my efforts on reviewing stuff I've forgotten since last year, with the goal of being able to use them actively, not just understand them again. It's much easier to relearn things than learn them for the first time, and reviewing is always worthwhile, but still kinda wish I hadn't had that break... Oh well, it happens.

[Liz]

Day 4: Another day of my gentle start, and I didn't get much done today. (But hey, it doesn't say "96 days of Japanese" in the title, so it's all good haha.) Thought I'd do something a bit more entertaining today so I found a music video of a song I like that had both romaji and a translation, then looked up all the words I didn't know, and tried to understand the grammar. Definitely found some things that I couldn't make sense of, but mostly I think it went ok. Doing this will also help reinforce the words and grammar when I listen to that song again later, which I surely will, even if I'm just listening without actively trying to learn anything. Using music really helped me when I was studying Italian so I want to use that approach for Japanese as well. Came across some more music I liked as well, so I'll just keep hopping around Youtube to find different material to learn from. Plus it's enjoyable, even if I don't learn anything. Not everything has to be a learning experience... Have done some flashcards today as well. Found EUdict so now I have another decent romanised dictionary besides JP101's. On a more positive note, I'm loving the sound of Japanese even more than usual today, which is great

[kujichagulia]

Hey, Liz! Good luck with your Japanese challenge. がんばってください！

[Liz]

Thanks Kuji (It still feels like a small victory every time I'm actually able to read something in Japanese, even if it's just something short! Not that long ago it all looked like random squiggles to me...)

Day 5: Frantic day at work and a 2-hour nap afterwards - so I was never going to get much Japanese done today. My brain is less foggy today, just tired from work, so hopefully tomorrow will be my first good day since I started studying again. I've had some Japanese music on today - let's call it listening practice I've noticed that after hearing the same song a certain number of times without understanding it, I stop paying attention to how it sounds, and on some level I stop trying to understand it. It just sounds like nonsense, but still enjoyable. So I've been trying to make out the syllables of a few songs to hopefully help with understanding eventually. Realistically one of the challenges for my Japan trip will be trying to make out exactly what I'm hearing. Because real people talk fast, slur, shorten things, etc. and I'm not sure how to prepare for that besides lots of practice. In the past I've found that it helps to just listen to whatever I'm hearing in the present moment and with a bit of practice, that makes it easier to hear the details I would've missed if I was only focusing on the big picture things my non-Japanese-speaking brain can pick up on. I think I need to find some movies or dramas or something where people don't talk particularly clearly and use that for practice. The interviews I listen to on Youtube tend to be reasonably clear for the most part. If anyone has recommendations for things I can find legally, I'm always looking for good sources...

[Elenia]

Noting things down might help you concentrate on what you're hearing? Maybe pick a specific (common!) word to listen out for, or a particular part of speech. Or maybe just note down things that catch your interest. It could help you keep focused and also have the long term benefit of helping with spelling/grammar if you choose to look up and study the things you note down at a later point.

(It's also a great reference point for if you ever want to go back and laugh at yourself see your progress).