#Cyn/Tyler's Journey: August 2019 - Present

240 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

peak pine
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I started learning Japanese in 2019 with Genki 1, and stuck with that for about a month before I found Matt's YouTube channel.

At the time, Refold was known as MIA (Mass Immersion Approach), and it was similar in a lot of respects, but also very different and not as fleshed out as Refold is today. My original goal for learning Japanese was to be able to read most novels fluently since I got tired of waiting for official translations to be done, but at the time, Matt was pushing a listening-heavy approach since (in theory) it would require much less work later on to correct any flaws in your accent. Additionally, RTK 1 + 3 was still being shilled (this was before people started realizing it was not necessary), so I spent the first 5 months doing that, too.

Anyway, my first year was spent doing RTK 1 + 3 and watching anime without subs at all for the sake of better listening ability. After about 14 or 15 months, I was at what would be called 2C today. At this point, I was satisfied with my listening abilities to where I allowed myself to start reading, and so I jumped straight into literature.

The first 3 months were pretty annoying since I had accumulated a ton of words through audio only and I had no idea what their kanji were. So I was essentially just learning the kanji for a lot of words I already knew, which made it pretty frustrating considering the text density that comes with novels. It was also around this time that I started moderating this server.

After about 1.5 years of reading novels (~3-5h a day on weekdays, 10+ on weekends), I reached a point where I could comfortably pick up most books and read without much of an issue. This was very satisfying, but I was also starting to get bored of just reading, and so I began to work on output.

Because I had spent so much time reading while doing about an hour of listening a day alongside it, despite my listening-only period in the first year, I would write/speak like an author. That is to say, I would often use expressions, connectors, and literary vocabulary in my writing and speech. This was cool at first, sure, but it became pretty annoying lol. I decided to just work on speaking only until it stopped, which took about 3 or 4 months.

I'm 5 years in now and moving to Japan next month (July 12th) to do software dev. I don't really have any aspirations to have amazing Japanese in terms of accent (nor have I really ever have), and I'm pretty content with my output abilities now. I do intend to take Russian to stage 3 (already stage 2C), and more than likely Korean. I'm sure I'll work on Japanese more when I'm living in Japan, but the days of me spending several hours a day intently improving it are behind me I think. I just immerse for enjoyment now.

As for advice - I don't really have any lol. Any advice I would give is just advice you'd see a lot of other people in this server give, anyway.

I welcome any questions, though!

agile fog
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Why don't you immerse in novels anymore even though it was your initial motivation?

peak pine
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I don't want to look back 2 more years from now and just think back on how many books I read lol

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It's not really fulfilling to me

terse nest
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Did you use anything to supplement it? Textbooks, Anki, etc.

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And how often did you do look-ups/how did you look stuff up? Transcribing into a dictionary by ear?

peak pine
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I didn't use any supplement, no

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It just took forever

peak pine
terse nest
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Nothing at all? Like not even tae Kim or the aforementioned genki 1?

peak pine
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Nope lol

terse nest
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Damn.

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No Anki either???

peak pine
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When I ran into something I didn't know/understand I just Google'd it

peak pine
terse nest
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Ah.

peak pine
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Until I started reading at least

terse nest
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So it was pure free-flow with, I assume, transcribing into a dictionary?

peak pine
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Mhm

terse nest
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Did you have no subs at all? Like to copy words from.

peak pine
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Uhh sometimes

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Back then there weren't a ton of subs for every series you could think of

terse nest
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Cuz jeez. I could not imagine doing that for like a year. 😭

peak pine
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And a lot of the time the subs were just bad

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Like the timing was off by minutes

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So retiming them was a pita

terse nest
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Sounds like most current J-Drama subs. 😭

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Seriously, massive fucking kudos.

peak pine
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Yeah lool

terse nest
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I'd have probably died if I tried something like this. 😭

peak pine
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I REALLY wanted to read novels fluently like baaaaad

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But I also didn't want my listening to be shit

terse nest
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Were you sort of pressured into doing listening at the start or is it something that you also wanted to do besides reading?

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And did you start with the absolutely hard shit or did you do easy stuff?

peak pine
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Sort of pressured since that's kinda the direction the community was leaning towards at the time, but I also knew myself well enough to know that if I started reading from the beginning, it's likely that I wouldn't have been able to help myself lol

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And I didn't want to have to play catchup

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So I decided to have a huge buffer for my listening

peak pine
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Hard easy whatever

terse nest
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You really must have had the patient of a fucking saint to have gone through all of that. 😭

peak pine
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Yeah lol

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It wasn't fun

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Especially RTK

terse nest
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Did Matt ever have any opinions on things VNs and LNs related besides "it isn't good to read without a listening component?"

terse nest
peak pine
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It was like 3 months before RRTK came out

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So right at the end of its lifecycle of relevancy

terse nest
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I thought it died down back in like 2018 when I would randomly lurk in the learnjapanese subreddit and I heard people praise wanikani.

peak pine
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I was already 1500 cards in, so

terse nest
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Jeeeeeeeeez.

peak pine
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That's all I remember

terse nest
peak pine
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I see lol

terse nest
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So were things like ttsu reader around when you started reading? And yomichan?

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Or did you have to find other ways to read and mine?

peak pine
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I knew the guy who created ttu for like a year before he made it

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Yomichan thankfully was available when I started reading though

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So I used itazuraneko a lot

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Which wasn't fun because they didn't have anything I really liked lol

terse nest
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Oh, so things like aozora bunko and shit?

peak pine
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Ye

terse nest
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So like you read the really old shit.

peak pine
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Well no not really

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I read NGNL for example

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Overlord

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Violet Evergarden

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Physical

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Bunny Girl

terse nest
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Oh. Mb then. I thought bunko had like the really old stuff.

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Did you read web novels too?

peak pine
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Nah

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Rarely any manga either

terse nest
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I honestly gotta commend you for this cuz having to relearn all of the kanji for different words sounds fucking tedious.

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Jeez.

peak pine
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Thanks lol

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Yeah it was awful

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3 months until I got to a point where I wasn't looking the most common things up constantly

terse nest
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Did you ever have any moments where you gave up?

peak pine
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Nop

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I thought about it a couple times

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But nah

terse nest
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So this was all continuous? No breaks or anything?

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Damn.

peak pine
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Nah lol

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Wake up read for 3-5 or 11 hours

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Rinse and repeat for 2 years

terse nest
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2 years? And this was just for the reading phase?

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Holy shit.

peak pine
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Ye lol

terse nest
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Did you have anything else going on at the time? How did you balance all of this with daily life?

peak pine
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Year 1 listening
Years 2 - 3 reading
Years 4-5 Youtube + output (with some reading)

peak pine
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But nah I didn't have many hobbies outside of it

terse nest
peak pine
terse nest
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Nothing at all? Were you able to keep a good social life?

peak pine
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I just realized that I needed to focus on output more

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Cause it was becoming more important to me

terse nest
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Ahh.

peak pine
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Having a social life was much harder lol

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But a bit

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I would go out with my friends about once a month or so

terse nest
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Fair enough then.

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Have you taken the JLPT?

peak pine
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Nah

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Idc about it

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Makes me an example that you don't need it to get a job at a JP company there too

terse nest
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You don't need one for your future job/employment in Japan?

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Damn.

peak pine
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No lol

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I think it helps with getting PR

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But that's it

terse nest
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Ah.

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Final question before I gotta head to bed (thanks for letting me ask you these questions), you got any regrets?

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Like things you could have done differently, etc.

peak pine
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Hmm

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Probably spend less time on reading in those 2 years, but that's mostly just a personal preference thing

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I don't regret anything though, no

terse nest
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Fair enough then.

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You definitely worked hard to get where you are now.

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Kudos.

peak pine
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Ye lool

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Ty

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And you too

terse nest
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And thanks for letting me ask you a ton of questions.

peak pine
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Np

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Have a good night

terse nest
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Night night.

peak pine
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Lmao y

terse nest
# peak pine Lmao y

Oh, burn out from the language. I only learnt Japanese to complete my VN bucket list, but continued with it after and slowly became burnt out cuz of Japanese media.

peak pine
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Ah I see

terse nest
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I'm slowly getting back into it with dramas and shit, but I wouldn't have mined not continuing had I decided to stop after my last VN, which I completed last year.

peak pine
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I burned out from programming for 6 months before I started Japanese

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So I knew what to do to avoid it

terse nest
peak pine
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More lol

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But yeah

terse nest
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JFC.

peak pine
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More than 10 hours and for more than a year

peak pine
terse nest
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I'm only mustering like 6 hours with Java rn.

terse nest
peak pine
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Well programming was the only thing I had go on lmao

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I got obsessed

peak pine
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Lel

terse nest
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Tbf, I can see why. I wasn't obsessed with programming before, but making Minecraft mods is actually kinda fun.

peak pine
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Mhm

terse nest
peak pine
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Once you work on something you're super into it turns into a huge timesink

peak pine
terse nest
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Ah, so it's still mostly English. Fair. Do you output quite a lot throughout the day in Japanese or is it for a set amount of time like 2 hours or so?

terse nest
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Or make something Pokemon related.

peak pine
terse nest
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Most fun I've had with programming since the Pokedex idea from a few months back.

terse nest
peak pine
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There are mods that already do that too that you can use for reference if you get stuck

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Just don't straight up copy and paste the entire thing

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Without trying to figure out how it works

peak pine
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Excited

terse nest
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Imma be building from scratch.

terse nest
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And if you do live there and eventually obtain citizenship, would you be willing to give up your American citizenship for a Japanese citizenship?

peak pine
peak pine
terse nest
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Would obtaining one cost a lot?

peak pine
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Wym

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I already have a work visa

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And it cost 0

terse nest
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Oh. Mb. I don't know how these things work to its entirety.

peak pine
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Ah ok

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Yeah the work visa is what I got from the embassy 2 days ago

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It's my ticket into there

terse nest
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I thought you had to apply for a visa after you go there and that it costs a lot of money to apply for one.

peak pine
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Nah

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I mean I'll have to apply for a renewal when I'm there

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At some point

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But I don't think it costs anything

terse nest
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How long till it expires?

peak pine
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3y on mine

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They go from 1 to 5y

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Depends on what the gov decides

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Basically

terse nest
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Are there any prerequisites for applying for a work visa besides being employed?

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Like do you already have to have a contract with a Japanese company or anything?

peak pine
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You accept a job offer from a company in Japan and then they have you fill out an application form called the COE (certificate of employment) that they then send to the government in Japan to get you your COE. This can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 4 months or so. Mine took 3 weeks

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Then they mail it to you and you take it and send some other things to a JP embassy in your country

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Which then stamps your passport with the visa

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And sends it back to you

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You need the COE for customs still when you enter the country

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That's about it

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But yeah your company acts as a sponsor basically

terse nest
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That seems... Oddly simple.

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Simpler than I thought.

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Well then, I have a lot to think about then. Thank you for all of the information.

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I shall be going to sleep now, so thank you so much. 🙇‍♂️

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Goodnight.

peak pine
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No problem lol

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Have a good night

hardy meadow
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How did you work on output? I've really been struggling to get my output to be even 1/2 as good as my comprehension.

tender portal
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You said in your post that you only started reading after about 14-15 months, do you regret that decision, would you have done it differently if you could redo it now? Could you share your thoughts on why you decided to hold off on it for so long?

peak pine
# hardy meadow How did you work on output? I've really been struggling to get my output to be e...

When I first started I was just writing short stories in a literary style. Once I started talking to normal people though and noticed my writing was a bit weird cause of all the reading, I got a few people to talk to off Italki and did that a few times a week. I think talking to different people every time accelerated things a bit too since you get comfortable talking to people from other backgrounds and such

Anyway, it was pretty much just that, along with writing in text on HelloTalk. Not really talking to other people, but making use of the "post" feature that you see on like Twitter and stuff. People would correct my writing afterwards. Output will always be lagging behind compared to your comprehension though (even in your native language). Don't think there's really any way around that

peak pine
hardy meadow
peak pine
hardy meadow
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wow. I wish that would work for me.

peak pine
hardy meadow
peak pine
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How is the output for your writing going

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Compared to speaking

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Some people (like Alice) have had a lot of success just getting good at writing and then it transferring well to speaking

hardy meadow
hardy meadow
main storm
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What do you think would have gone differently if you went with reading from the start?

peak pine
# main storm What do you think would have gone differently if you went with reading from the ...

Well, I do know someone who did only reading for the first 2 years. When he went to work on listening, his mental model of what the language sounded like was very off, and so he would hear common words like 本当 or 大丈夫 and they would sound like new words to him lol. It was pretty frustrating from what I remember.

I don't think I would have let my reading get that far ahead of my listening, but I do definitely think that I would have had to dedicate a big chunk of time to catch up on it. It wouldn't have been enjoyable, and I might've just gone back to reading more often regardless because of how much better I would be at it, and how much more enjoyable it was for me

Not saying this will happen to everyone that likes reading by any means if that's what they decided to do, but it's probably what I would've done because of my original reason to learn the language

boreal ether
peak pine
boreal ether
peak pine
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Other things just started to become more important to me. I don't see a lot of value in sitting for several hours a day reading a piece of fiction anymore lol

boreal ether
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Aaah i see. Just switch to non fiction itudemoii

peak pine
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Thanks for the suggestion but non-fic is not my cup of tea haha

fierce berry
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Sorry if you answered this above already, how did you approach grammar. In listening or reading, you knew all the words, but had no clue on the meaning still. Did you try looking up the grammar, or just let it go by and realize it will click eventually?

peak pine
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For me personally reading something like a grammar guide daily was just useless because I'd forget about what I read a few days later

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So instead I just looked these things up as they came up in my immersion

fierce berry
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Awesome, thanks for the reply! And loved reading your journey to this point. Your story and advice helps so much!