My Journey Learning Japanese

My personal journey learning Japanese

My Childhood

Looking back, I think I’ve always had an interest in languages. The idea of communicating in ways that other people couldn’t easily understand fascinated me. It all started when I was around 8 years old. I remember learning an alternative symbol for each letter of the alphabet and writing secret messages with those. It was quite fun, but it had the shortcoming that I was the only one who knew that code, so I couldn’t share my ideas with others.

A few years later, when I was 12, I learned about Braille and finally understood what the symbols on the buttons of elevators meant. But most importantly, I appreciated the cleverness in such a system that allowed blind people to read. During the following years, I realized that learning a new language would be much more useful, so I set that as my goal.

Getting Started

There were many options. I tried some of them using Duolingo and similar apps. I studied French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Esperanto, among other languages, but of all of them, Japanese was the one that really got my attention. It seemed complex, yet Japanese culture was so widespread that it shouldn’t be too hard, I thought—how naive I was then.

In December 2014, I decided that I was going to master Japanese. At first, I started reading a book of common phrases in Japanese with its translation in Spanish. However, that alone wasn’t going to take me far, so I began looking for a concise grammar book. That’s when I came across Japanese Grammar Guide by Tae Kim.

First Attempt

English was a compulsory subject in my school, so I knew the basics, but I was still far from being fluent. Nonetheless, if I wanted to read that Tae Kim textbook, I had to force myself to read English.

In 2015, after learning Hiragana with the help of mnemonics, I began reading the book. During that process, I had to look up many English words and sentence structures that now are obvious to me. I think the most noticeable change then was how much my English improved—more than my Japanese, even.

Around that time, I also liked to use a website called Lang-8 where you could post paragraphs in the language you were learning for native speakers to correct. I also bought Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig, but never really read it because of bad reviews I saw immediately afterwards (I kind of regret not reading it then).

Getting Off Track

I didn’t finish reading Japanese Grammar Guide. I got sidetracked by English content on the internet, but at least I had the general idea of how Japanese worked. A few years passed and my English understanding improved gradually. I knew some Japanese already too, so I thought I would get better if I kept reviewing a little here and there. That never happened.

I still had the intention of becoming fluent in another language. Japanese was at the top of my list, but I wasn’t sure how to tackle a language that looked so different from the others. At the end of 2019, Matt vs Japan Youtube channel finally clarified the strategy for me.

Finding Direction

The approach to language learning that he used to learn Japanese made sense to me. He said that the most important thing was to focus on getting input in the target language through reading and listening. I reflected upon the way I learned English and everything clicked for me—immersion in the language is crucial.

What about Kanji? There are thousands of those Chinese characters. Matt’s solution was the book Remembering the Kanji along with a software for spaced repetition called Anki.

Second Attempt

Once again, I was all-in with Japanese, but this time I had a plan. The first few months of 2020, I was learning to write Kanji at a rate of 25 new characters every day using mnemonics and Anki. When I got to a thousand, I stopped to prioritize watching Japanese content. Maybe I should have continued until I was done with the 2,200 Kanji in the book, but I was excited to start watching actual Japanese and expand my vocabulary.

After a couple of months of consuming content in Japanese, I returned to Kanji and finished the book at last.

Where I’m At

In July 2022 I passed the JLPT N2 exam after doing immersion for around 2 years at that point. I’ve also created a repository where I share the tools and resources I’ve found most useful for language learning. Now I’m just keeping the routine of learning new words through a technique called Sentence Mining and trying to immerse myself in the language as much as possible, although it’s been harder lately because of other priorities.

I omitted tons of details in my story, mainly because I don’t remember them well or because they’re kind of irrelevant. I wanted to write this down before I forget even further.

Final Thoughts

I think learning Japanese has been and continues to be an enriching experience that has shaped who I am now. I encourage everyone who is thinking about learning a new language to give it a try—not just for the sake of a better resume or a job opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize those are great things too. Just don’t underestimate the impact it can have on one’s understanding of different cultures and perspectives.

Best of luck with your studies!