Nihongowaaa

1 week in.

I’ve kept up relatively well in this first week. I believe I missed 1 day Anki, due to going on a weekend camping trip, but was able to continue the day after.

I remembered last time that only doing Anki and kanji started feeling purposeless, because with Heisig while you’re learning the meaning (mostly) of the characters, it seems abstracted enough from real language usage that it feels disconnected. But most of the Anki stories are at least tangentially related to the meaning of the kanji, so I do feel like I’m gaining some real knowledge aside from simply associating kanji and keyword.

I’ve noticed that if I spend a little extra time on either creating or visualizing the keyword story, I remember the character much better. The interesting thing is that even 10 years after learning Chinese in college, there are some characters that I can recall immediately! And we used the rote method then, so I was pleasantly surprised that I remembered more than I was anticipating. It’s fun writing out the kanji too! I’m enjoying that part.

Like I mentioned previously, I’m casually going through NHK’s Easy Japanese lessons. Also watching Japanese TV/movies on Netflix, if only to be able to catch some words and phrases that I know about already. The Saiki Kusuo anime is absolutely hilarious, and I sometimes will pause the title screens to look up words. Maybe I’ll check out the manga later on for reading practice

Other than that, I’m just chipping away trying to keep up with 20 new characters per day.

I discovered this website that visually shows your progress when you punch in how many kanji you’ve learned. I’m more than halfway through the first 10th of the 2200 kanji, so it’s encouraging to see that, as opposed to thinking, “argh, I have more than 2,000 more to go!”

Anki Progress:
Young+Learn: 140
Unseen: 2060
Mature: 0

This will be my second attempt at learning Japanese– it seems like a lot of the logs are from relatively advanced learners, so I thought it might be interesting to keep a log of starting pretty much from the beginning.

My current language level is extremely basic. I know hiragana, katakana, and some basic greetings, but really nothing else. I did study Chinese for a year in college, so that’s given me a leg up on learning the kanji. Even if I don’t remember the exact meaning many of them are familiar, and I have a good sense of stroke order logic when writing.

Current study plan:

Refreshing myself on the hiragana and katakana with an Anki deck.

Going through the NihongoShark kanji deck from Anki, learning 20 new cards per day. I switched the card layout so it’s keyword –> kanji. I see the keyword, write the kanji out once, then flip to check and write the kanji a few more times.

Calculating out, if I stick with this progress I should be able to learn the 2200 kanji by sometime in March 2019. Not sure how long it will take to mature cards, but I’m assuming I’ll still be doing reviews for quite a while after that date.

I’m also trying to mix up the kanji studying with some general vocab and conversational learning. I have an NHK app with basic Japanese lessons, and I might listen to JapanesePod101 a bit, but I’m not pressuring myself to do that every day. Really only when I feel like it. Trying to keep my focus on learning the kanji for now.

Progress:

So far (on day 3) so good haha! I think I’m spending about 20-30 minutes per day on the Anki decks; I’m sure that time will increase as I get more kanji to review.

Thoughts:

March of 2019 seems far away, and that’s only the beginning of my learning progress. I’m trying to focus on developing the habit of practicing Japanese every day, instead of thinking about why I’m not there yet. It’s frustrating to think that if I’d just kept up my first attempt of learning, I’d be so much farther along. But the only thing I can do is start again now and take it one step at a time.