My Japanese learning journey thus far

Mmm, why am I blogging now when I have a Japanese listening exam in less than 2 hours? D:

When I first decided to ‘try out’ self-studying Japanese, I thought that I should post regularly about my progress so that I can keep track and also it would be fun to re-read all my posts a few years down the road. Maybe I’ll be fluent in Japanese then? #justsaying

But I didn’t do it. Everytime I wanted to blog, my fingers simply rested on the keyboard. There.is.nothing.interesting.to.blog.about. I’ll tell myself that. What’s so interesting about learning a few words and learning a new sentence structure. There’s no progress anyway.

But on reflection, there is progress. Progress in language learning is a really stealthy creature. You just don’t see it day by day, but it just comes without you knowing. Suddenly, on one fine day, it will hit you that you have actually made wonderful progress within that period of time.

Okay, I’m not very coherent. But you get the idea.

My approach on learning Japanese is to link it to Korean materials. For now. More on that next time. But I’m slowly and steadily able to read simple articles in Japanese!

JYJ ユチョン主演「屋根裏部屋の皇太子」ブームを巻き起こす3つの理由

Was reading this article yesterday and I found that I could actually understand it! Even without a dictionary – but that’s because I know Chinese and the kanji isn’t much of a problem 😛 But nevertheless, I could understand most of the the article. And using a dictionary helps even more.

SO I’M VERY VERY HAPPY.

[and so I’m continuing this post the next morning – listening exam went alright ^^]

It was then that I realized that I actually made progress. I’m now quite familiar with the verbs – the te form, na form and the passive form.

I spent the last 2 days learning about the passive forms and doing exercises and forming sentences and sentences. I reckoned that I got a decent understanding of it.

Truthfully, I have no idea what my goal is for Japanese. Do I aim to be fluent, or do I just want to be able to read and listen? As of now, I just want to enjoy learning. Understand a new culture, and a new way of thinking. (: