Hi!
So I considered myself quite advanced at this stage. I live in Japan so I am exposed to Japan consistently. I am not fluent (I would say) but I have enough baggage to date my Japanese partner (4 years now), and play some Japanese video games without looking words every minute. I am currently playing Persona 3 Reload and for the most part I think I am not really struggling.
Don’t get me wrong though I still have a long way ahead of me. Receiving mails about taxes, reading news about a complex topic, there are still a lot of times where I just give up, grab my phone and take a picture for translation.
Something I am a little bit concerned about is: since Japanese is written so differently, I wonder if it ever becomes light-fast to read it, if you stick to it? Or if you’re cursed to be a slow-reader because you didn’t grow up doing it?
I am not native English but when I read English, it’s immediate; I don’t “read” so much as I take a mind picture and understand immediately. Just like I do with my native language. But Japanese is still painfully slow for me to read (unless it’s some super common sentence), and sometimes I entertain the idea of just switching back to English when playing games, just because I save so much time. But then I feel bad because I am not improving my reading skills anymore.
I just wonder if some of you have achieved what you consider is native-level Japanese reading speed, and if so, how long the journey to get there was.
Thank you!
by Rasrey