I moved to Japan a little over three months ago. My wife (a Japanese national) was able to procure her dream job and I decided to quit my career and come along for the ride with our two year old. We procured an apartment about 17 minutes away from her parents (who are wonderful) and we had our daughter born into the world 25 days ago and we decided that I’d enroll into a language school here while she was on maternity leave so I could have at least a little time to study. I had read that learning the kana is required for the school I was attending and was able to have that down before attending. The thing is, this class isn’t even four weeks in and it’s completely kicking my ass how accelerated it is — I simply can’t keep up. On top of that, my whole family caught Covid this week which ends on Friday and taking classes via zoom is a challenge for my listening comprehension let alone everything else that goes on instead of being there in person. Covid has barely given me any time to keep up with any of the chapters and I feel like I can barely keep my head above water.
That’s when my wife told me to just… *relax*. It’s a process and that the class I’m taking is way more than anyone can take on — that it’s meant to immerse me into the language and that I need to take it a day at a time. That it’s okay if I fail a test or don’t grasp a lesson. It’s been a fight for me when it shouldn’t. Am I the only one who does this? I’m taking it a day at a time and it’s a rough road, but I want to come out on the other end being able to grasp at least the conversational aspect so I can enjoy my time here exploring and communicating.
32 comments
First 1-2 years usually feel like this in serious environments and I can totally relate to this as well. Makes me smile when the anti-school brigade comes out and say you don’t learn anything taking classes. Enjoy this frustration, you will come out much better for it.
I mean you have covid, you are very sick, you have to understand that your health is the #1 priority.
Please focus on your recovery. It is really sad you had to miss class but it is worse still if you don’t recover.
Many natives while understanding their language is difficult, still think immersion in itself will make things easier. If your language course can be repeated, do that. Why was that course selected? I came here with old level 4 jlpt. Even then, I felt it was steep. I did a few years on YWCA evening courses (which I believe are quite reputable), and the Trident (under Kawai Juku), preparing for jlpt exams again. What are your language goals? How much can you use now?
Language schools can be challenging. Once you feel better, do your best to keep pace with everyone in class. Schedule your studying every day and avoid “multi-tasking” if possible. If you can’t keep up just do your best; generally one can repeat classes.
Everyone around you seems to be going uber fast. But some of that is an illusion, as drop out rates are pretty high.
There are reasons some of the schools are running fast pace. For example, the students who wish to enroll in Japanese university or trade schools have less than 2 years to become fluent enough for these schools; many start at zero Japanese. I suppose these are the pacemakers. Language school visas are limited in time & generally the students have personal constraints on funds/time for language school.
Many of the foreign students are studying brutal hours (and some are working part-time too). The Chinese and Koreans have a head-start, principally with the kanji and grammar, respectively. Some countries train students to memorize quickly so that can be an advantage too.
Our situations are quite similar and the first few months for me were pretty rough. It gets better. Good luck my friend.
First of all good on your wife for keeping you in check. She noticed you were taking on too much and tried to get you to relax a bit ( hopefully you take that to heart). That’s gonna be an amazing skill that comes into play later when your child is older and they stress themselves out like we all do at some point in life. But honestly take what she said to heart.
The way I imagine learning is that it’s like driving a car. Some people are rushing to get to their destination of speaking Japanese. Other people are just cruising with no real mind to their time and speed. Ultimately how quickly you go depends on your own personal goals. BUT like driving a car trying to go too fast too quickly can lead you to crash. You have to slow down to properly navigate tricky turns (hard language concepts to grasp) or you’ll crash and not learn anything. Also you need to take breaks or your engine will overheat. You need time to rest and recuperate or you’ll be too exhausted to go on and won’t learn or maintain any meaningful learning.
Like your wife said take it a day at a time. Ease off the gas or else you’ll crash. It’s okay to go a bit slower while you also keep your goals in mind since they’re important to you and motivate but understand it’s a cross country drive not a 10 second race. You need breaks and time to refuel and refresh and that’s okay no need to be to hasty since once again you don’t want to crash. You’re not racing agasint other people so getting there in a manner that allows you to enjoy the ride while also making good time is the best way to go, that’s what I believe personally.
Yeah she’s completely right. I couldn’t tell you the number of times I felt like I would never make progress when I moved to Japan and was trying to learn Japanese. It was gradual but I did make progress and I’m not finished but i can easily have conversations, read books, and watch TV and understand 80% of everything
It took me over two years to reach that point though. You’re wife is right. It’s a marathon and not a race
I’m sorry I can’t comment on the language school aspect, but am I understanding that your wife works full time, you have a two-year-old and a newborn, AND your family has Covid? I think you perhaps are being a little hard on yourself. I’m at a lower-intermediate level. In my (non-language school) study experience, there are ups and downs—sometimes you feel completely overwhelmed, and then sometimes several different concepts, words, and rules might click into place seemingly out of nowhere. Good luck!
Give it 3 mo this and it’ll start getting easier
Edit – Wow, got a massive downvote just because i try to ask something.
Off topic, can someone tell me the correct way to write Syahmi Oziar in Katakana. Thank you.
Syahmi – シャフミ一 or シャミ一
Oziar – オジア一
We learn most when we’re pushed out of our comfort zone, because if you’re comfortable you probably already know the material…. The class is probably designed this way on purpose. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Learning such a different language than your native is quite a process. It’s going to take time.
You’re married, have a wonderful wife, and a beautiful child, and you’re living in a great country by most standards. You’ve already won, dude. Don’t stress
You’re gonna fuck up some tests and it’ll take a while to get used to living somewhere completely new. Fuck it. You’re a dad now. That’s more important than learning kana
Enjoy it. Embrace it. You’ll be fine
It’s normal to feel overloaded, just do as much as you can. It’s a marathon not a sprint, if you keep going at a regular pace you will make progress.
If the class is very intensive, e.g. because it has a lot of Koreans and Chinese, then they will have a head start, as they already know the Kanji. In that case, you might do better with a class focused on westerners.
I studied Japanese in Taiwan, and it was hard for me to keep up, even though I had already studied Chinese. I ended up repeating classes a few times. If you don’t stress too much about it, you can drink from the firehose and make progress at your absolute maximum rate.
It is tough to learn when you are older, but it can be done. My father started learning Chinese at age 40 and became quite fluent. Good luck.
For me personally, this sense of constant uphill battle is necessary. Because otherwise I just start making excuses to not work hard, sometimes even giving up on things entirely.
I stopped learning gamedev, chess, and singing. With Japanese, I made it so that if I don’t work my ass off, I’ll be screwed, and that actually keeps me going
Did Japanese at GCSE and thought it would all come back to me ten years later. Spoilers it did not. First lesson I absolutely bricked my pants and felt like I could never do it. Just got to keep on going. It gets a bit easier in some ways and does feel good when you can communicate.
> That it’s okay if I fail a test or don’t grasp a lesson. It’s been a fight for me when it shouldn’t.
The goal of taking the classes is to learn, not get a grade. Once this clicks, then should make the learning process fun again.
I’d get wanikani and just do it 3 times a day. Takes like 30 minutes per session. You’ll learn way faster with spaced repetition than any other method. And it’s fun and less stressful than a class.
With a month-old baby at home, I‘m surprised you’re retaining anything, really. Neither the wife nor myself trusted our brains with anything during the first 8-10 weeks. So don’t be so hard on yourself.
And with Japanese, the barrier to entry is pretty thick – you can’t really read stuff to build vocabulary first, listening comprehension takes a while (or longer), and wrapping your head around Kanji and pronunciation is hard. You chisel away at that without seeing much progress at first, but you‘ll get there eventually. Constant, small progress is key here, I think.
Have you looked over the work from the first week? See how much you’ve improved over 4 weeks?
some of us have wives who dragged us here years ago, refuse to speak Japanese with us in the house or pay any attention at all to our studies, but will feel free to cast our slow progress as a core intellectual or moral failing that is personally burdensome
so, uh…maybe don’t complain so much when you are clearly winning
I really recommend finding a way to study outside of class, you have a Japanese wife you said? I’m guessing you usually speak in English, try only Japanese, if she speaks English than she knows what it’s like to start a new language and it’s best for both of you to use the language of the country you’re living In around your kid (if you intend for them to go to Japanese school).
It’s hard but you’ll really come to love it once you start getting ahead, the beginning is always the worst lmao
Congratulations on the recent birth of your daughter. I don’t want to come across as anti-classes here, because when I studied English I loved learning in a class environment. But now in my early 30s I’m enjoying self-learning Japanese and then just taking weekly classes to practise conversation only. What I’m really trying to say is, maybe that class environment is not the best for you right now, but that’s okay. Take from the experience as much as you can while it lasts, then you’ll be able to learn by yourself anything that you missed and it’ll be way easier when you try again at your own pace. I’m sure your wife and her family can help with any doubts and also later on to practise conversation after a few months learning.
Maybe I’m wrong and self-learning is not ideal for you either, I was just surprised it was for me when I started with Japanese. Who knows, if you keep at it with your class, maybe that becomes the best way to learn for you, but overall I don’t think you should stress, you’ll either get used to it if you keep your effort or you’ll realise there are better ways to learn for you. Good luck!
It may not feel like it mate but stick in, it will be working. Doesn’t matter how much you learn each day if you keep with the routine and the classes your getting that 1% better each time.
Small steps lead to big things.
Humans have a bad habit of always looking at the road still ahead and not the road behind us.
Some suggestions.
1) Take notes, rewrite them after class – doubles the input
2) Try out what you’ve learned each day on a family member. Choose a word or phrase or technique and use it a lot.
3) Don’t worry about what you forget. Just keep a note and practice it when you can. I just rewrote all of the grammar notes from chapters 1-18 of Minna No Nihongo this week to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.
4) Try to relax when listening (I struggle with this) and be like a fisherman catch a few words each time they go passed and don’t grab and hold onto any or you’ll miss others. If you miss one let it go.
5) Also try repeating what is said as it goes passed. You may not notice but we all do this in our native language.
6) When someone says something to you repeat it back to them and then answer. We do this in English too and people won’t mind if you looks like your clarifying. I find it really give my brain an extra go at understanding.
The good thing is that if you’re not working now you have some time to dedicate to this. I also live in Japan, have a japanese wife and a kid (1 year old), but my job is teaching English. Sure I have time to study, and I do, but the use at my job is seriously holding me back. I’d like to just pretend I don’t speak English sometimes.
Dude, slow down. What’s the rush? You have the support you need and time needed to eventually get to where you want to be. It will come, just not as fast as you feel it should. Readjust your expectations and try to relax.
In couple of years you’ll look back and realize you stressed for no reason.
If your life does not depend on it at all, as you mentioned in a couple comments, then yeah chill and learn at your own pace. Change the school if you have too, there’s a lot of them.
There’s always a sensei out there or online that can match your learning pace better.
The only important question at the end of a week is whether you know more than you did a week ago…
You daughter was born 25 days ago! Enjoy it! Focus on your family, the rest will come.
Also, she might be your best way to learn the language! 😀
Hope you have a great life!
You are three months out from an international move, living in a new country, with a one month old baby, you’re sick, your family is sick, and intensive language classes really tend to front load all the difficulty.
Give yourself some compassion, man.
Could always get a tutor from italki. Go at your own pace and it’s 1 on 1, so you can ask all the questions you want and have the lessons tailored to your leaning speed. Probably cheaper, too, but it’ll rely on you to study on your own, but you’ll have more time as you’ll only want to take 2-3 lessons a week.
I know a lot of people who come here and take classes and struggle for years. You’re surrounded by Japanese all day. Instead of going at some teacher’s pace, just learn the basics yourself and then learn by just simply paying attention to and picking up what’s around you.
It’s very possible your class is too advanced of a level for you, or doesn’t mesh well with your learning style. Some people can approach the kana and sentence structure very logically and succeed, but other learners are less analytical and need mnemonics, exercises, and other more “active” methods.
Japanese is known as one of the trickiest languages in the world for a reason! You won’t become fluent overnight. Just like with any big endeavor, you gotta relax and embrace the journey, with all its ups and downs.