Learning Japanese (2 year progress) as an adult, a husband, a father and a full time worker (WFH)

Two years ago (35 years old, now 37), I decided to stop being a monolingual beta (languagesimp joke). I’m hoping with this post I can help those looking up the mountain, and perhaps I will learn something about myself after I read this post a year from now.

I’ll try to break this down initially but I will follow up with how I feel I’ve made mistakes along the way, what has worked for me and ultimately may work for you.

Also, you’re going to look at the times below (I’m just realizing it) and realize “This guy is nuts, full time job, etc… when does he see his family?”. What works for my family and works for you are different things. Also, since I’m work from home (even though my job is VERY demanding) there are pockets of 1-2 hours here or there. Times where I can bust out my novel for 30 minutes or read my grammar book.

The below times I achieved because I worked from home and quite frankly got rid of time syncing hobbies (playing video games mostly). I still spend as much time with my family and kid as before, but they’ve both also understood what I’m trying to do. And frankly has kind of enriched our family in some interesting ways (learning about different cultures such as Japan etc). But safe to say my hobbies consist of doing things in Japanese 80 percent and 20 percent other stuff.

# MY GOAL:

I’ve always wanted to learn another language, I live in America, so Spanish would be 10 times easier and 10 times more useful to me. But I had 10 times more interest in Japanese media and culture. So I decided on Japanese, honestly the thing that tipped the scales was seeing MattvsJapan (more on the pros/cons of this later)

**My true goal of what fluency is to me:** To speak Japanese for 60 minutes to a Japanese person about everyday topics and not make any mistakes. Food, work, life, travel and so on. I haven’t hit it yet.

# WHAT I DID EVERY DAY:

Everyday these are averages of my activity times (I’ve only recently tracked my time the past 8 months, however). Obviously its not perfect, some days were 1 hour of immersion, fewer were 4-6 hours. But on average I feel solid in saying its been at least 2 hours of ‘active immersion’.

My overall goal in a day (at least today) is get at least 2 hours of active immersion, do 30 minutes of grammar (somettimes missed) and my Anki deck with 20 new cards (I pull back if my time in Anki is more then 45 min). And any in between bits (cleaning, travel etc) I’d passive listen to podcasts.

***First 6 months:***

* 30 minutes of grammar review (Tae Kim, Cure Dolly, and others) **\[some days I drop this due to time\]**
* Anki 20 new cards a day (initially JP1K Deck, Sentencing Mining) **(try not to exceed 30 – 45 min)**
* 1-3 hours of immersion (Watching shows, Japanese Audio/Japanese Subtitles)
* Passive listening when I had the chance, varied wildly varied 30 min – 2 hours (While cooking/cleaning etc)

***Second 6 months:***

* 30 minutes of grammar (Tae Kim, Genki, Cure Dolly) **\[some days I drop this due to time\]**
* Anki 20 new cards a day (Started 2k/6k deck, stopped Sentence Mining) **(try not to exceed 30 – 45 min)**
* 2-3 hours of immersion (For the first time in my life, I started reading Manga, but still watches shows)
* Passive listening (Increased this as I got more into a flow, but still varied 30 min – 3 hours)

***Third 6 months:***

* 30 minutes of grammar (Genki 1, 2 and Tobira) **\[some days I drop this due to time\]**
* Anki 20 new cards a day (Finished 2k/6k, started up Sentence Mining again) **(try not to exceed 30 – 45 min)**
* 2-3 hours of immersion (**MOSTLY READING**, any given amount of time I would read for 2/3 my alloted time and watch shows for 1/3. Mostly Manga. **This is when I really found the power of reading.**)
* Passive listening same as before.
* Near the end of this I found a Japanese person to talk to/play games with in Japan every weekday (roughly) We’d talk for an hour in English and an hour in Japanese.
* I started taking lessons for Grammar from the GROUND UP from an Italki instructor (This was very beneficial for me) once a week.

***Fourth 6 months:***

* 30 minutes of grammar (A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate Japanese) **\[some days I drop this due to time\]**
* Anki 20 new cards a day (Finished 2k/6k, started up Sentence Mining again) **(try not to exceed 30 – 45 min)**
* 2-3 hours of immersion (**MOSTLY READING**, Now reading purely novels. Watching anime/drama or VLOGS with remainder)
* Passive listening same as before.
* My Japanese friend and I still talk for 2 hours 4-5 days a week (half English/half Japanese).
* I started taking lessons for Grammar from the GROUND UP from an Italki instructor (This was very beneficial for me) once a week.
* I stopped taking classes (felt I got what I wanted out of it, but will continue later)

***Up till now I’ve read about 200 or so Manga and two novels.***

# WHAT CAN I DO?:

* I can read everyday life manga with not much effort in the grammar/sentence structure department. Certainly I’m still not breaking N2 ground but I feel solid in N3 territory. I have to look up a word or two every page or so, really depends on the material. Some pages are full of words I don’t know, or I can go pages and pages without being tripped.
* I can listen to my Japanese friend talk without too much difficulty and understand him 80-90 percent of the time. He tells me he does go slower (probably 15 percent) then he’d normally talk, but I do the same for him in English. He’s also taught me a lot of words and has helped my listening.
* I’m starting to watch shows WITHOUT Japanese subtitles and being able to understand some shows almost fully on the first viewing. This of course varies WILDLY and still rely on subtitles anything too fast, too much vocab and so on.
* I can watch any slice of life show WITH Japanese subtitles with very little misunderstandings. I’m certain there are misunderstandings and there are times where I need to back track a line to verify what I read/heard, but by in large its a much more enjoyable experience. There are certainly still many new words.
* I am almost done of my second Novel and its gotten easier as I went, but initially it was like being dragged through the mud. Though my reading of novels has really helped with easier content (Manga and surprisingly listening/speaking).
* I took the N3 practice test, I’m not interested in passing the real deal. I got every answer right except 3 and that was 6 months ago. I do not believe for a second I’m N2 material, but I’m excited to get there.
* I can make basic and compound sentences (though I still make mistakes with compound sentences or more nuanced sentences). Some days I can do multi-sentence strings to explain more complex things. The key here is I have my friend tell me ぺき (short for 完璧) every time its right, and if its not he tells me. I do the same for English.

# TOOLS I WOULD DIE WITHOUT:

**SITES:**

* [https://learnnatively.com/](https://learnnatively.com/) (This is how I choose my content, its not perfect but its awesome)
* [jisho.org](https://jisho.org) (of course)
* DeepL (Great as a very last ditch effor to understand a sentence)
* [https://bunpro.jp/](https://bunpro.jp/) (Seriously great, though I stopped at N4 Grammar, I use it completely as a grammar search engine basically)
* Streaming services (Netflix etc)
* Countless other sites, but these are my go to rotation (including JP Amazon of course)

**TOOLS:**

* Migaku (For tracking words, sentence mining, everything)
* Toggl to track my time (its easy, you press a button and it starts. It helps me track my time and lets me decide if I’ve hit my “goal” for the day if I want to do more or not. Its honestly a game changer)
* KanjiTomo (for my Novels and Manga word lookups)
* Capture2Text (When KanjiTomo doesn’t work)
* Kindle reader and app (PC)
* Samsung Ear buds (passive listening while cleaning)
* Easy Japanese on my phone (for reading random articles, though don’t read articles often)

**YouTube:**

* [https://www.youtube.com/@the\_bitesize\_japanese\_podcast](https://www.youtube.com/@the_bitesize_japanese_podcast) (she talks slowly, at this stage I don’t need the subtitles, mostly)
* [https://www.youtube.com/@JapanesewithShun](https://www.youtube.com/@JapanesewithShun) (This guys vibes are really cool, though I’d prefer optional CC)
* [https://www.youtube.com/@yuyunihongopodcast](https://www.youtube.com/@yuyunihongopodcast) (I like him for challening speed listening, very clear)

# KEY MANTRAS:

* Do this for fun, do not forget your friends and family. Its addictive thinking “Just one more hour a day and I’ll be fluent sooner”. It happens faster then you think.
* This takes a long, long time. And frankly I do not believe it should be all enjoyable, its work at times.
* Bad and good days come and got, but consistency will consistently show you progress.
* Try not to be perfect and don’t compare yourself, to anyone.
* Treat this like learning an instrument. You’re never going to be in a real rock band, does it make it less rewarding?
* Sometimes the simplest things take forever to click. Try to do something else to make it work (take a class, read instead of listen, find guides)
* Assess your method every 3-4 months, see if you need to mix it up both for fun sake and because that jolt may fix things you can’t see.

# MISTAKES:

Just one man’s opinion, I can only learn my first language once.

* I fell into the Immersion crowd hard early on. When my job was less intense I would watch anime for 3 hours straight and only study grammar 30 minutes in the first six months. If I had to do it again. If I had 3.5 hours a day like I did, I would have spent at least 1.5 hours on grammar, words etc and less time on immersion. First year I would have focused more on learning the language then immersion. (But immersion is still important)
* I would have started reading as soon as I could. For me, its been an absolute game changer in my development. I wish I didn’t wait nearly a year to start. Sub-opinion: I feel like watching shows with subtitles is mostly reading, so if you’re not good enough at reading it can feel like you’re not soaking it in.
* I would have just stuck with the 2k/6k deck. Though I feel the JP1k deck was fine, there was nothing in it that was wholistically beneficial to me.

# OPINION CORNER:
​
* For the first 12 months, grammar is so important its unbelievable. People down play it because, yes, grammar is finite. But the moment you know what よく or ながら does to a sentence, is the moment you stop wondering if that’s a word or not. Because not all words use Kanji (perhaps artistic reasons or others). It just absolutely breaks down barriers. I’m still studying grammar and I probably always will be.
* If you’re going to speak, find someone who will tell you if your sentence is accurate or not, EVERY TIME. While I don’t fully believe in building bad habits forever (fossilizing), I do know that it’s easy to fall into them. That’s just life. Just try to avoid it.
* For me, Pitch Accent is important in such that I want to be aware of it, try to be good at it, but at the end of the day its not important for me. Unless you want to live in Japan and absolutely don’t want to have an accent then certainly study it hard core if you enjoy it. But personally I feel its a waste of time, just be aware of it, tune into some Dogen videos and try to imitate. At the end of the day even MattvsJapan fixed his own Pitch Accent at the end.
* I think George Trombley’s cadence when approaching is exactly what someone needs to do with a language this hard. Try not to be so serious, do it if you enjoy it and try not to be a one-up artist. I bought all his books, but ironically I was too advanced (I felt) at the time of purchase. Though Maybe book 4/5 could teach me a thing or two, I may revisit after I’m done with my dictionaries.
* Reading became the majority of my source (though I still watch/listen). I started reading and it honestly stuck so much better. Highly recommend it. It’s the core to learning a language for me.
* With the right teacher, iTalki classes help in a BIG way even at Intermediate level.

# WHAT I’M EXCITED FOR:

* Next 12 months, I want to be able to watch shows of everyday life stuff without subtitles the majority of the time.
* I want to read 5 novels by this time next year.
* I want to build upon my speaking and get beyond just compound sentences (and messing those up still).
* I’m excited that I can now play games and outside of words, no longer be stuck with reading.

Thank you for reading this insanely long post. I’ll answer any questions people have.