こんにちは！So I started studying Japanese back in 2019. Started with katakana/hiragana. Duolingo and wanikani. Eventually found a tutor and was taking Japanese classes once a week. Fast forward to a few months ago, I started working long hours and just went through a rough time in my life. Stopped going to classes and hardly studied. Or didn’t study at all. I’ve recently started studying but since I work long hours, I’m tired and just wanna go home and hit the couch. Studying seems like a chore sometimes But I don’t wanna give up! How do you find time to study? How to balance work and studying?
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I work only night Shifts 11h each plus half an hour driving one way.
To keep on track I do vocab every day. I try to do 4 repetitions per day with at least 20 words. Bad days only 2 repetitions. But I never do less.
Due to a personal loss I took a break on my weekly online lessons but I will continue them end of next month, maybe upping up to twice weekly.
Thing is, I cut down useless TV watching to zero and try to cut even more time wasted on my phone. This way I can rest, learn Japanese and avoid feeling rushed.
When it seems to become a chore I take a break by relearning something I already feel confident but use different material. This way its easy, but I still profit from doing something.
You don’t need to push, just keep doing it, even if it’s just repeating things you already know. Of course this way it’s slower progress and you can not push away new lessons forever, but it’s better to keep using what you learned than doing nothing.
I too use wanikani. Just reduce the tempo. It’s not a race.
All I can say is it’s doable. But takes a lot of motivation.
Source: long hours at work with no breaks/mini breaks, 2 kids, trying to speed run Wanikani and grammar. N4ish after 3 months.
This is my daily routine:
I listen to podcasts or stories on satori in my car on my way to work and on the way back as well
I take 30 mins class on Preply or Italki on lunch break
I do flashcards in the evening.
If I go to gym I’ll listen with my headphones some more Japanese podcast instead of music.
What I do is write down my study times and I had to give up some of my other hobbies.
Also it really, really helps if you don’t have a big commute. To the point of, it might be worth finding a way to reduce that.
I think you just have to squeeze whatever Japanese you can into your day. I work in construction which was pretty unforgiving during the pandemic, along with juggling my first baby girl and an abusive relationship I had to deal with daily. That was shitty but I did manage to make progress in Japanese!
First thing is to get a textbook to have some structure, but one that you can come back to in your own time to free you up. The next thing I did that really helped was religiously drill vocab during my commute, daily. And the last and I guess silliest was reviewing in my head until “I am going to get lunch” became more and more complex sentences.
Good luck!
I face the same issue. I’m usually so dead tired from work by the end of the day I have so little energy to do anything. I try to aim for daily practice of something at least, but I don’t be hard on myself when I skip it. It really depends on what is feasible for yourself and what you think you can manage. If you find yourself not even touching any things it means your bar is likely too high. Some examples of what I try to do daily
– Review flash cards (I cut the number of cards down from 30-40 to just 15 a day, so I feel less inertia to do it )
– Texting my classmate from Japanese class to talk about the day in Japanese
– Watching Atashinchi which is bite sized 6-7min of Japanese.
– Verbalising one sentence using a grammar/sentence structure I’ve learned before to describe my day
– Doing 1 small section of my weekly Japanese class homework (rather than sit down and do it all at once).
Hope some of these ideas help!! Know that you’re not alone.
/EDIT: Just fyi, I may end up doing one or even none of those lol. And that’s ok with me because I know I’ll try again the next day.
I had the same issue even though I really wanted to study more. What works for me now is I wake up early and before work, I do wanikani for 25mins and then read Japanese material for 10-15mins. I tried studying after work but I just don’t have the willpower to study consistently when I’m tired af after work. So I do this routine every day including weekends unless I’m traveling or something. I also do a private online tutor session for 1hr each week. I’ve been really happy with my progress recently. Studying in the morning is great because I don’t have to worry about cramming in study time during the day.
The answer for me was I couldn’t. I also started in 2019, got a job later on in 2020 and it started out at 50 hours a week not including 2 hours of commuting on work days, I gave up on my learning journey.
When I left my job late last year I started it back up again and I have been doing great (at least until I get employed again.)
Its understandable, sometimes things begin to feel like extra work we don’t want to deal with. It may help if you find somebody also learning , maybe give some video chat time between dinner and sleep just to get some basic practice in. Also for the writing, there are workbooks on Amazon that may be helpful but that depends on you . Still its hard when you are overwhelmed with a hefty daily schedule , but maybe a practice partner would change the dynamic of it.
Haha, are you me? I also started in 2019 and have a pretty busy life with two kids and very intense work. Since my 2nd child was born I’ve fallen off the wagon when it comes to kanji and I have almost no time for reading practice. But I am religious about at least doing my lesson every week because we speak in 99% Japanese and it’s both great practice, and motivates me to keep doing *what I can* to get even better.
If you can do Anki kinda stuff on your phone, that’s really helpful since you might not have the motivation to do it from a computer. Likewise if you can listen to podcasts while driving. My favorite is Let’s Talk In Japanese w/ Tomo.
Ultimately this is the issue with anything that takes time.
How do people find time to exercise? Or study? Or play video games? Or spend time with their children? Or do laundry?
You have to prioritize it.
The best way for me to keep doing something is to integrate it into a schedule. I haven’t studied Japanese in a long time but I’ve been studying math and I’ve carved out an hour every Tuesday and Thursday to do so.
Then I don’t think about “oh I should this” or “maybe I should that”. It’s just my schedule and I just do it.
I don’t have the ability to willpower myself into anything otherwise and when working 9-11 hour days there’s no willpower left anyway.
I hope you find something that works for you.
I feel your pain. Been living in JP for almost 10 years now, but for roughly six of those years I didn’t study at all. I’ve got a million reasons I could give but they all boil down to “I kept telling myself I would study again when I had more time, but I never did.”
Last year JP gave me my first 5-year visa, and I took it as a sign to get back on the saddle. I still have no time, but nowadays I do a lot of anki and reading practice whenever I am on a train. I also go to a night class once a week. That’s only about 40 minutes a day, but it’s actually been making a difference in my day to day life.
When you just have no time and energy, the only thing left is to find an opportunity to multi-task. One thing I’m sure of is that waiting years for the perfect study opportunities to come didn’t do me any good. Kinda kicking myself now for wasting so much time.
働きながら勉強しなくちゃ。
I have this guys book and he’s starting to push out a few videos. Would recommend his book, covers pitch accent pretty well, and sentences are more conversational, not transactional.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmujab8ElX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmujab8ElX8)
Just check out Japanese for Dogs by Kazki on Amazon.
I do Pimsleur on my commute and 1+ Duolingo lesson per day. I also watch Japanese From Zero YouTube videos while I’m stretching after my workouts about two times per week (trying to get my splits) and I read grammar lessons before bed every so often. I’m pretty happy with my progress! It’s definitely doable. I can read simple news articles with a dictionary now and understand a surprising amount of Peppa Pig. Admittedly I am a heritage speaker of Mandarin so that foundational knowledge is helpful. I was able to dramatically improve my Spanish using this method as well although I do take online classes for that since I’m much more advanced in that language.
It’s not a race and not everyone is trying to be “native” level. I just want to be able to order food in Japan and sing karaoke and understand my favorite Japanese songs. Maybeeee read manga one day and watch Studio Ghibli films. It’s my fun language while I suffer through the upper intermediate/advanced plateau in Spanish and Mandarin 😩
I had a bad period not long after I started. Working rotating shifts, sick family member, tons of anxiety and stress and studying something else at the same time. I always made my own Anki cards so for awhile I just treaded water, did my reps as often as I could, didn’t add any new ones just did enough to keep them from going out of control and played Japanese games a fair bit. Basically reduced what I felt like I needed to do, just to keep it alive long enough for things to balance out. Eventually I got a new job, family member passed away and I finished my other studies. Now I enjoy studying Japanese much more.
Still hard to balance energy with trying to get fit, work and do normal life stuff though haha. Probably always will be. But Anki gets me through the tough times because it means everyday I do something, even if it’s only half an hour of reps.
It somewhat depends on the kind of job you do – I’m lucky to have a non-customer-facing office job where I can have a headphone in at the office and listen to Japanese radio stations or podcast; plus commute on the bus rather than driving myself, so have time during that one hour there and one hour back to mess about Japanese language learning apps or try to read articles, or re-reading parts of Tae Kim, etc. I also have two 15 minute breaks throughout the work day (as well as lunch) which is enough to do some flashcards on multiple apps.
Though admittedly, my ability to do more long-form focused Japanese learning is hindered by essentially working two jobs (office job 8 – 5, freelance art when I get home), so I feel you on the being too tired and just wanting to decompress on the sofa in the evening.
A lot of it is trying to fill in any time you can with little bits of Japanese practise throughout the day, and then maybe on the day/s you don’t work setting aside a few hours to do more focused learning (eg. textbooks, tutors, self-guided learning something specific, etc). There’s times when you’ll need to force yourself to keep up with it, but staying in the habit is a good way to make sure you stick to learning a language. It’s also important to find a method and stick to it; so picking up a textbook, getting a few chapters in, then dropping it for a different one over and over again can make it harder to progress. Generally, grab a few different learning tools (a handful of apps, a textbook or two, a handful of different podcasts/video series on learning, etc) and stick to them through to completion. (This of course doesn’t count if you get a textbook and it turns out to be *bad*, definitely drop bad resources)
Also, being conscious of how *you personally* learn will help you massively. Always play to your strengths; if learning in huge chunks of information works best for you, prioritise that; if learning in smaller chunks (eg through apps at first, or short chapters of textbooks) works better for you, go for that instead; if you learn better in an audio format, try podcasts and videos; etc.
It’s 100% not easy, and when stress is high or I’m sick or really tired for a while, I find my ability to focus on language learning is one of the first things to slip, as well as other learning-related hobbies (eg. when I was first learning Python, 3D modelling, etc). But all you can do then is pick back up as soon as you feel less stressed or tired.
I work 80 hours a week. The biggest thing that helps me is having all of my study materials on my phone because I always have my phone with me. I have the Flaming Durtles app for WK, the Kitsun app (I use this for vocab instead of anki but there is an anki app), the Satori reader app, and I have the Japanese keyboard installed. Whenever I have a moment I do reviews or lessons. I am lucky to have two jobs where I sit and occasionally have down time, and I use this time to write out what I’m learning because writing reinforces knowledge. I just doodle sentences or vocab on post its. But I also do reviews and lessons when I go to the bathroom/go on my breaks.
Making your study materials as easily accessible as possible makes it so that you can swap over whenever you have a brief moment.
I hope this helps 😊
My advice isn’t useful since I learned the basics in college, but my trick lately has been to just use Japanese media as my main media sources. It was a bit difficult at first, but aggressive word lookups, Google lens, and anki have built up my vocabulary to the point that Japanese media is much more relaxing and less stressful. Now I “study” more than ever.
for me it’s more of a hobby than a chore, so it’s not something I dread doing
I wake up early before work (about 1 hour) and study.
I find this really good because there are no distractions and it’s easy to build the habit.
My office job really varies in hours so I have learned to accept that sometimes all I can squeeze in is 20 mins of vocab revision and other times I can do an hour of grammar/reading. As long as I do a bit of Japanese everyday, I tell myself that is okay. It took me almost 8 years to get to N2 level that way but I managed (somehow).
I also listen to podcasts when commuting, have Japanese friends that I’ve met online, read as much as I can, follow Japanese accounts on Twitter and Insta.
My top advice is, ignore people that are saying your progress is too slow/insignificant. We are all advancing at our own unique pace.
Edit: typos
This may not be possible depending on what your job is like, but tbh I just sneak in bite-sized pieces of Japanese study throughout the day. I split my Wanikani reviews (about 75 items a day) between dead time at lunch and the 30mins before I leave, then sprinkle in some Satori Reader whenever I’m in between tasks and have some time to kill.
Then, when I come home I sit down and do about 30 minutes of some kind of practice (reading manga, listening practice, workbooks). When I split it all up like this it can feel like I’m barely doing anything at all, but it definitely adds up over time.
I have a long leg of my commute on public transport (bus/subway/etc). It can take an hour or more each way (30 miles), so I review my Anki deck, and other online resources when I can. On the other hand, getting your frame of mind in a positive state is important too. It could be that once your life is more steady, you’ll be able to absorb material more easily as well. I hope things settle down for you soon!
For those working a desk job, try keeping a small notebook and writing in it. I write a page of “notes” (Closer to just observations of everything around me) each day. People around me know I’m learning Japanese, so nobody questions that I’d take notes in it.
Just be ready to switch back to English if you need to take real notes faster than you can translate them to Japanese.
It’s hard, hang in there!
I work 12 hours a day so it can be hard to keep up with reviews. During my breaks at work, I take the time to push through my reviews/lessons on Wanikani and Satori Reader. After a shift I’ll read a new chapter of Satori Reader and either watch an episode of an anime with Japanese subs or read a few pages of whatever book I’m reading as I cry about my lack of free time and how I need to go to sleep now or else I’ll never get up in time for work tomorrow.
On my days off I silently pray this weekend never ends as I finally take the time to indulge in some escapism. I will sometimes hop onto VR chat to make a sincere attempt at speaking some japanese on the JP EN exchange world which usually ends in my feeling worse about myself. Spend some more time reading, watching anime. And push through all my housework and talk to friends online (clearly I do not have a regular social life).
The only way you can do this is to take advantage of any small breaks you have to push through your reviews and when you do have more free time you can do immersion. It’s not entirely fun and sometimes you’ll trip and fall behind on reviews but once you find a rhythm that works for you it isn’t as hard anymore.
I don’t think there is a solution to this, OP. I’ve been learning Japanese for 7 years alongside a very intensive undergrad + PhD and my pace has been glacial. Respect to those who can manage to focus on Japanese on top of an intensive work schedule but it you’re like me, you may just have to accept that you have limited energy and progress is going to be slow.
Good for you getting back into studying.
I teach Japanese to adults in the US. A lot of my students have the same problem, but it’s actually easier to overcome than most people think. I’ve written and self-published my own textbook. Chapters 2 & 3 are on な and い adjectives, and chapter 4 is on transitive verb. I have my students write a daily journal once they’ve reached chapter 4. These are my instructions to them:
1) On the left page of a notebook write in Japanese: the year / month / date / day of the week. Use only ひらがな.
2) Write 1 – 3 sentences all in ひらがな / カタカナ. No more than 3 sentences per day.
3) On the right page write the translations in English.
Steps 1 and 3 can be skipped when you don’t have enough time. But, do step 2 every day. Don’t get too excited and write more than three sentences. If you write one sentence, you can be done with it. Creating a sustainable habit is the main goal.
Now, a lot of my students complain that their lives are boring and they have nothing to write about. Boring is better for journaling in Japanese. Can you say, “I ate a sandwich.”? Can you add when, where, with whom to the sentence? Can you write it with the correct particles? Can you spell “sandwich” in Japanese? Can you say the sentence aloud? You can also write a sentence with an adjective, “Today was hard,” or “Today was long.” Are you confident with conjugating the な and い adjectives accordingly? How about “I’m tired.”? When my students write the same, mundane things over and over (making sure the grammar is correct by checking the grammar diagrams in my book), they make progress. If you spend 15 minutes, you can write one sentence and you’ll have your minimum daily studying done. The key is in finding ways to stop saying there’s no time.
Do it for three days in a row. Then, three more days. Then, again and again until not writing feels strange. Learning a language is a lot like getting in shape. You can’t make much progress by working out for 6 hours once a month. Besides, something comes up once in a while and you might miss the entire 6 hours. So, do a little bit every day.
Lastly, while, of course, I don’t discourage my students or anyone from studying vocabulary with flashcards/apps or studying kanji; I don’t ever recommend it especially for beginners. I tell them to look up the words that you need for your particular usage. Grammar, good pronunciation, and knowing ひらがな & カタカナ perfectly are way more important, especially for beginners. Sure, knowing 30 random words is better than not knowing them. But, after spending time and energy into memorizing the words not being able to say a simple, three-word sentence seems wasteful and might be frustrating, especially, if Japanese people don’t understand what you’re saying. I’ve seen that happen many times.
The perfect video for the perfect thread.
https://youtu.be/Qk7K7eaFCGU