Considering it’s about to be the last month of the year or it already is in some places, I just felt like reflecting on this past year as a whole. 2023 was the most insane year for me in terms of life and japanese development. It almost feels like a dream and I can’t believe it’s already coming to an end.
**As a quick review, these are the key points that happened this year for me:**
* In January, I got invited to a Japanese meetup group randomly in my City from HelloTalk. Decided to go and this group completely changed the direction of my entire year lol. Best decision was going.
* I consistently met with this group every week throughout the entire year. Met hundreds of Japanese people. Got to practice speaking the language, taught english, and made a few crushes along the day.
* Went through a new NHK easy news article almost everyday and translated each one from Japanese to English with assistance of Yomichan plugin for kanji I did not know. This was important for improving my understanding of Japanese grammar. I documented every article translated into a Google docs that I keep and I intend to continue going forward in 2024.
* Got confessed to from a Japanese girl, started dating, got to improve my Japanese a bit and then we later broke up after she returned back to Japan.
* Used Memrise to learn 2000 Kanji and Vocab and documented it on Youtube.
* Used the website Supernative daily to practice my listening. Went from MMR 2000 to 2600.
* Finally started watching content on Youtube In Japanese. Was surprised to see my listening progress several months into 2023 improve. Couldn’t believe I could comprehend what was being said.
* Went to Japan for an entire month. Absolutely insane month. Too long for this post. Daily Japanese listening and practice. Started dating another Japanese girl, got to improve my Japanese further.
* After returning back to my city in September, I got back on Supernative and got from 2600 to 2900 which is absolutely insane considering how long it can take to improve on that website for Listening comprehension. It’s nice to see the practice from this year add up.
* Went to Japan for the 2nd time a month ago, for the whole month. That was another great experience.
* As of right now, my entire friend group is 95% Japanese and that wasn’t intentional but once you start hanging around a few people, you meet more and get introduced to others. This is of course great for learning. What’s a better way to learn?
* As a last note. It’s mind-blowing to think back to the start of 2023 when I was first using HelloTalk … The awkward difficult voice calls, difficulty texting simple sentences full of errors to now text and speaking feeling much more natural and confident.
I am someone who has been actively studying Japanese almost daily this year and even after such a crazy year; I am not fluent but I am so much better in speaking and listening than I was at the start of the year. This year surpasses any previous attempts at learning Japanese in past years. I’m unsure of my current level but I may guess N2 now.
If you are someone looking to improve your Japanese listening and speaking skills, my advice to you is to put yourself out there and start making Japanese friends whether through voice chat rooms, paid services, tutor, or with people from your city. I promise you, you will improve 100x faster than any self learning method you are currently doing.
This was my 2023 and if anyone else feels like sharing how they improved this year, feel free to.
3 comments
I live in Seattle. I think I’ll take your word on trying to actually talk to Japanese people. maybe it will increase my learning speed.
Hey! It’s really nice to hear about your progress, and this post includes a ton of incredible advice. Everyone should definitely take notes, and I’m probably bookmarking this post to come back to later for advice haha.
I’m not nearly as good at Japanese as you yet, but one of my biggest problems is that while I do good in Traditional Schooling environments, I’m not good at keeping myself motivated for self-study. Because of this I’m planning to, at some point, move to Japan for a couple years and attend a Language School to keep myself moving. I’m hoping that’ll get me a lot further than I am now.
That’s a super cool write up! Listening is my mountain. Like it’s a super obvious and an objective fact that practicing listening will make you better at listening, but I’m almost in disbelief that it’s possible sometimes haha. But I think it’s because progress feels achingly slow (at least for me). I spent this past month prepping for the JLPT N4, and I finally feel comfortable working through a random ちょうかい practice test with an average ~80-85% correct rate (I got almost every question wrong the first time I took a practice test a month ago), with my mistakes now being from simply not knowing a key word rather than before I couldn’t even parse the syllables that were said.
But then I’ll be watching regular Youtube content or do a small session of Supernative and I’m just swatted back down to Earth and left thinking “fuck this feels impossible.” Of course, I know I’m jumping all over the place in terms of difficulty with that sort of material and at N4, I’m just barely scratching the surface. It’s all a process.
Posts like these really give me that hope.