Hello all,I have always had a strong passion for Japanese culture primarily through cars, history, and anime. Living in a relatively small town in the southeast U.S., I never had the opportunity to study Japanese language in primary school or college, instead opting for Chinese, and reaching the AP level my senior year.
Fast forward to spring 2023, I graduated college with a B.S. in natural resources. My college only offered 1 year of Advanced Chinese which I had completed as a freshman, right now, I would consider myself barely fluent if that. Upon graduation, I already had an 8 month internship lined up as a forester for a natural resource management company. I just recently completed my internship feeling burnt out.
Having moved back in with my parents last month, I began having a quarter life crisis. I recently had an aunt and uncle move to Japan for business and decided I would like to dedicate a few months to develop conversational Japanese and passing N4 Japanese in the summer of 2024, in hopes of attending graduate school and/or buying a house, where education and real estate is much more affordable compared to my hometown in the U.S. My parents have been supportive of me taking time off to learn Japanese. However, my girlfriend thinks I am foolish for trying to learn another language instead of developing a career path in the states and insists that she would never move to Japan.
I have spent a month studying Japanese, mastering all the kana, learned how to say about 200 words, relearned how to write most of the N5 kanji from my hanzi knowledge of simplified Chinese, and have just recently started studying Genki 1 grammar. I feel like learning Japanese is a huge challenge ahead of me that will ultimately take years. I am just worried I am wasting my 20s away. Does/did anyone else feel this same way? How did you ultimately stay motivated and learn Japanese? ありがとうございます。