Don’t you love reading success stories on here? Maybe my failure story will be a little entertaining.
About me: High school dropout. Failed 10th grade. Became a pothead and worked at dunkin’ donuts. And I failed to learn Japanese (big shock).
In 2016 I had saved up and decided to go learn Japanese in Osaka. I had never even left my city (NY) before then. My plan was to live in Japan for a year in a half and when I got back, I would be able to understand Japanese without subtitles. Big mistake.
Turns out that learning Japanese is hard. Language school demanded that we learn 20 kanji (音・訓) a day plus a lot of grammar and vocab. As a person who never even did his homework, I was quickly overwhelmed. I failed to graduate class. The school didn’t kick me out but I had to repeat the grade. (Grades change every 3 months if you pass a test.) After 6 months, I was hardly a step closer to my goal of “understanding” than when I started.
I got very depressed. I had made friends however and a core bunch of us became gaijin hub-crawlers. I started drinking heavily. Being drunk was the only time I felt comfortable trying to talk in Japanese or strangers in general. But spending hours in bars and nursing hangovers only made me fall further behind. I managed to graduate a few levels but the people I started school with were already reading books and writing articles for newspapers. Not long after, I dropped out of school again.
After that, for 2 years I didn’t study Japanese. I didn’t look at Japanese. I didn’t watch anime or pick up a book. Then, around 2019, I found my old notes and Genki books. Looking through Genki made me feel a little bit better about myself. I did learn all the kana. And had managed to picked up a few kanji. Genki looked a little easier. I thought about trying to self-study this time. After watching a few youtube videos about it, I downloaded Anki and tried learning Japanese again.
Fast-forward to now. I can happily say that I reached my goal. I can watch anime without subtitles and understand 80% of whats going on. I’m writing about it because I’m the biggest idiot I know. A drunk. A pothead. Can’t keep a job. But I learned Japanese (still have a long way to go) . All because I stuck to it. So if you feel like quitting. Quit. But you’ll come back. **And as long as you are opening the books, learning new words, watching tv and reading books, you will definitely reach your goal!** In better words: **ネーバァ ギブ アップ！！！！**
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxGRhd\_iWuE&ab\_channel=Ryuujin131](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxGRhd_iWuE&ab_channel=Ryuujin131)
Edit: —
Thanks for the silver! Here is what I did starting in 2019 if anyone wants to know.
1. Remember the Kanji (All hand written stories, 20/day)
2. Use this Anki deck ([https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/735547011](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/735547011)) for grammar.
3. Started sentence mining. Made a lot of flashcards. Used subs2srs (decks: [https://www.mediafire.com/folder/p17g5uk4phb41/User\_Uploaded\_Anki\_Decks](https://www.mediafire.com/folder/p17g5uk4phb41/User_Uploaded_Anki_Decks))
4. Wrote all reps by hand
5. Started reading manga (Starting with よつばと！ )
That took a few years. I wanted to quit everyday. Got motivation from reading r/learnjapanese and youtube. I don’t think the study method matters very much anymore. How many hours you put in is what really matters.
Currently: I do vocab flashcards and not sentences. I see the words used in sentences via immersion. I watch Netflix with Japanese subs and read novels. When I see a new word X amount of times, I stop and look it up. Just keep putting new vocab in anki, rep everyday, and read/watch as much as you can. Also, I still rep RTK but with reverse cards.
I hesitate to say my Japanese is “bad” because this is supposed to be a motivation piece for people trying to reach this point. It feels patronizing and insulting to say that when we are all working very very hard. I have a lot to learn. Right now, I’m enjoying the daily wins of hearing a word I just learned or that satisfying feeling of finishing a page of difficult text. That’s the point to me. I hope you guys are enjoying it too.
22 comments
How long did it take you from picking up Genki again to watching anime without subtitles?
Thank you for the inspiration
Haha this made me feel better. I feel like I just suck so bad at learning Japanese, but you’re right. Progress is progress, even if it’s just a little bit at a time.
this is just success with extra steps!
20 kanji per day seems unreasonable, I don’t think you were at fault for not keeping up.
Is that you in the video
Good on you for getting back into something, and then conquering it, that you had earlier ‘failed’ out of. And for your honesty. Keep going!
I would give you award, but i am poor
How many languages could you speak before learning Japanese?
Are you from a Chinese or Korean background?
>I managed to graduate a few levels but the people I started school with were already reading books and writing articles for newspapers.
So you were in school for less than a year at the time, and you had classmates who started from nothing to *writing articles for newspapers* with a year???
Wut???
>ネーバァ ギブ アップ！！！！
Love this lol
Thank you for sharing this! There are so many times I’ve seen people asking for advice on how to learn Japanese as FAST AS POSSIBLE. In theory it took a native Japanese person until probably about middle school / high school to get to a high fluency level in Japanese for reading and writing. That’s like a decade of Japanese school 6 days a week, plus living in Japan, with Japanese family etc. Just a word to those who are just starting or feel bad about their progress, IT’S GONNA TAKE TIME! and that’s ok! cause unless you’re super old, you probably have decades of your life left to study Japanese. Incremental progress is still progress. Don’t sweat it! Have fun! Enjoy the path!
ネーバァ ギブ アップ！！！！ LOL
20 kanji a day seems kind of excessive even for full-time.
Beyond that your biggest mistake was the gaijin bars.
No idea why everyone is so surprised about the 80% comprehension. 80% means that on average, you don’t understand every 5th word, or in other words, if we assume a sentence is on average 10 words long, there are 2 words EVERY sentences that are not understood. Not trying to talk your succees down btw, if that was your goal you should be more than proud of yourself, I am just trying to give some people here a reference and decide for themselves if this is realistic or not.
thats amazing that they just let a high school dropout fuck around in japan for years. i must be doing something wrong. props to you man
Sounds like a success story. Clickbait 🤨
As someone who consistently keeps giving up on everything, I am very happy that you did it
Sometimes it’s not only how we study but when, because who we are at specific times drastically effects the outcomes of our choices.
Different versions of you can manage different obstacles / goals in life! Congrats on your successes. Wins are wins, don’t let anyone challenge that or take it from you.
Damn dude, how difficult was the jump to going from Dunkin’ Donuts to traveling to Osaka?
Assuming you took the year, (6 months in school and dropout? not sure the cycle)
How’d you manage the budget with that? I’m also studying Japanese, but dealing with my income and putting my job first usually play a heavy impact. I couldn’t ever feasibly see a way for me to just ‘take off a year’ AND travel to a foreign country.
Congrats! Nice to see you could improve and finally reach your goal.
As for me, I kinda gave up? I am still exposed to the language thanks to anime and videogames, but Japanese is still this weird, cryptic language everything I like is released first, before being interpreted and translated by language gods.
well I hope you’re feeling better
you should probably fill in what you did after Genki, because Genki isn’t enough to do much with but it’s a good foundation
20 Kanjis a day sounds rough… I am already quite annoyed with my “5 words a day” goal I set in my Anki, I can only imagine your suffering. Good on you for having managed to do it after all! And thank you for sharing this story with such honesty.