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[ I lied only once](https://preview.redd.it/np4gzuqqzu9c1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=e99e7101685115a4b7caae522e0c55140f87e81a)
In my point of perspective, learning a new language is the most difficult, yet at the same time most rewarding skill, or a tool that anyone can get in their life, a skill that will be useful all the time. This update will not tell how much I understand the language, I want to give you a puzzle to solve, or just to think about it.
Many people like to tell precise calculations of how many hours they spent of watching, reading, etc. I will not do it for some reasons, one of them is I didn’t record anything, I have an anime account with time I spend on anime, but still, you might be suspicious about it, because in reality I might of spend less time, or the statistic is not correct, let’s say, that I spend a whole year, mainly focusing on Japanese language, let’s begin a story, where I will tell my ups and downs, thoughts and reasons, because it is much more interesting, then a simple statistic.
**My goals for Japanese are** \- *to read visual novels* and *watch anime*, *read manga*.
**Beginning**
I like to think that at night of 7th January 2023, I was really bored and that was the reason why I started learning Kana. Unfortunately I didn’t write any thoughts about it, so I don’t really remember a lot from it, yet that was the point of beginning.
The whole process was very similar to a lot of others learners, except that I didn’t really spend time doing nothing. I didn’t make a mistake on focusing too much on Kana or do very little in hopes of success, reality was different. You might say Anki with n5 and n4 Moe way tango decks; kana from an android app; watching anime from a beginning was pretty interesting. But I didn’t comprehend anything, at the same time I was extremely hopeful to be able to understand what I am watching, one of my first anime was Your lie in April.
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[The opening is the reason why I watched the show](https://preview.redd.it/idedwsjtzu9c1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=540518d1e295a845608919c78d9ecd6afc1c68bf)
四月は君の嘘 wasn’t my favourite anime, I didn’t even like it, yet I’ve read manga and watched it before, yet watching in Japanese without help was interesting, I’ve watched a bunch of episodes and that is it. I think I liked the idea of thinking that I could understand something, unfortunately, I can’t really watch it again and think this is way, simply because I will understand probably much more.
From the end of February, I made a minimum to do every day – anki, 3 episodes of anime and 2 grammar lessons. In reality I watched many more episodes, than simply 3 episodes. I think at the time, after Tae Kim, founding about Cure Dolly made me thought that I will never be able find a grammar explanation that will be better than her channel, it made me think like I am superior than any other learners.
Now I need to clarify a very important think – up until this point Japanese is still a joke for me, I had previous experience in a learning new languages – all of them failed after a week or two at best, so we all know that Japanese is infamous for it’s difficulty, yet everything changed at 24th March. I bought Macbook m1.
Clarifying a specific model of a laptop is pretty important, since I had a dream of buying a device from Apple a long time ago, I don’t really like to spend money, that is why I always had a lot of them, so one day, a big sale came and I bought it.
Thanks to this decisions I was watching anime with Japanese subtitles much more – from 15-33 episodes per day for around 3 months with this consistency. This is the time when I started mining. Of course, I’ve been watching on MacBook.
Another important part, when I can end the beginning part of the story is not telling anyone about learning a new language. I don’t really like to think, that it was important to tell someone about it, I thought it was dangerous and I might just quit, so the first 4 months were the time, when no one knew that I was doing something weird. Even till this time only 5-6 people from my real life knows about it, not even my family. The desion to not tell anyone about it made pretty good benefits and desions for me – if for some reasons I would think that got bored or didn’t like Japanese, I would quit and no one will never know about it, or If I would continue, then there would be no external pressure from outside.
**After the beginning**
Repeating all events that happened will take an eternity, simply because I spend the whole year thinking about japanese as the first thing or priority, nothing really changed anyway. Let’s speak about things that I discovered, enjoyed and let’s say “learned” thanks to it. Also, I don’t know when I realized, that learning Japanese became a serious thing for me.
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1. Reading is way easier than listening, it was a big surprise for me, who could of know the fact, that It was much easier to read, then listen.
2. My first visual novels were really simple in terms of vocabulary, yet they were really hard. Some time after I can read a lot of stuff, and by that I don’t mean slice of life garbage or nukige, I mean something like Witch on the holy night, KageroToryuki, or some fantasy like Eustia.
3. Anime is a great hack at the beginner stage – too much different anime, too much time and viola – you have an infinite amount good practice material
4. The next point is actually the greatest thing and the most important part of Japanese language – an infinite amount of exceptional tools, games, manga, anime, visual novels, light novels that are easily available for you. You can start reading on your 5th month with a texthooker and improve very fast thanks to it, you have YOMICHAN, when I said to my friend about this technology, he was overwhelmed with the idea of it, he asked me to find a similar thing for English, but we didn’t find anything. People who created the tools are great, Arigatou!
5. People like to call some visual novels hard that even natives can have problems reading them – Mareni, Masada, other authors. In reality, the simple hack can be made to understand it, for example I did it twice.
When I wanted to read Kara no shoujou episode 3, I thought that the game is way hard for me based on nothing really, yet I still downloaded it to see, whether textractor works with it or not, turns out it is, yet I also noticed, that I could read it and not be bombarded with new words! Same thing happened with Oretsuba.
[Good novel](https://preview.redd.it/sojnvsmwzu9c1.jpg?width=256&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2107f55dd7f8dc534d8e5caf082f1df04f11686f)
[Fantastic writing](https://preview.redd.it/pj5agc3yzu9c1.jpg?width=256&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4f721438097478f513f59e7ff5a1de14623363e)
**How did I started reading?**
After 5 visual novels that I’ve completed, I basically didn’t read anything for a reason that it is so hard to do it and enjoy it, yet everything changed when I started reading a web novel where Main character with a help of his beautiful teacher will rape his classmate. She will not like it. The thing is, I really enjoyed it, unfortunately, I don’t like it at all, the problem is I quitted this shit years ago, yet would always return to reread the beginning, because it is addicting. (And it is easy to read even for a beginner)
Remember the guy who Jerked his way to n1? I still think that he is a legend, but now I understand that reading something like that all the time is literally exhausting, even without doing the “act” you still overload your brain with Dopamine.
After this story I have returned to Visual novels (it is not like I have read all of the novel, it is too big for it)
**The most interesting novels, anime, manga that I discovered.**
* **Witch on the holy night** by Kinoko Nasu, the guy wrote Fate. I don’t like his works that much, yet this one is something very weird, I didn’t expect to like it that much. I have finished it 3 times in japanese and since the remaster on pc is out, this is gonna be the 4th time. I like the way he writes his story. Many people who can read it in original knows, that it is hard to make a good translation out of his works to adapt text pretty well. Since I’ve finished it 3 times, I can certainty prove, that the guy can write good things.
* **Chainsaw man**. I have read it 2 times before, when I didn’t know the language, yet rereading this thing was a blast. Fujimoto-sensei knows how to write good manga. Goodbuy Eri on the other hand is not that good. (I’ve read it two times). Oh year, I like snowball fights.
[I’ve never seen you crying](https://preview.redd.it/121j7mga0v9c1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a77269ee287345d328b72a9f5ffeb9c169d6648c)
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* Tetris movie – now this is really special thing because this is the only movie that was enjoyable for me because I knew all three languages that was used in a movie and they didn’t use any subs. I saw a version of movie where all characters speaks in Russian, English and Japanese without any subtitles or translation – truly unique experience.
* **Music** \- it feels surreal to understand music, Japanese music is really great – openings of anime, endings, visual novels ost, etc. I will say some of my favorites – Sakura no uta song (not the game though), 74 – a great song by Itoki Hana and Toby fox, Yoasobi’s Yuusha and of course White album song. There are much more, but for some reason I feel like these songs will stay with me forever. Because they don’t simply apply to specific story, but for a life too, here’s the greatest praise that I will give to a Sakura no uta:
>\*I miss Sakura no Uta, ever since the DMCA incident it has been so silent. I no longer wake up to the beautiful sounds of Sakura no Uta, now it’s just quiet and silent. I get up out of my bed and walk through the silent halls, devoid of heaven’s greatest song, where I sit and eat a bowl of wheat flakes in silence, get ready for my dull workday, and make my way there in the silence that is a Sakura no Utaless world. I sit in the same monotone office cubicle, bloodshot eyes, red from my constant crying over the loss of Sakura no Uta and the dull dead expression from a life without which that I love. I go home, dull and without the will to eat or freshen up. I walk towards my room where the once Sakura no Uta-themed room of mine is now back to the dull and bleakness of yellow beige and white, as I sit in front of the only thing that is Sakura no Uta-themed left, my Shrine, I sit there and cry in prayer, hoping that one day it will come back to us, that Sakura no Uta will come back to me. As I sit there and pray and cry into the night in the silence of my lonely home, I get up and go lay in bed, such a dull bed of a dark blue blanket and a pillow, I lay there and whisper one more silent prayer. A prayer of “my beloved Sakura no Uta, please return to me my love” and I drift into sleep as I cry once. I dream a dream where I always hope to dream of a time I used to love but get nothing but nightmares now about my loss of Sakura no Uta and my loss of love. How I miss those days of joy and love with Sakura no Uta. How I miss Sakura no Uta.
**Special thanks goes to…: ANKI!**
One of the most important tool that was created for learners, because learning Kanji would of been way harder without it.
**Let’s give you final clues, what I was able to finish up to this point.**
**YouTube** \- I watched a Persona 5 let’s play and shadow of the colossus let’s play till the end. I also watched a bit of other stuff.
**Manga** \- I have read chainsaw man and goodbye Eri and Tsukihime manga till the end. I also started other manga, but very quickly quitted them out of boredom.
**Grammar** \- Watched Cure dolly’s 95 video’s playlist 4 times (rest in peace). Also downloaded a deck for JLPT grammar (in process), Tae Kim is garbage and boring, yet thank you so much for the effort.
**Anime** \- *3347 episodes.*
**Visual novels** \- *25 till the end.*
Anyway, I don’t practice writing or speaking. Also a few days ago I did monolingual translation.
Everything would be very hard without Moe way guide I think.
What is my level on JLPT level then? ~~N5~~, I am not Jazzy.
I remember a really great advice from Moe way site- if you really want to learn Japanese, you should delete reddit. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
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[To all the people who got here.](https://i.redd.it/env2wp0azu9c1.gif)