Journey to Fluent Japanese (01) - The Start

06-01-2023 359 words 2 minutes

Contents

Introduction

I finally decided to learn Japanese seriously. I used to watch anime a lot, which is how I became interested in the language. My first attempt at learning Japanese was in 2017, six years ago. But I didn’t get very far and eventually gave up after a few days. After my first attempt, I did try three more times to learn the language, but the results were all the same. My lack of seriousness as well as procrastination are to blame for my failure. But, I’ve finally found my resolution to take my language-learning journey seriously.

What I Already Know

I’ve already done 2 years of intense Japanese listening from watching anime.
I know roughly 300 Japanese words from my previous learning attempts.
I’m familiar with hiragana and katakana. But I can’t read them fluently, especially the katakana.
I know the meaning of 150 kanji characters, but I cannot read or write them (except a few).
I know 7-8 very basic introductory grammar rules.

My Current Roadmap

Kana: First, I need to re-learn the hiragana and katakana so that I can read them fluently. I’ll be using this shared Anki deck for this.
Vocabs: I will learn the 1000 most frequent Japanese words with the refold’s JP1K deck. I plan to learn 15 new words a day, so it would take a little more than two months to learn the entire thousand words.
Kanji: Using Heisig’s RTK method, learn 10 new Kanji every day. I will just learn the meaning and the writing, not the reading. The 2200 kanji should take 8 months to finish.
Grammar: I will start studying grammar only after I finish learning the thousand words. I will be using the Genki textbooks for this purpose.

Timeframe

Conclusion

Language learning is my hobby. I’m afraid my other responsibilities will interfere with the language learning progress. So, I need to find a balance between language learning and my everyday life. What I’ve outlined here is my ideal pace. And if it becomes too much for me, I will limit or even stop learning new words for a few days to focus just on the review.