Thought I'd revive this thread to see if anyone is studying. How's it going? Where are you at with your progress?
I passed N5 half a year ago, but I have a day job that requires me to constantly study. My brain is always tired, which makes it difficult to keep up the pace on the studying. I'm not complaining at all - I enjoy my job, and I enjoy studying Japanese. My brain is usually tired by the time I sit down to study, but I don't really mind. It's just a fun hobby.
I'd like to pass the N3 in the next 10 years, with a very confident pass - not just a borderline score. If I won the lottery tomorrow and could study full time, I'm sure I could pass it much more quickly than that.
There are some absolute basics that, for some reason, utterly refuse to stick in my brain. Things like certain verb conjugations, or remembering the difference between 妹 and 弟. I learn them, they stay in my memory for 10 seconds, and then a passing gust of winds blows the neurons right out of my head. Same with the difference between 使うand 作る. If I stop and think then I can eventually remember which is which, but it isn't locked in yet.
I enjoy anime, but my big Special Interest is Japanese pop and rock music. I get a lot of value from watching live TV performances on youtube that have karaoke lyrics underneath them. Thanks to that, I reckon I've locked in about 300 kanji so far, though I could probably only write about 50 of them confidently from memory. I was happy when I saw the band Anzen Chitai written out as 安全地帯 and could recognize the first three kanji.
I try hard to appreciate the moments when I can read and understand a long string of text, even if it's just basic stuff. I was checking the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar the other day, and there was a sentence about a man called Taro that hasn't been to America yet. The sentence is いつも行きたいと思っているがお金がないから行けない. I felt happy that I 100% understood the individual pieces, and 90% understood what the sentence was saying. This time 18 months ago, I would have barely understood the hiragana bits phonetically, without knowing the meaning behind them.
(Goddamn I wish Japanese had spaces. I know that everyone says it gets easier with practice - but spaces would still make it even easier. This is a hill I will die on. I'm correct, and the entire nation of Japan is wrong.) (That was a joke.) (But also, I am completely serious.)
