Published on November 5th, 2023
Japan
Japan is a weird country.
For as many problems as it has, and trust me, there are plenty, I can't help but find myself pulled to it by something.
Anytime the country is mentioned in any sort of context, some signal goes off in my brain. Maybe it's because I like
what their country produces so much. Maybe I feel like I need to step up as some sort of “authority” because of my large
consumption of Japanese content and language experience.
Either way, it's an incredibly dorky thing to feel.
Japan has been thought of as “cool” by foreigners since the 80s, but I remember when anime and otaku media was still a
pretty weird thing to like. Not that I went around telling everyone I knew that I watched Japanese cartoons, but it was
something you could just sense. Thankfully, I was never found out and consequently stuffed into a locker, but it sucked
not really having anyone to talk about it with until the mid-2010s. Though funnily enough, these days I actually have little
desire to talk about anime with other people. I can only hear about Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man so much.
It's very strange, feeling like you can't share this interest with anyone and now everyone suddenly shares that interest.
I now meet people my age with the expectation that most have watched at least one or two anime. The anime club is fairly
sizable and diverse at my college. I see shredded dudes and athletes wear anime t-shirts all the time. Even some of my
professors who range from middle-aged to seniors have mentioned it off-hand (although they might have never seen any).
But I still freeze up when I get asked the dreaded, dreaded question of “What anime do you watch?”. Seriously, do I be
honest and say Cardcaptor Sakura? Or something more popular? Flip to page 56 for option one and 96 for two!
It's still weird to be a weeaboo of course, but having interest and a fascination with the country, or at least anime, is common.
But for anyone who's been into anime for long enough, your eyes start to wander. You discover that there are these neat anime
books, called manga. Cool! It's like anime but it's a comic. Then after being into manga for a while, you discover that
there are light novels, which are these neat anime novels. Awesome! It's like a novel but the plot is asinine and the title
is longer than Don Quixote. So you get deeper and deeper into this subculture until, eventually, you will almost definitely
get hit with the roadblock of: translation. Or more specifically, un… translation. Or maybe you won't. I don't know who you are, man.
The Journey to Present
I still remember the moment I resolved to learn Japanese. I remember it didn't really take much consideration or thought, it
was something of an epiphany. It truly did just dawn on me that I could learn the language to make my life easier. It was at
some point in October of 2019 I believe, and I was despairing over how the Zaregoto series had not been officially translated past volume 2.
The Zaregoto series is Nisio Isin's debut novel series. Not a very popular series in the west, as Monogatari takes that spotlight,
but I had found Zaregoto through my existing love for Monogatari. I read what existed of it officially in June of that same year,
and was pretty obsessed with it for a while there. But, Zaregoto was a nine volume series, and I had only read the measly two that
had been published in English. That simply would not do! Instead of waiting for some translation that might never come (well, not
officially anyway), I took it upon myself to learn Japanese and read it myself. Of course I didn't want to learn the language solely
for Zaregoto, but I would be able to read many other untranslated works, be it Nisio or someone else. Even though the rest of
Zaregoto did end up translated by fan(s), it never impacted my willingness to learn the language.
So I started sometime in that October, and screwed around for a few months. In the first five months or so, all I did was learn
kana and a few basic words/grammar structures. To anyone unfamiliar with Japanese, that amount of knowledge is fairly negligible and
can be learnt in a month or less. At this point I was motivated but not disciplined and hadn't fully committed my mind (and my hot body)
to Japanese yet. It wasn't until the coronavirus pandemic hit that I decided to get serious about it, as like many other people I
was now granted bundles of free time. Since then, I have been much more consistent with the language and would consider this period
to be the time that I really started learning Japanese. Although, I would make my biggest strides once I started really immersing
myself in the content of the language around early 2021 (I think).
That brings me to my next topic! I'm learning (or acquiring, rather) Japanese using Refold's roadmap and methodology. Immersion
learning is the way to go and Refold provides a very solid and comprehensive framework for learning a language from nothing to
fluency, and it has served me well thus far. A few days ago I moved myself up from stage 2C to 3A. Although I don't plan on outputting
anytime soon, I met the requirements to move up (or graduate, in very Japanese terms) and so why not make that jump? As of right now,
I've read 23 books which add up to over 10.5K pages according to Bookmeter, although that doesn't include anything I've read online,
which is sizable. I've had a pretty easy time reading fiction, so long as the content isn't too out there. Not too long ago I finished
watching Mysterious Girlfriend X without subtitles, and understood pretty much everything without thinking about it, save for a few
stray words/sentences. Not too shabby! I've still got a long way to go but I'm making good progress. Right now my plan is to achieve
basic fluency and be able to output on a basic level by 2026.
The Japanese Language
Japanese is beautiful. Even when my motivation wanes the littlest bit, I'm always pulled right back because the language is so
compelling. For me a lot of the beauty comes from the written language, particularly because of the presence of kanji. Although
the sheer number of kanji one has to be familiar with might be intimidating for beginners, I'd like to assert that kanji becomes
fairly simple to memorize when you learn them in the context of words instead of intensive drill exercises. Equally as important
in my opinion is also trying to gain an appreciation and admiration for kanji characters; to recognize their long history and the
incredibly creative ways they can be used by writers. It may take weeks, months, or even years, but once you get used to them I'm
positive most people will gain some sort of appreciation. Or maybe you won't! I don't like you if so.
Of course the spoken language is very pretty as well, although I dislike how
vague people speak a lot of the time,
which is simply
something embedded into Japanese society and the language is a reflection of that. As someone who hates when people are vague or
indirect when talking about anything, it can be a bit frustrating when imitating a native involves using very unconfident and
uncertain language. The conclusion I've come to is that when it's time for me to output, I'm going to be as direct as I can while
still being as close to a native as possible (a fairly difficult task), but I'm sure with time it'll be possible.
I love the process of immersion learning, but explaining it to other people feels like more trouble than it's worth sometimes. Think
about it: you're raised your entire life thinking there's only one way to learn languages because that's how every institution says
to do it, and all of a sudden some guy tells you to throw all that out because it's wrong, and do it this way instead because, um,
just trust me. People vouch for the benefits of immersion learning all the time, but it is far from common knowledge at the moment.
I want to tell people about this wonderful thing, but it feels like this sometimes.
All things considered, I'm a young guy and the immersion learning community grows larger by the day, so maybe within my lifetime
I can see some false conceptions about language acquisition be overturned and see the system change, at least a little bit. Linguists
have been writing about this for decades already, it just needs to spread throughout the world. So maybe I should annoy more people about it all.