Will Morrison's Site

Japanese Learning Log

Introduction

I started learning Japanese on 09/16/24 during the start of my senior year at Boston College. A friend of mine was working remotely in Japan at the time and reading about his experiences and the Japanese culture motivated me to learn.

Before studying Japanese, I had spent a few years learning Spanish in middle and high school and took two years of Latin in college. Language learning has always been fun to me, but I never became interested enough in Spanish culture or classics to willingly spend time on those languages beyond what was required for my classes.

On this page, I will make an entry every week detailing what I accomplished and any additional thoughts I've had about the language, the learning process, and my progress. My hope is that this will help when motivation wanes since I will be able to see how much I've improved and in what timeframe.

Week 13: 12/09/24 - 12/16/24

Very slow because of finals and travel. No new cards.

Motivation Level: Medium

Week 12: 12/02/24 - 12/09/24

Motivation Level: High

Week 11: 11/25/24 - 12/02/24

Slow week because of Thanksgiving.

Motivation Level: High

Week 10: 11/18/24 - 11/25/24

Slow week because of a work trip to Phoenix.

The most exciting part of this weak was my discovery of how powerful Whisper subtitle generation is. I downloaded the first few Japanese with Shun podcasts and generated transcripts for them. I've been listening and reading through them and I'm happy with my comprehension. This seems like one of if not the most efficient way to learn: alternating between listening to and reading a podcast until you have a complete understanding of it.

Motivation Level: High

Week 9: 11/11/24 - 11/18/24

I did lots of reading on Yomu Yomu this week. My comprehension of the Beginner 2 stories I read is quite good and I know over 90% of the words. I can feel the benefit of this extensive reading already and I'm having more fun with it than with watching content I don't understand well. I find myself forming some Japanese sentences in my head throughout the day which wasn't happening before.

Motivation Level: High

Week 8: 11/04/24 - 11/11/24

Motivation has gone down a bit. I decided to not learn any new cards for the last two days of this week. Trying to avoid burnout.

Motivation still relatively high since I've been keeping up with reviews and some immersion, but it has definitely dropped.

Motivation Level: Medium

Week 7: 10/28/24 - 11/04/24

Biggest news this week is my discovery of Comprehensible Japanese and their website. The content is engaging enough and I really like the time tracking system and difficulty levels (complete beginner, beginner, intermediate, and advanced). Right now I am able to understand complete beginner videos almost entirely and enough of beginner videos that they feel relatively easy.

I'm going to aim for one hour of CIJ per day, making this my primary form of immersion.

Motivation Level: High

Week 6: 10/21/24 - 10/28/24

This week I realized that I was no longer obsessing over grammar in the sentence cards I'm going through. In the past, when I was confused about a grammar concept used in a sentence, I would dig into it by asking friends or using ChatGPT. Now, I think I realize that it doesn't matter much since the only way to fully understand the grammar is to immerse anyway. This has allowed me to go through reviews faster.

Motivation Level: High

Week 5: 10/14/24 - 10/21/24

Motivation Level: Medium

Week 4: 10/07/24 - 10/14/24

The most important part of this week is that I have phased out Anki and am just using Migaku now. Migaku's academy course is fantastic.

The plan is to continue with Migaku's academy course and increase immersion once I feel I have a good base of vocab and grammar. I'm not sure if 20 cards/day will be sustainable. If it becomes too much I'll drop it to 15 or 10.

Motivation Level: High

Week 3: 09/30/24 - 10/07/24

The most important part of this week has been my usage of Migaku. I've decided to start Migaku's Japanese course while keeping up with my current Anki work to see how I like the platform. So far it seems like the best platform to learn Japanese. Grammar and vocabulary study are both in the same place and the knowledge tracking and sentence mining features appear to be better than Yomitan on YouTube and Netflix. I'm excited to keep using the site and if things continue to go well I will drop Anki and use Migaku for everything Japanese.

I made a new YouTube account for Japanese and have been enjoying the channel Comprehensible Japanese.

Motivation Level: High

Week 2: 09/25/24 - 09/30/24

I'm very happy that I was able to get through the easiest article in Satori Reader. It took well over an hour to work through it all but it didn't feel too difficult. I knew very little of the vocabulary, but looking it up was easy and I came out of it feeling like I understood each sentence completely.

Because of how well the reading went I'm planning to do more of that in future weeks. My focus will be on vocabulary, grammar, and reading with some additional listening to train my ears a bit. I'm going to try starting よつばと to see how that feels compared to Satori Reader.

Motivation Level: High

Week 1: 09/14/24 - 09/25/24

My first week of Japanese has gone quite well:

Anki reviews are taking ~1 hour each day.

Learning Japanese vocabulary is challenging. With Latin and Spanish I could cram tons of words before an exam, but I feel like these Japanese words are taking days to really sink in. My plan is to continue going through Kaishi 1.5k and RRTK at 10 cards/day each. RRTK seems to be paying off quickly: each day kanji look less foreign to me.

I'm glad I chose Cure Dolly as my primary grammar resource to start with. Her explanations seem to suit my brain nicely. My approach has been to watch her videos as well as read the transcript multiple times. I also found Jouzo Juls on YouTube who seems to publish paraphrased (plagiarized?) versions of Dolly's videos, so I have watched those as well to have a slightly different explanation for each of the concepts.

For immersion, I haven't found a reading resource that is enjoyable and beneficial yet. Watching anime with English subtitles first and then in Japanese has been my primary approach to immersion.

のんのんびより is very fun.

I'm trying to get to the point of being able to consume enjoyable native content as quickly as possible. I know that my motivation will dip in the future, but I think if I can push through to that point then I will continue for a long time.

Motivation Level: High

Log format:
## Week [Number]: [Date Range]

Details

### Motivation Level: [Low/Medium/High]