二年前日本語の勉強を始めた。
最初にそれはDuolingoだけだった。実は興味が暫くの間あった。
ある日、お姉さんが「Duolingoに日本語の過程がある」と言った。
それは日本語の勉強の始めだった。
二ヶ月の後にその過程が終わりました、そして分かった、それはまだまだ。
故に日本の童話を読み始めた、もちろん日本語で。
始めにそれは難しいだった、けど子供の童話は比較的に難しくない。
多分二十の童話が読みました、それから小説の読み事を始めた、けどそれはめちゃ大変だった。絶対難しすぎるだった。
だから別の方法も試した。小説の読むことで沢山の単語が手に入れた、そしてAnkiでそれを練習しました。その方法で今は七千ぐらいの単語がしります。
だが、それは問題の中心。七千ぐらいの単語を知りますけど日本語は余りできない。
それから、熱心が弱くになってきた。だから、理由があまりない。
それもそうだが、諦めません。二年は長い間、そして短い間もある。僕は頑張った、だから諦める事はとても難しい。
確かに日本語をあまり話しませんが、ちょっとだけできる。そして今、沢山の経験もある。
別の方法は要るだけです。
その別の方法は沢山の読み事かもしれません。初めに童話は読みました。多分それは今もできること。
PS、ごめんね、それはめちゃくちゃ大変な日本語だった。
Saturday, November 14, 2020
新しい方法とか理由の探しとか
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Long long time and slowing down
It is now day 321. It feels like a really long time has passed. I haven't missed a single day since last time, but there have been a bit less than a dozen that barely count.
I'll just go through the highlights.
After the last post I've read a dozen or so chapters of Madoushi Michi.
I also read a few more fairytales on Hukumusume: Urashima-san (and) Ko-soda Yuurei.Since I had decided to move on to more difficult text(Madoushi Michi) I stopped reading fairytales after those.
At one point I translated a song by Yousei Teikoku(妖精帝國) called Viscum Album, since I wanted to know what it's about. Link. I am sure it could be done much better, but at least I now know what I wanted to know.
Near the end of March a friend told me he had some coupons for a language learning site. It turned out that they also have a course for Japanese, so I tried it out. It's called Transparent.
Intrigued, I started and finished the Japanese course in less than 2 weeks. It was disappointingly small and so the relatively higher-level content wouldn't be possible to reinforce on that site. I finished nonetheless, as I saw it as an opportunity to add a couple hundred words to my Anki deck.
On youtube there is a channel called Japanese Ammo with Misa. She has excellent videos for learning grammar and she explains things in a way that I understant. I haven't watched many, but I plan to watch all of them at some point.
I joined OhMyJapan and found some people there to talk to. Apparently my level is high enough that if I write slowly, I can make myself understood. I feel like a child though, since I use only simple grammar and often build strange sentences.
I tried writing a short story in Japanese and while I'm fine with the result, it's too embarassing to post it.
Eventually I got tired of reading Madoushi Michi and quit, because the amount of new words was too hard to keep up with. A hundred new words a day? I could do that sometimes, but as is I'm not good enough to consistently work this hard.
The main problem with the words in Madoushi Michi is that they are too high-level for me. When I started reading the story, I had learned less than 2000 words in total, so it would be better to focus on easier words first.
Thus I started looking for other stories to read on the same site and came across something familiar. I had seen the Slime anime, so I was aware of what kind of story it was. I began reading this instead of Madoushi Michi. While the grammar isn't necessarily easier, the words so far have been a little lower in level and thus, more useful.
I've also watched around 10-20 more anime series by this point.
Throughout the months I also quadrupled(4x) the Japanese words I have in Anki. I now also keep a large amount of unlearned words so that if I wanted I could just keep going for several days no matter the pace.
One day I noticed that the Duolingo Japanese course had become longer. I haven't done much yet, but I plan to finish it again, since unlike previously the course now contains way more Kanji. There are also more example sentences, more vocabulary, more grammar, etc. Overall it's more of the same good stuff that I was there for in the first place.
I am now at 6221 words in Anki, 953 of them unlearned and 4 suspended for not sticking in my head. Having learned this much, I feel like it's starting to get more difficult than it should be. There have been months where I learned around 900 words, but as time goes on I feel more and more that learning just words is not enough. For the year I've spent on Japanese and considering the amount of words I know, my ability to actually read, write or speak the language is low.
Thus, lately I have begun to think about changing how I learn. I've been learning Russian for way less time, but the progress feels faster considering how little effort I've put into it. One major reason seems to be that in Russian I don't learn only words, but also sentences. I have 2 separate decks for Russian.
It seems reasonable to do the same with Japanese, but I haven't got to it yet. That said, I don't think learning words by themselves is necessarily bad. It's just incomplete.
I'll just go through the highlights.
After the last post I've read a dozen or so chapters of Madoushi Michi.
I also read a few more fairytales on Hukumusume: Urashima-san (and) Ko-soda Yuurei.Since I had decided to move on to more difficult text(Madoushi Michi) I stopped reading fairytales after those.
At one point I translated a song by Yousei Teikoku(妖精帝國) called Viscum Album, since I wanted to know what it's about. Link. I am sure it could be done much better, but at least I now know what I wanted to know.
Near the end of March a friend told me he had some coupons for a language learning site. It turned out that they also have a course for Japanese, so I tried it out. It's called Transparent.
Intrigued, I started and finished the Japanese course in less than 2 weeks. It was disappointingly small and so the relatively higher-level content wouldn't be possible to reinforce on that site. I finished nonetheless, as I saw it as an opportunity to add a couple hundred words to my Anki deck.
On youtube there is a channel called Japanese Ammo with Misa. She has excellent videos for learning grammar and she explains things in a way that I understant. I haven't watched many, but I plan to watch all of them at some point.
I joined OhMyJapan and found some people there to talk to. Apparently my level is high enough that if I write slowly, I can make myself understood. I feel like a child though, since I use only simple grammar and often build strange sentences.
I tried writing a short story in Japanese and while I'm fine with the result, it's too embarassing to post it.
Eventually I got tired of reading Madoushi Michi and quit, because the amount of new words was too hard to keep up with. A hundred new words a day? I could do that sometimes, but as is I'm not good enough to consistently work this hard.
The main problem with the words in Madoushi Michi is that they are too high-level for me. When I started reading the story, I had learned less than 2000 words in total, so it would be better to focus on easier words first.
Thus I started looking for other stories to read on the same site and came across something familiar. I had seen the Slime anime, so I was aware of what kind of story it was. I began reading this instead of Madoushi Michi. While the grammar isn't necessarily easier, the words so far have been a little lower in level and thus, more useful.
I've also watched around 10-20 more anime series by this point.
Throughout the months I also quadrupled(4x) the Japanese words I have in Anki. I now also keep a large amount of unlearned words so that if I wanted I could just keep going for several days no matter the pace.
One day I noticed that the Duolingo Japanese course had become longer. I haven't done much yet, but I plan to finish it again, since unlike previously the course now contains way more Kanji. There are also more example sentences, more vocabulary, more grammar, etc. Overall it's more of the same good stuff that I was there for in the first place.
I am now at 6221 words in Anki, 953 of them unlearned and 4 suspended for not sticking in my head. Having learned this much, I feel like it's starting to get more difficult than it should be. There have been months where I learned around 900 words, but as time goes on I feel more and more that learning just words is not enough. For the year I've spent on Japanese and considering the amount of words I know, my ability to actually read, write or speak the language is low.
Thus, lately I have begun to think about changing how I learn. I've been learning Russian for way less time, but the progress feels faster considering how little effort I've put into it. One major reason seems to be that in Russian I don't learn only words, but also sentences. I have 2 separate decks for Russian.
It seems reasonable to do the same with Japanese, but I haven't got to it yet. That said, I don't think learning words by themselves is necessarily bad. It's just incomplete.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Huge progress and new methods
It has been a while since the last post, 96 days in fact. At least that's the days I worked on Japanese since it's now day 135. I probably missed a few days, but not that many.
(According to google it has been 102 days, which would leave the amount of missed days at 8. Not a big deal, I've been keeping up every single day for weeks.)
By now I have 1958 cards in Anki, 193 of which I've added in the last few days from reading Kintaro, Nezumi-Kyou and that thing, most of them from the latter.
So far my list of stories read is thus(14):
Momotarou - That I talked about last time.
O-tsukisama ni Itta Usagi
Tsuki no Naka no Usagi
Hanasaku Jiisan
Warashibe Chuuja
Omusubi Kororin
Tsura no Ongaeshi
Kachi-kachi Yama
Kamotori Gonbee
Rikitarou
Hachikazuki Hime
Oitekebori
Kintarou
Nezumi-Kyou
Today I started reading what seems to be called Shikkaku Kara Hajimeru Nariagari Madoushi Michi.
Or shortly, that thing.
It's way harder than the fairytales I've been reading so far, but I am actually capable of understanding it somewhat. A huge improvement when just a bit more than 3 months ago I got PTSD from reading a single line:
"美術鑑賞の備忘録とデジタル画挑戦のために始めたブログが、けっきょくはいずれもできず" (from https://ameblo.jp/art00art/)
I can't understand the sentence as a whole, but it seems to have something to do with art notebooks, digital art and being able to do them sooner or later.
That is, I didn't get a heart attack.
Learning kanji has been hard, not because the signs themselves are that bad, but because sticking to it every single day can get tedious.
However, ever since completing Duolingo I've understood that sometimes turning up the pressure improves results.
For a while I didn't find a way to do that in Anki without burning out. Going through the reviews became a chore as I kept forgetting words that I should by now have known. Clearly it's not enough to just drill words into my skull.
So I started to look for a way out. A way to learn Japanese without putting myself through that ordeal. What I knew was that practice was necessary and I wasn't going to give up Anki, but if I only did that I would eventually give up.
So I started reading again, with the intention being that reading is primary and Anki is only there to make me forget less. It was still a chore.
That is, until 28/02/2019, which was 5 days ago.
For a while I had been changing how I use Anki. Instead of just answering straight away I began to keep a word in front of me until I could forget it and remember it again just by looking at it. This was effective unlike the rote practice from before, but it had a huge dowside: it took me several hours to go through reviews and if I ever tried speeding up it got tiring. Learning was even worse, taking an entire day for just a couple dozen words.
Previously I had accepted that as just being the work required, but no more. What I needed was a way to make myself forget a word without waiting. To do so, it would be optimal if I could just look at other words meanwhile without the scheduling logic of Anki interfering.
Once I knew what I wanted, the answer came quickly: Advanced Previewer, a plugin for Anki.
At first I made a filtered deck to use it, because I had trouble getting the previewer to only work on due cards, not new ones, but then I found that Anki has a bug whereby some review options in filter decks turn the card back into a completely new one.
Thus I started to use previewer in the normal deck instead and with all those changes my pace has skyrocketed. I complete 100-200 reviews in less than an hour and can learn almost as many words by spending the same amount of time.
My method for using the previewer is simple:
0. Set the search filter to "deck:current is:due" or "deck:current (is:due or is:new)"
1. Go through the list with previewer, answer all words you know.
2. Look at all words even if you don't know them and try to remember.
3. Refresh the list by clicking search and opening the previewer again.
4. Repeat from 1.
The result is that I don't have to spend 5-6 hours on Anki anymore and it's so much easier to put in work every day.
Instead this created a different problem - Putting in new words is tedious and if I take them from a list like the ones on wikipedia, half of them will be irrelevant. This is what I've tried to fix for the past few days by simply reading more.
Hence why that thing is handy: it has lots of words that I would expect to find in a fantasy context, yet isn't so complicated that I would be unable to read it. I can verify these words by just how they sound - having watched over 80 anime series, I just find a lot of them familiar.
Just a final note, I find it much easier to read Japanese text now, even if I have to consult Yomichan for half the words.
又ね
(According to google it has been 102 days, which would leave the amount of missed days at 8. Not a big deal, I've been keeping up every single day for weeks.)
By now I have 1958 cards in Anki, 193 of which I've added in the last few days from reading Kintaro, Nezumi-Kyou and that thing, most of them from the latter.
So far my list of stories read is thus(14):
Momotarou - That I talked about last time.
O-tsukisama ni Itta Usagi
Tsuki no Naka no Usagi
Hanasaku Jiisan
Warashibe Chuuja
Omusubi Kororin
Tsura no Ongaeshi
Kachi-kachi Yama
Kamotori Gonbee
Rikitarou
Hachikazuki Hime
Oitekebori
Kintarou
Nezumi-Kyou
Today I started reading what seems to be called Shikkaku Kara Hajimeru Nariagari Madoushi Michi.
Or shortly, that thing.
It's way harder than the fairytales I've been reading so far, but I am actually capable of understanding it somewhat. A huge improvement when just a bit more than 3 months ago I got PTSD from reading a single line:
"美術鑑賞の備忘録とデジタル画挑戦のために始めたブログが、けっきょくはいずれもできず" (from https://ameblo.jp/art00art/)
I can't understand the sentence as a whole, but it seems to have something to do with art notebooks, digital art and being able to do them sooner or later.
That is, I didn't get a heart attack.
Learning kanji has been hard, not because the signs themselves are that bad, but because sticking to it every single day can get tedious.
However, ever since completing Duolingo I've understood that sometimes turning up the pressure improves results.
For a while I didn't find a way to do that in Anki without burning out. Going through the reviews became a chore as I kept forgetting words that I should by now have known. Clearly it's not enough to just drill words into my skull.
So I started to look for a way out. A way to learn Japanese without putting myself through that ordeal. What I knew was that practice was necessary and I wasn't going to give up Anki, but if I only did that I would eventually give up.
So I started reading again, with the intention being that reading is primary and Anki is only there to make me forget less. It was still a chore.
That is, until 28/02/2019, which was 5 days ago.
For a while I had been changing how I use Anki. Instead of just answering straight away I began to keep a word in front of me until I could forget it and remember it again just by looking at it. This was effective unlike the rote practice from before, but it had a huge dowside: it took me several hours to go through reviews and if I ever tried speeding up it got tiring. Learning was even worse, taking an entire day for just a couple dozen words.
Previously I had accepted that as just being the work required, but no more. What I needed was a way to make myself forget a word without waiting. To do so, it would be optimal if I could just look at other words meanwhile without the scheduling logic of Anki interfering.
Once I knew what I wanted, the answer came quickly: Advanced Previewer, a plugin for Anki.
At first I made a filtered deck to use it, because I had trouble getting the previewer to only work on due cards, not new ones, but then I found that Anki has a bug whereby some review options in filter decks turn the card back into a completely new one.
Thus I started to use previewer in the normal deck instead and with all those changes my pace has skyrocketed. I complete 100-200 reviews in less than an hour and can learn almost as many words by spending the same amount of time.
My method for using the previewer is simple:
0. Set the search filter to "deck:current is:due" or "deck:current (is:due or is:new)"
1. Go through the list with previewer, answer all words you know.
2. Look at all words even if you don't know them and try to remember.
3. Refresh the list by clicking search and opening the previewer again.
4. Repeat from 1.
The result is that I don't have to spend 5-6 hours on Anki anymore and it's so much easier to put in work every day.
Instead this created a different problem - Putting in new words is tedious and if I take them from a list like the ones on wikipedia, half of them will be irrelevant. This is what I've tried to fix for the past few days by simply reading more.
Hence why that thing is handy: it has lots of words that I would expect to find in a fantasy context, yet isn't so complicated that I would be unable to read it. I can verify these words by just how they sound - having watched over 80 anime series, I just find a lot of them familiar.
Just a final note, I find it much easier to read Japanese text now, even if I have to consult Yomichan for half the words.
又ね
Friday, November 23, 2018
This blog and Momotarou(桃太郎)
I started learning Japanese a couple years ago with a private teacher. He was very helpful for getting down the basics about how Japanese is written and how pronunciation works. When we got to grammar I didn't understand it all that well though and since I also had some other issues in life at the time I stopped taking lessons.
Over time my Japanese got rusty. I tried learning from the Genki textbook myself (the one my teacher had used to teach me), but found it too hard. Reading took too much time to stay focused and the exercises didn't seem to help me learn fast enough that I would remain interested.
Eventually I considered asking the teacher again, but then I realized that it would be rude if I had forgotten everything he had taught me previously and had to start all over again. Thus I needed a way to learn. Something that would be easy enough to keep me interested, but still actually teach something.
Watching anime no longer taught me all that much, I had learned the most common words and the rest didn't stick. It did help me a bit - I got used to the sound of Japanese, so I was able to pick up words from speech. That said, I didn't know what the words meant and couldn't figure them out fast enough without a dictionary. And using a dictionary for everything is surely the least interesting way to learn. Or so I thought.
A couple months ago(4/08/2018) I started the Duolingo Japanese course that I had recently heard about from my sister. I had some experience with Duolingo before, having tried to learn German and Swedish on the site, although with very crude methods. I didn't get far with those languages because I did most of my learning on select few days when I was motivated, but then had no motivation to continue once I hit any real difficulties. Difficult parts simply can't be done in a day, but I didn't realize that at the time.
In any case, Japanese was going to be different. I had matured quite a bit in the recent years, so I decided that I would stick to Japanese and do something every single day. If I worked every day, it would be impossible to not progress. Knowing this was going to motivate me to keep going.
Around half the days were difficult for me. It took me 60 days to complete the course according to the streak counter on Duolingo. The second half of the time I was much more serious and made sure to do more than just keep the counter going, as I felt I was running out of time. This made it harder, but paradoxically I got way more done. Often I doubted whether I would be able to do it in 60 days at all, but I persisted and made it happen. Looking back it seems like my doubts were mostly a result of the pressure I was putting myself through, not rational observations. It was fear.
During the course I regularly sang songs from Aimer(エメ). She's one of my favourite singers due to her unique voice and her ballad-like songs. I don't know how much it helps my pronunciation, but singing gave me a way to take breaks from Duolingo without completely throwing Japanese out of my mind. Thus, it kept me focused.
I was done on 2/10/2018. I thought about what I should do next and talked with people about it and about what I had already achieved. The Duolingo course wasn't as helpful as I had hoped since it's still pretty small, but it was a good start nonetheless. Near the end of the course I noticed that reading hiragana is nowhere near as hard as it used to be. There were some cases where I got confused, but that's not so bad. I also began to understand what people say in anime more accurately due to having some understanding of grammar now.
I didn't learn much kanji from Duolingo. The course went very far to avoid using any, instead going with hiragana even for simple words like 私(watashi). I somewhat understand why they did it like that. If you don't know a kanji, it can be demoralizing, but then again for me the opposite is just as true - if you know a kanji, it's easier to read than hiragana.
Eventually I tried reading some blogs in Japanese to get myself going again, but it turned out to be very hard. The blogs that I could understand used few kanji, but they were specifically made for learners of Japanese and for that reason the content wasn't actually interesting by itself.
I also tried some harder blogs that might be more interesting, but when I saw this line, I gave up:
"美術鑑賞の備忘録とデジタル画挑戦のために始めたブログが、けっきょくはいずれもできず" (from https://ameblo.jp/art00art/)
I realized that I had huge issues with reading anything that included kanji. I tried various other places, hoping to find stories that had fewer kanji. During the Duolingo course I had found http://hukumusume.com/douwa/pc/jap/ and tried to read Momotarou, since it was a story I somewhat knew beforehand, having read it a little when I had a private teacher. It had been too early then, as reading hiragana was too slow to remember the entire sentence. However, I was different now. I had completed the duolingo course.
Yet I didn't find the motivation to read it. It was not something I would do every day and so it seemed like any progress I get would just be erased with time as I forgot.
Instead I figured that if kanji is really so hard, I might as well just learn that instead. I started practicing kanji recognition with Anki, which is a tool I had known about for a while but didn't have a use for. I got the kanji from this wikipedia list: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:1000_Japanese_basic_words
Initially I added 10 words per day, but only those with multiple kanji in them. I thought that if a single kanji is used alone it might have too many ways to read it, so I would just confuse myself in the end. Similarly I avoided all words that didn't have kanji, since that wasn't the focus for me.
I missed a day at one point, but otherwise I've been practicing kanji recognition every single day, with today being day 39.
On some days I added more words from the list. By now I've almost got all the interesting words from it, so I've been looking for alternative sources, such as songs by Yousei Teikoku(妖精帝國) and Aimer(エメ). The singer of Yousei Teikoku is especially known for how she loves unusual kanji, so I've had to be careful about what words I learn. For that reason I put all words through romajidesu to see what they really mean and if there are multiple readings I also google them to see what's the difference between them and which ones I should probably not learn for now.
Today(23/11/2018) I finished reading Momotarou, which I started reading again a couple days ago on 19/11/2018. From the whole story I got 33 words to add to Anki, so the total is now 485 words, all of them with kanji.
I use the add-on Yomi-chan for quickly translating specific words, although I also use romajidesu.com for any words that I might want to learn with Anki. I never got Rikaichan to work up until now when I turned it off and that apparently activated it. Turning it off turns it on. Strange.
I've thought about taking more Japanese lessons, but right now I don't see a reason to do it. As long as I can keep going by myself, I should do that. If I ever get so stuck that I need help I'll probably take lessons again. For now though I'm fine.
I also have the Duolingo reverse tree(learning English through Japanese) on standby. I have no idea when I'll take that up. Maybe when I run out of things to do.
What I don't know is how far I'll eventually get with Japanese. I love the language and culture, but since I don't really have any Japanese friends I might forever remain a beginner or perhaps even lose interest. Losing interest seems unlikely, but who knows.
In any case, I feel passionate about all these things and will keep trying for a while. I don't see how it could completely fail and if I succeed it will be the biggest thing I've ever done on my own. Learning a completely new language mostly through my own effort is such a powerful idea that maybe if I can do it just once I'll be able to do so much more. If I can do something so hard, it will help me believe in myself and make me truly progress in other things as well, such as becoming good at singing and getting really good at game development. If I could do that, it would be so good.
Over time my Japanese got rusty. I tried learning from the Genki textbook myself (the one my teacher had used to teach me), but found it too hard. Reading took too much time to stay focused and the exercises didn't seem to help me learn fast enough that I would remain interested.
Eventually I considered asking the teacher again, but then I realized that it would be rude if I had forgotten everything he had taught me previously and had to start all over again. Thus I needed a way to learn. Something that would be easy enough to keep me interested, but still actually teach something.
Watching anime no longer taught me all that much, I had learned the most common words and the rest didn't stick. It did help me a bit - I got used to the sound of Japanese, so I was able to pick up words from speech. That said, I didn't know what the words meant and couldn't figure them out fast enough without a dictionary. And using a dictionary for everything is surely the least interesting way to learn. Or so I thought.
A couple months ago(4/08/2018) I started the Duolingo Japanese course that I had recently heard about from my sister. I had some experience with Duolingo before, having tried to learn German and Swedish on the site, although with very crude methods. I didn't get far with those languages because I did most of my learning on select few days when I was motivated, but then had no motivation to continue once I hit any real difficulties. Difficult parts simply can't be done in a day, but I didn't realize that at the time.
In any case, Japanese was going to be different. I had matured quite a bit in the recent years, so I decided that I would stick to Japanese and do something every single day. If I worked every day, it would be impossible to not progress. Knowing this was going to motivate me to keep going.
Around half the days were difficult for me. It took me 60 days to complete the course according to the streak counter on Duolingo. The second half of the time I was much more serious and made sure to do more than just keep the counter going, as I felt I was running out of time. This made it harder, but paradoxically I got way more done. Often I doubted whether I would be able to do it in 60 days at all, but I persisted and made it happen. Looking back it seems like my doubts were mostly a result of the pressure I was putting myself through, not rational observations. It was fear.
During the course I regularly sang songs from Aimer(エメ). She's one of my favourite singers due to her unique voice and her ballad-like songs. I don't know how much it helps my pronunciation, but singing gave me a way to take breaks from Duolingo without completely throwing Japanese out of my mind. Thus, it kept me focused.
I was done on 2/10/2018. I thought about what I should do next and talked with people about it and about what I had already achieved. The Duolingo course wasn't as helpful as I had hoped since it's still pretty small, but it was a good start nonetheless. Near the end of the course I noticed that reading hiragana is nowhere near as hard as it used to be. There were some cases where I got confused, but that's not so bad. I also began to understand what people say in anime more accurately due to having some understanding of grammar now.
I didn't learn much kanji from Duolingo. The course went very far to avoid using any, instead going with hiragana even for simple words like 私(watashi). I somewhat understand why they did it like that. If you don't know a kanji, it can be demoralizing, but then again for me the opposite is just as true - if you know a kanji, it's easier to read than hiragana.
Eventually I tried reading some blogs in Japanese to get myself going again, but it turned out to be very hard. The blogs that I could understand used few kanji, but they were specifically made for learners of Japanese and for that reason the content wasn't actually interesting by itself.
I also tried some harder blogs that might be more interesting, but when I saw this line, I gave up:
"美術鑑賞の備忘録とデジタル画挑戦のために始めたブログが、けっきょくはいずれもできず" (from https://ameblo.jp/art00art/)
I realized that I had huge issues with reading anything that included kanji. I tried various other places, hoping to find stories that had fewer kanji. During the Duolingo course I had found http://hukumusume.com/douwa/pc/jap/ and tried to read Momotarou, since it was a story I somewhat knew beforehand, having read it a little when I had a private teacher. It had been too early then, as reading hiragana was too slow to remember the entire sentence. However, I was different now. I had completed the duolingo course.
Yet I didn't find the motivation to read it. It was not something I would do every day and so it seemed like any progress I get would just be erased with time as I forgot.
Instead I figured that if kanji is really so hard, I might as well just learn that instead. I started practicing kanji recognition with Anki, which is a tool I had known about for a while but didn't have a use for. I got the kanji from this wikipedia list: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:1000_Japanese_basic_words
Initially I added 10 words per day, but only those with multiple kanji in them. I thought that if a single kanji is used alone it might have too many ways to read it, so I would just confuse myself in the end. Similarly I avoided all words that didn't have kanji, since that wasn't the focus for me.
I missed a day at one point, but otherwise I've been practicing kanji recognition every single day, with today being day 39.
On some days I added more words from the list. By now I've almost got all the interesting words from it, so I've been looking for alternative sources, such as songs by Yousei Teikoku(妖精帝國) and Aimer(エメ). The singer of Yousei Teikoku is especially known for how she loves unusual kanji, so I've had to be careful about what words I learn. For that reason I put all words through romajidesu to see what they really mean and if there are multiple readings I also google them to see what's the difference between them and which ones I should probably not learn for now.
Today(23/11/2018) I finished reading Momotarou, which I started reading again a couple days ago on 19/11/2018. From the whole story I got 33 words to add to Anki, so the total is now 485 words, all of them with kanji.
I use the add-on Yomi-chan for quickly translating specific words, although I also use romajidesu.com for any words that I might want to learn with Anki. I never got Rikaichan to work up until now when I turned it off and that apparently activated it. Turning it off turns it on. Strange.
I've thought about taking more Japanese lessons, but right now I don't see a reason to do it. As long as I can keep going by myself, I should do that. If I ever get so stuck that I need help I'll probably take lessons again. For now though I'm fine.
I also have the Duolingo reverse tree(learning English through Japanese) on standby. I have no idea when I'll take that up. Maybe when I run out of things to do.
What I don't know is how far I'll eventually get with Japanese. I love the language and culture, but since I don't really have any Japanese friends I might forever remain a beginner or perhaps even lose interest. Losing interest seems unlikely, but who knows.
In any case, I feel passionate about all these things and will keep trying for a while. I don't see how it could completely fail and if I succeed it will be the biggest thing I've ever done on my own. Learning a completely new language mostly through my own effort is such a powerful idea that maybe if I can do it just once I'll be able to do so much more. If I can do something so hard, it will help me believe in myself and make me truly progress in other things as well, such as becoming good at singing and getting really good at game development. If I could do that, it would be so good.
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