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.
