The Journey Until Now - Part 1 (Human Japanese in 2011)

 Hello fellow reader, my name is Adam Boehm, and I'm here to summarize my Japanese studying regimen that I've been following so far before this blog really starts to kick off.  No, I'm not an expert at all, but my hope is that this blog will evolve as I become more confident in my Japanese abilities.  And maybe after reading about some of the mistakes that I made, you'll take more care to avoid falling into the same trap as me.  Anyway, let's get started.

April 2011 (junior year of high school)

"Eh, I don't feel like studying French anymore...  Why can't they offer languages that would be really impressive to learn?"

Looking at Japanese text intimidated me, but at the same time, I thought "How cool would it be to be able to read this?  I bet I could impress the ladies... or maybe just my friends."

And then I thought about it further.  I've been a fan of Nintendo since I was a kid, and the Japanese culture seemed interesting to me.  It was definitely something that I was willing to research more.

So what did I do?  I hopped onto YouTube, searched "how to write in Japanese" and I found Japanesepod101.com's series Kantan Kana.  I used this series to learn the two basic writing systems, ひらがな (Hiragana) and カタカナ (katakana).  I started out at a slow pace, learning about five characters a day.  At the time, I wasn't sure how much time I wanted to devote to this "project" yet.  All I knew was that I had nothing to do after school, and I wanted to see if I could learn a language with my free time.

And then I stumbled across the goldmine of learning software.  And no, it's not Rosetta Stone.

Human Japanese

This software is a godsend.  I'm not just saying that, either.  The time that I spent with Human Japanese was the most valuable time that I spent learning how to read sentences (in Kana) and listen to native speakers say the sentences whenever I click on them.  That's right, my friends.  Every sentence in Human Japanese has an audio file attached to it.  You don't need to insert a disc and find the track.  It's right there with the sentence.

Yes, Human Japanese does introduce hiragana and katakana characters, so you could easily skip the YouTube series that I used and jump right into Human Japanese.  However, I found the beginning chapters slightly easier since I already attained basic reading skills.

When I finished Human Japanese, the Intermediate version wasn't available at the time, so I bought textbooks.  There's no need for me to mention the names, but I can tell you that studying wasn't as fun anymore.  Also, a lot of the material in the books was already covered in Human Japanese, but I didn't feel like I was ready for the Intermediate textbooks.

So what did I do?  I decided to take a break from the project that brought me so much joy... all because I was lost and unsure about what to study next.  Keep in mind that I was coming up with my own curriculum.  I didn't have teachers to help me out, and none of my friends shared an interest in learning Japanese.  I was too shy to try conversing with native speakers in Japanese, so I put the books away and invested time in video games.

That's where this post comes to an end, I'm afraid.  But 2012 was right around the corner.  A new year meant new opportunities, and that's what I'm going to leave you with for today.

Until next time,

Adam
アダム