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May 2024

Why Japanese is So Frustrating

Japanese is very frustrating – but not for the reasons you’d think. You might think it’s because there are so many kanji with so many different readings. This isn’t the reason it’s frustrating.  Learning those is a time-consuming slog, but it’s straightforward.  Tools like wanikani can help with that. You might think it’s because the grammar is so backwards from English.  That isn’t really the reason it’s frustrating.  It’s fairly easy to adapt to, once you get into the right mindset. You might think it’s because there are so many… Read More »Why Japanese is So Frustrating

This site is about learning Japanese again.

I have been posting on this site for maybe six years now.  Originally it was meant to be about a, well, gaijin learning Japanese.  Quickly it began to include posts about Jpop and other Japanese culture, and then I went more and more off the rails until I barely talked about learning Japanese at all. I realized today that that doesn’t even make sense.  Not only did it probably destroy the site (something I don’t care as much as you’d think about), but the posts didn’t quite fit the theme… Read More »This site is about learning Japanese again.

The Japanese Resources I Currently Use

My journey of learning Japanese has been finding new apps/resources/etc., using them, tossing them aside, and finding others…  ad nauseum.  So the ones I’ve found now are the ones that have stood the test of time (for the most part).  Each one is a “part of this complete breakfast”, but none of them is a silver bullet, and none of them will get you towards the goal of N1 or C3 or fluency or whatever. Also, these are the resources that work for me.  Don’t get mad if they don’t work for you. Wanikani… Read More »The Japanese Resources I Currently Use

What I Would Do Different in my Japanese Journey

What would I do differently in my Japanese journey? Maybe not try at all?  Well, maybe, but there’s more to it than that. When I first started Japanese, I didn’t really know why I was doing it.  I still am not entirely sure, but I think it kind of came down to being my way of dealing with some issues that I was going through at the time.  I think I learned Japanese for much the same reason I started the Lily project.  There was something about that world that attracted… Read More »What I Would Do Different in my Japanese Journey