A success story

[nandemoii]

I AM sorry, I was misunderstood.
I forgot to quote. It is not MY (nandemoii's) story, but the blog's AUTHOR's story.
I am not as good as he is ... YET.

http://alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about/

I learned Japanese in 18 months by having fun. In June 2004, at the ripe old age of 21, all post-pubescent and supposedly past my mental/linguistic prime, I started learning Japanese. By September 2005, I had learned enough to read technical material, conduct business correspondence and job interviews in Japanese. By the next month, I landed a job as a software engineer at a large Japanese company in Tokyo (yay!).

I didn’t take classes (except for a high-level “newspaper reading” class…which merely confirmed that classes, um, suck); I didn’t read textbooks and I had never lived in Japan.

So how did I do it? Well, by spending 18-24 hours a day doing something, anything in Japanese (”all Japanese, all the time”). That sounds like a lot of time to invest, but I was almost as busy as you are: a full-time student majoring in computer science at a university in the armpit of the US (Utah), physically far from Japan and Japanese people. I had computer science coursework, jobs and even a non-Japanese “significant other”. In other words, I had a life.

So what? Well, my point is not that I’m better or you or smarter than you. I am not. I am not special—in fact, I have an embarrassing history of making incredibly dumb mistakes that other people just never make. But I achieved some good results and there were reasons for that, namely:

1. The belief that I could become fluent in Japanese
2. Constantly doing fun stuff in Japanese

[TheProfessorOne]

Hey man,

Thanks for the encouraging post. If you did "learning" it in 18 months, I would think that was some sort of world record.

Seriously though, I am reading your site and loving your direct way of dealing with the topic at hand. I will mark it and check it from time to time. Thanks for the info and best of luck in that job and with your Japanese.

- Pro

[nandemoii]

I AM sorry, I was misunderstood.
I forgot to quote. It is not MY story, but the blog's AUTHOR's story.
I am not as good as he is ... YET.

[TheProfessorOne]

I AM sorry, I was misunderstood.
I forgot to quote. It is not MY story, but the blog's AUTHOR's story.
I am not as good as he is ... YET.

Ah well that makes all the difference in the world huh? Either way it was a nice read. I didn't care for how he kept asking for money all over his site, but to each his own.

I did inspire me to try harder. I even grabbed my kanji dictionary and sat in a bubble bath for an hour! Woohooo!

[kichigaijin]

I love that... (paraphrasing)
"I spent 6 years studying Chinese off and on, but I had absolutely no experience with Japanese"

Like saying "I studied latin for 6 years and on a completely unrelated topic, I picked up Spanish rather quickly".

I praise the guy for working hard and picking up the language that well. Even getting that far in 7.5 years is nothing to scoff at; waaay better than me. But that time spent in Chinese definitely had some carry over.

Appreciate his recommendations though and implementing what i can.

[Bueller_007]

I love that... (paraphrasing)
"I spent 6 years studying Chinese off and on, but I had absolutely no experience with Japanese"

Like saying "I studied latin for 6 years and on a completely unrelated topic, I picked up Spanish rather quickly".

I praise the guy for working hard and picking up the language that well. Even getting that far in 7.5 years is nothing to scoff at; waaay better than me. But that time spent in Chinese definitely had some carry over.

Appreciate his recommendations though and implementing what i can.

I didn't see any mention of him learning Chinese.

[kichigaijin]

I love singing my own praises. And I love casting stones, people, but unfortunately I am not without sin. I’ve been “studying” Chinese since late 1998 or so, but I’ve stopped more times and for longer periods than I care to freely admit in a public forum such as this. From 1999-2001, I didn’t do any Chinese at all (I would sit around feeling guilty about not doing it, but that doesn’t count). From 2001-2004, I took some Chinese classes off and on, but was distracted by my desperate search for tools and methods that would allow long-term memorization of large numbers of Chinese characters (thanks to Piotr Wozniak, Rick Harbaugh, Mary Noguchi, Chris Houser and James Heisig, that problem is now solved). And then since 2004, Chinese has been taking a big back seat to Japanese.

from: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl ... echniques/

Still trying to find his comment where he says something along the lines of:
Chinese language students hit the 常用漢字 level by about 1.5 years because they start out in kanji and don't have kana around as a "crutch".

EDIT: A really random thought just popped into my head about music unlocking the memory. Then I remembered how ancient poets like Homer would remember astronomically huge volumes of material by turning it into song form. Now I'm realizing that I'm probably going to have to make a more serious attempt to get into JPop. I've got over 12K songs on my ipod and know the lyrics to a large majority of them, so 2,000 kanji and/or new vocabulary words shouldn't be a problem.

[TheProfessorOne]

EDIT: A really random thought just popped into my head about music unlocking the memory. Then I remembered how ancient poets like Homer would remember astronomically huge volumes of material by turning it into song form. Now I'm realizing that I'm probably going to have to make a more serious attempt to get into JPop. I've got over 12K songs on my ipod and know the lyrics to a large majority of them, so 2,000 kanji and/or new vocabulary words shouldn't be a problem.

I must admit that your random thought is in fact "right" IMO.

I noticed through college that I learn much faster, and remember more often, while studying in music form. Although JPOD101 isn't exactly music, I am noticing that my ability to recall words and phrases has picked up since I start listening.

Good food for thought. Load that IPod!

[kichigaijin]

you know i would really be poor if Japanese iTunes would let me make an account and if it carried better stuff- like Orange Range, Judy & Mary, Asian Kung Fu Generation, Aqua Times, etc.

my favorite band right now is 九州-based female punk trio i picked up in 沖縄 during my trip there named Sodopp. The Japanese is pretty easy for me and the stories they tell are funny (ie. "マイカー"- about a "paper driver": someone with a license but no car "ハイウェーを走る。どこまでも遠くまで”). Listening to this band has actually taught me a bit and I haven't even busted out the lyrics sheet to see all of the words yet. New project!!!

[Bueller_007]

I love singing my own praises. And I love casting stones, people, but unfortunately I am not without sin. I’ve been “studying” Chinese since late 1998 or so, but I’ve stopped more times and for longer periods than I care to freely admit in a public forum such as this. From 1999-2001, I didn’t do any Chinese at all (I would sit around feeling guilty about not doing it, but that doesn’t count). From 2001-2004, I took some Chinese classes off and on, but was distracted by my desperate search for tools and methods that would allow long-term memorization of large numbers of Chinese characters (thanks to Piotr Wozniak, Rick Harbaugh, Mary Noguchi, Chris Houser and James Heisig, that problem is now solved). And then since 2004, Chinese has been taking a big back seat to Japanese.

from: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl ... echniques/

Well then, yeah, he had a bit of a head start when it came to Japanese then, didn't he.