I'm 23, at frame 1836 and can't wait for RTK to be done and to finally start learning "real" Japanese.

Finally !!!
I've wondered A LOT how old the learners around here are ! Especially these names you see everywhere like buonaparte, nest0r, Fabrice, cb4960, Nukemarine and all those people !
I think there was a thread like this somewhere, but much smaller. I might have dug it up when I was bored some day :/ "reading old discussions is great fun most of the time, just search for something you're interested in on the forum ^^ "

I turned 17 a month ago. I finished RTK two months ago but preferred to wait for summer to start Japanese the Manga Way.
*preferred" is a pretext here ^^' I don't know why I couldn't start anything :/

Rediscovered Anime last summer and fell in love with everything Japanese, plus my passion for languages ^^

13-year-olds !!!! Great work ! Keep on you people ^^


The thing that will make this place a heaven is a "social" theme. If it was like a Goodreads.com for Japanese learners, would've just been great ! I'd deactivate my Facebook account :|


EDIT : XD, THIS IS THAT THREAD !

Age 17 now, 18 in August. Did all of RTK1 when I was 16 from October to June. Kind of guessed a lot of people here were around 20s~30s. I must be a minority.

Age: 19, turning 20 in November.
I started RTK in February. I had a week at leisure from the military so I learned the initial 600 Kanji in seven days but I just didn't have the time for 200 reviews every single day while I was at service, so I stopped reviewing in the end of February. I started from where I left in the middle of May.
Current Kanji: 920

27!

I finished RTK1 about three years ago..? I guess.. and my brain has stopped considering Japanese as a foreign object. I stick around because I like to see what's going on in the Japanese learning world these days.

Will be 25 in August. Wow I'm already well into my twenties...
I finished RTK in August 2009, but quit Japanese for two years, and then back but had many small breaks, I easily get distracted on hour to hour and on long term basis.
Come to think of it, if I kept on studying Japanese consistently since I've finished RTK, I would be fluent by now... This is depressing indeed...BUT now is better than later, and both are better than never!

I started learning Japanese on my 19th birthday, April 2012. My very first step was learning hiragana, I remember that day very well (best impulse decision ever!). Finished RTK1 on December 1, 2012 (I took a hybrid approach including vocab [mainly Core2k] and grammar [mainly JTMW] study though). I'm 20 right now and reading awesome manga, children/light novels and visual novels with a variety of tools by my side to help comprehension. Recently I got myself an Android smartphone (for epwing/edict/eijirou lookups, anki reviews and aozora ebooks) and the Basic and Intermediate Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar; it feels like an evolution, they're magnificent study aids.

Sounds great, right? Except I constantly pressured and stressed myself to perform to the point of almost burning out and now my mind often triggers stress responses when reading Japanese. I also tend to obsess over comprehension and get frustrated when I don't understand something or forget things I knew before, even though I usually understand the vast majority of the material. Also pretty much neglected listening/speaking (feels impossible), didn't do much writing either. So my current goal is to try to "fix" these issues as much as I can before my next birthday.

Studying Japanese is definitely a good way to take your knowledge of your own strong points and weaknesses to a higher level ^^;

This is also something to keep in mind for the people who regret not having pushed themselves hard enough to progress faster: you don't know how it would've influenced things like your enjoyment and stress level. The returns can be high, but taking it easy is the safest route. Maybe you would've had far more regret or even burned out with a faster route.

@Undead_Saif
Welcome back! Wait, did you go somewhere?

@Savii
That's an interesting perspective about the stress levels. I think it had more to do caffeine, but trying to compete in Tadoku and keeping up with work and real life pressures gave me a minor eyelid twitch for a few days. Nonetheless, I've been enjoying the challenge. I think I read faster in English now that I've learned to read quickly and not over think things in Japanese. Like you, and despite Tadoku, I've realized I need to focus on speaking right now. It's good to know, however, that all I have to do is refocus my energy because there are people around me who are patient enough to listen to my stumbling Japanese.
I like the way you use your birthdays as markers for self-improvement and achieving your goals, and how you gave the commitment to study Japanese to yourself when you turned 19. Kampai!

I feel old. I am 25 years old here.

I finished RTK for about 3-4 months. Haha

Yeah, you're over the hill.

Uhm, I'm 43 for another hour...
I was a JET 1992-1994. Now I'm a h.s. teacher of Asian Studies and the East Asia Club advisor. My job is fun. I just got back from my 3rd trip to Japan to our sister school with students. Every year a Japanese delegation comes to my school and I coordinate everything. A year ago, I would have thought I would never be able to read Japanese. Now I'm reading my childhood favorite novels thanks to stumbling across this site. Life is good.

You kick ass, Lori.

Ah, so you're all children, the majority at least. No wonder.
I wish you luck.

buonaparte Wrote:Ah, so you're all children, the majority at least. No wonder.
I wish you luck.

Life experience isn't the same as years spent alive. A common fallacy of thought.

theasianpleaser Wrote:27 will be 28 in a few months.

Never really thought about my age until I saw this thread

Posted the above comment in November 2008. I had been in Japan a little more than a year and finished RTK 1 in 2.5 months.

Now coming up on 6 years in Japan and kanji is a daily part of my job and life. Mr. T and shakuhachi still occasionally enter my mind when I casually glance at a headline

uisukii Wrote:Life experience isn't the same as years spent alive. A common fallacy of thought.

Sure. I’ve always suspected that being a child prevents you from all common fallacies. Not so sure about uncommon ones, though.

So even though most people here are closer to or in their twenties you consider them children? That's quite a foreign line of thought to me.

buonaparte Wrote:Ah, so you're all children, the majority at least. No wonder.
I wish you luck.

何様のつもりやねんｗ

drdunlap Wrote:何様のつもりやねんｗ

仰るとおり。穴があれば入りたい。

tashippy Wrote:@Undead_Saif
Welcome back! Wait, did you go somewhere?

Thank you! No I didn't go anywhere, while in university I convinced myself that all my time must be spent on studying engineering, so I lost Japanese and didn't become the super engineer I intended to be, lol.
About a year ago I returned to learning Japanese, started with RTK lite, and then proceeded with Tae Kim's and Core2k6k, but I'm very easy to distract so my progress was VERY slow. I renewed the determination recently, and it went relatively good this week. Had do do some mind tricks on myself, like telling myself that there's nothing worth doing other that learning Japanese and the guitar! LOL.

undead_saif Wrote:there's nothing worth doing other that learning Japanese and the guitar! LOL.

I don't think that's a bad sentiment. We may as well start a guitar Japanese thread. I think there's a few members who share these two passions.

Do bassists count? :p

Stian Wrote:Do bassists count? :p

I'm a guitarist... and no, bassists don't count. Well, they count more than drummers.

=D

Haha, I'm a drummer. I agree with Tzadeck

Stian Wrote:Do bassists count? :p

tashippy Wrote:Haha, I'm a drummer.

tashippy Wrote:I don't think that's a bad sentiment. We may as well start a guitar Japanese thread. I think there's a few members who share these two passions.

Maybe make a Japanese learning band? And take the name "Weeaboos" HAHA!

Tzadeck Wrote:

Stian Wrote:Do bassists count? :p

I'm a guitarist... and no, bassists don't count. Well, they count more than drummers.

=D

LOL This cracked me up!!