In the interest of encouraging each other. I thought I'd start a thread where we can post those little triumphs that show us that we are indeed making progress in this battle to learn a language.

For example, last night I was watching the Olympics and as I watched various Japanese athletes I realized I knew exactly how to write their names in kanji even though I had never seen them before.

I recognize a lot of kanji(or hanzi i should say) in the olympics but i'm not far enough along to do names yet.

Today, I suddenly understood 100% of a phrase I'd previously only gotten the gist of. That was satisfying. Also, I started reading ブラッドアローン, and realized that I didn't really have to look up that many words.

Oh, and I memorized the writing of Biang, just for the heck of it, although that's only tangentially related to Japanese studies.

I'm at a Japanese language kind of retreat thing here in Rinkuutown by the Kansai airport. Anyway I was reading a sign by the elevator and saw this kanji combination "段差." I was really surprised at first cuz I couldn't read the kanji but within the context of the sentence it was in I knew it was talking about a "grade difference." So I put it all together and it was talking about being carful when you get off the elevator because there might be a difference in the grade of the floor! Booya! Two seconds later I realized that I could read it as well as 段　is in the kanji for stairs (階段 kaidan) and 差　is in the kanji for discrimination/distinction (差別 sabetsu). 段差 (dansa)! Booyax2! That's another one in the 語彙　銀行！