woah! 200k reviews!

Nana korobi, ya oki. I hope I have this right! I am told it means "I fall seven times, I get up eight." The meaning should be obvious. I have had the disappointing experience of getting to 700 or more kanji several times, only to let life get in the way. So, I'm getting up again. That's my milestone!

WOHO!
Finished reading my first full-length book in Japanese. So much fun!

i just finished the book "日本語できます vol1",its almost entirely in japanese and i understood more than 60% of it

Finished my first children's novel, スレイヤーズ １ リナとキメラの魔法戦士, and my first light novel, キノの旅 1, a couple of weeks ago. The former, I was able to understand almost everything. The latter involved a fair bit of skipping technical stuff and riding on the fact that I saw the anime, but it was fun to read.

In Anki stats, I recently crossed 21k reviews on my Core6k deck (3777 seen), and my RTK deck is down to only 20-25 reviews a day (almost 20k total reviews).

I did UBJG a while back, but I've started working through Nukemarine's wonderful Tae Kim cloze deck to fill in the gaps.

ta12121 Wrote:

vinniram Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:New achievement, can read japanese novels with only a few rare vocab/rare-reading that I can't read. I can understand/listen to anything in japanese and understand all of it now.[Obviously, what I mean by this is: majority of everything, movies,dramas,animes,tv-shows,reading articles,new-sites,etc. If it was a high-level about theoretical physics in Japanese, then there would be some high-level vocab but none-the less, you can't know everything in a language but you can become fluent]
The things that trip me up still, but is becoming less and less as I increase my kanji knowledge. Is names,place-names. That's about it. Aside from the rare readings, I've attained a good level of reading/understanding. I believe I will work on ways of improving speaking/writing next, which is so far is going good. I tend to use J books to explain j-stuff now.

hey, how long have you been studying? That's a really amazing achievement! congratulations, I hope I can be like that in 5 years

1 year and 2 months now in total. I did take a full semester of a level 1 course in japanese but, I don't consider that into the number because solely, I forgot/didn't care at the time when I took it. It didn't really teach me much/or anything[only thing it taught me was, there was no way i could get fluent even if I took all courses.]. I soon found out that the highest level, level 8 would teach you only 400 kanji. Now I know around 2000-2500, so the self-study method definitely tells me you can learn a language on your own. The only thing that would be good is one on one tutors, because your only concentrated on yourself. Conversational classes and such things like this.

Jesus, it took just a year and change from learning your first hiragana to being able to understand adult novels and the news perfectly? I want whatever you`re eating. It sounds hard to believe, to be honest, but I guess where there`s a will, there`s a way. I imagine if you took the N1 you`d get over 90% without having to study.

I, however, have been studying off and on for about 7 years and still talk like a caveman. To anyone else here that is still struggling with this language after several years of study, you are not alone.

julianjalapeno Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:

vinniram Wrote:hey, how long have you been studying? That's a really amazing achievement! congratulations, I hope I can be like that in 5 years

1 year and 2 months now in total. I did take a full semester of a level 1 course in japanese but, I don't consider that into the number because solely, I forgot/didn't care at the time when I took it. It didn't really teach me much/or anything[only thing it taught me was, there was no way i could get fluent even if I took all courses.]. I soon found out that the highest level, level 8 would teach you only 400 kanji. Now I know around 2000-2500, so the self-study method definitely tells me you can learn a language on your own. The only thing that would be good is one on one tutors, because your only concentrated on yourself. Conversational classes and such things like this.

Jesus, it took just a year and change from learning your first hiragana to being able to understand adult novels and the news perfectly? I want whatever you`re eating. It sounds hard to believe, to be honest, but I guess where there`s a will, there`s a way. I imagine if you took the N1 you`d get over 90% without having to study.

I, however, have been studying off and on for about 7 years and still talk like a caveman. To anyone else here that is still struggling with this language after several years of study, you are not alone.

I'm still far from fluent(very far in my own opinion). But I know I have made some good accomplishments for myself so far, but I don't think I'm even good though. I think it's because all this "learning" has been just fun. Learning more kanji, understanding native jp material and yet...
I still want to keep going until I reach that goal of mastering Japanese to the extent similar to a native-level college student(same as me).

As for what i'm eating lol. Nothing special, I pretty much just srs a lot,listen a lot,read a lot and make connections between monolingual look-ups,grammar and so forth. But one thing stands out the most is, daily effort. I put in my time daily and enjoyed ever bit of it.
Even though this is a good accomplishment, I'm still very,very far from being fluent.

I recently started through RSH while learning readings as well. I'm on 350, so I've still got a ways to go, but it's nice to be back into a familiar routine. Almost a fourth of the way there! I suppose that is a rather nice milestone.

I was accepted into Ritsumeikan University yesterday. I'll be in Japan for 4 more years now! =D

Cheesemaster64 Wrote:I was accepted into Ritsumeikan University yesterday. I'll be in Japan for 4 more years now! =D

Did you made any exam? On what subject? Japanese?
I too want to apply for a masters there, I've been searching and Fukuoka Daigaku seems the best choise for me, but I have to take an admission exam and as I don't what the exam is about...


Congrats!

Cheesemaster64 Wrote:I was accepted into Ritsumeikan University yesterday. I'll be in Japan for 4 more years now! =D

Congrats! Holy crap that awesome for you!

My biggest recent milestone is scrolling through my iPod and being able to 'decode' some song names using Heisig keywords.

Kind of puts me to shame, though I'm still seriously proud of mine.

Wishing you the best 4 years Japan and your own academic ambition can get you!

Yesterday was my first business meeting entirely in Japanese, where I was the only non-Japanese person in the conference room. Not only was I able to understand everything, take notes in Japanese, and remember everything in Japanese afterwords, but I was able to contribute to the meeting as well.

Pretty happy about that.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Yesterday was my first business meeting entirely in Japanese, where I was the only non-Japanese person in the conference room. Not only was I able to understand everything, take notes in Japanese, and remember everything in Japanese afterwords, but I was able to contribute to the meeting as well.

Pretty happy about that.

WOW! I'm impressed! I had a business meeting once where I was the only non Japanese, it was a disaster.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Yesterday was my first business meeting entirely in Japanese, where I was the only non-Japanese person in the conference room. Not only was I able to understand everything, take notes in Japanese, and remember everything in Japanese afterwords, but I was able to contribute to the meeting as well.

Pretty happy about that.

that's awesome, keep up the good work

I'm heading towards the 1 year and 3 month mark(15 month mark). Another progress report is due. I will post it once I've reached it. Should be a few more days or by the end of the month

I finally figured out that the "BS" and "CS" buttons on my remote in my hotel room will get me more T.V. channels (although I've got a sneaky suspicion that the CS is the japanese equivalent of the Shopping network). Only took me about 2 years to discover this. Yey me!

aargh57 Wrote:I finally figured out that the "BS" and "CS" buttons on my remote in my hotel room will get me more T.V. channels (although I've got a sneaky suspicion that the CS is the japanese equivalent of the Shopping network). Only took me about 2 years to discover this. Yey me!

Grats! Considering what I've heard of Japanese TV, those extra channels will probably come in handy

Are the 'unscripted' shows as bad as they say?

Last night I decided I needed an online pitch-accent dictionary. So I found one, all by myself, in Japanese. I'm pretty pleased with myself.

I love this thread for its sense of perspective. Learning Japanese is a hugely impossible task, like climbing a massive mountain. But, I come here, look a long way down to where adoette is now (I remember that. It was maybe a year ago.), then a long way up to Ryuujin, and for some reason the task doesn't seem too big anymore. Impossible, but we're doing the impossible. 奇跡を起こしてる。Awakening miracles.

Congratulations everyone for making it as far and thank you for your encouragement.

皆、頑張ろう！

wildweathel Wrote:Last night I decided I needed an online pitch-accent dictionary. So I found one, all by myself, in Japanese. I'm pretty pleased with myself.

I love this thread for its sense of perspective. Learning Japanese is a hugely impossible task, like climbing a massive mountain. But, I come here, look a long way down to where adoette is now (I remember that. It was maybe a year ago.), then a long way up to Ryuujin, and for some reason the task doesn't seem too big anymore. Impossible, but we're doing the impossible. 奇跡を起こしてる。Awakening miracles.

Congratulations everyone for making it as far and thank you for your encouragement.

皆、頑張ろう！

the more you climb, the more you noticed it isn't as hard as it's cracked up to be. But it's a long-term task that requires long-term enjoyment. That's what I've found out so far as I keep learning japanese and reaching more new levels.

oh yea i bought chopstick set(kanji design). It looks awesome(well i haven't gotten it yet but should come by the end of the month). I'm basically trying to keep that "japanese" feel for everything. My computer is all in japanese, the games i play are in japanese, the music i listen to/mp3 player is in japanese, the books i read are japanese, the text i write out for fun is in japanese. Basically I've gotten to that point of not caring what others think about me when I have all my japanese stuff with me(Reading books on the bus/music in jp).

Some people find it awesome, while others find it strange in a way. But it really doesn't matter, all that matters is enjoyment

I know this isn't much...but I'm a third of the way though mining Japanese the Manga Way and am finally understanding some grammar things I've missed in the past. Plus I'm 600 words through kore and actually loving it. Anki's fun now.

Starting to be able to read and comprehend without thinking about it some (albeit extremely) simple sentences with grammar I know. (I like grammar, so I pick it up somewhat quickly).

This is fun! =)

adoette Wrote:

aargh57 Wrote:I finally figured out that the "BS" and "CS" buttons on my remote in my hotel room will get me more T.V. channels (although I've got a sneaky suspicion that the CS is the japanese equivalent of the Shopping network). Only took me about 2 years to discover this. Yey me!

Grats! Considering what I've heard of Japanese TV, those extra channels will probably come in handy

Are the 'unscripted' shows as bad as they say?

I actually like the unscripted shows. If you like goofy stuff japanese T.V. is great. I also watch a Japanese sesame street type show on a regular basis that I really like.

I also went to an izakaya last night and I was the first gaijin to go there. They were really impressed that I could read and write kana and some kanji. I was able to follow along on the karaoke T.V. and sang one of the local okinawa folk songs that I was familiar with (ジョンジョン）。

Just finished 完全マスター文法2級. I skipped over the exersies but I'm going to go back and finish those too. It's so weird -- whenever I came to a point I didn't understand I would leave it and come back and understand it after doing some other points that aren't related. I guess the less puzzle peices the easier it gets.

皆さん、頑張ってください！

I'm about to finish 完全マスター文法3級. Only a few lessons left, easy ones, covering stuff I already know, but it's good to review before the 4kyuu. I enjoyed using it (my company during my 2.5 hours) in the train to home, every friday for the last weeks, it was useful because I learned a few more grammar points　(like てもかまいません or volitional+とする...).

Also, I've been watching "mother" for the last 30 days or so (watched loads of times lol) and learned new vocabulary and can understand a lot of what they are saying, I'd say 60/70% and not more because of unknow vocabulary (that I will learn eventually). Whatching this and more recently "AYUready" I've been catching casual japanese expressions.

It feels so great to actually undestand what it is being said

My japanese speaking skills are getting better, I'm gaining more confidence with my japanese and have been speaking more in the classes. I have been training at home whenever I learn a new grammar point I repeat example sentences or create a few of my own and repeat them, imagining myself in real world situations (like for instance talking to my teachers).
My listening skills are getting better too, I've been listening to japanese everytime, unless I have to study for history, either way I just end up singing or trying to answer to the dialogs.

I've just begun so compared to some of the amazing milestones this is quite small. But I just saw 東京 and then translated it to the Heisig keywords, then realized what it means together in English.

Put a smile on my face, yup yup