dizmox Wrote:I was definitely getting ahead of myself by going to the BCF 1 year after completing RTK though, oh man that was a trainwreck. D: Did you say you interviewed there, or am I mixing you up with someone else?

I think I'm more social and outgoing in Japanese, I could never bring myself to do karaoke in English for instance...

Yeah, I was interviewed by Square Enix, and then turned in an (English) essay, had an interview, and will have another one within a week or so? Yeah, I'm still in the process (how long do these take?!) but you could definitely be thinking about me.


Yeah...When I'm in Japan, it's not so much of a problem. It's now that I'm back in the states, so I'm losing my conversation skills as time goes on, and I'm not as talkative at our conversation tables anymore. I think I have a tougher time speaking Japanese with other native English speakers than with native Japanese speakers...go figure

Yeah you're who I was thinking of, good luck with the interview. I'm surprised you could interview in Japanese but only barely passed JLPT1 since most of the companies there seem to insist on complete fluency.

I ended up finding a internship back home in quant finance and intend to build up technical experience to end up in a senior role in Japan later on.

In June it'll be 2 years. I'm still pretty much a beginner. I have a really hard time with the language. I'm not going to say it's not my fault, I go on and off every few weeks, only keeping my anki reps consistent. I just feel like I'm directionless. I wish someone could guide me every step of the way and know exactly what I need to study or how to help me. Unfortunately that's not realistic, and I may never succeed in my goal of learning Japanese.

I feel like a bit of a downer.

I think plenty of people would be happy to tell you want to do TheVinster, but I think you'd then have the trouble of knowing who to listen to.

dizmox Wrote:Yeah you're who I was thinking of, good luck with the interview. I'm surprised you could interview in Japanese but only barely passed JLPT1 since most of the companies there seem to insist on complete fluency.

I ended up finding a internship back home in quant finance and intend to build up technical experience to end up in a senior role in Japan later on.

I'm trying for their research and development section, which according to the guy is about 40% foreigners, and a lot of work is done in English.

The interview at BCF was 100% Japanese, and I'm pretty sure he could tell my パソコン用語 probably isn't up to par, but we focussed on more on concepts rather than complex computer answers I probably can't answer in English.
The Skype interview was about...probably 60% English, to be honest. It was a different guy who, IIRC, was Canadian? But then the Japanese guy came on, and we talked about Japanese literature for a while (my other major)...which I kind of made a fool of myself. I don't know anything about Japanese Literature :/

But yeah, thanks a lot! I'm hoping for the best.

So you lined something up in finance? They sure had a lot of financial-types there. I was a little disappointed, because I don't know anything about/have any interest in finance. But yeah, nice job hooking the internship, and I hope you end up in Japan

TheVinster Wrote:I just feel like I'm directionless. I wish someone could guide me every step of the way and know exactly what I need to study or how to help me. Unfortunately that's not realistic, and I may never succeed in my goal of learning Japanese.

This was pretty much the reason I decided to sign up for classes. I was signing up freshman year and I noticed Japanese was an option -- I figured I may never get another chance and...well, it's kind of shaped who I am now, to be honest.

People here, and those adamant followers of AJATT seem to look down upon classes, but I thought they were great. Provided direction, motivation, and an excellent community -- once I got past the beginner classes, the people still studying are usually pretty cool people.

I'm much more suited to the technical, mathematical coding roles in finance rather than the mainstream stuff which require native level Japanese that get touted at these fairs, so I felt a bit out of my depth too.

Did you see the tobacco company stall? I wonder if you need to smoke to work there...

TheVinster Wrote:I feel like a bit of a downer.

Don't feel bad. It's difficult, everyday I convince myself to try X or do Y....
From what I read, I think the best thing is too make it fun! Try to do something that you like to do...of course saying all that keep in mind that I'm a total newbie. If I only learn one new Kanji or one new word a day overtime it makes a difference.
The next things on my list to try are:
The movie method and some type of vocabulary sentence mining! I need to learn more words!

dizmox Wrote:I'm much more suited to the technical, mathematical coding roles in finance rather than the mainstream stuff which require native level Japanese that get touted at these fairs, so I felt a bit out of my depth too.

Did you see the tobacco company stall? I wonder if you need to smoke to work there...

I just noticed you're from the UK...and I'm not supposing there were too many from the UK there (just a guess, because they have a London one, right?)

You didn't happen to be waiting for the bus afterwards one day and talk to a korean kid and an awkward american kid with curly hair, did you?


Tobacco Company: I was wondering if it was a requirement or not, and if you would have to change brands if you didn't smoke theirs ?! lol

Nah that wasn't me, I was hanging around with some Japanese guy I met at the Hearthrow departure lounge and his friends a bit, then holed myself up in my hotel room later on. Definitely wasn't a great place to be given my unease around crowds and formal situations, haha.

I've studied for just under a year. I am a second-year student, and I guess I'll be a third-year student in May. When I started, I used Genki and Pimsleur as well. I spend a lot of time practicing writing kanji, but I'm now focusing mostly on spoken Japanese. I've tried a lot of different methods, but what works best for me is listening to a variety of different textbooks' audio and repeating it. I use Core 6000 in Anki, but it is hardly as useful as the dialogues from textbooks I use. Short sentences seem to help with vocab, but they do much less in terms of listening comprehension. I don't use RTK, but I did give it several tries. I've found more success with sticking to kanji in words I know and studying them in Anki.

I don't read textbooks cover to cover anymore. Whenever I can't understand something, I just open up the book and figure out what they're saying using the vocab and grammar lessons from that chapter. I use audio from Ultimate Japanese, Genki, Pimsleur, Japanese for Busy People, Minna no Nihongo, Intro to Intermediate Japanese, etc. In many cases, I've edited out long gaps to make the flow more normal.

Also, I would advise against using Pimsleur and Genki as your sole audio sources. Pimsleur is too slow, and it uses way too much English. The sentences in Japanese are short, and they are spaced too far apart. I ended up cutting out just the dialogues at the beginning and adding them in with my other dialogues. Genki's audio is a little better once you get through the first half of the first book, but even then, it's fairly slow.

I'm in my 4th semester of Japanese classes right now. Started using An integrated approach to Intermediate Japanese by akira miura. My classes went through the first two genki books already. The teacher I have now is better in the sense that he doesnt just stick to the grammar we are learning and he'll bring in grammar from say 102 201 that was breezed by before. I like the book a lot better than genki too because it has longer sentences and less furigana.

Been doing rtk since Jan 23rd about. and I'm currently up to 700 kanji.

To be honest I don't like the classes that much because I haven't gotten much out of it. I can speak slowly but its still choppy. I probably won't be satisified until I'm throwing out sentences without thinking. Truely reacting in japanese.

Been following AJATT as long as I've been doing RTK. I now feel almost uncomfortable around english. It feels like I'm cheating. A couple days I celebrated good moments with a couple of my favorite english rap songs. but disciplin builds character and language skills. I can sing along random phrases in japanese now but i don't know what they mean yet.

So 1.5 years of study and all I really have to show for it is the 700 kanji I picked up from RTK. Which is a big deal a great start and I'm looking forward to finishing and moving on with AJATT.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:Started using An integrated approach to Intermediate Japanese by akira miura.

Just talked with the guy today
He's doing good, but has a tendency to talk a lot about how getting old sucks, and all his friends are dying. But he's also got some pretty neat stories -- like getting surgery without anesthesia after the war.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:To be honest I don't like the classes that much because I haven't gotten much out of it. I can speak slowly but its still choppy. I probably won't be satisified until I'm throwing out sentences without thinking. Truely reacting in japanese.

This is really something that you probably won't get out of a class. Classes can give you motivation and direction, but they won't get your mind working in Japanese. This is a skill you've got to develop on your own time by talking to people, internal dialogues, etc...
I'm all for classes, but if you really want to develop skills, you've gotta do that on your own.

Asriel Wrote:

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:Started using An integrated approach to Intermediate Japanese by akira miura.

Just talked with the guy today
He's doing good, but has a tendency to talk a lot about how getting old sucks, and all his friends are dying. But he's also got some pretty neat stories -- like getting surgery without anesthesia after the war.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:To be honest I don't like the classes that much because I haven't gotten much out of it. I can speak slowly but its still choppy. I probably won't be satisified until I'm throwing out sentences without thinking. Truely reacting in japanese.

This is really something that you probably won't get out of a class. Classes can give you motivation and direction, but they won't get your mind working in Japanese. This is a skill you've got to develop on your own time by talking to people, internal dialogues, etc...
I'm all for classes, but if you really want to develop skills, you've gotta do that on your own.

Pretty much true, if you want to develop your skills. You have to do it on your own time. I've learned from experience(math classes) is that if you want to do good in something you have to put in the time outside of the classroom. How do I know? I had to take grade nine math 3 times in highschool. A lot of people assumed I was stupid, even the teachers (i.e. recommending I take applied courses,etc,etc). But guess what? When I took grade 10 math I ended up with an 86 the first try. The teachers couldn't believe it.

But it was pretty simple, all I did was put in the time.
Heck even when I'm learning Japanese people don't know how far I've gone. When the time comes(i.e. I put in more time and more time, until I reach fluency). Everyone will be surprised yet again. But this time, it's different. This isn't for school or for anyone else. This is for myself, no one should be forcing you to learn a language

Interesting thread. Thanks for sharing so far everybody

Hm. I studied Japanese once a week in university besides my normal courses, that was in 2002 and it was for about a year. That hepled me with the basics. I studied on and off a bit by myself. My listening skills at that time were already quite good thanks to listening/watching to jmusic/jdramas/anime since 1998 basically every day in Japanese.

3 years ago I moved to Japan which is when I REALLY started studying Japanese seriously (all by myself, though). I started out with RTK (End of July - September '08), then I continued with KO 2010 (both books), a bit of Kanji in Context, grammar via the Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate grammar, then prep for N2 grammar, took N2 (my first JLPT test ever) in December last year and passed (I took a 2kyuu mock test in December 2009 and passed as well .. I was just too scared and greedy to take the real thing earlier).
In 2008 I was really extremely motivated and studied every single minute before and after work. It became less and less and I also always had longer breaks in between, but also was always able to resume my reviews without problems.
Since I passed N2 (and won a speech contest here in Japan last year) I haven't really done anything (apart from reading novels, listening to jmusic etc.), I have to get back to ANKI and Co. soon or else I will never pass N1.

By now I can manage life in Japan quite well. I still have problems in hospitals when the doctors use medical terms I might not even know in my mother tongue and stuff like that and I still lack vocab and grammar skills, but it's really on a good level which is probably why my motivation went down a bit (plus there are so many other things going on right now in my life as well ..)

I want to try RTK3, but that might have to wait until after I pass N1.

dizmox Wrote:Nah that wasn't me, I was hanging around with some Japanese guy I met at the Hearthrow departure lounge and his friends a bit, then holed myself up in my hotel room later on. Definitely wasn't a great place to be given my unease around crowds and formal situations, haha.

Just wondered, are you a student, and if so what uni?

Yeah, Cambridge =)

Ah, okay. Thought you might be from my uni (Imperial), since we're all about finance internships and stuff like that

Yeah loads of people here are obsessed about getting into IB/finance too - I can't imagine being so eager to work 12+ hour days of photocopying, phone calls and powerpoint presentations myself. D:

Are there lots of Japanese people to talk to at Imperial? On my course here there are plenty of Chinese people, not so many Japanese...

Not lots, but there are some. We have a Japanese society which many of them are members of, and which has joint events with the JapSocs of the other London unis, so there's a decent amount of opportunity to talk to Japanese people. Overwhelming amount of Chinese people though of course...