Toast
Member
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2021
Yesterday marks the day that I have been living in Japan for 6 months now.
Crazy how fast time flies. Figured I should write some sort of self reflection on what I've done, what I could have done better and my experiences so far.
My goals when I came to Japan on April 6th 2022 were pretty simple:
Fuck hot Japanese girls
Learn Japanese
Experience real life living here
To keep this a little more organized rather then randomly babbling nonsense like I normally type ill break it down into these 3 categories.
Learning Japanese
School started off extremely slow. Class began with learning Hiragana and Katakana and extremely simple Japanese. Like hello, my name is Devin, I like girls. Ect. So pretty much I fucked off from school and coasted for the first couple months, never really studying, never really doing homework, and passing the class based on what the lesson was that we studied in class, and what I already knew. Only until maybe the last month of the first quarter did class actually have any valuable grammar that I didn't previously know. But even though its new stuff. It was not really useful for actual conversation.
This is a reoccurring though about Japanese Language school as a whole, and ill get more into that later.
At the end of the first term we had a JLPT N5 sample test. I essentially scored the exact same as i had on a practice test before I had come to Japan. So almost no progress with learning Japanese for the first 3 months of living here.
What experience I gained concerning Japanese was my ability to speak and formulate ideas with the Japanese I already knew. Since I was doing a lot of approaching outside of school. I was getting tons of practice formulating sentences and finding work arounds to explain the things I wanted to talk about. As well as becoming comfortable speaking nonsense and just trying to get the other person to understand my limited Japanese. This is probably the most valuable thing I did in the first 3 months. Just getting over the fear of speaking and sounding dumb. Probably one of my strengths is not giving a fuck about looking dumb and just doing shit. Definitely attribute the AA program to this aspect of my life. I've done way more cringy and dumb things then trying to compliment a chick in Japanese.
2nd term starts and its still considered the beginner class, but there's tons more Kanji, vocab, and more complicated grammar. TBH i still didn't really study that much, and didn't do all of the homework. I just coasted of my ability to absorb information in class and my test taking skills to pretty much pass all the tests with around a 70%. At this point the Japanese grammar being taught is a little more useful for stringing together sentences and making more complex ideas. But still not really totally useful for conversational Japanese. At this point I'm still doing some approach, lining up dates, and speaking Japanese outside of class. 2nd term ends and i still feel like i haven't gained much in terms of speaking ability but my understanding of Japanese grammar is a bit better. Started actually doing more studying this term but not nearly enough. Took a sample JLPT N4 test and passed. So there is some tangible progress being made.
Personally I think of going to language school as a vessel to get into Japan. You can and will learn Japanese in class, and being forced to go to school for 3 hours and being exposed to the language is a good thing. But I think that the structure of the class is not great. Depending on what your goals are for the Japanese Language class structure is a bit incorrect for learning conversational Japanese.
For me I don't give a shit about learning polite Japanese, which is what is coming up at the end of the next term. Its essentially useless to me. Unless i get a job in a position where in talking to people who are a higher authority then myself. I'm literally never going to use this. As well as the school starts you off learning the MASU form and then making you conjugate everything into the dictionary form. When Learning dictionary form and then conjugating into the MASU for or regular form seems like a much easier transition. I think that the exposure to the language every day is what is most valuable about going to a language school. As well as essentially its just give the school money and they give you a visa. Ezpz
The things I do appreciate about school is the friends I've made. They have made life very enjoyable and I've had many fun experiences with the people I've met here. But that doesn't contribute very much to my language learning journey. Its more of a life thing.
All in all, I think that if I could do things over again with this school. I would probably say fuck the curriculum and self study more about the things I want to do with the language, actually becoming conversational, and just coast in school with barely passing grades to keep my visa status. Use the school as a place to test the things I've learned on my own and use it as a place to practice my speaking, reading and listening skills.
Crazy how fast time flies. Figured I should write some sort of self reflection on what I've done, what I could have done better and my experiences so far.
My goals when I came to Japan on April 6th 2022 were pretty simple:
Fuck hot Japanese girls
Learn Japanese
Experience real life living here
To keep this a little more organized rather then randomly babbling nonsense like I normally type ill break it down into these 3 categories.
Learning Japanese
School started off extremely slow. Class began with learning Hiragana and Katakana and extremely simple Japanese. Like hello, my name is Devin, I like girls. Ect. So pretty much I fucked off from school and coasted for the first couple months, never really studying, never really doing homework, and passing the class based on what the lesson was that we studied in class, and what I already knew. Only until maybe the last month of the first quarter did class actually have any valuable grammar that I didn't previously know. But even though its new stuff. It was not really useful for actual conversation.
This is a reoccurring though about Japanese Language school as a whole, and ill get more into that later.
At the end of the first term we had a JLPT N5 sample test. I essentially scored the exact same as i had on a practice test before I had come to Japan. So almost no progress with learning Japanese for the first 3 months of living here.
What experience I gained concerning Japanese was my ability to speak and formulate ideas with the Japanese I already knew. Since I was doing a lot of approaching outside of school. I was getting tons of practice formulating sentences and finding work arounds to explain the things I wanted to talk about. As well as becoming comfortable speaking nonsense and just trying to get the other person to understand my limited Japanese. This is probably the most valuable thing I did in the first 3 months. Just getting over the fear of speaking and sounding dumb. Probably one of my strengths is not giving a fuck about looking dumb and just doing shit. Definitely attribute the AA program to this aspect of my life. I've done way more cringy and dumb things then trying to compliment a chick in Japanese.
2nd term starts and its still considered the beginner class, but there's tons more Kanji, vocab, and more complicated grammar. TBH i still didn't really study that much, and didn't do all of the homework. I just coasted of my ability to absorb information in class and my test taking skills to pretty much pass all the tests with around a 70%. At this point the Japanese grammar being taught is a little more useful for stringing together sentences and making more complex ideas. But still not really totally useful for conversational Japanese. At this point I'm still doing some approach, lining up dates, and speaking Japanese outside of class. 2nd term ends and i still feel like i haven't gained much in terms of speaking ability but my understanding of Japanese grammar is a bit better. Started actually doing more studying this term but not nearly enough. Took a sample JLPT N4 test and passed. So there is some tangible progress being made.
Personally I think of going to language school as a vessel to get into Japan. You can and will learn Japanese in class, and being forced to go to school for 3 hours and being exposed to the language is a good thing. But I think that the structure of the class is not great. Depending on what your goals are for the Japanese Language class structure is a bit incorrect for learning conversational Japanese.
For me I don't give a shit about learning polite Japanese, which is what is coming up at the end of the next term. Its essentially useless to me. Unless i get a job in a position where in talking to people who are a higher authority then myself. I'm literally never going to use this. As well as the school starts you off learning the MASU form and then making you conjugate everything into the dictionary form. When Learning dictionary form and then conjugating into the MASU for or regular form seems like a much easier transition. I think that the exposure to the language every day is what is most valuable about going to a language school. As well as essentially its just give the school money and they give you a visa. Ezpz
The things I do appreciate about school is the friends I've made. They have made life very enjoyable and I've had many fun experiences with the people I've met here. But that doesn't contribute very much to my language learning journey. Its more of a life thing.
All in all, I think that if I could do things over again with this school. I would probably say fuck the curriculum and self study more about the things I want to do with the language, actually becoming conversational, and just coast in school with barely passing grades to keep my visa status. Use the school as a place to test the things I've learned on my own and use it as a place to practice my speaking, reading and listening skills.