Progress so far

Because I decided to start posting this blog over a year into beginnig to study Japanese and making plans for a trip to Japan, I have already made quite a bit of progress that I will share with you now. Please keep in mind that I work a fulltime job, so progress is slow but steady. :)

I'm using a few excellent books and online resources that I can recommend to anyone.

I started by getting a book called 'Japanese in Mangaland', from which I learnt hiragana and katakana in a few days each. Then I didn't do much for about 9 months, because the next chapter was about kanji and it just seemed too much to take on while working as well.

However, in August of 2009 I discovered the most wonderful book ever: 'Remembering the Kanji' by Heisig. Learning kanji was a breeze with this book (I remember being impressed I could do 10 per day when I first started it, and by the end I was doing between 30 and 80 a day), and then when I discovered the website 'Reviewing the Kanji' I was set. I learnt the meaning and stroke order of 2042 kanji in about 6 months. When I finished on January 31st, 2010, I was over the moon!

By then, I had forgotten a lot of my kana, so I used Heisig's 'Remembering the Kana' to brush up on it.

Recently, I started 'Remembering the Kanji 2', which focuses on learning onyomi and kunyomi. I'll explain my method for that in another post, as RTK1 is quite fixed in its method, but RTK2 allows forces you to come up with your own method of studying. It took me a few weeks to figure out how, but I've found a method. Most people doing RTK2 will call me crazy for doing it the way I do, but hey, it works for me.

So most of my time was spent in Kanjiland; I haven't studied much 'real' Japanese so far, except for using another wonderful method: Pimsleur. Pimsleur is one of those 'repeat after me' CD methods that seems to work wonders for me. I tried the whole 'reading and copying and saying' thing, but it took me way too long and I found my retention was much too low. However, with Pimsleur's aural method I retain things much better! Pimsleur consists of three parts, with 30 lessons consisting of 30 minutes of listening. It also has supporting notes. At the moment I am on part 1 - lesson 27, but I plan on doing one lesson a day so I am finished before going to Japan. Sometimes I do a lesson twice, if it features a lot of things I mess up.

All about my trip to Japan in another post!