Thought I’d share what my current day-to-day study looks like for learning Japanese. Lately, I’ve been spending around 2+ hours a day with the language. Today I finished going through the course from Refold called Teach Yourself a Language. It was 30 days and I learned quite a bit from it. It got me set up with even better habits! I highly recommend checking out that course if you’re learning a language too. So let’s see what I spend time on everyday:
WaniKani – I spend about 30 minutes on this daily reviewing Kanji/vocab that it has taught me plus learning 5+ more words a day. This website is essentially a fancier version of Anki which you may be familiar with. I’ve really enjoyed using this tool everyday for the past 3 months and I’m currently at level 6. Only 54 levels left to go!
KaniWani – This is very similar to WaniKani but does the opposite and feeds off of the data from WaniKani. It basically takes what you’ve been recently studying and sees if you can identify the Kanji from just seeing the English meaning. Good way to reinforce what you learn from WaniKani and it’s free!
YouTube – This is the main video platform where I watch certain channels that are targeted for beginner learners. I try to watch at least 30+ minutes a day. Here are the channels I’m enjoying right now:
These above teachers put in great effort and create some really enjoyable videos to watch. Yuki from @cijapanese is the channel I particularly watch the most of since her beginner stuff is fun.
Iago – A wonderful little tool that augments Netflix and YouTube with a way to very quickly look up words. It can quiz you at the end of the video and occasionally ask you questions about words you’ve seen in the past. Quite useful and free as well!
Satori Reader – This is a great graded reader for when you want to hear some stories about exploring cats or curious mice! There’s quite a bit of settings on what Kana should show and Kanji based on your vocabulary level. I basically do free-flow immersion with this and occasionally stop to look up an interesting word that I heard. The Japanese dictionary I use daily for lookups is called Japanese. I have it for iPhone but there’s an Android version too.
Nihongo con Teppei (for beginners) – I listen to his podcast before going to bed 30 minutes every night. It took the place of my meditation haha. He’s fun to listen to and speaks slowly so he’s understandable. He’s uploaded almost 2000 episodes so there are a ton to listen to! He has some other podcasts as well for intermediate learners and another for advanced learners. I believe his podcast series is on Spotify as well but I’ve just been listening to the episodes on iTunes.
That’s it! I’ve been enjoying doing this daily and fitting it into my daily life where I work full time and balance other hobbies. I’m not always super motivated but I’ve built habits doing these things and I just do them regardless of how I feel. Seriously learning a language takes thousands of hours and it’s a big commitment. I know my current strategy will change over time and I’ll write another post when it does.
またね！