/jp/ - Otaku Culture

As of this month, it has been four full years since I started studying Japanese. You may remember me as the guy who posted here last April saying he has studied for three years. I don't go to DJT anymore and haven't for about two years, but I feel compelled to make these yearly progress posts since DJT (O-OJT?) is the place that got me going in the first place, and I know I would have been interested in this kind of post back then. I won't go into as much detail as last time since basically everything's the same.

>Study with DJT methods for 2 years: anki, tae kim, DOJG, etc
>Life stuff happens, stop doing anki for one week, can't bother catching up to the 1000+ reviews
>Spend two years doing literally nothing but reading VNs, manga, LNs, etc (no text hooker by this point) (I also got a new computer and never reinstalled Rikai because I just forgot about its existence due to not needing it)

Total anki cards done in first 2 years: Around 10,000 (Core2k/6k up to 3kish, then 7kish cards from mining).

Where I'm at: I can basically read anything I want in Japanese without blinking, excluding the kinds of things that would give me pause even in English, such as wikipedia pages for advanced math or stuff like that. When it comes to most things, like Amazon reviews, chuunige, whatever - I read Japanese like it's my first language. I don't even think "I'm reading Japanese" when scrolling through Amazon or skimming through a LN, I'm just reading like normal. The trick is that once you know 99% of the vocabulary and are extremely comfortable with the grammar, you keep reading past words you don't know without even realizing, unconsciously filling in the gaps with context. Just like you won't know every single word in a tough English fantasy novel, you won't know every single word in a tough Japanese fantasy novel, but it'll be okay because the speed of your reading and context will make it so you don't even realize you don't know the occasional word.

But the real point of this post isn't for me to dick suck my reading ability. It's to be a warning, basically repeated from last time: Do listening practice. I do pretty much nothing but read, and that causes serious problems. I rely on kanji to understand a lot of things, and my listening is extremely subpar even when I know the words being said, simply because I'm so reliant on kanji. I can hear ほうそう and be stumped for a solid ten seconds despite knowing 放送 like the back of my hand. Listening practice is something that's easy to skip because reading is (for me, anyway) so much more fun and comfy than watching shows, but don't fall into that trap. You HAVE to do listening practice or you'll end up a Frankenstein monster like me, easily tackling hard books but stumbling every time the spoken language gets involved. Constant listening practice is necessary to not end up reliant on kanji for comprehension. My advice is to watch at least one episode of anime, live TV, some youtube show, etc a day. No subtitles unless you're super early in your studies and don't know the words they're saying in the first place (actually, I guess that'll take at least a year, which isn't "super early"... guess my perspective is a bit off now). Live TV will often have some subtitles anyway, that's okay, it can't be helped.

Examples of good things to just watch an episode (or preferably more) of a day. Note that these aren't so much specific recommendations as they are general examples.
Normie channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZf__ehlCEBPop-_sldpBUQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCibEhpu5HP45-w7Bq1ZIulw
Virtual youtubers: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy5lOmEQoivK5XK7QCaRKug https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCevD0wKzJFpfIkvHOiQsfLQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7AX9AjrSug
Let's play channels: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKEUwnF-h0VwDjKrJvd16ZQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrFvxZKw4X6oCFDt1j-NqPQ
Live TV shows: ゲームセンターCX ガキの使い
Anime: You don't need examples

Anyway, just watching anything like the above each day is important. You can't let yourself fall into the "I'll just do anki and read" trap - you have to do listening practice if you don't want to end up being half godly and half awful at Japanese. And the ideal is probably as much listening practice as reading, as I don't spend a lot of time listening myself I can't give confident advice, but the more listening practice the better.