Japanese Background

The very first language I really started out of interest. My story with Japanese goes back more than 10 years but it is not until 6 years ago that I started studying it. When I was in middle school, my friends showed me some mangas and I got interested in them. After watching some animes, I realised that I was attracted to the sound of Japanese. Being of the curious type, I did my research during my first year of high school and found out the beauty of the Japanese writing. The two syllabaries and chinese characters. Adding this to my already-growing affection towards Japanese, I just decided I had to learn this language at one point. I started trying to figure out the language on my own through the mangas I was watching and learnt basic grammar forms like the sentence order, particules and such. However for some reason, the Hiraganas and Katakanas would just not stick.

When I started University, in 2008, I started taking evening classes twice a week and in only 2 weeks I could remember all of them more or less. My affection for Japanese then changed slowly along my learning journey. I started liking less mangas and more dramas and movies; I pretty much stopped listening to only-girls groups to listen to less known music and got more interested in the Japanese culture. 

After two years of slow evening class learning, I passed the university first year exam for Japanese degree takers and in my third year of Bachelor (Economics), I was also in second year of a Japanese degree. My level started getting better and my knowledge of Kanjis went from the 400 learnt in 2 years to 1100 in just one year (and I mean reading AND writing). 

However after that year, as I changed city, I could not have any more classes and thus went back to studying strictly on my own but this time with a much better idea of what I wanted to know. I studied for about 8 months on my own before finally go to what had been my dream for a long time : Japan.

In the end of March 2012, I left to Tokyo, Ikebukuro, for an exchange program for my business master's degree. Living there, all changed once more. Some ideas got crushed, some appeared and some things were just as expected (although that was less common).  I first focused on improving my speech rythm and that worked out well, apart from the fact that each discution would almost make me sweat out of pressure to keep that rythm. 

In that University, I took classes of Japanese for each skill (reading, listening, grammar, writing) and turned out to be in level 6 out of 8 for grammar and 5 for the rest. Result: the people with me in the grammar class who were mostly just level 6 for each skill or even more, were much better than me and all had the JLPT N1 although I personally had just failed the N2 in December 2011 (by 4 points...) but it pushed me up and up and in July 2012 I took the JLPT N2 once more but this time without any preparation. I passed with bright colors and even got a perfect score in listening comprehension. 

Back in France in August 2012, I could not get over this incredible experience that was my exchange in Japan and just kept looking for things that could keep my memories fresh. Studying Japanese was one of those things of course, but documentaries about Ikebukuro and Tokyo, dramas in the area (Ikebukuro West Gate Park for instance), and of course my friends helped towards this. 

But life goes on and luckily my "buddy" (person assigned to help an exchange in its own country, usually in business school as far as I know) was coming to my school for one year and for the second semester begining on January 2013 we ended up being flatmates! I used Japanese a lot more and got to know better one of my favorite persons in the world. She taught me a lot, corrected me a bit and helped me make Japanese a part of myself so much that speaking Japanese almost felt more natural, easier, than french or english sometimes.

We left the apartment in June 2013 and I started an internship in August 2013. I got the opportunity to have a lot of Japanese clients, translate leaflets for my company. Actually putting my Japanese to use felt incredible but also made me realize my weak points. One being Kanjis as I had stopped any proper study of them since July 2011. After trying to get back to it, I couldn't and just started reading more and more and more to improve that aspect. 

 

My present level as of January 2014 is that of someone who's lost the ability to write by hand Japanese but can read books and the news without too much difficulty, watch any movie without subs, do business in the language but has troubles from time to time. 

The journey of learning a language is never ending and so it will be with Japanese!

 

You'll find in this section my language learning journey but also anything I'll find interesting or nice to say about Japan or Japanese culture!