About 10 years ago I became interested in learning Japanese. Mostly because of anime, I just wanted to know what the basic konoyarou/tasukete/urusai stuff meant so I could focus better on the show's plot.
The tsukkomi/boke comedy in anime involving unecessary physical/emotional violence never fails to amuse me. I don't watch much anime these days but I have become interested in Japanese culture.
The Miko shrine maidens, Shinto shrines themselves, Geisha, tea ceremonies, Onsen, no tipping in restaurants, general lack of DEI, and so on and so on. All things that I wish the US would adopt.
Thus I've been on a journey, for a few years now, to pass the JLPT N5. I've bought many books on this but it's always turned into a 5 minute study session followed by 30 minutes of youtube.
Result: I can read common kanji compounds like 野菜、電話、入口, without furigana now and from memrise practice I know pretty much all hiragana/katakana. However I just can't power through the grammar parts.
SO I've signed up here: https://www.tokiniandy.com/
It's $10 a month and my hope is that this course dumbs it down enough for me to stick to it for longer than 5 mintues a day. I know some N5 stuff now so I hope it can boost me to N4 level this year alone.
I don't mean to shill this course and I have no idea if it will even be worth it. However my plan is to post updates here every week or so and let you all know how it's going.
I hope that this will help other anons here struggling with learning Japanese. It's an amusing/mysterious high-context language (see honne/tatemae) but it will break you especially with grammar.
Still, the challenge can be quite fun. Which is why I refuse to drop it. Gonna start tomorrow (today?) night so stay tuned.
