Chore Day, July 25, 2020: Doing Laundry & Studying Japanese

As I’ve already mentioned, I’m studying Japanese because I plan to move to Japan. Although I’m fluent only in my native tongue, English, I’ve studied Spanish, German, Latin, French, Chinese, Portuguese, and now I’m learning Japanese. From what I can see so far, learning Japanese is going to take time and practice to learn. I’m talking about years of practice.

Fortunately, my partner started learning Japanese when she was in college, and now we practice with each other. I’m working at a preschool level and she already knows hiragana and katakana.

This is not the first time I’ve tried to learn Japanese. Two years ago I studied Japanese using the Rosetta Stone app, but my interest sagged after a while — I really wanted to read and write as well as speak Japanese but Rosetta Stone focuses only on conversational skills. Reading is is massively important in order to carry on an active ordinary existence in Japan. I want to be able to read newspapers, read the list of ingredients on a food package, read my phone contract, know what button I’m pressing on the washing machine, and most all, translate my children’s books into Japanese.

To start off I’m using Learn Japanese From Zero! The author, George Trombley, provides 100 videos on Youtube to discuss every aspect of the book, including pronunciation examples and cultural tips that help learners coming across as crude foreigners. The book’s lessons are also available for free on JapaneseFromZero.com. That’s a bonus resource, but having a book in my hands is absolutely essential to my learning method.

Now I’m off to do my daily homework.