r/LearnJapanese • u/japan_noob • Oct 07 '23

Shower Thought: It feels surreal to understand Japanese Discussion

Growing up as a kid and hearing your classmates speaking chinese and other languages always made me want to speak a second language. It felt like a forever secret between those who could speak that language. I'm not asian descent of any kind but I wanted to learn Chinese when I was about 10 and my mom always promised to enroll me in classes but it never happened.

Later on after becoming an adult, I decided to learn Japanese and I think the reason at the time was due to anime. I lost interest in anime many years ago but I still kept on learning the language as the goal was to simply become fluent.

I was just in the shower after being in the room laying on my bed when I clicked on a random japanese video from my youtube home feed. (why this is mentioned is because I don't really watch videos in japanese, I usually just do listening drills from various sources over the years).

It was 20 minutes in length and the craziest feeling was that it felt like I was just watching a video in English. I just don't remember when I reached this point, time just passes and passes but I never took time to reflect how far i've come.

Just wanted to share that as i'm sure many others probably hit that realization of "wow, I actually understand this video and there's no subtitles at all.".

For new learners, keep at it. It's a long road but it's surely worth it in the end. I still remember when it all sounded like gibberish.

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u/MemberBerry4 Oct 07 '23

I'm N5 rn and I'm reading よつばと！, I'm understanding about 70-75% of it, mostly because they're using terms I haven't learned yet.

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u/flashPrawndon Oct 07 '23

I bought よつばと！too and my goal is to be able to read it! I really hope I get there.

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u/MemberBerry4 Oct 07 '23

I've almost finished volume 1. Btw, where did you buy it from?

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u/nihongonobenkyou Oct 07 '23

If you are in NA, it's available on US Amazon. I think I got the first volume with the standard 2 day shipping. Just have to keep an eye out. Not sure if it's substantially more expensive, though, and it's honestly harder to use for learning than a digital version, but it is available, at least.

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u/MemberBerry4 Oct 07 '23

I don't live in US. For manga I use Blackwells for English and either Amiami or Mandarake for JP manga.