The Beginning


Hello, and welcome to my blog. I'm going to document how I study Japanese on this blog.  

My name is Kartik. I'm a third year student of BA Japanese at EFLU, Hyderabad. I have a physical disability known as cerebral palsy, which limits my mobility and restricts me to a wheelchair. As a result, I gravitated to hobbies such as anime and video games. I forget exactly how or when I discovered the term 'anime'  but I can safely say that I have been watching Japanese animation for as long as I can remember. Shows like Ghost in the Shell: SAC, Mushishi, Spice and Wolf, Black Lagoon, and Kino's Journey are some of my all time favorites. Eventually, I wanted to understand anime without subtitles. This became one of the motivating factors for me to start learning Japanese.

My first attempt at learning Japanese was way back in 2009. I  enrolled for the certificate of proficiency in Japanese at EFLU. This was an introductory program  that lasted for about a year. While this course served as a decent introduction to the language, it soon became apparent that I would struggle to advance beyond the 'Beginner' stage. I was having a very hard time with kanji, even at this introductory level. The brute force method of learning the Chinese characters was ill-suited to someone like me who couldn't write. This realization was so demotivating that I quit learning Japanese.

Some time after the course had ended, I moved to Bangalore with my family to attend college. Unfortunately, I had to drop out after just two semesters due to serious  health issues that confined me to bed for well over a year. This experience had a noticeable impact on my mental health, and I found myself unmotivated to do anything. Over the next few years, I studied a wide variety of things ranging from programming to commerce and finance. But I couldn't motivate myself to move beyond the basics in any of these fields.

My desire to learn Japanese had never really ceased. But I was unsure of where to begin. I would occasionally read a grammar lesson on a random blog and I would try to memorize  Kanji readings for 15 minutes before realizing that the endeavor was a waste of time.          

In late 2016, I stumbled onto a YouTube video of a guy claiming that he had learned Japanese to a high level in just 18 months through input. He referenced a method known as 'AJATT' or 'All Japanese All The Time.' Upon further research, I discovered that this was a method of immersion learning, specifically tailored to Japanese.

My issues with motivation continued to pose challenges and it took me well over two years to establish a sustainable routine for immersion. But during this time, I had managed to clear JLPT N3 without attending a formal course. 

I can now understand most slice of life anime without any trouble, and understand the gist of sci-fi and fantasy anime, though I still have a hard time grasping the finer details. So I still have quite some ground to cover. 

Over the next few posts, I will explain how exactly this method helped overcome the problems that I had faced while studying Japanese and the tools that I use to immerse effectively.

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