Language Frustrations

28 Dec, 2024

As I've been slowly getting back into the groove of things Japanese wise, I've started to once again deal with the reality that I suck at Japanese. And by this I don't mean the whole schtick of someone pretending to be modest and downplay how good they are at something to humble themselves. No, I mean the actual fact that I cannot do what I would like without the external help of a dictionary.

Basically, I've been reading One Piece for the last week or so fairly consistently at around 1.5 volumes a day. Not a great pace compared to my peak, but it's much better than the zero I was doing pretty much all year so I'm happy with what I get. I've been using a neat little tool called mokuro that makes it possible for manga to be read with yomichan, which is great. The issue though is that once my yomichan goes away, I can't read. Or rather, not that I can't read, but that the reading process becomes excruciatingly cumbersome.

See, back when I was a noob, this wasn't really an issue. I knew that I was a noob, and thus, I just chugged along, hoping that one day I will stop being a noob and that reading will be a breeze, just like it is in English. But uhhhhhhhh the day still hasn't come lol. It isn't that I can't read or that I can't go pages or chapters keeping up with everything and having a great time. It's that inevitably, I will hit some set of words or some pages or entire stretches of chapters where I basically think to myself "Man, I could just be reading this in English".

While there are probably plenty of solutions to this problem - at the end of the day it's just a "git gud" problem, nothing has really changed since I was a noob - there's this feeling or twang of despair? regret? depression? every time I come upon this hurdle reminding me of how far I have to go or reminding me of my incompetence and my lack of dedication that made me end up in this state. Knowing that if I was more disciplined or if I had done more Anki or something along those lines maybe this problem wouldn't exist doesn't help either.

Again, any person with a brain would simply say "Well just get to it. Nothing stopping you from being more disciplined and dedicated now" and they'd be right. It just won't happen though lol. I can't quite explain as well as I would like but I think the fear is that there's nothing for me at the end of this hard work. That I can go ahead and put all this energy and time and that whatever I was hoping to gain from this - this sort of accomplishment or enjoyment from Japanese media that I was seeking - won't be found at the end of the journey. Or that even if I did get there - wherever "there" is - I'll just move the goal posts and be back at square one. I mean that's basically what happened now anyway. By all accounts, I can use the language, I can communicate with people, I can survive and maybe do even well for myself in Japan. But deep down I feel like there's a lack of accomplishment because unless I reach that elusive "goal" I'll just never be satisfied.

Anyhow, I feel like that's a lot of yapping over nothing. I'm enjoying my time reading One Piece and I hope to catch up by the middle of next year. Reading it has reignited my love for reading manga again and even after I catch up with One Piece, I hope to continue the habit of reading manga especially with how easy it is to use yomichan now to search things up¹. At the end of the day, all of this is nothing more than me being in my own head and like they say, you're either going forward or backward, so I have to keep chugging along and see where this road takes me.