Still on the Japanese Train, Somehow

25 Jun, 2025

The Japanese train is still chugging along 🚞. Despite this being one of my new year goals, even I’m still shocked that I’ve been able to keep up lol.

A little while ago I mentioned how I’ve decided to be a bit more lax in terms of how went about listening rather than the super intentional understand every word version that I’ve been going about it previously and I have to say it’s going quite well. The barrier to listen has significantly dropped and I’ve come to gain back the joy of listening to something and japanese and being happy that I’ve understood it, rather than the dismay of not understanding every little thing that was said. I’ve now decided to take that same energy into reading.

It’s quite unfortunate that I’ve never came to this realization earlier. One of the big things I feel like people worry about when learning a new language are stuff like vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc. And while those things are obviously important, I think the biggest thing that matters is “vibes”. Let me explain¹.

When you see most second language learners speak, there’s a sense of it being “off”. Most people would pinpoint it to something like grammar, pronunciation, word choice etc. but really, I think a lot of it is mental. Take for example a heritage speaker. You have two extremes, one who is just as good as a native born speaker, and one who is just as bad as a second language learner. But in between, you might have someone who clearly knows fewer words than the second language learner, whose pronunciation may not be as good as that second language learner, whose overall technical skill may not be as good as that second language learner, but yet, still has this vibe of being like a native speaker. What constitutes that vibe or why other speakers treat that person like a native speaker, I couldn’t tell you². But for me, that’s kind of my goal now. I’ve sort of moved past the goal of wanting my language ability to be “as good as a native speaker”. Now, I want my language ability to be as good as the uncle that runs the bodega store and is funny.

With this mindset, reading becomes a way to sort of ingrain patterns that might help me build up this vibe. Sure, I search up every word I come across that I don’t know. But when I reach long winding sentences, or when certain nuances come up that I can’t quite grasp, I just move on³. It’s very freeing.

Hopefully this Japanese renaissance can continue and doesn’t turn into my many failed promises 🙃