When people asked me when did I start to study Japanese? I can’t remember it well until when I found my school receipt. It was dated 2010.
One of the most frequently asked question in class is why do you study Japanese? I still remember the reason vividly. So that I’ll be able to watch J-dorama (Japanese drama series) without subtitle.
Having lived outside Japan, we need to depend on the community to provide the subtitle for the drama. These people are working voluntarily. And to build their fan base, it’s quite understandable that they will pick a series which likely to be popular. For example those with popular actors or actresses. Even if the actors or actresses are good, it doesn’t necessarily always popular, for example when they are getting older or passed their prime. And this can happen to actors/actresses we like.
Well of course there is Japanese subtitle too. If you understand the language.
So, this is my main motivation to learn Japanese.
There are few occasions when I was about to give up and stop learning. Because work was busy, I didn’t have time to revise or do my homework. But I told myself that don’t quit, you may think that you’re not progressing or maybe make a very little progress, but you’re still learning. But if you quit, you’re definitely not making any progress or learning anything.
I went to Japan in 2012 with few friends, took proficiency test at the end of 2012. But I feel that my Japanese still not up to the level I want.
One random day, I started to realize that I can understand better when I was watching some dramas. I can even make a guess, what the stars would say by reading the subtitle.
I’m glad I didn’t quit.
Although I kind of lost, because I feel that I achieved what I want to achieve, somewhat.
Last year, I took another proficiency test and I passed.
2 weeks ago, I went to Japan to attend a week of Japanese class. Because I didn’t really use Japanese in my daily life, so I don’t have any way to gauge my Japanese level. And this time, I can use it in daily conversation, more or less. It reminds me back then when I started to learn English. Be a kid again.
This trip gave me a new purpose of learning the language. I want to be able to use it as one of my conversation language like English to me.
Because of this discovery, I’m more motivated to learn.
This long post can be summarized into shorter sentence, that we need to update our goal.
But I feel that knowing the essence without knowing the background makes it easily forgotten.
So, thanks for reading it. Do you have similar situation like me? Share it.
