Still at it. Decided to add in some anime (no subs/JP subs) for listening practice. The idea is to apply the same approach to my listening that bore fruit last year with my reading of the Tadoku graded readers as per their “golden rules:” start on the easy side, no lookups, ignore difficult words/sentences, and move on to the next episode/series if it’s feeling tough or not interesting.

It’s going fine, I guess.

Ramping up my Spanish, watching Spanish comedians. Vocab is solid, but working on polishing off that sabo kid energy with a focused anki deck.

French and Portuguese are kind of treading water. I do some minimal work with them in Anki every day, but not absorbing much content.

Took a week off language studies after the trip… because the trip really wore me out. You know, actual training for my job is like, hard and brain-power sucking. Then coming back from a trip is still all this laundry, chores, catchup at work, etc. etc.

Okay, so my week in Berlin, what did I learn?

• The tourist areas are full of tourists. I walked up to many people to ask something (ex: can I cross the street here?) only for the response to be “I only speak English”, be it an American, a Dutch/Netherlands couple, or Italian.

• City centers, subways are filled with German speakers who will respond with German. They’re busy and often don’t want a conversation, but they can answer one or two quick questions. Due to their impatience, they’ll take one question in German and immediately switch to English (something in my accent must have reliably told them I’m American/English speaker).

• There were still situations where I was forced to use 100% German and I think it improved my language skills. Immigrant communities, such as the Turks who make all the Döhner Kabobs, they speak Turkish first, German 2nd, and don’t really have the room for English. Same thing with the massage I got: Thailand immigrant, who also speaks German, but very broken English. There’s also a substantial number of “older folks” who speak German only (but usually have a spouse who speaks English, or a younger person nearby, like an employee, who they’ll redirect you for English).

• The actual computer training was all in English. I accidentally started to one of the staff in charge of the Hotel as I was looking for anyone who spoke German (she was sitting in the dining area, so I assumed she was part of the training at first, but she was actually in charge of organizing / watching over the conference as Hotel Staff). My German isn’t at the conversational level yet though so we mostly talked in English after trying a few lines in German.

I did pickup a B1 textbook in German

So solid progress, but now I need to think about my push to B1. I’d like to finish Grammatik aktiv to get me a grammatical basis (mostly because I’m already half-way through Grammatik aktiv, but also because grammar is a good foundation for new stuff). That would leave mostly the vocabulary / practice when I get to the coursebook.

I’ll probably start reading more for variety as well. I’ll need to fill up my vocabulary banks / Anki again.

Was doing okay in my studies up until this recent heatwave. Always so tired and unable to think. No AC in Ireland either, so it gets up to around 28C in my room, even with the windows open, and at night. Temps go back to normal around Thursday/Friday I think? So I’ll just pick up then when I’m actually able to think and not be so drowsy.

Just got back from three weeks in Japan.

• this was the first time I genuinely felt like I could have a decent conversation in Japanese
• I had issues with tenses, forgotten vocabulary, mispronunciations etc but found that I could nonetheless get my point across and have a productive discussion
• my listening / immersion practice has really paid off as I felt like my listening comprehension has greatly improved

It was a lot of fun. I went to three areas:

• Tokyo: people are busy but I was able to practice a lot of functional Japanese: ordering food, asking questions, etc.

• Kochi: I love Kochi. Very few foreigners and people are nice and outgoing (for Japanese people that is). Most locals speak very little if any English. I really enjoyed spending time here and had lots of decent conversations including a long chat with an older gentleman in the onsen at my hotel. (He started the conversation or I wouldn’t have spoken in the onsen). Tosa-ben took a little getting used to

• Kyoto: in my opinion not a good place for Japanese immersion. There’s English everywhere and most people speak very good English. Most shopkeepers would immediately switch to English the moment they saw me even if I greeted them in Japanese. It honestly was a little depressing at times. Also tourists everywhere, many of whom clearly haven’t spent much time learning about cultural norms in Japan. It was fun for sightseeing but I doubt I’ll go back now that I’ve visited the palaces & Nintendo museum

All in all it was a great trip and I feel like it helped my language learning move forward.

Oh! And I bought some Japanese language manga. I finally know enough to be able to read it while only looking up one or two words per page. I’m about halfway through Sakamoto Days 1 and I’m genuinely enjoying the story without the language barrier getting in the way. Progress!