1. New sites to see | kanjibox 4h

Today I came across a few sites I have to explore:

Learning:
kanjibox.net study resource. That's what I did today. It took me ~2.5 h to get everything in green:

Now starts the nice part of it: I feel good when I am sure about the answer, and obviously it happens a lot more often than 2.5 hours before! >.<
www.lingq.com  study resource
kanji.sljfaq.org You draw the kanji you see, they find it for you in a dictionary.
Evernote - notes
www.tofugu.com/2012/04/24/practicing-japanese-to-insanity/ The Headset made my day <3

Reading:
lwt.sourceforge.net You add 'your' texts and words you don't know, I guess...
japaneseerc.weebly.com Japanese reading club (have a few links)
www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy Japanese news with furigana

Rikaichan - chrome extension, looks up kanji 

Yotsubato! - manga
www.raw-manga.net
www.updateraw.com

I have to finally try Anki (Core 2000 and Core 6000 decks). It's been recommended to me and I see posts about it often....

At the end of my day I went back on kanjibox.net and did some kana exercises, I think I have the wrong order of doing things, lol. To get everything green took me a. 1.5 h:

0. Getting started. What I already know?

Emm... Nothing much. More precisely: hardly anything. It's:
   >> Hiragana
   >> Part of a katakana
   >> I can understand a few words while watching anime
   >> I know tens of kanji, but mostly can only name them (not always in Japanese) and can't remember how to read them. In worst cases I know I 'learnt/saw' it somewhere, but have no idea what it is.


Silly of me - trying to learn kanji while not knowing katakana, but... The characters are too easy O.o'' I mean I don't think enough while learning them, so I forget it reeeally fast. I just decided time for katakana will come when I will actually start reading something.

The easiest way to learn new words/characters... is by seeing them in context. So my new decision is: I will start translating raw Japanese manga. I will start from something easy... like short shoujo mangas.

I think learning Japanese will be a little easier to me this way, because 4.5 years ago I started learning English this method. Back then I think I knew next to nothing and didn't feel comfortable in foreign language. Now I 'Don't See Obstacles, [I] See Opportunities' to write/speak/communicate in English. The only differences are that: I am older and... shoujo mangas sucks big time for me now, while then I've read them with enyojement.
Knowing this for a moment I though about reading shounen manga... BUT... But they are mostly long and the words are more uncommon, unrealistic and unnecessary. Of course I won't start from josei or, my goal, yaoi, because they lack furigana and I would became discouraged because of the raid of unknown to me kanji really soon. It takes me a lot of time to find kanji by radicals (jisho.org), so...

I've found an article about tips what to read on the low Japanese language knowledge - it's obvious that the higher level you are the more sources you can find to read... So what to do when you know next to nothing? Here is an article which points the way: tofugu.com. 

I am starting to learn Japanese seriously. FINALLY

I watched TED talk:




 and decided that if I shouldn't say anybody about it, then I will write daily. Of course not about my plans, but about what I did in current day with my Japanese.

Today and a few days before I found myself not actually learning it, but reading about learning, but whathever.

Two weeks ago I did Basic Japanese course at memrise.com. I think it's a nice way to start.

Here are one of the most popular obstacles in learning Japanese. Btw, it's for me, I will look on this post every time I will lack motivation or will try to find any excusses (source: http://www.textfugu.com/season-1/hard-way/1-4/)

1. The lack of time: In your free time you mainly read manga, watch anime, read fanfiction. Why not read manga in Japanese instead if you want to so hard?! Time to make a bank account and ship some nice Japanese manga home!

2. 'I don't have enough money': Your parents pay for your house bills, you have an Internet. There are a few free resources to learn Japanese! You would finally buy one of the books too... You don't really need to buy new manga title! No more new titles in 2014! Except yaoi ones, of course! XD

3. 'I will end up burning out and quitting midway': Well... It's time to show yourself you can do everything, but only if you really want to. Are you in?! We can't be half assed here! You don't 'want to learn Japanese'. You WILL BE LEARNING Japanese when you finish writing this post!

4. 'I'm not very good at learning languages': It's really one of the most popular excusses? I'm quite shocked. Every people can speak their native language. The only exception? Abuse when young. I have to say that I quite can't agree with the textfugu (see:source) here. Every human being have an ability to learn languages. Others may feel better about this, but it's only because of different attitude. You can't think 'I don't think I can do this/', because then you really CAN'T. Think the other way around!


Now I'm in the middle of my two weeks winter holidays. One week passed on sleeping and preparing walls in my room for painting them, which sadly only started today. Tommorow is a Sunday, my only plan is to visit my grandpas, so I will definitely find some time for Japanese! No youtube tommorow, lol.