Introduction #

I got introduced to the anime rabbit hole when I was in 9th class, around 2015, with Tokyo Ghoul being the latest phenom. Over the next year I got pretty deep into it, and I think I just did not have enough else to do to distract me from watching more and more. But sometime around the one year mark, I started analysing the feasibility of actually just learning the language. I mean, I was already watching content in Japanese 40h/week and had a hang of listening, might as well formalize it. Fast-forward about 4 months, I had been going to weekend classes in Delhi and had just cleared the N5 exam. I was exhilarated!

N5 had been a breeze, and I mean that. I did so well quite effortlessly that I decided to skip N4 and prepare for N3 next. Sure enough, N3 came and went, and this time, it took effort. To explain the effort in learning this beast of a language, I think I need to give a primer on how Japanese learning is structured.

Japanese and the Issue that is Nuance #

I will not pretend to know much about the history of why Japanese is the way it is, but it seems that of the three languages I can say I know well, and others that I have learnt in passing, Japanese is special.

• It has three writing systems. Two are quite straightforward, just 50+50 characters you have to remember, each associated with a phonetic syllable. The third is called kanji, and it is characters that hold meaning. There are hundreds and thousands of kanji in the wild, and even in your everyday life in Japan, one could be expected to come across ~500.

• Each kanji character usually has three types of readings: on-yomi, kun-yomi, and nanori. These are types, not count. The count can be higher than 3 of course.

• You cannot start reading on the internet just by knowing vocabulary. Having heard a lot of content in Japanese, my vocab was not small, but I just couldn’t read because I did not know what the characters were spoken like. I could perfectly understand the meaning if someone read it out for me however.

• Searching is a pain. If you’re learning, say French, and come across the word “chateau”, it would be easy for you to remember based on the spelling and sound to look it up in a dictionary right? Now think how you would do this with with kanji. You do not know how it is spoken, how do you search for it? PS. There is something called SKIP notation, but I only learnt of it pretty recently.

• After you have wrapped your head around all of this, then comes the nuance. Nuance is something which is unique to each culture. It is the reflection of the culture in the language. This is something which I feel cannot be taught. You can only ever grasp at it, and it is fluid in time - intertwined with the zeitgeist. It is why one word is clearly better than another in a situation, but you can’t explain it.

• After you understand nuance, be ready to welcome exceptions. You will find words where you know all the kanji and are still unable to pronounce them right.

As I write I realize how much more I can write about this. For the sake of progress, I’m gonna hold back, but I would encourage watching some video essay on the Japanese language as a curious adventure into differences among cultures.

N2 Again, oof #

Back to the story. After clearing N3 with intermediate effort, I started studying for N2. The backdrop of the story is important here too. This is during the second half of my 11th class schooling. Being in STEM, my curriculum was already taking a toll on me, but having decided to pursue an undergrad abroad meant I was studying for my SATs, schoolwork, Japanese and all sort of extra curriculars. I did end up failing N2, mostly because of kanji (I more than passed the listening section of the test).

And here I am, 8 years later, not sure why I registered for this test again after having little to no practice of Japanese for the better half of the decade. To be fair to myself, I signed up for this in March, at a time when I had barely anything going on and felt upto the challenge. But there is something about N2 that prophetically fills up my plate with auxiliary work. Right after registering, I got an admit to my masters application to Georgia Tech and so started the process of loans, visa and everything in between. Work became somehow more hectic now that I was planning to leave.

I started studying in April, if you can call what I was doing studying. I ramped it up in June, for my test in the first week of July. N2 is notorious for nuance. It asks for a good grasp on kanji too, but nuance and exceptions are the norm in this paper. My test is day after, and there is a feeling of guilt yes that I did not really study as much as I should have, and maybe some trepidation that I will infact fail to qualify again. But I also am glad that I rekindled my love for this language.