Focus Shift #3 - Take The All-Japanese Plunge
If we're in Phase #4, then you're already pretty good at Japanese. So come on, already! It's time to take the all-Japanese plunge. All books, all TV shows, all movies, all websites, all conversations with your cat, all thoughts in your head—make all that stuff Japanese.
If it's Phase #4, and you're still not totally immersed in Japanese, you've been easing into these cold waters for far too long now. It's time to finally dive in. The water is going to be very cold. And you will probably feel like it's too cold to bear, like you'll never get used to it. Just be patient and give it time, though. Immersion will not feel tiring after you get through the grueling initial phases.
For some tips on how to immerse yourself in Japanese, please see the immersion section from earlier.
Keeping a Journal in JapaneseOn November 13, 2012 I started keeping a very specific type of journal. I write one short entry for every single day, and each entry starts like this: The best thing that happened today was when… The original idea was that it might be a good way for me to remember all of the small and beautiful things that make up this thing we call life. Some days I had really good, positive entries. Other days, “the best thing" was something small—a delicious cup of coffee, a text from a loved one, a 15-minute nap. Starting that journal was one of the best things that I have ever done, and I've written in it almost every single day since then. When I'm feeling bored or sad, I can scroll through it and recall good memory after good memory after good memory. Also, it helps me to pay more attention to what I'm doing with my life and what is making me happy. Writing that journal helped me realize that the things that truly make me happy are usually small. I'd say that food and moments with loved ones probably make up for about 90% of the entries. Reading back over them, I can't help but reassess what I'm doing with my life (or trying to do with my life), because I really consider the things that bring me happiness. On March 25, 2013 I started writing this journal in Japanese. And since then, every entry starts with:
今日の一番良かった事は… At first, it was quite tiring writing each entry in Japanese. Also, I felt like I couldn't convey how I really felt about the things I was trying to describe. Now, though, hundreds of entries later, I don't even really have to think about how to convey those feelings, about how to form the sentences. Writing in Japanese feels natural now. I only write a couple of sentences per day. Sometimes just one sentence. “The best thing that happened today was when… I had a beer after work." Or something like that. But those sentences really added up over time, and I think that they helped to improve my Japanese quite a bit (especially when I had a Japanese person proofread entries). The key point that I want to convey here is that I was able to practice writing Japanese every single day for hundreds of days in a row, because I linked it to an activity that I find intrinsically valuable and uplifting. If possible, try to find activities like this that you truly enjoy and merge them with your Japanese practice. Immersion does not have to be a 100% painful experience. |