As of last night, I officially hit 50 hours of Japanese. It took me a while simply because I had a lot going on in my life and couldn’t consistently get input at times. I am still focusing on an input-only approach, with only a small handful of words—fewer than ten—that I have actually looked up on occasion.
Here are the things I have noticed:
Segmentation: I have noticed words no longer feel blended together like they did in the beginning. My brain can automatically tell where a word starts and stops.
Word Categorizing: My brain has automatically started to notice patterns. When I hear an unfamiliar word, I often have an idea of what its meaning could be related to, as well as whether it’s a noun, adjective, or verb. I’ve noticed this helps me acquire words faster than before.
Comprehension: My comprehension has increased dramatically and noticeably. I went from watching the lowest-difficulty videos I could find and having no clue what was going on—struggling to grasp any meaning at all—to understanding 90–95% of every “complete beginner” video I watch, regardless of the difficulty level.
Vocabulary: Although I can’t reproduce many words yet, I recognize a lot of them automatically now. I can feel my “vocabulary bank,” if you will, increasing.
Cusp of Beginner: I can almost feel that I’m getting close to being able to start watching “beginner” videos. It’s a strange sensation, but not completely unfamiliar to me, as I felt the same way when graduating through levels in Spanish. To start out, I’m going to do what I did when I was transitioning from beginner to intermediate Spanish: I’m going to gradually mix in more beginner videos until all of my input is at that level.
Relying on Pictures Less: I am starting to notice that with certain low-level, complete beginner videos, I can just listen to the audio by itself and comprehend 90–95% of the content. Due to this, I have been incorporating that into my CI time. I’ll take a few minutes to listen to a video or two with no visual guide whatsoever to practice getting my brain used to audio-only CI. The hope is to slowly work my way up to podcasts.
That is pretty much everything I have noticed. I definitely have not developed the “Japanese sector” of my brain to the point where I am able to start thinking in Japanese like I do with Spanish; however, I am not worried about that. I know it will come with time. I am still very early in my CI journey, but I’m pleased with my progress and excited to continue growing and watching myself develop in this language! At this point, I still find the Comprehensible Japanese platform to be the best way to spend my time. The content works well for me, so I have stopped seeking out other forms of CI for now. I am currently up to about an hour a day of CI. I will return with another update when I hit 150 hours.
Until then, as our lord and savior Yuki would say, またね!
