Story Time

When I was a kid, I would come home every day after school to watch Pokemon, Digimon, and Dragon Ball Z on Fox54, a local TV broadcast in Alabama. They were some of my favorite shows, and when I eventually learned that they were all made in Japan and originally recorded with Japanese audio, I decided that I wanted to learn to speak Japanese. How hard could it be, right!?

I walked from my parents' store to the local Books-A-Million, where I would normally go to get a pack of Pokemon as a reward for getting good grades in school. This time, I walked past the spinner display that had all of the cards I wanted into a back corner of the store where all of the language learning materials were. It might come as a surprise to you, but the selection of Japanese learning material in a bookstore in a small town in Alabama in the early 2000s was pretty limited. After browsing all 3 books the store had to offer, I noticed that they had a single CD set. Listening seemed much more appealing to 12-year-old me than reading, so I decided to buy it. I had recently come into a large sum of cash for my birthday, a whole $75, so the $60 price tag on the CDs didn't deter me.

At this time in my life, and most of the time until a few years ago, I had terrible social anxiety. I was a fat nervous child, here's a picture for reference. This should help set the tone for the next part of the story.

I took the CDs to the register to check out. The cashier, who in my mind was an old man, but in reality was probably in his late 20s or early 30s, started asking me questions.

Him: "Who are you buying this for?"

Me: "Myself."

Him: "Why?"

Me: "Because I want to speak Japanese."

Him: "Do you know anything about Japanese?"

Me: "No, not yet."

Him: "It's a very hard language to learn."

Me: "Okay…."

Him: "It's very expensive."

Me: "Yes…"

Him: "I have a master's degree, and it would be hard for me to learn Japanese."

Me: "Okay…."

Him: "I'm sorry, but I'm not selling you this."

Me: "Okay…."

Then I put the CD set back on the shelf where I got it and walked back to my parents' store. When I told my dad what the cashier had said, his simple reply was, "If he has a master's degree, what is he doing working at Books-A-Million?" and he walked off.

My mind was still obsessed with getting these CDs, so a few hours later I walked back to the bookstore. After peeking my head in to make sure that the same cashier wasn't still working, thankfully he wasn't, because I would have just walked the mile back to my parents' store utterly defeated.

After working up the courage to try again, I walked back up to the counter, CDs in hand. The lady who was the cashier didn't say much; she just handled the transaction and gave me a small smile. With that, I was on my way back to my parents' store with a bag in my hand and a smile on my face.

Once I got home, I rushed to my room, replaced the Yellow Card CD from my mini stereo with the first CD in the set. After about 10 minutes, I realized that the first cashier was very right—Japanese is indeed a hard language to learn. Before I eventually gave up a few days later, I had learned to count to 5 and how to say "tamago", the Japanese word for "egg."

Current Day

After trying different methods in short bursts over the past 20 years and spending around 4 months in the country at this point, I know a few more words and phrases, but I'm very far from fluent.

My goal is to be able to have general conversations with people in Japanese so I can connect more easily with people. I plan on spending a lot more time in Japan, and this seems like a great time investment to make my travels there more enjoyable and smoother in general.

Right now my current study schedule is:

• Listening to a Pimsleur audio lesson while on my daily walk.
• Reviewing my self-made Anki decks daily
  • The first ~650 words for the deck come from the book "Fluent Forever" by Gabriel Wyner
  • The rest are words I thought would be useful or things that I have tried to say in the past while talking to people in Japanese
• Immersion
  • For now, I'm listening to YouTube videos with very slow speakers using basic language or content for kids
  • As my comprehension increases, so will the difficulty of the content.

Aside from the audio lesson that I do while walking, I have to fit the rest into about an hour each day. I could learn quicker by dedicating more time to immersion, but with everything that I have on my plate right now, I can't spend more time on it. I think this is a solid plan for now, and as long as I can stay consistent, I should make progress. You can view my consistency tracker and daily logs at https://www.bucketlistbruce.com/log