Introduction

I have decided to start this blog to document my learning projects. This is the first: in this series of blog entries, I will write about my efforts to learn Japanese from today, September 1, 2025, to August 31, 2026.

Why write this blog?

Despite my passion for learning and intellectual challenges, I have consistently been less consistent than I would like with my own learning projects. Sometimes, it’s a problem of time. More often, though, I have a fear of not living up to the high expectations I have for myself and the image that others have of me.

I am fully aware of the importance of consistency and habits. I teach English to nonnative speakers as a full time job and, for both personal and professional reasons, I have read dozens of books, done courses, and watched videos about how to learn. However, as I have a wide variety of interests, I end up constantly switching and dropping projects when they start to challenge me too much, or go badly, or I get busy at work, and so on. This blog is an effort to break that cycle.

Who is this for?

I’m writing this blog thinking about two potential groups of readers:

One is my students. I try to hold them to rather high standards and convince them to be consistent with their English studies. I think it would benefit to them to see not only the ways that I implement my own advice in my personal learning, but also the ways that I myself fail and recover.

The second is people who are interested in seeing what a dedicated learner can do with limited time. The internet is full of people who have quit their jobs to pursue ambitious learning projects, or who already work in part-time jobs that they can flexibly adapt to prioritize their learning needs. My goal is to see what I am able to accomplish without doing these things. How much can I learn through consistency in the time I have available to me?

Benefits of the Project

For myself, I hope that this blog will serve a few purposes.

One is accountability. While the research on the use of public commitments to stick to learning projects is conflicted (I’ll write about that topic in the future), I think that, in this specific case, writing publicly about my learning will help me commit more to the project.

Second, seeing whether I can maintain an interesting blog about a topic that I am passionate about will be an interesting personal challenge. I’ve always loved writing and explain many of these concepts for a living. A blog seems like it could be a fun way to work on combining these two skills.

Third, I hope that this project will serve as a blueprint for future projects. If it succeeds, I intend to apply similar techniques to other things I would like to learn with more consistency and better results.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I hope this project will give me faith in my ability to focus on and learn something independently.

Goal of the Project

There are a number of tests that judge Japanese level, ranging from N5 (the lowest level, indicating basic proficiency) to N1 (the highest level available to learners). I am not aiming to do any of these, as my project has no specific end goal. Rather, the aim of this project is to develop and maintain a daily habit, and see to what point such a habit brings me over the course of the year.

The research on goal setting, like many topics in learning, is not super clear. Some sources suggest that having an end goal can be motivating, while others say that it’s the habits that really matter.

The reason I have decided on a habit-based approach is simple: I have no idea how much I’ll be able to learn in a year. Japanese is very different from Western languages, and I do not know how fast I will progress. I am also a “false beginner” in the language; I have knowledge in some areas that a true beginner wouldn’t have. In addition, languages are never really “finished”, despite proficiency tests. Just as one can continually improve in their own native language, getting an N1 in Japanese would not mean perfection. For this reason, an end goal would probably not make sense.

So, while the specific habit will probably evolve as I learn more, for the next few months, the goal is simple: to use Anki, Migaku and (possibly) WaniKani on a daily basis to “recover” what I have learned before, and retain information from my Japanese class.

Japanese Learning Background

As mentioned before, I am a false beginner.

I have been learning Japanese on-and-off for years. Many years ago, I started using the app Human Japanese to learn some basic grammar. Later, I subscribed to WaniKani, a website for learning kanji (the characters that came historically from Chinese). This was quite fun, and I gained knowledge of the basic structures and vocab of the language. However, I never got to a point of conversation. This was largely my fault, but it wasn’t exactly unexpected. At the time, I had time and not money, and decided to invest that time learning kanji, as I could not invest in classes.

I then essentially stopped studying for several years, minus a few months each year when I tried to maintain a bit what I had learned. This was mostly due to changes in my work life, other studying projects (including improving my Spanish), and social opportunities.

In January 2024, I planned a trip that would take me to Japan for two weeks in January 2025, and decided to start private classes online in September 2024. I have taken classes fairly consistently for the last year, albeit without investing significant time outside of class. I have also returned to my kanji and vocabulary studies.

Learning Materials

I have accumulated over the years a wide variety of Japanese learning materials. These include the following:

• Human Japanese
• WaniKani
• Migaku
• Rocket Japanese
• Genki
• Dogen’s pronunciation course
• Emurse
• Satori Reader
• Japanese Uncovered
• Bunpro
• LingoDeer
• Wonderlang

I’ll go more into the specifics of these resources and how I plan to use (or not use) them in the future, but to start I’ll mostly be using WaniKani (together with Anki) for kanji practice, Genki and Bunpro (together with my private class) for grammar and some vocab, and Migaku for a bit of kanji and vocab. As time goes on, I’ll shift into the use of other resources according to my needs.

Learning Plan

The plan for the first several weeks is simple:

Migaku: Finish the Level 1 Migaku decks

• The Kanji Academy – Level 1 deck teaches the most common kanji readings through mnemonics. As of September 1, I have 515 new cards in this deck. My plan is to finish it by September 15, if possible, by learning 30 new cards per day, with a few days of extra cards. I believe this to be feasible, as I have seen many of the kanji before.
• The Academy – Level 1 deck teaches the most common vocabulary used on Japanese Netflix, using those kanji as a base. I have 1626 new cards in the deck. My plan is to maintain a similar rhythm of 30 cards/day to finish by the end of October. This is likely less realistic, as these cards are often more time-consuming and include a number of explanation slides. Whether I succeed with this deck will depend greatly on my adoption of a good Japanese study habit.

WaniKani: “Catch up” by using Anki cards created from the material

What is WaniKani?

WaniKani is a kanji study website. In the past, I got to level 26 (out of 60 levels at the time, with the first 50 considered essential for reading in Japanese). Due to a combination of pride and an excess of optimism, I refused to just reset my level on the website and start again, instead opting for the much more complicated and time-consuming process of creating Anki cards from the material I had unlocked from those 26 levels.

WaniKani divides material into three types: radicals (the building block components of kanji); the kanji themselves, with a common reading; and vocabulary, to teach other readings. Notably, the vocabulary on WaniKani is not selected because of use, but rather for the readings it teaches. As each character can be read a number of ways, it is important to develop an instinct for the pronunciation of characters in context, and WaniKani is very useful for this.

For this reason, I believe that Migaku (which I started using recently) will complement WaniKani well; Migaku selects vocabulary based on frequency, while WaniKani selects it to bolster reading capability.

WaniKani Goals

I have two goals with regards to WaniKani:

1. To catch up to the reviews I have pending in Anki (about 2500) by doing roughly 100 every day.
2. To effectively “relearn” the vocabulary levels. In the past, I have studied repeatedly the kanji and radicals, and are quite common with them, but I was lazier about uploading all the vocabulary cards with their audio. As of right now, I am reviewing vocabulary for level 6. The other 20 levels will probably each take me between 4 and 10 days to relearn. This means that, unless I do 50+ new cards per day (a likely unsustainable rhythm), I will probably not be able to fully catch up until the end of the year at the earliest. The plan, thus, is to do at least 30 new cards per day.

As time goes on, and I accomplish these goals, I will redirect my plan toward other goals.

Future of this Blog

My intention is to write a blog entry roughly once a week, at least at the beginning. This blog will discuss the Japanese language, but will be more focused on my efforts to learn it, and the challenges that arise in the process.