[Susiron]

I've been slowly teaching myself Japanese for awhile now, but I've only just recently started learning how to actually write the characters. I've known hiragana, katakana, and some kanji by sight, but learning to actually Write them has helped a lot with my reading and recall.

These are all from memory! I've mostly been doing my practices in a notebook, but it's fun to do them with my tablet as well.

EDIT: forgot the general oekaki rule of no posts that are purely writing, so I added in some actual drawings. If it's still too wordy though, lemme know mods 👍

[Adamented]

Cute doodles, wow the writing looks so beautiful... tbh I think it is both art and writing ;w;

Where did you first start learning Japanese? Have you been teaching yourself, did it start in school, or with a friend/tutor?

[Susiron]

Cute doodles, wow the writing looks so beautiful... tbh I think it is both art and writing ;w;

Where did you first start learning Japanese? Have you been teaching yourself, did it start in school, or with a friend/tutor?

Aww thank you!! And it's true that kanji does look very beautiful! I'm glad you like my writing here with it <3

So I've been teaching myself Japanese in a very haphazard way, just by myself. I took a crack at it a few years back with Duolingo, but I didn't stick with it and really didn't feel like I was retaining anything. I started revisiting it again though about 1-2 years ago? (Maybe longer, my sense of time is Very Bad) And the first thing I did this time around was I taught myself to read hiragana and katakana using the site Tofugu, which was insanely helpful for learning both. Hiragana and katakana are honestly both fairly easy to learn, whereas kanji takes a lot more time and effort.

I then started just teaching myself some vocabulary using the book "Japanese Kanji for Beginners" by Timothy G. Stout & Kaori Hakone. I was retaining a lot of this for awhile, and building up a pretty nice vocab on just that, but eventually my hyperfixation with it crashed and I started forgetting some of it.
Then I started picking up Duolingo again, and since my first try with Japanese on Duolingo, they've improve the courses a Lot. I find them much easier to follow now, especially now that I actually know hiragana and katakana. I'm still doing Duolingo for it pretty much every day.

It wasn't until like a week or two ago that I started learning to actually write everything though. I realized Duolingo had some lessons on it that involved actually drawing the kanji out, and I realized too that my memory was much better for kanji I'd actually drawn. So I started really pushing myself to draw all of them, and then a week ago I extended that to drawing hiragana and katakana. Cause even though I taught myself these awhile back, I didn't know how to Draw them, and couldn't really recall what they looked like in detail unless I was looking at them directly.

I've been watching some helpful videos on Youtube too from some folks teaching kanji and Japanese. One channel I've really grown to like is ToKini Andy!

Sorry this got kind of long! It's definitely just been something I've been doing on my own time, finding what works for me and how my mind wants to learn this language. I've been having a lot of fun, and it's been really rewarding to see my progress and be able to write hiragana, katakana, and around 50 kanji now without reference!

[Adamented]

Wow! Sounds like its been quite the journey for you, I'll probably check out that youtube channel at some point! I've wanted to learn but haven't really been able to find a good resource for it, I made an attempt with Duolingo as well a whiiiile ago (years... I think I was still in secondary at that point) but I wasn't retaining any of it, I noticed, so I kind of just put it down and didn't come back to it.

Thank you for sharing your experience with learning Japanese with me! n.n

[Susiron]

@Adamented Definitely! It's pretty funky learning a language mostly by yourself with no real like set tutor or system, but definitely go for it if it's something you're passionate about! Youtube has a lot of surprisingly good resources for it, and a lot of the channels will also recommend sites to help too-- stuff with flash cards, or etymology lessons, or other useful things.

And np! Happy to share <3
Thank you for your sweet comments!