/jp/ - Otaku Culture

It has been 9 years since I first started learning Japanese on 4/13/2014. I make a yearly post about it but I forgot for ten days until now. I also had to look up whether it was 8 or 9 years since I couldn't remember. Really goes to show the erosion of self over time. I haven't posted on DJT for 7 years but I make sure to continue this post for no reason. Feel free to ask anything. Wow, almost the big 10.

I paused translating a book to post this. My job is a professional translator for books and games, though mostly books nowadays since they have the least headache. I will now resume translating. Even if there are some days or stretches of time where I'm not playing or doing anything in Japanese, I always have a (self-assigned) daily quota of stuff to TL for work, so I've interacted with JP just about every day for 9 years. Wow. I should be a lot better than I am, but it goes to show that you will stagnate without focus. In particular, I have no reason to write in Japanese (outside of communicating with authors / agencies), so my production remains poor. Input helps a lot, but without practice I think one ends up pretty clunky. The words don't come to you immediately since your brain isn't used to pulling them out. But at least I can read really fast. My record is reading three books in one day when I wanted to finish a series fast, but I don't usually focus on that kind of thing (especially since one could look for like really thin light novels if they wanted to cheese it).