Hey, everyone, it's been a long time since I've uploaded a Japanese video.
Today’s video will show my first Japanese studies from the time I started all the way to the current ones.
It's a "notebooks until now"...introduction video!
This is my high school Japanese notebook...ah, rather than just Japanese, a lot of language exercises are gathered in this notebook, however
These are the notes from the first time I started learning Japanese.
Actually I couldn't write nicely, but..
Here, it's always romaji, there's like no kana
Um...so from here, *drumroll* I've started to practice a little hiragana and katakana. I feel that I learned a lot of hiragana in this way.
This notebook is from my first-year at university
It's VERY MESSY, isn't it?
It's not that pretty! But..
But I really studied hard.
At that time, um, I studied a lot of sentences using textbooks, but
I love writing a lot, every day, after day. I wrote a lot!
It is important to find a study method that suits you
For example, if you like writing, it's a good idea to practice writing a lot
But, if you don't like writing, a lot of people learn well by listening, so in that case
maybe you can listen to a Japanese CD while cleaning or doing other work. It's good to keep hearing the language.
Let's go onto the next one, next one is again a university first-year notebook, so it's the one following the last one.
I wrote, "NIHONGO!" haha
At this time, I was working hard on my Kanji, I still couldn't write, but
I try writing Kanji this time, using the same textbook, but writing the new words
I wrote a word list
Um...it's an ordinary notebook, however there's lots various information and sources I worked from.
OK! Next notebook is...
Ah, another one from first-year university!
This notebook
My parents moved to Japan when I was a university student
So I really thought that I needed to study Japanese super hard
I worked so hard
This whole notebook was filled up during one winter vacation
When I was in Japan at that time, I didn't have a lot to do except traveling,
but when I was at home, I would basically just study Japanese
There's purikura too lol
Oh this is
My dad worked in Japan and he got the Japanese Times newspaper at work, and they had a section with phrases for Japanese learners.
My dad always photocopied this and brought it home for me (thanks pop, love you!)
So I'd read those and learn new sentences.
Let's continue!
During this time you can see how my characters/handwriting got a lot smaller
so smol
Can you see?
Oh this is definitely thanks to MUJI's pens. Thanks to those thin pens my characters became small.
As expected of Japanese stationery :D
When I started this notebook
I didn't want to use English a lot
So if you look carefully there isn't a lot of English written here
I put in a lot of effort to only write notes in Japanese
And when I finished this notebook I moved onto this one
This is from when I was a second-year student at uni.
Already 3 years ago
Already 3 years!!
If I used a new textbook I'd write the name of the textbook at the top of the page like this
And the notes from the book below it
Yeah this notebook is just a mess of a bunch of different sources and books
magazines and newspapers etc
textbooks, internet etc
I took notes from various sources
Not so much I can show you guys, just a normal notebook
If there are conversations in the textbooks I'd write them out a lot
I also use different pen colors for my notes
This is the notebook I use now.
It's from 2 years ago and I'm still using it lol
This notebook was when I used a bit more "advanced" textbooks than before
I'd underline Kanji that I didn't know
And I'd make a word list of new vocab here on the right
after finishing the page from the textbook I'd go and look up all the words
I worked quite hard on this page. This is from an article in a magazine for women.
"Understand this now: Things you have to do before 35" was the name of the article
I thought it was interesting and I wrote down the points.
And Kanji that I didn't know go on the right.
It's interesting to compare my notes and handwriting from when I first started until now
A website I love is called italki
You can upload sentences or paragraphs you wrote to the website
for example, Japanese learners can upload Japanese paragraphs and get it corrected by native speakers. (I just wrote out my original paragraph and the italki corrections in pink)
This is an ad for a design competition that I found in Japan
There are so many words I don't know but
I'd read ads or competition information sheets like these and look up the words and sentences
and this is another way I studied.
And something you must remember is...
It's a bad idea to write notes and not come back and read them.
Think about the reason why notes exist.
So all the places where I've highlighted is where I've come back to this notebook in 1 or 2 weeks or a month and reread stuff. The highlighted parts are stuff I still didn't have memorized.
This is a method that works well for me.
These are notes while I was reading a novel. I rewrote sentences from the novel. And I also practiced writing Kanji.
I'd really like to see your notes too,
so please send me photos on instagram (@lindiebotes) or twitter (@lindiebee)
See you in the next video! Bye!