The Japanese language is more difficult than I thought.

Hello all, this is my first post on this platform.

I randomly found a post from someone else's blog while browsing the internet and checking it further I felt a sense of nostalgia on how city-cost works, a minimalistic yet practical way of creating content that was how I got started into blogging back in the early 2000's.

Therefore, for my first post here as an expat living in Japan, I'd like to put it out there how the language itself got me trapped. I must mention that English is not my first language (please pardon eventual mistakes), despite having a post-degree diploma acquired in Canada and been communicating in English for most of my life.

Besides my mother language, Portuguese, I can perfectly speak and read in Spanish and have some ground in French as well. That being said, I had an overall impression that Japanese wouldn't be that seven heads monster everyone always told me about.

While in university 20 years ago I attended Japanese classes for about 2 years and found the phonetics quite close to Portuguese, for me the junction of syllables felt like a puzzle game and sounded cute. The particles tricked me in the beginning but made sense.

After arriving in Japan, planning to stay for a year or so 3 years ago, I ended up changing my plans and decided to settle down right here. The list of reasons for my change in plans could go on and on but I can resume it as having family nearby (my wife's) and a sense of security, both financial and overall, that I wouldn't find back home or in Canada where we were, at the time, waiting for the immigration papers in order to finish the diaspora.

Since my initial plans didn't include settling down in the island country I didn't bother going deep on the language, I signed up for a reasonably cheap school close to home with 3 hours classes on weekdays and imagined that the daily life would do the rest. But it didn't.

The school, maybe for its price and profile, wasn't a good choice I found out 3 months in, with new students joining the classes every week and the teachers returning 2 or 3 chapters on the book to accommodate the newcomers, I soon lost my motivation and left it.

I tried Duolingo 2 hours a day for over 6 months but felt there was something missing. I tried other apps such as MochiMochi which also bothered me for clearly providing wrong information on the lessons. I bought Kanji drawing books, Minna-no-Nihongo, Grammar books. It didn't stick. I signed up for a 3-month government-funded course through JICE, a good option I may admit, but didn't help me master the language in such a short period of time besides their great teachers.

At this point, my son who was born 10 months after my arrival, is starting to speak Japanese. The daily attendance at the nursery home plus the periods he spends with his grandparents have definitely played a role in it. That puts extra pressure on me.

For 2 months now I am enrolled in a Kumon school close to my place, twice a week I drop by and deliver the booklets I was given in the previous session, the instructor then hands me the booklets I delivered before signed with a red thick pen where I made my mistakes. I quietly sit beside her and correct my mistakes, eventually asking her about how to fix one mistake or another that is not very clear to me.

So far I believe this strategy has been the right one for me, I can feel like I am covering so many gaps in grammar that I couldn't work on my previous learning experiences. Add to that the fact that they use the "drilling" technique, deliberate repetition on the vocabulary, grammar and kanji. 

Last but not least, I have come to an agreement with my wife that we may only speak Japanese from now on between the two of us to force me out of my shell of self-limitation. About my son, I will be speaking to him in Portuguese only. It's a very difficult language that I believe he will suffer to learn in another stage of his life, so in order for him to one day be able to understand and, who knows, live my culture it's a task I have to embrace while it's still on time.

What about you? How did you tackle the language? How has it been limiting you to fully live your life in Japan? Please share in the comments your tips and hacks, it may be helpful to me and other readers.

Thanks for reading.