Finishing My Second Japanese Textbook

This is an add on to a post that I made earlier about my wanting of learning Japanese. You can find this post here.

What I have completed this time?

After finishing Genki 1, I immedietately bought Genki 2 (the second version of the Japanese textbook provided by the authors) and started to self-learn whenever I had time too. I’m currently (almost) done with the book and I wanted to share my thoughts and opinions on what I’ve learned and any suggestions that I would make to those who are self studying Japanese.

The Genki series is REALLY good for beginners who are trying to self-studying. I’m not joking, this book not only contains a vocabulary section, but also contains detailed grammar points, custom listening audio files, grammar section, and even a reading section. While this may seem a lot, it actually is not because of how condensed yet important each question in the book is. While I have not tried other books, I do know that a lot of the old books have bad or simply just “inconsistent” grammar section. I feel like as a new beginner it’s important to have a strong foundation in Japanese grammar. For example, learning the te-form, etc.

How did I finish the second textbook?

With it being summer since I started the textbook, this meant that I had a lot more time than during the school year to self-learn Japanese. For example, during the school year maybe I would spend like maximum 5 hours a week self-studying Japanese, however during the summer I was able to spend up to like 40 hours per week going through the textbook. However, I did want to say that I was able to go through the textbook at an alarming rate because of the time plus my dad who also speaks Japanese. (He helped me with a lot of questions that I had). If your someone who doesn’t have a lot of time, a more realistic time to complete the textbook would be at least 3 months.

Similarly to how I finished Genki 2, my daily routing of going through the textbook would be like this.

Day 1-2: I would utilize Anki decks to start memorizing the vocabulary of the new lesson. This is typically a two day process since the first day it’s very easy to think you remember something but then second day completely forget some of the words.

Day 2-3: I would go over the grammar points in the textbook, while watching ToKiniAndy on any grammar concepts that I appear unclear about. He goes over clear and straightforward explanations that match the grammar points within the textbook. After reviewing the grammar points, I would jump straight into the textbook exercise questions. These typically consist of various questions asked through an audio file and then you would respond by saying it out loud. Although, I do want to say that sometimes it’s difficult to understand whether the audio file says something or something else. For a simple example, it might be different for one to hear 美容院 (beauty salon/biYOUin) or 病院 (hospital byoIN). Like these words approximately have the same fundamental hiragana characters, however the way you say it is different. These subtle differences sometimes makes it hard for me to check my answers so I typically utilize Seth Genki Study Resource to check my answers as it has an answer key built into the software.

Day 3-4: After going over the grammar points in the textbook, I would start the workbook section. I do not write any of the Japanese because I wanted to focus more on the listening and speaking aspect of Japanese so utilizing Seth Genki Study Resource I’m able to type out all of my Japanese answers. Which I am very grateful for Seth not only making this website for free but also open-sourcing it for others to utilize. I do want to note that the Questions sections at the end are difficult, so it is ok to go back in various grammar sections to review grammatical concepts. Sometimes I had to use Chat-GPT to sometimes understand why a sentence is said this way. Like what grammar points is this sentence using to construct the meaning of the sentence.

Day 5: After finishing the workbook, I would work on the listening comprehension in the textbook while also going over the dialogue in the beginning of the lessons. In my opinion, the dialouge seems to utilize very complex sentences with certain grammatical structures we did not learn in the textbook. I heard that people felt the same way online, but I guess it’s trying to get us used to listenign to fluent conversations? Anyways, it’s important that you continue listening to the dialogue untl you completely understand. Even if you think you understand, Japanese has a lot of subtlties that are important to notice.

After I complete the grammar points, I would loop through this process again. It is worth to mention that everyday, even if I’m not learning anything new, I would go over the Japanese flashcards on Anki that I need to review. This is just to make sure that I don’t forget any terms. In addition to that, I would always finish my Bunpro deck. If you did not read my post before this, it’s basically like Anki but for learning grammar points. It gives you a sentence with fill in the blank and you need to fill in the correct grammar point. This software so far has been the only way I could remember the grammar points. Before this, I would learn the grammar but never touch it again which would make me forget it. I highly recommend this software for everyone to use. Another software that I have seen people use is something called WaniKani which is a software that helps you remember Kanji. For me, since I know a lot of the basic Kanji characters so I decided to not use this software yet. Though, once I go up to a higher level I will for sure add this to my practice list. The process of utilizing Anki and Bunpro everyday takes around 1 hour. During my free time yet still busy, like when I’m at the gym or driving long distances I would listen to Japanese podcasts. This is something that I try to do everyday, however if I’m extremely busy in the day I would force myself to listen to at least 10 minutes.

Some interesting points

I was looking back at my old blog posts and I remember mentioning that I could only “understand around 30%” of what the podcast Nihongo Con Teppei would say. It’s interesting because I could proudly say that I understand around 80% now of what the podcast says. It’s so interesting how I improved this much over the course since the last textbook. I continue to listen to this podcast everyday and it really is interesting to learning about Japanese culture and the perspective from someone else. In addition, watching J-Drama during my free time has made me realize how much I understand also funnily enough how the translations from Japanese to English is sometimes “bad”. Like it does not fully encapsulate the meaning of the sentence which is something I find interesting.

What am I going to do after?

After this textbook, I do plan to slow down my learning a bit (not a lot) but I have gotten really busy recently. I don’t have as much time to spend in learning Japanese, but I still want to continue learning. After doing some research on some books that I should continue after Genki it seems to appear that QUARTET and Tobira are the more popular intermediate level Japanese textbooks. After doing some research, I decided to continue with Quartet. There’s a really long explanation on why but long story short, it was after watching this video which compared the 2 textbooks in which I finally decided to continue with Quartet. It simply is more updated with more detailed grammar section, while also created by the authors of Genki.

Adding onto the my previous post, I’ve decided that I do not want to take the JLPT exams (which is an exam that measures your Japanese level). I feel like I’m only trying to learn Japanese just to understand better and not neccessarily to get a certificate or anything. Like people would know if I know Japanese just buy the way I speak and comprehend stuff. Despite this, I think it’s good to have a clear goal and 頑張って! (Good luck!)