Fluent Japanese by March 1st 2013 | My language mission and my log | Forum

I know it's far away, but that's my actual deadline.

On March 1st I will be landing in Nagoya, Japan to work as a missionary for 1 year. By that time, my goal is to be fluent in Japanese, which for me consists of these things:

1) To be able to speak comfortable with a native. So I will not be nervous about not knowing a word, the conversation will flow without me having to mentally search for a word, I understand the regular slang, and I can fully express myself. I should be able to live an entire day speaking only Japanese. Let me know if you think this needs to be even more specific.

2) I will understand and be able to use at least the 2,136 Joyo kanji. This is a list the government has decided that will be 'regular use', so the newspapers and such only use these ones, and all Japanese school kids learn them throughout school. As a byproduct, I will be able to comfortable read a normal Japanese daily newspaper, understand menus and signs, read notes written by natives (this will take a lot of practice) and write emails/write letters to natives comfortably.

I am learning on my own, and I believe this will work out better for me, rather than going through a course at uni. I am using Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar), I am learning kanji using my Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary in the order presented on this site (http://kanjidamage.com), and I am meeting with natives at my university at least once a week to practice, as well as attending a few Japanese events like conversation classes and Christian fellowships in Japanese. I speak to my girlfriend a bit too.

For reading, at the moment I have a Japanese 'Bagguse' magazine, a English-Japanese New Testament Bible (lots of obscure Kanji in there) and a few odds and ends in Japanese. To learn Kanji I am using physical flash cards I made with old business cards because I don't have a smart phone and it's the only real way I can do it on the train.

Whew, that's about it. I first discovered this site a few months ago, and boy has it inspired me as well as kick my butt into gear. You probably won't read this Benny, but thank you very much for what you've done to help.

I don't know how often I'll update here but I do keep a blog about my learning process at http://2000kanji.blogspot.com.au/.