So my Japanese studies continue with Duolingo. I feel a little bit better about hiragana and katakana; I’m just a little slow at reading it. And using the app, I’m picking up some kanji. I need to go back learn more kanji, but right now, I’m working on sentence construction and telling time — it’s been a slow process.

The one app I’m using for learning kanji is a little annoying — it forces you to write correctly (which I’m fine with), but slight deviations can make you miss a character… the line detection is a little buggy. Like my angle might be a little off, so it considers it a fail.

Which brings up an interesting point; my hand writing isn’t the best. I can write in cursive, but I’ve settled on something that’s about 1/2 cursive and 1/2 traditional letters — depends if one letter flows nicely into the next or not. There’s a little “art” when it comes to writing in Japanese with the more complex kanji, any my pragmatic writing style gets in the way sometimes.

The other thing I’m realizing I need to spend more time on is listening… I watch anime in Japanese whilst reading subtitles, but it’s not until recently that I read a word in English and try to pick it out in Japanese. Like the other day, I heard 行く, meaning “to go”, but picked up the conjugated form. Fun, but feel like it’s just the tip of the iceberg (氷山). (heh, that’s ice mountain)