Both are possible. I got to N2 in one year as a full-time student in Japan by studying (school + at home) around 6-8 hours per day. People outside of Japan don’t get as many chances to actually use the language, so the same amount of study of course might yield less in that case.

Most westerners take 2-3 years (3-4 hours per day) to get to N2, which is reasonable. So my hours are about the same, just I crammed two years into one (because I really needed to).

Whereas many Chinese speakers tend to pass it in less than a year of getting to Japan because they already have a huge head start on kanji knowledge.

The relationship with languages you already know changes things a lot. The proximity and opportunities to use it are really important too, I think.

Practically every European I’ve met has pretty good English, I’ve noticed that. But most people in Japan I’ve met don’t. Many, if not, most of them studied it in school. They also get tested on it as part of university entrance exams. But most of them don’t need it much outside of those contexts, so I don’t blame them for not being able to speak English either.

I had no idea they made an American version of Hachikō’s story.

Most people don’t really understand how many total hours of purposeful learning and actual usage is needed to become proficient.

For Japanese, it typically takes people who can’t already read 漢字 about 1,325 hours to reach N3 (conversational), and 2,200 for N2 (roughly business). That means if you want to get to N2 in only one year, expect to study like five to eight hours a day.

So don’t feel too bad if you can’t.

Or do, and use that frustration to motivate your study.

Or a massive transmutation circle…

It always bothered me how so many Twitter users in Japan just kept using Xitter after everything Musk has done to it, like they’re not even aware. I think the language barrier has been filtering some of it out until now.

But,

I am not afraid of AI; I believe in its future and potential. However, I cannot accept my work being used, learned from, or exploited without my consent.

Boichi, that’s what’s been happening with AI to everybody’s art this entire time!

Fun fact, recorded rhymes are one of the clues linguists use to help reconstruct older pronunciations of words and their changes over time.

Aye, that’s it.

You can hear it in some words like 日本, as ‘nippon’ and ‘Japan’ both feel closer to the Middle Chinese pronunciation than they are to modern Mandarin’s ‘rìběn’.

Also, I hear Chinese students unintentionally (or half-intentionally) slip in Mandarin pronunciations all the time when they forget the Japanese pronunciation that is very close.

Japanese speaking and listening is still harder than reading and writing for me, and I’m guessing it’s the same for you, since you already know 漢字?

Yes.

When talking with the average American back home, there are lots of things you can sense they don’t notice and don’t seem to think about, especially if they’ve never even travelled.

From small things like always being cognizant of time zone differences and phone number country codes you use, to bigger things like seeing how crappy American restrictive zoning laws, suburban hellscapes, and car-centric society are.

Also, from the weeb perspective, going from needing anime subtitles to almost not needing them is pretty interesting.

I live in Japan, and of course there are formal ways to say everything, but in formal and polite situations, people actually try to avoid saying ‘you’ (anata, 貴方) as much as possible. Because even that can feel too personal. I only see it in writing that addresses the reader indirectly, like in surveys.

If you do address or refer to them, you typically use their title/position (e.g., ‘sensei’ for doctors and teachers, ‘Mr. President’), or name and appropriate honorific (e.g., Tanaka-san).

P.S., a lot of what might’ve been archaically formal and polite ways to say ‘you’ have become ironically rude and/or condescending. Like, ‘KISAMA!’ (貴様), kimi (君) (sovereign/lord), onushi (お主) (lord).

If you drive the same roads every day, you can start to pick up on the pattern and timings. It’s when it turns yellow in those times you feel almost too close to stop comfortably but too far to feel you’ll make it that people will “squeeze the lemon” and accelerate through that yellow light, not that I recommend it.

Also glad I don’t have to drive anymore.

I wholeheartedly agree with this guide.

When I was in college, I reached a point where I was wishing I was dead. I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be happy. What was the point of living? What was I suffering for? But I remembered there are things I really want to do in life. So what was keeping me from doing them?

I decided, if I’m going to die, why don’t I just go ahead and do the things I truly want to do in life.

Even if I fail and want to die again, I can wait until after trying all the things I want to do in life first.

Today, I’m feeling great. Ever since that time, I’ve gotten to do more and more of the things I wanted, accomplished goals that would’ve felt impossible for me back then. Because I figured out what was important to me and decided to keep moving forward.

So don’t stop! Don’t be afraid to fail horribly. Just keep moving. Life is too short to always be worrying about all that stuff all the time. Figure out what you want to do and do it!

As border tensions intensified, the sight of soldiers and journalists carrying heavy field gear underscored the harsh terrain and long deployments at the frontier. For those in such unpredictable conditions, reliable equipment becomes essential.

Like the 5.11 Tactical Backpack, Rush 72 2.0, designed for military and field operations with multiple compartments for carrying essentials.

The sudden shift to advertising gear in the middle of article caught me off guard, lmao

The disappearance of the moth memes were what made me think about how memes nowadays come and go way too fast.

But the moth memes are so unforgettable that they they still come up every once in a while. I’m strangely happy when I see it. It’s like an old friend.

P.S. Nice username.

I met a Russian student studying abroad who was very intent on staying out of Russia as much as possible because he’s aware of how messed up things are. Had very a good sense of humor. His jokes about Putin and the Russian government would be enough to get people there thrown in jail.

I remember hearing a while ago a little bit about Servo. It seems to have been started by Mozilla, but is now managed by the Linux Foundation Europe.

I know. But unfortunately, the president is also the commander in chief of the executive branch, so he has the power to approve their operations.

From what I understand, the military will suggest potential courses of action, but not all of them are good, which is where the president is supposed to use his wise judgment, if only he had it.

I don’t think he’s right. Personally, his comments rub me the wrong way. They remind me of the annoying, confidently incorrect comments I’ve see on Reddit so many times.

Granted, I’m also fairly biased because I used to be in the army, and don’t appreciate the kind of assumptions/generalizations people make about people in the US military. I bash the military all the time personally in my private life, but it’s different when I see people who clearly don’t know shit do it.

I respect you for admitting there are things you might not know though.

I feel like many of the commenters below are missing the point, or didn’t even read the article. It’s not about incompetence by the SEALs (they weren’t), it’s Trump’s incompetence. He basically ignored the restrictions his predecessors had put in place because they knew that using special operations for extremely high-risk operations (because they’re likely to fail or be disastrous in the first place) was not something to be done lightly, but Trump, being Trump, just approved crazy operations without any clear thought.

Hey you kids, get off my WLAN!