9 comments

1. Are there any cultural associations of the phrase “幸せはすぐそこに”?

   Context: This is the theme for an ikebana contest in a mobile game (Hananezumi) It’s translated in-game as “Happiness lies within you” but machine translation says it’s “Happiness is just around the corner.” While there is a form of hanakotoba in the game, none of the “happiness” flowers seem to be graded well, so I am STUMPED.

   So now I’m looking for other meanings. Several of the other contest themes are based on haiku lines or Japanese proverbs (“山眠る” for winter flowers, “春の息吹” for red and pink early-spring flowers etc) so maybe “幸せはすぐそこに” is similar? All I can find is the enka song with that title tho.

2. I plan on reading Mushoku Tensei(無職転生) light novel as my first book. Is this a bad idea at all? I really liked the anime so I thought reading a story I already know the gist of is a good idea. I know it’s probably better to do something easier but I literally cannot read or watch slice of life stuff. I get so bored and quit often when the content doesn’t interest me.

3. Confusion with the jplt recommended requirements. So I know jplt doesn’t really gauge your skill well but I still would like to eventually pass them, I am 3 weeks into learning and am confused as the recommended vocab for the n5 is 800 and 100 kanji what is the difference I couldn’t find a direct answer

4. Pple often say that kanji is super hard to learn, but after learning Japanese for 2 years now with about under 1k kanjis under my belt, I find myself learning the kanji associated with words faster than learning how to say the words. I just thought this was interesting and wanted to know if other pple are the opposite

   I feel kanji gets easier the further in due to patterns that emerge, meanwhile there are so many similar sounding verbs that will always get under my skin

   返る: to return (to a previous state)

   帰る: to return home

   変える: to change (something)

   返す: to return (something)

5. What is the よ actually doing in this phrase?

   少年よ大志を抱け

6. Not sure if I’m asking for advice or if this is more of a rant, but I’m just a bit distraught on what to do to immerse as a total beginner… I started a little under 2 months ago and I know I’m still very very early into it, but I’m at the point where I can at least understand a lot or all of absolute basic beginner content (such as the Complete Beginner and most of the Beginner content on CI Japanese), but beyond that even “regular” beginner content such as easy podcasts or youtube channels completely elude me besides just picking out words here and there and maybe understanding just a couple full sentence out of an entire video. I know it’s stupid for me to be already getting frustrated by this when I am so new in the process, but, if I’m being totally honest, I’m already a bit tired of being talked to like a literal baby and it’s getting exhausting lmao. I’ve also been consuming a lot more native japanese content in general like watching anime and random youtube videos about stuff I like in japanese raw and it’s obviously more fun, but I feel like it does close to nothing for my actual language learning because, again, I don’t understand literally anything besides picking out words here and there and that’s it.

   You constantly hear in this community “input needs to be comprehensible to be useful” and also “input should be enjoyable so you’re motivated to continue”, but as a complete beginner all the comprehensible stuff is boring, and all the fun stuff is incomprehensible lol. I guess I’m just not sure if I’m doing something wrong, i.e. do I need to just suck it up and accept that there’s going to be a long period of having to slog through stuff made for literal 3 year olds and push through it, or should I drop that and just try to make the most out of watching stuff I actually enjoy where I understand way less?

7. I am going to start using genki 1 after practicing kanji from genki kanji look and learn sample from Apple Books. Is there advice that will help learn Japanese and to avoid bad study habits?

8. This example sentence from the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar is for some reason giving my brain a hard time and I’m not really sure why.

   私に謝ってもらってもしようがない。

   The written translation is ” There is no point apologizing to me.”

   But in my brain when I see てもらう it is receiving from the person/thing/etc., in front of the に. So when I see the sentence my brain is thinking ” I won’t apologize to you/there’s no way you are receiving an apology from me” or something in the same vein.

   I’m hoping someone will be able to shed some light on where I am going wrong. Thanks again!

9. What vocabulary deck should I try? (N4 Level) I got reccomended Kaishi 1.5k by others but I just wanna confirm that this is the way to go. I finished Tae Kim’s grammar guide already, so I’m looking for a deck to continue on. Also can’t really mine as I have barely any time to do it, so premade is much preferred