I can't believe that it has been more than 1 and a half years since I have posted in this thread! I thought I'd give an update on what I have done in these past one and a half years. So here we go.
Last year I ended up quitting my job at my company to pursue fluency in Japanese. I lived in Tokyo for 3 months on tourist visa. When I was in Tokyo I was living with about 5 Japanese in a sharehouse which I found through a friend who works at a sharehouse company. I asked my friend specifically to put me in a sharehouse that has Japanese people only and she did that for me.
So as you could imagine as I was living with Japanese people I would be using Japanese everyday, we all became the best of friends together watching T.V, eating food, having some banter, talking about all sorts of things.
Whilst living with Japanese I learnt how to speak more naturally and I learnt how to speak a lot more faster during that period. After those three months ended I travelled a little bit and returned to Australia. From there I found another job and saved a bit of money. I had to wait 6 months before I could re-enter Japan on a working holiday visa so I waited out that period and came back to Japan on the 8th December of 2017.
The only difference about this time is that I'm in Kansai living in Hyogo and working in Osaka. I met a person in Tokyo who basically gave me a place to stay for 30000 yen a month in Hyogo, I got a bike, and that same friends older brother owns a restaurant business so I got a job too and a whole bunch of acquaintances.
Since I am in Kansai, I said to myself I am going to master my Kansai dialect in which I studied a little bit and then I learnt from speaking to other people.
Now the best part of my job is I'm working in Tenma. For those who don't know Tenma it is the galore of Izakaya's foreigner restaurants, bars and central for Nanpa. For those who don't know what Nanpa is it's basically picking up girls. Everyone in Tenma is doing it, a lot of people in my restaurant are doing it. What's better than being around Japanese who are playing hard, drinking, having fun and letting loose?
At my job all my co-workers are Japanese so I'm speaking Japanese all the time, all the customers are Japanese so I'm speaking Japanese all the time and gradually I
got better and better and better, to the point where customers stop and ask me if I'm actually Japanese and born here even though I don't look Japanese.
Customer's buy me drinks quite often, talk to customers all the time about random stuff, I get invited for after work drinks by customers quite often, I get hit on quite often from customers, I do get asked if I'm a model sometimes too.
I even met my ex-girlfriend from my work who was a customer.
Through my job I learnt 謙譲語 Kenjougo and the standard 敬語 Keigo . My co-workers are the best, I have the best examples to copy, listen, and ask questions to. I use Keigo normally now and can easily switch between casual, polite and respectful speaking styles depending on who I am talking to.
My speciality in Japanese is dirty words, jokes, and Kansai dialect along with Keigo and sounding Japanese.
My weaker side is grammar. My Vocabulary level is great, but my grammar is lacking, not bad at all but lacking in terms of writing pieces.
I learnt a lot of slang through work, clubbing, drinking and going out on dates.
The only thing with this year is I haven't been doing my direct study at all cause I work and play and that's pretty much about it. But that has changed now since I have a new goal I am aiming for.
My goal from now is to get into a Japanese university and study Economics or Business administration in Japanese. Through this way I will get my degree and up my grammar and argument skills whilst also being around Japanese people for the entire 4 years.
So I'll be going back to Australia to work and save up about 25-30k to pay my university fees which will take me a year to save after all expenses are paid. I am also learning how to write, I know how to read but I need to learn how to write to be able to do exams. I have started it in these past two weeks. I already knew how to write Hiragana and Katakana and a few of the basic of basic Kanji.
I created my own strategy for learning how to write the Kanji efficiently and I will be posting how I am currently doing that soon.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
Suburban Errorist's main focuses in the past couple years are listed below and not limited to;
1st year : Kanji, Vocabulary
2nd year: Grammar, speaking.
3rd year: Speaking, Keigo
From 2019;
4th year: Writing
There have been a mixture of speaking, grammar, speaking in all years but if i were to sum up the main focuses, there it is.