Still Learning

Watashi wa nihongo no gekusei desu. Demo chotto muzikashi deshita.

I am a student of Japanese, but it has been a bit hard.

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My translation is probably crap and my Japanese is sure to be worse, but that demonstrates about where I am up to. I have begun reading Naruto and Doraemon manga (comics) in Japanese kana and I am watching alot of anime. I still do not understand much, but every now and then I do not need to read the subtitles. I intend on making this frequency increase until I am fluent. My goal is to be able to enjoy Japanese anime and manga in its original form. I told one of my private students the other day that we must be pilgrims of language, searching for our own original truth of language, some form that we may exploit to practice our skill until we master it, ie: books, film, poetry, science, a friend, a country, etc. Yes I have probably been watching too much manga - this theme of searching for a mystical truth is very common in manga, it probably has its origin in confuciansim, buddhism, taoism &/or zen.