My Japanese Learning - Difficulties and Roadblocks

Now that it's been nearly two months since class started, I think I will start reflecting on my own growth as a Japanese student and the trials and tribulations I've met along the way.

Starting off, the class was easy. Almost too easy. Everything progressed at a normal pace. I guess it helped that I had learned hiragana before and knew how to introduce myself already.

For me, it was easy to handle the homework and vocab quizzes.

That's before they got longer
...and longer

To learn a language, its important to be consistent. For me, I have the most trouble remembering phrases. Starting out, I had trouble remembering "~kara kimashita". Now, I know that "kara" means "from" and "kimashita" means "come". For me to remember a new phrase, I have to know what the individual components mean. That's just how I learn. I always struggle with the phrases given to us as "here, remember this".

I am interested to know about how the learning of Kanji will be for me. As a fluent Chinese speaker, I already recognize (and have an associated meaning/reading) with many of the characters we are being introduced to. This may prove tricky in the future. For example, in Chinese “安” means "safe" or "calm" while in Japanese, the same character in the phrase "安い" means "cheap". In Chinese, the character is read "an" while in Japanese it is read "yasu". I wonder if this will prove very difficult in the future.

I think for the most part, writing is easy for me. It is being able to respond quickly and fluently (speaking in Japanese while thinking in English) that is the most difficult. I hope to one day progress to the point where I can seamlessly switch between the two. That's the goal! Now it's up to me to put in the effort.