日本語での冒険: A 4-month update.

Okay, so it's technically been about four and a half months since I started this whole thing, but - close enough. I figured I'd take some time and go over my overall progress up to this point, and where I stand my learning cycle. For now, I'm still in the Kanji stage. I had to slow down how fast I was going through RTK since my retention was beginning to slip. A bit behind where I wanted to be, but I'm still progressing. That's the main point. Another thing that I have begun to notice is that the immersion is beginning to pay off, even if in very small ways. I'm starting to pick up on small phrases, words and sentence structure. I've gained a basic understanding of the flow in which Japanese is spoken. I'd say I still don't understand 96% of what I hear, but I am okay with this. Something else that's come to my attention is web pages full of kanji no longer look like chaos to me. I can pick apart the kanji/kana, recognize some, and see some sentence structure there as well. I did wind up jumping into hiragana and katakana, so at least I can read those parts of the sentences even if I don't yet understand them. It's also helping out when using furigana. I also seem to recognize about 20% of kanji on most pages, which is kinda cool. Also, when I go to the local Japanese restaurant, I can pick up small portions of conversations - I know eavesdropping is bad but hey, I'm trying to learn here! More frequent updates (I'd like to do one per month or one every other month going forward) on my progress soon.