今は二ヶ月と少しも日本に滞在しているんだけれど、予想していたほどより周りの言葉が聞き取りづらくて、最近、そもそも自分がいったい何のために日本語を勉強しようと思ったというのかとさえ疑い始めていた。
三年前、日本語を初めて勉強するようになったときからまるで変わってないじゃないか。
やっぱり俺には無理だった。勝元と成功している他の皆にある何かが、自分にはずっと欠け落ちていたんだ。
どうせ失敗するなら最初から諦めばよかった。

と、本気でそう思ったんだ。頑張って小説を読めるようになったのに。頑張って幾千の漢字も
書けるようになったのに。頑張ってぺらぺら話せるようになったのに。かつて夢にも見なかったことができるようになったのに、今はまだ完璧ではないからとて自分が積んできた努力を全て棒に切るつもりか？　ふん、まさか。そんなわけがあるまい。

有り難う、勝元先生。君がいなければここまで上達することはできなかった。お礼としていつかきっと、日本語をマスターしてみせよう。

I don’t know why but this quote is possibly the most personally motivating in a while. It’s a great way of looking at it.

I’ve been putting off learning Japanese for a while, not because I didn’t believe I could do it (I’ve already reached proficiency in Chinese, after all), but because I didn’t want to go through the long process again, months to a year or more of barely understanding anything about anything…
Yet thinking of it this way, “You don’t “speak” a language. You use it.” puts things in perspective. I don’t have to learn Japanese, but I can use it. I can use it right now.
Maybe the software is a little barebones right now, but I can always install more features later.

In any case, I’ve already familiarized myself with most of the romanization, and, and, get this, I browsed through the first few minutes of One Piece with Chinese and Japanese subtitles, as well as Gantz manga with Chinese and Japanese side-by-side, and from what I saw the majority of the Kanji is either the same as Chinese or so similar it’s easy enough to figure out by context. This takes a huge load off me.
One of my main issues when learning Chinese was not being able to figure out what is actually a word, what to look up, what goes where… but with the Kanji the context is much clearer. A lot of the stuff in between the Kanji are often just chain words and ending particles and such, too.

Besides that, I’ve been familiar with basic Japanese greetings and perfunctory jibba jabba from Japanese media exposure for years, so I already have a bigger advantage than when I started Chinese. After learning the romanization, it was exciting for me to even be able to understand basic expressions like ‘oi!’ or ‘arigoto’ without being able to look them up.

Thus, I’ve already gained a number of victories before I’ve even started. It counts, buttface!