Coming back to it
I got into Japanese through anime and manga, and I’m not going to pretend that is a rare origin story. I still watch plenty of it, and I read light novels too, though only in translation so far. Getting far enough to read them in Japanese is the thing I am actually working towards.
For the past few years I have been picking this up and putting it down again, mostly by drilling vocabulary, which has always been the part I find hardest. Grammar has never been my problem. Vocabulary is, and it is the part that never stays put, which is a bad combination to spend years on.
This time I reset my WaniKani level from somewhere around 16 back down to 5, so the older material comes back around. Going backwards to move forwards is a strange thing to do on purpose, but I would rather relearn words I half know than keep pretending I moved past them.
Here’s hoping I stick to it this time.