Sophie the Japan

August 19, 2025 | 1:22 AM ET

Blog Status

Hello again!! The markdown-to-html converter I created has made post-writing easier than ever before..! I'm itching to spread my words on the internet for all of my friends to see. This blog has always been a place for me to collect my thoughts and less so to produce polished content, so it makes sense for me to make lots of blog posts if I want to. I might spring a 10,000 word essay about a particular manga I read or something, but those events might be few and far between.

One thing I can potentially do to separate the wheat from the chaff is to attach a word-count to the main blog-post index page, or maybe an actual tag that denotes an "effort rating" for the post. That way, you may choose to read posts which are more polished and describe actual important ideas of mine which are separate from these stream-of-consciousness posts. This may also become a separate directory on my website entirely.

Japanese

I've been thinking of learning Japanese again. When I was in middle and high school, I really liked the idea of watching anime and reading manga untranslated. I think it originally came from a "subs are better than dubs" perspective, which I feel less strongly about nowadays since I've discovered that some subs are extremely high quality (Dragon Ball and One Piece are very good, and the English voices feel more iconic than the Japanese counterparts), but I still want to learn Japanese for the fun of it. There's been a few manga I've come across which are untranslated (like the newest chapters of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken); it would be cool to be able to read these myself before waiting for a translation!

I've been checking out this website as a starting point. I used to do a lot of Duolingo in middle and high school to learn Japanese, and I think I really did do this for several years, but I didn't get much further than learning directions (like "the library is north of the supermarket"). Duolingo is, infamously, not a very reliable tool to enforce long-term or high-quality learning, as opposed to tried-and-true methods like textbooks and actual study. This guide is encouraging because it focuses more on immersion, particularly the area I actually care about: learning Japanese for the sake of watching anime and reading manga untranslated. It introduces a satisfying idea: why don't I just leap into these things headfirst, without actually spending a lot of time in preparation learning grammar or memorizing a thousand words, and just learn it as I go?

Some anime and manga (particularly the kind I enjoy, Shōnen) is designed to be read by teenagers, so it oftentimes uses relatively simple, straightforward, digestible language accompanied by obvious visuals. This makes it a very nice target for comprehension since you can oftentimes discern what is going on even if you don't understand what's being spoken beyond a few works. I liked the idea further after watching Jujutsu Kaisen with my friend the other day and noticing I understood up some words if I really payed attention to them. It was exciting!

It sounds like a nice goal to be learning Japanese alongside completing my PhD. I want to complete my PhD by four years from now, so I think it's manageable to become intermediate-level (or at a well-enough level to watch anime and read manga untranslated and get a good amount of enjoyment out of them) within that time. I have an idea to start a long-running anime that I don't really care about but that I still want to watch, which I can use for pedagogical purposes: one anime which fits this description could be Naruto. I've already been meaning to watch this for a while, though I don't expect to be really invested in it like I am with One Piece or Jujutsu Kaisen, so this is a nice opportunity to watch this without being worried I'll experience less enjoyment due to not understanding any of the dialogue (for now!!). I'll start doing this soon and will check up on my status!!!

-Sophie