When I was in college, I bought the Standard Japanese textbook, planning to teach myself Japanese. But I gave up after just one lesson.

After I started working, our company had deep and extensive collaborations with Japanese companies like Sony Ericsson and Canon, so we were assigned a Japanese teacher to help us learn the language. However, every time we got to Lesson 4, I just couldn’t keep up — it was quite embarrassing.

Many years have passed, and I’ve completely given up on the idea of learning Japanese.

Nowadays, learning a new language is so much easier than it was 20 years ago — there are countless online resources available. I sincerely wish you success in your self-study of Japanese.

By the way, have you ever considered learning Chinese? Haha.