Onkar has been calling more often these days.
He obviously has a vested interest in Japan, so watching us experience it in real time is fun for him. Mom keeps him posted on everything we do, and he keeps sending her recommendations about things we’d like and should do here.
Because of the nine-hour time difference (he’s in the UK), he usually calls in the morning here, which means I’m almost always asleep. So most of the time, I just hear about what he said from Mom later on. That was also the case today.
She told me how their conversation had gone. She’d updated him on how studying Japanese was going (spoiler alert: badly — not that we aren’t doing it, but cramming is brutal). He told her quite frankly that we should be talking to Japanese people more instead of just relying on textbooks.
Which, yes. Obviously.
That was the original plan when we got here. We wanted to use immersion, take advantage of the fact that we’d be surrounded by the language.
Reality was a little different. It became painfully clear, almost immediately, that we weren’t anywhere near ready. We couldn’t understand a thing. Every attempt at conversation ended in confusion, blank stares, polite nods, and apologies. It was a frustrating cycle, and it wasn’t getting us anywhere.
So we had made a conscious decision: we’d pause the immersion and focus on textbook studying first — at least until we reached a level where we could actually benefit from immersion.
That was weeks ago.
For a while now, it’s felt like it’s time to go back to the original plan. We won’t get another chance like this. You can study from anywhere in the world, watching anime and movies and reading textbooks, but you can’t immerse yourself in Japan from anywhere else. If I don’t take advantage of this now, I’ll regret it.
There’s just one thing holding back from fully switching to immersion learning, and that’s the exam.
I knew from the start that N3 was out of my depth. I just didn’t realise how far out of my depth until I started reading up on it. Genki I & II — the textbooks we’ve been using — cover N5 and N4.
Mom is taking N4. She has an endpoint. A finish line in sight. I, on the other hand, am taking N3, which requires way more than just finishing Genki 2.
At the time of signing up, I figured that if I could master Genki 1 & 2 thoroughly, I might be able to scrape by. After all, the passing score is only 50%. I assumed that knowing the N4 syllabus well combined with some educated guesswork would be enough to land me somewhere close.
Reddit has since informed me that I was very, very wrong.
Apparently, N3 isn’t just an extension of N4. It’s not a slightly harder version — it’s a completely new beast. If I had taken and passed N4 before, I still wouldn’t be able to pass N3 without a hell of a lot of extra studying. I don’t even have the vocabulary base to begin tackling the real exam content.
And yet, somehow, my brain hasn’t accepted failure yet. Logically, if I think of stepping outside my own body like a third-person narrator watching this all unfold, I can tell you with 100% certainty that this girl is going to fail. No question about it.
But inside my head, I haven’t lost all hope yet. I’m still trying. Still cramming. Still preparing as much as I can, because if nothing else, I still want to use this exam at least as motivation to learn as much as possible before doomsday — December 1st.
I know that after the exam, distractions will creep in, and I’ll find reasons to stop studying more anyway. I definitely won’t choose to study over spending time with dad and Bua. So studying as much as I can seems the best way to make use of the time I have before they arrive.
Honestly, I haven’t given our study method much thought since we first decided on it. I’ve been so focused on cramming that I haven’t stopped to reassess how I’m actually learning, but what Onkar said this morning about socializing made me pause. It was obvious, but I just hadn’t been thinking in that direction recently. It reminded me of something I should have realized much sooner.
I’ve spent the past few months working on Fluenci, an AI language partner app I built precisely for this kind of situation — where you theoretically know enough to communicate but fear making mistakes in front of native speakers, so you just don’t. The app lets you practice conversations in a low-pressure way, simulating real interactions without the fear of embarrassment.
It’s a great practice method. But I’m in Japan RIGHT NOW.
This is a limited-time opportunity, and I don’t want to spend half of it talking to a bot. The whole point of coming here was to leverage immersion, and yet I’ve been procrastinating it all over again — falling back into the same cycle of social anxiety I told myself I wouldn’t let happen. The cycle I literally built an app to help other people out of. I just found a way to rationalize it under the facade of “studying for the exam.”
Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. I didn’t deliberately use the exam as an excuse, and I did genuinely consider textbook studying the best approach. But things need to change now. Even though I still have a lot to cover theory-wise, I know that the best approach isn’t just textbooks — it’s a mixture of theory and practice. Because my real goal — believe it or not — isn’t just to pass the exam. That would be a (highly unrealistic) cherry on top.
I want to be able to enjoy anime without dubs or subs. I want to read manga in its original form. I want to understand Japanese music, not just sing along to memorized lyrics. I want to be able to talk to my brother in Japanese. I want to interact with people here naturally, like a native.
And if I could magically gain all that in exchange for the exam? I’d give it up in an instant.
But as much as the exam is stressing me out, I can’t deny that it’s also motivating me to learn. Without it, I wouldn’t know even half the Japanese I know right now (which is not much, but definitely not nothing).
Well, it’s clear now that the next step in this language learning journey is putting myself out there and interacting with locals in Japanese. It’s time to start tackling my social anxiety.
I’ve thought about this a lot. I’ve written about it before, and I’ve resolved to work on it many times, and I have improved from where I started (especially over the past year and a half since I started traveling more), but I still have a long way to go.
The funny thing is, talking to people in Japan actually feels easier in some ways because of the culture.
People keep to themselves. Eating alone is normal — many restaurants even have solo dining booths. Being alone is normal. No one expects small talk. There’s no pressure to perform socially, which makes me feel oddly comfortable. In a way, I feel more extroverted here than I do back home.
But that’s the paradox — this culture makes it easier for me to talk to people, yet at the same time, it creates fewer natural opportunities to do so.
People won’t come up to me. I won’t just fall into a conversation. It feels weird to disturb people with conversation when everyone is so busy minding their own business. It’s also odd to approach someone at random and talk about the weather, and there aren’t many other topics I have the vocabulary for at the minute. But if I want to practice speaking Japanese, I have to be the one to initiate. And I haven’t been doing that.
Up until now, my only real interactions with Japanese people have been transactional — ordering food, buying tickets, checking into places. I know some common phrases in Japanese that I need in these situations, but I need to expand the topics to speak on.
How do I actually properly socialize? Do I just go sit at a bar? I haven’t done this sort of impromptu thing before.
It’s even harder when mom and I are together — strangers hesitate to approach, assuming they’d be intruding, and if we do end up talking, I tend to rely on my mom instead of putting myself out there.
Recently, we’ve been staying in guesthouses with private rooms more often, but we still book the occasional hostel, and that’s where we tend to run into people. Not Japanese people, but travelers like us.
If I were traveling solo, I know for a fact I’d have struck up conversations with them by now. I’ve grown that much. When there’s no language barrier, I’m pretty comfortable making new friends in these settings, at least one-on-one.
Back in Portugal, I met Lydia and Louise — two best friends traveling together. It was pure chance that I clicked with them and ended up hanging out with them a fair amount, but in general, duos are hard to break into. I’ve even felt that dynamic with two of my closest childhood friends — I’m great with each of them individually, but together, I feel like an outsider.
That’s not exactly what’s happening here, though. This time, I’m the other half of a duo. I mean, I’m traveling with my mother who obviously I’ve known since birth. You don’t get much closer with a person than that. And it makes socializing harder in a different way.
Take Omotenashi Lab, our hostel in Sakura City. We met a girl from Israel there, and we got along well. She and I talked easily, and she and my mom did too. But then, on the second night, another girl arrived, and she naturally gravitated toward the Israeli girl. After that, the two of them were always together. I knew that if I’d been traveling alone, I’d probably have been part of their little group. Three works when all three are new, but when two people already have a bond, it shifts the dynamic. And with mom in the room too, the groups became the two of us and the two of them.
And then there was Jared, an Australian guy who spoke to mom and I at length the first night we checked in. After that initial introduction though, we would always see him outside smoking in the garage when we got back to the hostel but he’d only nod in acknowledgment, nothing more. Maybe if I’d been alone, I would have tried to make small talk. Maybe not, but that would’ve been because I hate the smell of cigarettes more than because I didn’t want to.
But this trip isn’t about socializing with travelers from other countries the way some of my past trips have been. I’ve done that before and made some great connections along the way, but this time, my focus is different. The goal is learning Japanese. And my (very short) social battery needs to be preserved for that.
Speaking of social battery, always being around my mom takes up some of it too — not as much as if I were with strangers, but not as little as if I were completely alone. I have to pick my battles, and for now, the main one is Japanese.
It’s clear that I can’t count on social dynamics to naturally put me in the right place at the right time to practice speaking Japanese. If I keep waiting for the opportunity to come to me, it won’t. I have to be the one to make it happen.
I should probably stop overthinking and just go sit at a bar. Or find a way to chat with someone at a café. Something. Anything. I need to set myself up for success, which means I need to do this first on my own, and then maybe encourage my mom to do the same.
You know what? I’m making it a personal goal to bond with a Japanese in the next couple of days, in Japanese. I’ve talked to Japanese people who know English before, but it’s my turn to get out of my comfort zone now and speak to them in their country, in their language, as best I can.