It’s been two years since I left my first repressive employer, Opera Software, which means that I am finally free of all non-competitive agreements as of today. Of course, disclosing that fact might in itself be against said (or non-said) agreement. So I’m not saying it’s the case, just that it might be. Anyway, it’s cause for celebration.

I was young and free, still enrolled at university, and eager to put my l33t coding skillz to use so what was I to do? No, looking back I realize – thank Providence – it was a good decision. It kick-started my career and set me off on an an interesting path.

But let me tell you kids: non-competitive agreements and the like are bad. Stay away from them and stay away from companies that will only offer you employment after signing one. I was lucky, but I don’t think most people are. Of course, whether or not they’re enforceable is another matter, especially when the nationality of the parties and the country where work is carried out are all different. But it smells of bad employment practices.

I was actually contacted a little more than a year ago about an interesting employment opportunity that I would definitely have been interested in if it weren’t for said (or non-said) agreement, so it’s not just all hypothetical. And regardless of the probability of such an unmentionable agreement being upholdable in court, I am a man of my word when signed in triplicate under witness and after review by lawyers. And specific knowledge of the Opera source code wouldn’t have been an advantage either – so it’s all just self-flattering from the oppressive party’s part.

Not coincidentally, today is also two years since I joined my second repressive employer, Picsel Technologies (also known as Picsel Research, Picsel Malta, Lescip, Picsel Holdings, Lescip H, Picsel Trustees, Lescip Seetrust, not to mention the Geurnsey-based Picsel Group Holdings, and a number of other names). Picsel was fun in many ways. If I get the salary they still owe me it’ll seem even funnier. But at least they didn’t require me to sign anything oppressive.

If you’re interested in understanding what happened to Picsel, a seemingly flourishing mobile software technology company, there’s a site for that. Highly recommended reading.

Anyway I’m better off now, thanks largely to these two repressive employers. Happy independence day!

Let me tell you three things that I used to think sucked but really enjoy now:

1. Discovering a kanji I don’t recognize

2. Reading a word I don’t know
3. Finding a sentence pattern I don’t understand

Out of which 3 and 1 are fairly uncommon. And I am making an effort!

Every time I find a kanji that I don’t recognize, or a come upon a word I don’t know, or find a sentence pattern (grammar) I don’t understand, I look it up in the dictionary, find words using its different readings, locate sentences using these words, and add them to my Anki card deck.

I am learning 5 new items per day, and I make an effort to catch up by learning more on days after I for some reason didn’t do any new items (such as holidays). Most of these items are words, so that means my Japanese vocabulary is growing by at least 1800 words per year, which seems like a reasonable pace to me – although I’m sure it’s possible to learn much more than that.

Finding 5 new items per days actually takes some effort though. Although some days just seem to bring with them a storm of unseen vocabulary and kanji, in order to keep a decent buffer of them – I aim at always having at least 50 unseen cards in my Anki deck for rainy days – some effort is required. These are my main sources for discovering unknown Japanese:

1. Japanese Wikipedia

2. News”papers” – specifically Asahi Shimbun
3. Books – any book, as long as it’s in Japanese

I find these three to have quite different characteristics; Japanese Wikipedia uses quite formal and long-winded language, decent supply of new words, but not many unknown kanji. The news on the other hand is written in that typically very compact form with lots of kanji compounds, but of course almost no non-joyo kanji, with a decent supply of new words, and also often interesting sentence patterns or vocabulary usage.

Books of course depends on the book… I read essentially anything I find interesting. Quite often that is books about the Japanese language or one of those introspective books about Japaneseness – of which there are plenty in Japan – both ones that go “Japan is the greatest” and those that go “Japan sucks”. The one I’m reading right now is quite basic in its general difficulty level but uses a tremendous amount of obscure kanji – actually I think the author is trying to show off – but that is of course great for my purpose.

Anyway, so, lots of reading, finding new things, and reviewing – every day. I used to listen to the radio a lot but I kind of grew tired of it and it stopped being very effective (although I still think it is for JLPT 1 listening practise), and besides now I’m listening to Chinese while working.

So that’s how I’m studying Japanese now, and I don’t expect it to change much for a while since I’m focusing on Chinese, albeit still mostly on a hobby level. Another thing I’m going to do is write a few more pages like my recently published page on software development-centered technical Japanese. I found writing that more fun than I had thought as well as providing me with a good chance for review, and I have a few more topics in mind!

I started learning Japanese in my second year at the university, where I was studying engineering. I had somewhat liked studying languages before, except French, and felt studying only engineering was tedious. So I figured I should study a language on the side, as long as it didn’t harm my engineering studies.

It was either Chinese, Japanese, or Latin. I wasn’t then, and am not now either, very interested in learning yet another normal European language. Japanese had a good selection of classes at my university, and seemed to be the most difficult, so I ultimately went for that. I was lucky to get in, on a reserve spot, on that over-crowded class. That really did change my life, much for the better, I think.

So in the beginning I wasn’t interested in Japan at all. I wasn’t particularly interested in Japanese either except it seemed like a good challenge. That came to change later, of course. I think choosing to study Japanese because it’s hard was a very good starting point – you can’t really give up with the ever so often heard “it’s too hard (for Westerners)” then can you?

And Japanese is tough to learn. I’m not convinced “hard” is the right word though. It just takes time and effort and determination and method. I very much believe it when I hear people saying it’s the hardest language to learn for Westerners – although there might not be any real scientific proof of that.

Actually, I wonder how I would have done in the first place had I known how much time it would take. When I signed up to transfer to the Tokyo office it was initially for one year, and I thought that spending one year in Japan should leave me decently fluent in Japanese, as you’d imagine it would with a European language for instance, but that was of course not the case. (Even now, three and a half years later I still would definitely not call my self “fluent” in any way, although I do have an advanced understanding and decently good conversation level to use Japanese in daily life and business.)

I might actually had abandoned the idea of studying Japanese had I known only this at that time. But if I had also known the pleasure of being able to read a book in Japanese, or listen to and understand advanced topics discussed on tv, or everyday conversations between the neighbors, not to mention it has lead me to living a more fulfilling life than I probably would have otherwise, then beyond any doubt I would have taken up learning Japanese when I did. The thousands of hours I’ve put into it has started to pay off now, and I’m sure the return on this investment will multiply in the future.

Anyway, shortly after I started studying Japanese, I realized it was a lot more fun than engineering, so in a way, I did let the engineering classes suffer some (not much though – I passed them all with pretty good grades). On the other hand, if I hadn’t had the Japanese studies to keep me motivated, maybe I would have failed completely and stopped studying altogether. It’s been pretty much the same way since I started working as well – work has never been challenging enough, so if I hadn’t had the Japanese language studies on the side I might have become too understimulated to do anything. (Yeah, someone should give me a more challenging job, or I’ll have to take up Chinese soon…)

Now I’m gonna stop babbling about the past.

For the record, here’s a breakdown of my studies up until this point:

• Fall 2002-Summer 2003: Half-time basic course in Japanese at the university. (During this time I also studied engineering at around 150%, adding up to around 200% of full speed academic credits.)

• Fall 2003-Summer 2004: Japanese conversation and Technical Japanese at about one quarter speed. Also studied Japanese history, culture, society, and politics at one quarter speed, while keeping up with my regular engineering studies.
• Fall 2004-Fall 2005: Didn’t study much in particular. In October 2004 I went to Japan for the first time as part of the post-graduate program on East Asian business culture that I was enrolled with. In January 2005 I started working, and that summer I went to Japan again for work for almost 2 months in total. Still didn’t study much though.
• Fall 2005-Winter 2006: I transfered to the Tokyo office in early October 2005. After getting settled I took up my Japanese studies again. In early 2006 I resolved that I should pass JLPT level 2 that year, which I did – thanks to diligent studies and frequent opportinities for conversation practice.
• 2007: While the passive vocabulary and expressions I had picked up for JLPT2 soaked in and strengthened my active Japanese skills, I didn’t study much at all actually. I spent my spare time this year learning web technology stuff and doing web-based projects such as Unreal Soccer.
• 2008: In February, I resolved that I should pass the JLPT1 that year, with a good margin, thus essentially repeating what I had done in 2006. Started reading books in Japanese and listening to the radio every day, which improved my passive understanding of the language dramatically. By early fall I started digging into the JLPT1 textbooks for real, then slacked off, but got back with a vengeance a month or so before the test. Started using Anki for tracking and reviewing vocabulary and expressions.

And that leaves us where we are today. So, adding up years spent studying and counting the half-time basic Japanese classes I took as one year’s worth of studies (that’s how the university counts it, anyway), it adds up to three full years – two of which I spent in Japan. Seems pretty reasonable to me, for passing the JLPT1.

Next up, I’ll be writing about what I’ve learned about learning, how this could have been done more efficiently, and how I’m going to study from now on.