Happy 1st Birthday Self Taught Japanese!

It’s hard to believe, but I started this blog on WordPress exactly a year ago, on Dec 1, 2013.

Although there were some periods where I didn’t write very often, overall I managed 170 posts, which translates to almost one every two days. Given my busy schedule I’m still amazed I found the time to update this often, but it has been very rewarding to watch my followers and views gradually grow, and overall it’s been well worth the time.

To date I’ve gotten about 15,000 views, and given this is somewhat of a niche blog topic (apart from the fact that some of my articles talk about foreign languages in general, which has a somewhat broader audience) I think its a nice figure. I’ve also seen my monthly views gradually rise in most months, even when I only wrote a handful of posts. Not only have I gotten a good number of official “followers”, but I’ve gained a few people who frequently read my blog and seem to enjoy it (“followers” in the real sense), which I’m grateful for.

It’s also interesting to compare the view stats of various posts, for example the top most viewed post which was ちゃんと (chanto): doings things properly in Japanese with over 600 views. It’s unfortunate that Google stopped giving detailed search term information for most searches, but just from looking at the titles of the more popular posts I can get an idea of what people are interested in most.

I’ve also posted a few surveys and gotten some really good feedback from them, thanks again to everyone who participated.

In the last year I’ve read a few books in Japanese as well as kept up my daily conversations in Japanese with my wife, and even started a new blog in Japanese where I’ve written over 20 posts. Through all this I think I’ve improved in some areas, though I still have much to learn.

It’s a really unique, and strange experience to feel like I have enough experience to offer help to learners of Japanese, and yet I am still actively studying myself day-to-day. But I really enjoy both teaching and learning so maybe this is a good place to be at this moment in time.

Apart from language learning-specific topics, I’ve grown as a blogger as I learned some of the inns and outs of what it takes to make a good Wordpress blog. For any new blogs I start I’ll be carrying over much of this knowledge to help me hit the ground running, as they say.

As for the future, as usual there is a great many things I would like to try out, such as making a YouTube or audio version of this podcast, making a series of more proper lessons for Japanese learners, trying a hand at translating from Japanese to English, or even writing a novel or short story in Japanese. It’s hard to completely predict where my whims will take me, but because of the amount of interest in blog I plan to keep putting out new articles, at least for awhile.

I’m always open to new ideas about topics to write about, so if you have any please feel free to drop me a line anytime (you can just reply to this post).

If you enjoy this blog or just want to congratulate me for the occasion, feel free to become a follower of this blog.

My wish for the next year is that all of us make great progress in our Japanese (or other foreign language) learning. May the long, hard path to language fluency be equally fun and rewarding! And may those that want to travel to Japan (either again or for the first time) find the opportunity to do so.