Learning as much Japanese as I can in 2 weeks

Jun 24, 2025 | Rachel Yu

• languages

Thanks to physiotherapy, my leg is getting better very quickly. I have been dying to get out of my house, even for just a couple of days. So when I FaceTimed my friend in Japan a few days ago and told him about my healing progress, he invited me to go visit him. I gladly accepted his invite, then I notified all my other friends in Japan that I am going to visit them. I brought my ticket two weeks in advance.

Although this is only a short two-week trip to two countries, I have never been this thrilled for a trip before. To make things even more special, I am flying on my birthday.

My relationship with the Japanese language is... never had one. While I have been to Japan multiple times before and absolutely adore this country and the people, learning Japanese seriously has never occurred to me. I know some basic greetings and words here and there, just so that I don’t appear as a complete dumb tourist. But for some reason, Japanese has never really clicked with me. Not like Spanish and Portuguese, with which I felt instant connections.

So when my friend suggested picking up Japanese for the two weeks prior my trip, I was hesatant. I was making such good progress in Portuguese that it felt counterintuitive to pause it.

But then I thought, it’s just two weeks, might as well. Let’s see what happens.

Spoiler: As of this writing, I have been learning Japanese for 3 days now. I am absolutely struggling.

On day 1, I printed out the Kana chart and memorised most of them.

On day 2, I learned how to introduce myself, and attempted to form sentences on my own.

Today, which is day 3, I made more sentences and memoriesed some verbs.

My problems are:

1. My YouTube algorithm knows me. I keep seeing clickbait titles like ‘I became fluent in Japanese in 1 month!’ ‘How a white guy learned Thai in 14 days’ ‘Learn ANY LANGUAGES in 3 months with THIS METHOD’. While I know these are unrealistic and people only say these things for attention, the idea that SOMEBODY OUT THERE is becoming fluent in a language from zero in two weeks still somehow found a cozy corner to occupy in my brain.

2. I compare my experience of learning romance languages with that of learning Japanese. Spanish and Portuguese came easy, because Spanish share a lot of rules and word roots with English. Learning Portuguese has been even easier knowing Spanish. With Japanese, I don’t have such reference point. Even the alphabets are unfamiliar. So naturally my starting point for Japanese is way far behind. My logical mind is crystal clear on that, my cruel, devil of an inner critical voice ignores that.

3. I want to have fun and experiment with new methods, but when new things don’t work I get frustrated. When I was looking for a Japanese tutor online with whom I can practice my Japanese with, I stumbled upon this Peruvian tutor who only speaks Spanish and Japanese. I know that it probably wasn’t the best decision but I wanted to see how well I could handle it. The result was honestly to be expected. I handled the Spanish part pretty well, but my Japanese suffered all the same. My tutor saw through my impatience and frustration with myself and even reminded me that I need to slow down and not expect to be speaking fluent Japanese on my second day of learning.

4. I'm not sure if I am learning Japanese with the "right" motivation. I think motivation is the most important factor in whether we can successfully learn a language. My desire to learn Japanese stems from a place of urgency and wanting to prove a point. This might not be the best mindset to have when learning a new language.

It’s only been three days and I am being destroyed by this language. The SOV sentence structure, subject markers, conjugations are all very overwhelming and I don’t quite know what to prioritize.