Shannon Johnson’s Reviews > Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication: A Self-Study Course and Reference > Status Update

Is this what your writing practice is for?

This is why I study and read this book. Once a week, I meet with a 63 year old retired Japanese businessman, who lives in Yokohama, and we chat a bit and he helps me with writing. It takes a lot of effort for me, so I read this book to reinforce the basics so I can call to mind sentence structures more easily.

I think my problem is that I want to write like the educated 36 year old that I am, but I just can’t in Japanese and it’s so hard to fully accept that!

Gotcha. You should talk to me about sentence structures sometime. I know the mechanics backwards and forwards in English but I have no idea how Japanese is structured.

Learning a new language that's developed so independently of the Western civ we're familiar with is no joke. You're accomplishing so much! And it sounds like writing in Japanese is in the sweet spot for you of it being feasible but challenging so you have to push yourself.

^as in, I am curious to learn about how Japanese sentences are structured because I have no idea and you'd need to enlighten me. 🤣

Sounds good. We will probably need a screen share 😂