Reddit reviews Understanding Japanese Information Processing

Back when I first studied Japanese in 1991, times were a little different. I started from zero knowledge, and took a class at the local Japanese mall for 1.5 hours a week, for about 2 years, to get to what I guess you'd call N3 level today. Didn't really study per se, just set my mind to "full retention" whenever I was around the school.

At the time, an "English" computer wouldn't even display Japanese, so I got involved in development of software that bridged the gap, and even got written up in a book about the subject in 1993 (which says more about the sorry state of internationalization at the time, than it does about me personally) https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Japanese-Information-Processing-Lunde/dp/1565920430

Later transferred to New York University's Japanese program, which didn't do much for me. It was about 25 people to a class, and more than half of them spoke Japanese as kids, and took the class for the easy grade.

Been hovering at about N2 level now for about 25 years, but thanks to the encouragement of a coworker, started getting back into studying. More like, really studying for the first time. Using Anki during my daily 3 hour commute, with a Bluetooth puck on the steering wheel.

Back in the early 90s, I remember there being no expectation, really, that a person would learn Japanese as a language, in the way that a person would learn French or Spanish. At the first school I went to, there were students who had been studying there for five years, who couldn't really swing a basic conversation about daily life yet. I was progressing at a rate that you'd consider normal today, but they treated me like I was some kind of miracle student. In retrospect, this was pretty strange.