My journey to JLPT Level N3

 It was around 2011 when I started to learn Japanese at an evening college or in German "Volkshochschule". It was just once a week, 3 months long. The teacher, an older japanese Lady with a funny fashion taste was teaching and she did a wonderful job. Pronouncation was really important to her.

We used Japanisch im Sauseschritt and could decide if we want to use the version with Kanji or not. 

I liked the book, it was easy to understand, but the course was too slow for me 💦After the lessons ended, I went to a language school in Tokyo for a month. I've chosen KAI japanese language school because students were from western countries. The practical conversation course was superb. I've learned a lot during the 1 month. We had school for 4 hours and during lessons the language was Japanese only.

I've made some friends which were from Norway and Switzerland. Other students were from the US as far as I can remember. We got also homework and sometimes the homework was to practice the learned stuff which really helped. 

After the school, I never really tried to learn Japanese again. The following year I stayed in Japan for a year and got better because of learn by doing.

I never really stopped using japanese. Fast-forward, Covid happened, and I've decided to take online classes for keigo for 1 month.

To know my japanese level I used the  TTBJ Tsukuba Test Battery of Japanese. I didn't want to spend money on the JLPT.  My result was a score of 61, that's a N3. Good enough. Kanji score was 49.. oopsie. That's equal to N4.

I'm not sure if I want to improve my skills, I can communicate with my friends who can only speak japanese. It's not perfect but it's enough.

How did you learn japanese?