Developing a new mindset for Japanese

As I said in my last post, I want to get rid of my learning mindset which prevents me from improving my Japanese. Like Rome wasn't build in one day, changing a yearlong mindset isn't done overnight, either. I have to take small steps in order to slowly abandon the old habit of concentrating on actively learning vocab so that I can absorb new words unconsciously by concentrating primarily on the content itself. 

The goal is to gain interesting information by using Japanese only as a tool. From my experience with English I know, that skipping unimportant / uninteresting parts of a text is perfectly fine and won't harm my progress. I know, that I don't need to memorize words by using Anki or other learning techniques. But even though I realized that, it's not easy to let go of old thinking patterns. I still think "Will I really learn these words eventually?" But I need to have trust. I proofed myself that it can work. Improving my English may have been a "accident", an unintentionally improvement, but nevertheless it's proof, that it somehow worked. And since my previous efforts in learning Japanese through different methods and combinations of techniques weren't not as effective as I wished, I guess I have nothing to lose. 

Now, I want to show you an example of how I think I could change my mindset:

Below is a paragraph about the Jōmon period in Japan I read yesterday  (see the full article on  Wikipedia).

縄文時代（じょうもんじだい）は、年代でいうと今から約1万6,500年前（紀元前145世紀）から約3,000年前（紀元前10世紀）、地質年代では更新世末期から完新世にかけて日本列島で発展した時代であり、世界史では中石器時代ないし新石器時代に相当する時代である。旧石器時代と縄文時代の違いは、土器の出現や竪穴住居の普及、貝塚の形式などがあげられる。草創期・早期・前期・中期・後期・晩期の6期に区分される。この頃の日本列島人は縄文土器を作り、早期以降定住化が進んで主に竪穴式住居に住んだ。縄文式土器については、青森県大平山元I遺跡にて約1万6500年前の世界最古と言われる土器が発見されている。弓矢を用いた狩猟、貝塚に見られる漁撈、植物の採集などで生活を営み、打製石器、磨製石器、骨角器などを用いた。

Reading this paragraph with my old learning mindset would look like this: I would look up every unknown word or at least most of them. This would be so exhausting, that I wouldn't be able to get absorbed by the interesting content. After looking everything up I would choose words and sentences for memorizing and would create cards for my Anki deck.

But the mindset I had back in the days I improved my English was totally different. I was fully aware, that I want to gain interesting information from a text and that the language is only a tool to get these information. With this in mind let's have another look: 

This article is about the Jōmon period. The goal should be to learn about the most important characteristics of this period. What was typical for this period? Is something happened that had great impact?

縄文時代（じょうもんじだい）は、年代でいうと今から約1万6,500年前（紀元前145世紀）から約3,000年前（紀元前10世紀）、地質年代では更新世末期から完新世にかけて日本列島で発展した時代であり、世界史では中石器時代ないし新石器時代に相当する時代である。旧石器時代と縄文時代の違いは、土器の出現や竪穴住居の普及、貝塚の形式などがあげられる。草創期・早期・前期・中期・後期・晩期の6期に区分される。この頃の日本列島人は縄文土器を作り、早期以降定住化が進んで主に竪穴式住居に住んだ。縄文式土器については、青森県大平山元I遺跡にて約1万6500年前の世界最古と言われる土器が発見されている。弓矢を用いた狩猟、貝塚に見られる漁撈、植物の採集などで生活を営み、打製石器、磨製石器、骨角器などを用いた。

I highlighted the most interesting parts (in my personal view). The information in the first part are not interesting to me. I only skimmed this part and came to the conclusion, that I won't learn something about the typical characteristics of this period. 

The highlighted part is clearly more interesting. It describes how the people in this period lived and which things were typical for this period. Especially one thing attracted my attention: 大平山元I遺跡. It's the name of a archaeological site, where many artefacts from the Jōmon-period were found. I will read the article about this site later. By reading with great interest, I've found another interesting thing I want to learn more about!

Here's another interesting information: 世界最古と言われる土器が発見されている。It seems, that they found there pottery that is said to be the oldest in the world. After reading this I thought "Wow, that's amazing!". 

As you can see, I only read the highlighted part in more detail. But even in this part, I didn't look up everything. Kanji I know from RTK (Remembering the Kanji) gave me a hint on the meaning of some words. I may not know how to read these words, but knowing the meaning is enough at the moment. Maybe later, when I've seen these words more often, I would become curious about the reading. But for now, it's enough to only understand the meaning. So, RTK is a great help! By guessing the meaning with the help of RTK, I don't have to look up so many words. :D Then, I looked up the remaining words. That's it!

If I compare both processes then I think, that I gained much more by concentrating on the content than by concentrating on the words itself. With my old learning mindset, I would know, which words I don't know and would start memorizing them. Well, that's a bit depressing, isn't it? XD 

But by concentrating on the content, I gained much more: I used the knowledge I already had (vocab, RTK) to find out some interesting things about the Jōmon-period. Like, the name of an important archaeological site, the fact that pottery they found there is said to be the oldest in the world and how the life of the people of this period looked like. Now, the next step will be to read the following paragraphs with the intention of finding more interesting information like these. 

I won't do anything else but reading about one interesting thing after another. Memorizing words or building a sentence deck is not necessary. I only play with the idea to write down the interesting information I've found, but that's optional.

Maybe the example above was interesting to you!