How I Got "Hella Good" at Reading Kanji

Today on the way home from school I ran into a classmate. Actually it's embarrassing because I noticed him and was not sure he would want to talk to me (or maybe I felt for some reason I didn't want to talk to him), so I just kept my headphones on and refocused on the NHK news podcast I was listening to. He caught up to me on the stairs and started waving at me, though, so certainly at that point we were going to have a conversation.

There was the usual, "Do you live this way?" kind of chatter, but he also asked where I got "hella good" at reading kanji. I personally don't consider myself hella good, or very good, or even so-so—yet, but it was nice that someone noticed I am trying. Of course there's no "where," really; it's a time, not a place. The time is...every day.

I told him I just study kanji all the time. Like, in my free time, that is what I do. It's true and I'm going to take it even more seriously because I have a plan that will actually finally take me through all of the daily use kanji by the end of the year. Not that that's the end of kanji, but...I'm ready to at least have a basic understand of the characters everyone should know.

Of course there will be combinations using simple characters that are rare or I just haven't seen yet and I won't know what they mean, and it will annoy me, but even just knowing another word with a given kanji in it helps you look it up faster, since you can input the reading you do know and edit around it.

The other my classmate said to me is that he thinks my ability is "enough." This immediately brought to mind the book I'm currently reading. It's by Daigo Umehara, the pro gramer, and it's about how to continue winning. One of the things he things he says (which is by no means new, but still interesting to hear from the Street Fighter world champion perspective) is that people who rest easy with their current successes will not be able to continue winning.

To apply the thought to my current status: I don't want to just be the best reader in the class (if I am even that). Accomplishing only that does not mean so much, and it only means it until the term ends. I want to read this textbook and the next one, and actually, I'd like to read Umehara's book itself and understand a higher percentage of the words. Someday I'll understand all of them. The way he describes his determination is really inspiring and exactly what I need at a point where I've changed my life around (and will keep changing it in whatever way is necessary) to focus on studying Japanese and translation.