Were you using simplelogin.io, which is part of Proton? It is actually possible to reply or send mails from the aliases you create there. The feature is called reverse-alias.

I tried that, but I much prefer the haptics of real paper and writing with an actual pen. Also, I really like the look of ink on paper. Of course, there are still cases when a tablet is just the best. For example, when annotating PDFs.

pro tip: you can still write ugly if you use a fountain pen

Yes, but for my own notes it’s not a problem if the handwriting is ugly. I still like to write by hand, even if my handwriting looks pretty messy.

That’s a good point. I think you’ll be fine most of the time, but there are still some cases where you have to write manually. For example, when filling out registration forms.

I am selective about what shows and movies I watch. They have to be at my language level. It is important that, with my knowledge of the language, I can understand what’s going on. Otherwise, it will just be frustrating. I don’t necessarily have to know all the words and grammar because, over time, I’ll automatically pick things up and improve. For me, the whole point of immersion is that it does not feel like learning. That’s how I stay motivated. So, if a movie is too hard to understand for me, then I just stop watching it and look for something else. As I improve, I will be able to watch more and more movies. That’s how I learned English, and I hope it will work for Japanese as well.

Whenever possible, I avoid looking up words and try to deduce their meaning from the context. If a word is used very frequently and I still don’t understand it, then I look it up with an iPhone app called “Nihongo”. It does have OCR search (it can read Kanji from photos), you can draw Kanji with your finger, use radicals, or write the pronunciation with hiragana or romanji and I almost always find what I am looking for. I am sure there are similar dictionary apps for Android as well.

I don’t use flashcards because they are boring. If a word does not come up frequently enough for me to remember it, then I probably won’t need it anyway.

This is how I do things, and it may not work for you, but I hope that you’ll at least get some ideas of how your learning can become less frustrating.

Thank you! The pages you linked are really useful to me.

Nothing fancy. Just the alarms from the clock app on the iPhone. For example the wake up alarm, that the health app automatically creates from you sleep schedule. I also wanted to use a motion detector as a trigger, but it is not possible to use HomeKit devices to trigger personal automations. I guess, I’m stuck with time-based announcements for now.

I have some automated announcements. They run in the iOS shortcuts app on my phone and are triggered by an alarm. They announce the weather and stuff on a HomePod via intercom. Currently, there is no way to announce text via Intercom, besides the personal automations on your phone or iPad. At least that I am aware of.

I think you‘ll have to be patient. It takes time for people to discover your community

If you are not sure yet if the language is for you, I would try to get a feel for it with Duolingo. It seems to be the best free app.

If you are confident that you want to learn the language, and you have some money to spend, then I have some more recommendations:

Pimsleur (The most expensive course I have tried (around $500 for the whole course, or as subscription for ~$23 per month).

I quite like this course because you see how you get better every day. Also, over time, the lessons speed up, so you end up learning to speak at a normal conversational speed.

• full course consists of five levels of 30 lessons each
• 30 minute audio-lessons
• You repeat the lessons until you can do at least 80% correctly, then move on to the next lesson
• in the lesson, an English narrator and multiple native speakers explain the language to you. There are always pauses for you to repeat the sentences. Later on, the lessons start to pick up speed and will increasingly resemble actual conversations.
• The goal is to learn speaking intuitively without explicitly learning vocabulary, or grammar rules
• focus on speaking the language, correct pronunciation
• some reading lessons, but the focus is definitely on learning how to speak

LingoDeer ($160 for the lifetime license, or as a subscription for $15 per month)

I found this course to be very well-structured.

• good for Asian languages in general
• actual audio recordings for all vocabulary and sentences (in contrast: Duolingo still uses computer-generated speech for the Japanese course)
• grammar lessons with minigames
• vocabulary is always learned as part of sentences, and you can always click on the sentences to hear how they are pronounced
• there is a practice corner where you can review what you previously learned
• listening comprehension lessons are integrated in the course

Book: Remembering the Kanji (James W. Heisig)

I use this book to learn the Kanji because I had trouble remembering them just by using learning apps. As a free alternative, you may also want to take a look at KanjiDamage.

• You learn the “components” from with the Kanji are built
• book provides a lot of guidance on how to create good memotics
• Kanji are ordered, so you always know all the bits and pieces of a Kanji, before you learn the Kanji itself → because of this, you don’t learn them ordered by usefulness and some pretty important Kanji pretty far towards the end
• I think there are also translated versions of the book in some other languages.

I have also tried out multiple other Apps and courses, including Renshuu and Jalup, but none of these quite worked for me.

Of course, I would also try to watch as much Japanese TV and videos as possible, play Japanese games and listen to Japanese music. Just so your brain is constantly confronted with the new language. You will pick up lots of phrases and get a good feel for the language without much effort.