When I moved to Japan, my goal was simple.

I wanted to learn conversational Japanese.

Nothing more.

Duolingo seemed like the perfect way to do that.

Three years later, I still use it every day.

My progress has been steady.

But also slow.

The truth is that I never had a compelling reason to learn faster.

My daily life didn’t demand it.

I work from home.

My wife and I mostly speak English.

The conversations I have with my mother-in-law are usually short and simple.

Getting by with basic Japanese was enough.

Or so I thought.

Then everything changed.

As I’ve written about before, my Japanese driver’s licence was revoked.

I won’t be able to apply for a new one until February 2028.

Before I can do that, I must attend a two-day course on Japanese traffic rules.

The course will be entirely in Japanese.

No English.

No translations.

There may even be questions afterwards to make sure I understood what was taught.

For the first time since moving to Japan, I have a real reason to master the language.

Not just speaking.

Listening.

Reading.

Writing.

Suddenly, learning Japanese is no longer something that would simply be nice.

It’s something I genuinely need.

Looking back, I realize I was wrong.

I thought I could learn spoken Japanese first and leave reading and writing until later.

That approach made sense in theory.

It didn’t fit my life.

Most of my days are spent alone in my home office.

There simply aren’t enough opportunities to practise conversational Japanese.

What I do have, however, are books.

Time.

And now, a clear deadline.

So I’ve started buying textbooks and working through them from the basics.

This time, with a very different mindset.

Ironically, losing my Japanese driver’s licence may have given me something much more valuable.

A compelling reason to finally learn Japanese properly.

Writing this is also a way of holding myself accountable.

Perhaps, in the end, that will turn out to be the biggest lesson of all.

So there you have it.

I was wrong about my way of learning Japanese.