Aparté : alternatative, self language learning is dead serious

There is one thing that the tenants of traditional methods to learn (and teach) languages can't scoff at when thinking about the crowd of people learning and writing about their endeavors at self-teaching languages : that they are dead serious, and dead dedicated. Only maroons claim for a 10 minutes fix to learn Chinese. Not the self-learners recording in public their efforts - and failures. They all spend time and do not cheat, as there is no work around, because alternative approaches is not about doing less but doing more focused. And also treading on the bizarre, what others would call the uselessness. I received my book and audiobook from Italy yesterday. It is the first time I ever ordered something from Italy, first of all a country of the mind. Which explains why it was a somewhat emotional delivery. I am pleased by the color of the book and the CD package. Beautiful blue, which was one of the minor reasons to buy it. Thinking about it, there was no major reasons but the wish to try something in the range of the bizarre : listening and reading (shadowing) a language mostly foreign to me. It's a beautiful experience. The book is short enough that the reading is less than 3 hours. I can listen while in the train (so noisy by the way) in Tokyo. I can listen and think about something else and it does not intervene in the thinking like music does. Something weird by the way. It's evocative as I can pick up a few words here and there. I know it's about Venice and that's enough to fill content. I stated trying and follow the text while listening but I quit and I am now listening only. I will read while listening a second time, then start doing some shadowing. Later on, I will be up on purpose some words calling to be understood. I don't intend to learn Italian, but to have Italian language teach me something, the musicality of language, or maybe something totally different.