Chimmsen's slow and cozy Japanese journey

Japanese
#81

The bookmark feature might be a good idea for grammar, but I think I would just get lost with vocab. I’m already at the stage where I’m absolutely to sure already have a word in my SRS only to find out it’s not, when bunpro gives it to me. Preferably, I would add a word, when it’s at the stage of “huh, I regognize this word! it was used for xy and when they did yx!” when I’m sure I got the meaning somehow right and have heard it on a few different occasions. But I also really, really don’t want to pause my anime while watching… :rofl: I already tried a few times, but I always stop again, cause watching (even reading) is too fun to stop for quickly adding a vocab.

So I don’t know, maybe I’ll just go manually through the vocab lists, adding what I recognize. Sound more like work than fun, though :sweat_smile:

#82

I found myself regularly absolutely forgetting kanji while knowing the word a lot, lol. Now I just put sentence-audio on the front and learn grammar at the same time without forgetting those kanji

#83

I’m currently skipping on kanji, I already learned a bunch just by reading with furigana and occasionally deactivating some kanji here on bunpro. Since I’m only reading manga with furigana for now and watching anime without subtitles I wouldn’t gain anything at the moment by learning kanji. I’ll probably get wanikani during the next lifetime sale though, since I do well in structured paths and with mnemonics. But I’ll probably only start learning kanji, when I’ll transition to native materials that don’t come with furigana anymore.

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#84

I finished the first season of Dr. Stone without subtitles and it gave me so much confidence, I started my first new anime completely blind and with no subtitles! :smiley:

I chose Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie and it’s such a nice and easy watch :slight_smile: I somehow hadn’t watched it, yet, even though romance anime are one of my main watched genre :sweat_smile:. and this one is majorly cute and quite funny, too :slight_smile: I’m already halfway through, though. So already browsing for my next anime :sweat_smile:

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#85

Seems like watching anime is all I’m doing currently, but I swear, I’m also doing bunpro N4 and reading everyday! :sweat_smile:

I’ve finished shikimori and seamlessly went onto Aharen-san first season already finished again :sweat_smile: I’ve also finished Dr. Stone season 2, but it was a short season.

I kinda feel the same way I did a few months back, when reading finally clicked :slight_smile: I binged a lot of manga then, so I’ll use this time for binging as much anime without subtitltes as I want! :smiley:

Reading manga is still going well :slight_smile: I’m in yotsuba 13 now, so the end is near. Next on my reading list is Takagi-san I watched the anime some years ago and it was cute and fun, so I’m looking forward to it. I was also able to replace my general evening reading time with easy japanese manga reading time, so this will probably be a habit that I’m keeping, even if motivation drops.

Progress on N4? Almost halfway through :slight_smile: But I’m way less exited than I thought I would be, I’m way more interested which manga and anime I could read, watch and understand right now :smiley:

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#86

I think we are at the same point grammar and vocab wise but it sounds like you have done a lot more on output and immersion, so I am going to take on board some of your processes. For some reason, immersion scares me, I think its not knowing things 100% makes me feel a bit down but I think the benefits of it outweight my silly though process haha.

Keep up the good work!!! :muscle:t2:

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#87

Yeah, I think we might be around the same level, but with quite the different focus. I could never hold a conversation, probably not even form a proper sentence at all :sweat_smile: I only focus on consuming native materials, skipping on all that talking and writing and stuff :sweat_smile: And since my only goal was to watch anime and read manga, I started immersing basically on day one (with little success in the first year, obviously :sweat_smile:, but fun even without understanding much).

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#88

Conversation terrifies me but for me it’s a good way of practicing what I learnt as hopefully people correct my mistakes. I would love to be able to rewatch One Piece with no subtitles, perhaps I should give it a go haha

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#89

One Piece is quite the long anime :sweat_smile: I profited lots of my (still ongoing) Dr. Stone rewatch. By the time I switched subtitles off, I had already memorized basically every meaning of every sentence, which made it easy to learn new words and grammar in context. If your memory of One Piece has more gaps, it will probably be way harder. It’s rated L26 on natively, so probably really hard to digest for a first anime without subtitles, even if that’s your reading level. But if it’s an anime you love, I would go for it! :slight_smile: Such a long anime has its perks, too! After a few seasons, you’ll probably know all the unique vocab and grammar by heart :slight_smile:

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#90

If anybody is looking for a quick and easy watch to dip your toes into native material my favorite penguin just got a new anime, 12 episodes à 1 minute pure cuteness. The song is full of N5 grammar points so I recommend singing along! :smiley:

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#91

Omg I’ve never seen this before. That first video was amazing. I’m at work and I accidentally started singing along with the song halfway through. :rofl:

Funnily enough I only know this because of a cute looking Switch game I saw. I had no idea it was based on an anime. :sweat_smile:

Edit: (you sent me down a rabbit hole and now I’ve learned way too much about this penguin)

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#92

omg! it got a switch game! I do need this so much! Hope they do have a digital version. :smiley:

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#93

I empathize with this penguin so much :rofl::rofl::rofl:

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#94

Today I finished the last Yotsuba book I got, which was number 15, so not quite up to date. The last few panels had me almost in tears. Kids DO grow up so fast! I could relate to the dad so well.

So for reading, I’m switching over to Takagi-san, those 20 books will keep me busy for a while :dizzy_face: :smiley:

I’m still wondering, if I can manage to catch up with the Dr. Stone manga before the next season drops in July. I just started book 5 and would need to catch up to book 19, book 20 would be new to me. Finishing a book every 2 days doesn’t seem toooooo unreasonable, but I wonder if I would enjoy that. Well, if I don’t make it, I’ll probably have enough time to finish the whole series before the final last part will be aired. ^^ Anyway, reading the manga gives me pleeeeeenty of exposure too more difficult stuff, so it’s fun :slight_smile: Trying to decipher those extra pages :dizzy_face:

For watching, I’m up to date now with Aharen-san, and will have to wait for the next episodes. For Doctor Stone, I’m in the middle of season 3. I also started to work my way through Wonderful Precure again, picking up where I left. Precure is by far the easiest out of all.

My bunpro time becomes shorter and shorter in comparison with my immersion. Adding 15 vocab at once took always way too long, but 5 new vocab 3 times a day is way more relaxed. The only downside, I sometimes forget to add the ones later in the day :sweat_smile: Well, worst that will happen is, that I’ll be slower. But since I already get to read fun manga and manage to at least somewhat follow along anime, I don’t care for more speed ^^

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#95

Once again a week where I focused on immersion way more than I focused on bunpro. Still manages to pass the halfmark point of N4, though :smiley:

I’ve read more than 2500 manga pages in june (mostly yotsuba) and a total of over 7000 pages read overall. I also watched 38 hours of unsubbed anime this last month, making this my first months of actually sticking with listening :slight_smile: As long as I will find easy enough anime I enjoy, I think I will just keep this up :slight_smile:

All in all, I’m very happy with my progress :slight_smile: Reading manga and watching anime had always been my only goal and it feels very reachable now. Even if I wouldn’t do anything special now, but just by continuing what I’m doing, reading manga, watching anime, and slowly going through the bunpro items, I’ll reach a point where I can comfortably consume most native materials with good understanding in a few years :slight_smile:

7 Likes
#96

What % of yotsuba would you say you were able to understand without looking things up?

I tried reading it a bit at the end of N5 and it was not very easy. I tend to want to understand every line, so it was a slow process.

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#97

I rarely looked up words. And usually only those where I already had a good guess what they mean, or those that appeared multiple times in a chapter. On most pages there were usually only a few words that I didn’t know, but it rarely impacted my understanding of the plot. I had more trouble with structures that used grammar I didn’t know, but those also rarely impacted my overall understanding.

In terms of percentages I have no clue :sweat_smile:

Keep in mind, I read the whole “chis sweet home” series and the whole “gal to dino” series before I read Yotsuba, so it wasn’t my first book by far. The first few are always hard, no matter the level you already achieved. It takes some time to feel comfortable.

When I first started, I also looked up every word and every structure and tried to understand every sentence fully before going to the next. But after a while, I realized I can follow along well enough without understanding everything. I still try to guess an unknown word through context first, but if a sentence has like three or more unknown words and doesn’t look too important, I just accept that I don’t know what happens here. Maybe a page later, I realize what was said through additional context, or I realize it was important for the story and I have to look it up now. But those occurences got rarer and rarer, only a few times per book.

Most of the jokes probably went over my head, though. So a very good reason for rereading the series again in a year or two :slight_smile:

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#98

Yeah, I think i should try an approach more similar to yours next time. Otherwise I just don’t enjoy the reading and end up dropping it.

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#99

I’m currently in the mood to focus more on my listening, so I better use it while it lasts! :smiley:

The biggest problem with listening for me is, that my brain doesn’t parse sentences fast enough to fully understand it before the next sentence is spoken, even if I know all the words and grammar. I sometimes notice myself finally understanding a sentence 10 seconds later, but obviously missed everything that was said inbetween, since my brain was still deciphering what it heard earlier.

I know this problem will be fixed on its own just my continuing what I’m doing right now, but I’m in the mood to focus on listening a bit more, so I’ll try some tweaks as long as my mood lasts :sweat_smile:

My reviews will be done in “listening mode”, which is basically a sheet of paper over the written sentence. I try to listen first and it actually works better than I anticipated, but of course a lot of sentences have unknown vocab or grammar in them. Which is a good thing! Sentences in the wild are full of unknown stuff, being able to parse a sentence and taking an educated guess about what kind of word or structure I didn’t get is highly valuable. Getting a better feel for how often used grammar points sounds. On average I listen like 4 times to a sentence, twice to try to get the meaning by listening, then I read the sentence to get it fully, listening while reading once, and then again without reading.

My reviews now take forever, though, so I’ll probably won’t keep this up very long :sweat_smile: But I feel like it actually does a lot for my understanding, even after only a few days.

Other than that, I’ll just keep binge watching anime that are graded below 25 on natively. I was able to at least follow most of them, some easier than others. Longer sentences can throw me off, my brain cannot handle this much information at once 😵‍💫 So I make sure to pay special attention to how sentences chunk.

Reading is still ongoing, of course. I focus on Dr. Stone right now, since I’m hyped for the next season. I can read it without lookups now, since I already know the story. I can guess a lot of words correctly from context and just check, if I got them right. So I use the reading to pay extra attention to sentence formation and typical sentence chunks, in the hopes it will boost my listening, too :slight_smile:

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#100

When I first started out trying with listening to anime, I obviously started with shirokuma cafe, since it gets recommended everywhere. That was maybe 8 months ago and, as expected, I understood nothing :sweat_smile: even with subtitles :sweat_smile: I gave up after one episode, of course.

Now, I recently started to watch it again and it feels really easy! :smiley: I can breeze through a few episodes without my brain melting and I actually feel like I’m in 80%+ understanding level :slight_smile: It only rarely happens, that I’m unsure what they are currently talking about. So this feels like a very big win!

Since JLPTs are next months, I listened to an N5 listening comprehension test. Just for fun, I don’t intend to ever take one of those for real. I actually got everything right, though it was a bit harsh, putting the information together to get the right answer. But that’s not really a listening issue, but a memory issue :sweat_smile: The talking speed was soooooooooooo sloooooooooow, so I’ll probably never do that again. I hate slow speech patterns with a passion :sweat_smile: and usually speed up all things I have to listen to.

Other than shirokuma, I’m watching a bunch of random anime. I really like Love After World Domination, which doesn’t have enough gradings yet to get a proper natively level, but I thought it was easy enough to understand for most of it. It’s another one of those easy and predictable romcoms. There were occasionally parts, were I enabled subtitles, like once per epsiodes at most. For example when they tutored maths and the mc explained it all with muscles.

Reading and reviews are still my daily thing, but I keep it at a minimum right now, to focus on listening. I already got about 30 hours of unsubbed anime this months, but only 700 pages of manga read so far. Though I feel like my reading has also improved a lot after listening this much :slight_smile:

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