33/100 days
- 500 kanji production cards (365/500)
- N2 vocab deck (429/1659)
- [COMPLETED] Check Bunpro N5-N2 for weak grammar points
- Read through the basic and intermediate editions of the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar and mine for detailed nuances that I am not firm on (not started)
- Read 15 books (4/15)
- Maintain my mined vocab deck
Life, Immersion, etc
Been a busy and knackering few days. On the side of SRS I have just been maintaining. I finished going through Bupro N5-N2 so will begin going through the beginner and intermediate editions of the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar. My process here, by the way, is to read through the material and note things I want to revisit and once I have gone through everything I will check my notes and revisit the relevant points. If I feel like there is something significant that I need to reinforce further or that I am likely to forget then at that point I will make an anki card for it. I think just going through the process of revising and then revising again will be enough in most cases though. I think I will also further supplement my grammar revision here with some basic native resources aimed at children and probably the N3 and N2 Nihongo no Mori video series about similar but different grammar points but that stuff isn’t part of my goal list, just somethng I want to do.
Focused immersion has been light the last few days, almost all listening and very little reading, as I have been a bit busy with life and social stuff and work but Golden Week is around the corner and setting aside a few social plans I am planning on resting, working out, and studying Japanese. I am very much looking forward to it.
Anyway, today I wanted to tell a small anecdote which I think has a little bit of value.
Last night I was out for dinner with a friend to celebrate her birthday. I had been looking forward to it for a while but was so tired yesterday I was definitely having a “bad Japanese day” and ended up dreading it a little. You know the kind of day, where you make silly mistakes when reading and the words just don’t come out of your mouth the way you want them to. I have been here long enough now to know the best thing to do was to pull myself together as much as I could and just try my best. Well, the food was excellent but as expected my Japanese was certainly worse than usual. I made some rather amusing mistakes, including saying 散髪 instead of 散歩 for some reason that is unknown even to me. In the past (and even for a brief moment yesterday) I would have beaten myself up about that kind of thing. I am quite self-critical and to some extent that helps me push myself to get better but there is a limit. If I am with a friend then I want to enjoy myself. It isn’t a class. This year my main meta-goal is to go from feeling like a learner of Japanese to feeling like a user of Japanese. This isn’t just a semantic difference but one of genuine feeling. Getting better at Japanese certainly helps with that goal but also changing how I approach conversations and social situations in Japanese is a big part of it. And here was a perfect example. Instead of honing in on errors or mental blocks I just let myself have fun and, honestly, I had a great evening. As soon as I stopped worrying so much about how bad my speaking was that day I could allow myself to enjoy the world around me and appreciate how amazing it is that two years ago I was in the UK, barely able to read a sentence in Japanese, and suddenly here I am, chatting away about my week in Japanese, laughing away the evening with a good friend who doesn’t understand English at all, and feeling drunk on life.
It is safe to say that the last week or two I have been motivation rich and a little time and energy poor but I have a fire in my belly and I know that, although I have long way to go, so long as it is within my power I will achieve my goals. As I often say on this forum, just keep pushing and you’ll make it.
Thank you for reading!
Currently reading:
- 禎子の千羽鶴, 49,591
- 海辺のカフカ（下）, 222,476
- (Bunpro Book Club, Intermediate) スーパーカブ, 109,076
- (Bunpro Book Club, Advanced) スター・ウォーズ４, 169,574
Completed (since the start of this challenge):
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もしもの世界ルーレット (volume one) ; 1/10 (for small kids so more abysmally underdeveloped trash to go on the cultural heap); 70,941 characters
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むらさきのスカートの女 ; 6/10 (a well written if ultimately dissapointing quick read); 59,733 characters
-
変な家 ; 4/10 (an initially breezey but farfetched little mystery which soon turns into something quite silly and poorly executed); 62,734 characters
- 本好きの下剋上（TOジュニア文庫); 99,257 (will review after the second volume, if I read it)
Lifetime completed (possibly incomplete list due to bad memory, in no particular order, excludes stalled and DNF’d books which are easily over 10 in number, excludes manga/articles/anything else):
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また、同じ夢を見ていた , 2/10
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コンビニ人間, 5/10
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かがみの孤城, 3/10
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キッチン, 5/10
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人間失格, 8/10
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ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石, 3/10
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ノルウェイの森 (1) , 7/10
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ノルウェイの森 (2), 7/10
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薬屋のひとりごと 1, 4/10
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容疑者Xの献身 , 6/10
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星の子, 5/10
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西の魔女が死んだ, 5/10
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そして、バトンは渡された, 4/10
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国境の南、太陽の西, 5/10
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海辺のカフカ〈上〉, 6/10(?)
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