[COMPLETED] Back to Basics: A 100 Day Study Log

Japanese
#34

23/100 days

Moving the Goalposts

This week has been pretty poor for my studies with me mostly just hitting maintenance and topping up with an hour or so of input daily. As I suspected, as soon as things got busier I began to find doing kanji writing more of a chore (although I still enjoyed it in some moments this week). I like to keep my SRS time to a total of about 30 minutes a day and to hit 1k kanji a lot of that time will have to be spent on kanji writing - already I don’t have time to add new vocab. I considered cramming the kanji and just upping my SRS time for a few weeks and then it would be “done” however it is against the spirit of what I am trying to do and that time would be better spent reading so instead I think I have settled on a fair compromise which is to adapt my goals and better quantify some things so they can be more easily tracked.

As such, my goals for this challenge going forward are:

  • 500 kanji production cards (currently 335/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (currently 200/1659)
  • Check Bunpro N5-N2 for weak grammar points (currently up to N2 lesson 5 or 6)
  • 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 (3/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Each goal here is individually totally achievable and also small enough that I can knock them out in a week or two if I focus on a specific one. The only exception is the 15 books goal which is not exactly small but it should be achievable (it is a bit over a book a week) although with the expectation that my reading will not be uniform.

Another motivation behind this change is that I have really struggled this week, as expected, to stay on top of things (not just Japanese) and feel a bit drained. I wanted to read 50k characters a day this weekend and it definitely isn’t going to happen. On days or weeks like this it is helpful to have some easier or more mechanical things to fall back on. As I keep saying in this thread, please excuse my constant changes since it is my first time trying something like this so I wasn’t really sure how best to go about things. I think this is the correct way forward though as it makes everything easier to track and hopefully keeps my motivation up. I am really trying to avoid dumping time into kanji writing just to end up abandoing the deck (which is what I have done maybe 3 times in the past…).

Anyway, the goal for today is just to do whatever I can for my Japanese but it is another low motivation low ability day so we’ll see what happens. Gonna just try to relax and enjoy my immersion without pushing myself too hard. I hope for any beginner learners who may read through this study log that this is instructive - you can’t be at your best every day and it is important to not burn out forcing yourself.

Thanks for reading!

Currently reading:

  • 禎子の千羽鶴, 49,591
  • 本好きの下剋上（TOジュニア文庫), 99,257
  • 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):

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):

7 Likes
#35

Just so it doesn’t feel like you’re posting into the void, I want to say that I’m reading and appreciating these updates! You’re inspiring me to set goals for myself. I haven’t done it yet, but the inspiration is certainly there.

4 Likes
#36

24/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (345/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (309/1659)
  • Check Bunpro N5-N2 for weak grammar points (currently up to N2 lesson 6)
  • 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 (3/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Life, Immersion, etc

In a much better mood today although still busy. Anki somehow went very smoothly so managed to add new cards. The N2 vocab cards are pretty easy with a lot being immediately yeeted. I hope it continues in that way. Did some reading but my concentration is still a bit shot so had to keep stopping and starting as I kept losing focus and reading a bit too “extensively”. Currently sticking with Bookworm as it is so easy to dip in and out of. I can’t say I love it but it is good for its genre. I will probably try and stick with it for the next two or three days and hopefully finish it off before the weekend. A friend of mine is reading some crappy looking popular philosophy book currently so I may have to read that next so I can discuss it with her although we’ll see as I would quite like to have read the book club books and also want to finish Kafka on the Shore…

Cheers mate, I appreciate it. I struggle with sticking to goals but choosing the right ones is equally tricky honestly.

Anyway, gonna go for a bath and keep on reading before I go to sleep.

Currently reading:

  • 禎子の千羽鶴, 49,591
  • 本好きの下剋上（TOジュニア文庫), 99,257
  • 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):

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):

4 Likes
#37

25/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (350/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (359/1659)
  • Check Bunpro N5-N2 for weak grammar points (currently up to N2 lesson 6)
  • 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 (3/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Life, Immersion, etc

Pretty low immersion day as I had a busy day at work and then was replying to various messages for a lot of the evening. I did spend about an hour trying (and failing) to explain Lacanian psychoanalysis in Japanese via text and honestly that really has wiped me out…

Gonna bathe and try and read a little before I sleep. I believe Friday should be pretty clear for me (although now watch as I get a bad night’s sleep and a bunch of unexpected work gets dumped on me) so hoping to comfortably finish Bookworm before the weekend. That is my forecast, at least.

On work days I have managed to carve out a pretty solid Anki habit recently (days off are much worse) so long may that continue.

Currently reading:

  • 禎子の千羽鶴, 49,591
  • 本好きの下剋上（TOジュニア文庫), 99,257
  • 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):

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):

6 Likes
#38

26/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (355/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (384/1659)
  • Check Bunpro N5-N2 for weak grammar points (currently up to N2 lesson 7)
  • 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 (3/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Life, Immersion, etc

Things are slowly smoothing out at work as I get to know my new students better. My 英会話 class has been an absolute joy to teach so far.

It is still only about 18:40 here so most my immersion is still in front of me today but read for a tiny bit (maybe half an hour) at work and cleared my anki, did some new cards, and went through a bunpro lesson. Did some listening when I got in from work, maybe an hour so far. Feeling much more lively than last week so hoping my concentration keeps going up.

I am about halfway through the below video (took a break to write this post) and it is basically a rehash of a lot of the common AJATT-adjacent stuff you can find on youtube in English (in fact he references those kinda guys several times) but he is doing it the other way. So, AEATT… It is a fairly comprehensible video so if you are looking for immersion material about immersion learning then this is for you. If you are into immersion learning and have always wanted some easy way to explain it to your Japanese friends but you aren’t quite at the level to explain it yourself yet then it may also be useful for that.

Currently reading:

  • 禎子の千羽鶴, 49,591
  • 本好きの下剋上（TOジュニア文庫), 99,257
  • 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):

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):

6 Likes
#39

Mate, the amount of stuff that you seem to be able to do consistenly seems really impressive to me. Somehow you able to balance Japanese learning, work and going out. Kudos to you for that!

If you are looking for a “normal” (not light novels) book to read, I woud highly recommend 世界から猫が消えたなら . Personally I really enjoyed it as its written like a movie.

2 Likes
#40

29/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (365/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (429/1659)
  • Check Bunpro N5-N2 for weak grammar points (currently up to N2 lesson 8)
  • 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 busy the last few days with some unexpected life stuff, good and bad, so been a bit light on the updates here.

I finished the first furigana volume of Bookworm which is actually half the first regular volume so I will hold off on reviewing it until I finish the second furigana volume. Been plugging away at anki but am yet to do it today. Been doing a lot of listening today and yesterday. I have my volunteer lecture thing tomorrow so some time will be taken up by that but otherwise I should be studying.

Not sure what to read as my main book next. Probably I will decide on a whim. Would be good to read the book club books so then I can enjoy the threads but I also had a chat with the headmaster where I work yesterday and it turns out he is a Murakami fan and I told him I am in the middle of Umibe no Kafka so I may try to finish that off so I can chat with him about it.

It’s very kind of you to say but I always feel pretty inconsistent personally. I think in the long run I have more days on than off and it is as simple as that. I would say that I do sometimes sacrifice things for Japanese although finding a balance is important for happiness and health in the long term, I think. Living here and having friends and relationships with people who can’t speak English definitely lights a fire under you though.

It is on my list of candidate books for this current “back to basics” project although that is based on the length and Learn Natively difficulty score and nothing else so good to see it actually recommended by a real human. I’ll see if I can make it one of the 15 and let you know what I think.

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):

  • 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
  • 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):

6 Likes
#41

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):

  • 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
  • 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):

6 Likes
#42

Hey, you know what? You’ll never make that mistake again, guaranteed. You still learned something then, even when you were mostly focusing on having fun, which is actually the best way to learn.

I used to beat myself up every time I made silly mistakes like that, when talking to friends. It just makes learning very frustrating. One day I decided that I’m gonna be OK with making A LOT of mistakes, and it’s been way better since (not my speaking, but having that attitude lol).

Anyway, keep working hard!! I’m right behind ya :+1:.

4 Likes
#43

34/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (370/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (499/1659)
  • [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

First completely smooth day for a while, felt pretty engaged with my immersion today (just listening and a bit of news reading) and anki was pretty low resistance. Having said that, my output was not great today again although that is pretty much expected - give it a few more smooth days and it will be back up. Tomorrow is the 歓送迎会 (welcome/leaving party) so plenty of chances to chat although probably not much time for input. Then it is into the weird Golden Week (double long weekends with 3 days of work in the middle) so things are looking pretty good for the next couple of weeks I think.

I enjoyed the below video yesteday or the day before and thought it might be of interest to people here - pretty sure I didn’t post it already although I meant to.

Thanks 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):

  • 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
  • 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):

4 Likes
#44

May I ask if your book ratings are your personal difficulty level or enjoyment? I’ve only read また、同じ夢を見ていた but I’m looking at some of the others on the horizon as well to read after my current selections. I’m assuming it’s difficulty, though I’m also curious what your personal enjoyment ratings would be as well, haha. Seems like かがみの孤城 might be a good step up, so I’m curious what your thoughts are on that one in particular.

1 Like
#45

Good question - It’s my enjoyment, not difficulty. I am a harsh critic but 5 means average on this scale so a 6 is good. I would re-read anything that is 6 or above, probably. Difficulty is quite hard to judge as I naturally get better at Japanese as time goes on so it is hard to compare something I read a year ago with something I am reading now.

It took me ages to finish, maybe even a few months, as it was around the third or fourth book I read in Japanese and it is fairly long for a “beginner” book. It is a hard book to review without spoiling but basically at the time I felt like the middle section could be completely cut out and nothing would change. If I read the book in a weekend then perhaps I wouldn’t feel that way though. I would say it is good for a book aimed at kids but it still has the limitations of a book aimed at kids.

#46

35/100

Mega mini update as I am off out to the welcome/leaving party soonish. Anki cleared, new cards added, had a very interesting discussion about using ある with animate things (e.g. people), read a Japanese research paper on the topic, minor listening before work, attended a 書道 class at work (with the students) - quite a lot of Japanese today, even more so by the time I go to sleep, but not really in a focused way. Golden Week(end) number one comes tomorrow! オツ！

4 Likes
#47

Hopefully you have a great Golden Week and Congrats on clearing:

  • [COMPLETED] Check Bunpro N5-N2 for weak grammar points

This is kind of a “future maybe would be a nice to have” idea… maybe try to get a JLPT grammar book or a drill book (which has a bit of all sections). In my case, it has been a quite an interesting experience to go through eg Kanzen Master Grammar N3 / N2 books. I though I knew quite a lot of the grammar points but its a bit different when I get questions on them :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
#48

Yeap!

The 新完全マスター Books certainly have that effect. You think you know grammar until go through them. Then you realize how little you actually know. They’re eye openers.

2 Likes
#49

36/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (375/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (499/1659)
  • [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 (started, need to work out how to track this easily…)
  • Read 15 books (4/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Life, Immersion, etc

A bit sleepy but had a nice slow paced study day and feeling optimistic for the rest of the Golden Week period. Cleared Anki, did a few new kanji cards, read about 20k characters and will keep reading before I go to sleep, did a fair amount of listening although nothing crazy.

I think maybe I will try and read the Star Wars book over the Golden Week period besides whatever else I am doing as I want to participate in that thread as it is a bit less lively than the other book clubs. I have still only read the first chapter so I need to catch up regardless.

I actually have the N2 and N1 grammar books but have only ever really used them as reference books. I did consider doing the N2 one for this 100 days thing but thought it would go against the spirit of trying to not explicitly study for the JLPT but part of what I am trying to do here is make sure I have no gaps in my knowledge up to N2ish grammar-wise so perhaps I should have a crack at the N2 grammar book. I will finish going through the DOJG first and then see if I have the time and inclination still. The DOJG has already sent me down a fairly long rabbit hole once in the first 100ish pages so if that keeps happening it may take some time to get through properly.

I checked my calendar and it is test week where I work before the summer JLPT so with some planning I should be able to get a good clear 5ish days before the actual exam and hopefully can just crush a bunch of reading and keep myself well rested before the day itself. could possibly do Shinkanzen Master during those few days although it may be a bit late by then.

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):

  • 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
  • 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):

3 Likes
#50

Please do! I feel alone there, lol.

In fact, it seems I can’t post there anymore because there’s a 2 or 3 consecutive post limit in the forum, so I had to edit my last post in order to “post” again. Plus, it would liven things up with your presence.

I think you should definitely give it a shot, since the question format is exactly what you’ll see in the actual test. Plus, they have a lot of tricky questions that will definitely test your grammar knowledge. At least that was the case for me when I was studying for the N3 test.

Personally, I wouldn’t put such limits on your preparation towards the JLPT test. There’s no good reason not to utilize every resource available in order to improve your grades (not even as a “challenge”), IMO. I highly recommend them to anyone wanting to take the JLPT.

2 Likes
#51

40/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (405/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (594/1659)
  • [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 (started, need to work out how to track this easily…)
  • Read 15 books (4/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Life, Immersion, etc

A bit behind on updating here but things have just been slow and steady the last few days, nothing that interesting. Been chipping away at my SRS and on the side of input I have been doing very little reading but a fair amount of listening. My speaking skills seem to be having a good week this week so I have been chatting a fair bit at work and faced very few things I didn’t understand well today. Things are kind of just clicking at the moment so gonna try and take advantage of it whilst it lasts.

Incidentally from one little chat today I learnt that 母 can be read as も which I think I had seen before in 母屋 but it could be a false memory. Perhaps I connected おも with 主 (as in 主な) and not with (御)母. Having said that I just checked and jitendex on yomitan says 主屋 is also a valid way to write that word although my kanji dictionary said it comes from 御母屋 so who knows…Anyway, も is a valid onyomi for 母 at the very least. (This topic came up because I was discussing manyougana with another teacher and they have も in their name and showed me one way to write their name in manyougana which used 母)

I can’t pretend I care that much about the test and I don’t really have motivation to explicitly study towards it however I did think about it and there is no point in avoiding challenging review materials because they happen to be in the JLPT format so I probably will try and go through the grammar book if I have a chance. Any question I get wrong I will make a note of why I got it wrong and then review them at the end and mine any nuances I failed on if I feel it is worth SRSing.

I an very tempted to just bite the bullet and finish off the remaining 100ish kanji tomorrow so I can tick that box and mentally move on. It will depend on my mood tomorrow but hoping to polish off this weird 3 day work week and smash the 4 day weekend. I have a couple of social plans on a couple of evenings but mostly have time set aside for studying and some chores so looking forward to resting and studying.

Thanks for reading and I will try update more frequently!

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):

  • 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
  • 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):

5 Likes
#52

そうです！

I have a feeling that you’ll feel like you should’ve tried it sooner rather than later, but I might be wrong about that given how knowledgeable you are about grammar. Let me know what you think when you get around it.

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#53

44/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (410/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (594/1659)
  • [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 (started, need to work out how to track this easily…)
  • Read 15 books (4/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Life, Immersion, etc

It’s Golden Week (part 2) currently. Been a little socially busy but not that busy and just catching up on chores the last few days but my larger plans for tonight got cancelled due to illness (not mine) so I have most the day free today and tomorrow for studying.

SRS has been a little sloppy, just maintaining really. On the side of input, I’ve been almost exclusively just listening the last few days. Maybe I’ve read 10k characters from books and a few new articles so quite light but have managed 3+ hours of listening a day I think. Today and tomorrow should be quite productive although not sure where my energy will end up. I’ll go have a crack at some novel reading now to see if I can get into it otherwise I think today will end up being one of those 6+ hour listening days that cause my dreams to turn Japanese.

Related, sort of: Something I was idly thinking about this morning was to what extent my internal monologue in Japanese has a foreign accent. For example when I read and subvocalise or when remembering a conversation or when thinking about what I want to say or even just the rare passing Japanese thought occurs, how foreign is that voice? I know the intonation is poor and I also realised I can imagine a “more Japanese” voice if I try to. It sounds like an NHK announcer or something. But is that actually more accurate or is it just a different style of speaking which I normally don’t use for my own internal monologue? Very odd topic and something that is seemingly impossible to test for accuracy.

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):

  • 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
  • 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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