100/100 COMPLETED
As of the other day all of the below have been completed plus a bunch of untracked listening and plenty of conversation in my daily life.
- 500 kanji production cards (500/500)
- N2 vocab deck (1659/1659)
- 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
- Read 15 books (15/15)
- Maintain my mined vocab deck
So, what did I learn? Am I better at Japanese? Was revisiting the basics worth it? To reflect on everything I am going to go through each goal individually and then write up my general thoughts and conclusions at the end. Feel free to skip to a specific section you are interested in or to the end if you aren’t interested in the details.
500 kanji production cards
This was probably the thing I liked doing the least, found the most tiresome, and felt the least amount of direct benefit from. I followed the KKLC order so some kanji I was weaker on reading so writing them out did help, perhaps. When I read these days I don’t look at individual kanji specifically and I definitely don’t look at kanji parts to try and work out what kanji it is. It is just automatic. If I can’t read a word then I will look at the kanji properly but even that is kind of automatic as I instantly know if I know the kanji/reading or not. I think writing is probably useful as a beginner or as a long-term and deep learning project for advanced learners. I guess targetted writing of weak kanji would be useful at any stage. Regardless, I would like to be able to write kanji but I am not sure the SRS approach is right for me. Or, at least, not with the format I used (the format was Japanese words on the front with a blank space and then I would write the kanji - no English). I would say this is just something that doesn’t fit my personality but if you can slowly integrate it into your studies from near the start it would probably pay dividends down the line. Going forward I need to rethink how I study kanji writing or simply set aside a few months to focus exclusively on it and nothing else.
N2 vocab deck
Similar to the kanji production cards, I also didn’t love this one. I haven’t done a prebuilt deck for a while and this reminded me why I personally don’t like them. Essentially 80% of the words were too easy, 10% were in the right zone of me being kinda familiar but need some extra help on, and the last 10% were words I was not familiar with or just do not have a pressing reason to remember. That last 10% would end up leeching or hanging around too much and are the sort of words I would not mine (for the moment) or simply delete if they were in my mining deck. For total beginners prebuilt decks are extremely useful and I would recommend them without reservation. For studying specificaly for the JLPT perhaps these kind of decks are also useful for filling cracks. There is also the advantage that you can just start using them right away and don’t need to mess around with a mining setup. However, for me personally at this point I just couldn’t get on well with this deck. I am going to drop this deck this week probably.
Check Bunpro N5-N2 for weak grammar points
This was pretty useful and didn’t take up too much of my time. Okay, maybe N5-N3 was straightforward enough that I didn’t need to go over it but this served as a pretty good reminder of grammar I don’t see as much, even if I understand it comfortably. There were also some N2 points where I felt like I understand them but I am not solid on the exact nuances so this helped remind me of those. I think being aware of grammar points and nuances makes it much easier to notice them when getting input. I dropped N1 SRS halfway through due to diminishing returns maybe half a year ago but I may pick N1 SRS up again and slowly go through it just to reinforce rarer things.
Dictionary of Basic+Intermediate Japanese Grammar
This was also pretty useful and sent me down some rabbit holes a few times. There was luckily very little where I thought “huh, didn’t realise that”. Again, being reminded of nuances makes them easier to spot when they come up in real life. I plan on continuing through the advanced dictionary as well.
Read 15 books
This was pretty interesting as I was “forced” to read books I wouldn’t normally read or had to search out shorter and easier literary fiction that is more to my taste. As is often the case with reading comprehension I felt like I didn’t improve but actually looking back my ability did get better. My initial goal here was to feel more comfortable with reading and improve my intuition and fluency when reading. I think that has happened. I would like to keep easier and more extensive reading in my studies from now on although I am still a sucker for more intensive reading. At this point vocabulary is by far the biggest roadblock when reading and that will probably be the final boss of reading for me for a while now. I personally like reading so I may be biased but for any learners who are N3 or above and don’t regularly read as part of their studies I would strongly suggest doing so. I also read 5-10 volumes of manga, probably 100-200 news articles, random online stuff, a bunch of documents at work, and basically any other daily life stuff. I don’t count any of that stuff at this point but it does add up. I also read half of a few other books and dropped them. Anyway, not much to say here that hasn’t been said a thousand times by others but reading is good and you should try it!
Maintain mined vocab
Not much to say about this. Looking forward to mining again. On the side of active study I feel like vocab grinding is going to be the main and most productive activity for me for the next year or so now.
Concluding thoughts
I would say this project was worthwhile and a success. My main takeaways for myself have been that I don’t enjoy pre-built decks and I need a new way to approach kanji writing. In terms of Japanese, I feel a lot more confident and feel ready to start diving deeply into specific domains and really push into advanced territory now. There will always be certain “easier” things which are slightly lagging for whatever reason but I now feel comfortable that I don’t have some black hole in my understanding which I didn’t notice before. I feel that everything up to now has been preparation for the real journey and now I am ready to venture out and enjoy what Japanese has to offer. To that end, this project has been a success.
What’s next?
I have already started a listening focused project (which I explained in this post) although there will be no study log for that. I will post my results at the end though. Besides listening, at work I am friends with a history teacher and we are always trying to chat about history and politics with each other but my active vocabulary on historical topics is fairly weak so I am going to be focusing on 世界史 as a listening and reading domain and trying to read a bit more news besides.
Books I read for this project
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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
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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
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本好きの下剋上 第一部 兵士の娘1, children’s edition; 99,257 (will review after the second volume, if I read it)
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ちびまる子ちゃんの文法教室 ; unrated (a native school grammar guide for children and a good one at that); 200 and something pages, includes manga pages
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哀しい予感 ; 5/10 (a fairly middle of the road short novel which never finds its stride)
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世界から猫が消えたなら ; 4/10 (a straightforward read that felt like it could have been better as a short story than a novel - not unenjoyable but the execution left a little to be desired)
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本好きの下剋上 第一部 兵士の娘2; 4/10 (high-quality pulp - if you like this kind of thing you will probably love it)
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禎子の千羽鶴; 7/10 (a very affecting anti-war book for children - well written and culturally important)
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改良; 7/10 (a provoking and well written character study which left me with questions - I have probably discussed this book the most since finishing more than any other on this list)
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殺人出産; 5/10 (a collection of 4 stories with the titular story easily being the best - generally predictable and not as deep as it could be)
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蛇にピアス 6/10 (a provoking story which brings up questions of pleasure and pain - apparently somewhat atuobiographical)
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夜市; 7/10 (a great collection of two stories about ghosts/spirits - captures the atmosphere of strangeness and unknowing that a 7-12 year old can feel about the world and its limits)
- Star Wars 4; 4/10 (Star Wars - not my thing in the end but some nostalgia factor kept me reading)
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海辺のカフカ〈下〉; 5/10 (I read this way too slowly so it probably lessened my experience - very Murakami but didn’t leave me with any deeper thoughts)
Thanks for reading!
