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

Japanese
#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.

2 Likes
#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):

4 Likes
#54

45/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (425/500)
  • 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 (5/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Life, Immersion, etc

Very productive day for Japanese and of course it is on the last day of Golden Week that I finally feel in the swing of things. Luckily test week starts next week so hopefully I can get some good study days in then as well. SRS cleared, some new kanji added.

Started and have almost finished this grammar book aimed at native elementary school children. I have about ten pages left and will finish it up after I post this so will pre-emptively add it to my books total. Kind of an odd one in terms of difficulty as it is relatively short, includes manga sections, and I think I have had to look up literally 2 words in the whole thing however as it is a grammar guide it is not exactly compelling to read and equally has plenty of quite specific grammar words (although mostly already known or at least familiar) which cannot really be “whitenoised” the way some stray words in a novel can.

I have also probably watched about 3 hours of youtube today. Basically I have been reading a section of the book then watching a video and then rinse and repeat, setting aside a couple of short walks I took to clear my head a bit and cooking.

Lately my comprehension has been in a weird place where even if I understand something with 99% comprehension I feel like my comprehension is far lower than that, like 60%. I think perhaps as I get better if I understand something with high comprehension and low resistance my brain starts to pick out nuances and notice things I don’t understand perfectly or things like intonation and I come away feeling like I don’t understand anything. It is quite a hard feeling to describe well. Like, I understand everything but I don’t really understand it. It actually reminds me of being around 6 or 7 years old and starting to read properly and not really understanding what I am reading.

As always, 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):

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
#55

I was about to say “I get this a lot too”, but I think in my case my comprehension genuinely is a lot less than it feels like it is at the time. I’ll watch an episode of something, read a summary of it and realise there were whole bits that I missed. It’s like that thread on the fog, I feel like I’m far from though it yet, but it sounds like rather you’re through it and are now aware of the sheer depth of details on the other side?

2 Likes
#56

51/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (465/500)
  • 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 (5/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Life, Immersion, etc

Again, no updates as nothing much of note has happened. Been slowly chipping away at the kanji. Since I only do 30 minutes (maximum) of SRS a day they are taking longer to get through than I thought so I may push up to 40 minutes a day for the next week or so to finish them off and move on.

Been doing 2-3 hours of listening a day and started to get back into reading this week, although no big numbers. It is about 11:30 now and I have the rest of the day free and I feel pretty good so I am gonna have a good crack at reading for the rest of the day although not sure what. Already did my SRS today, about an hour of listening and some random reading.

Recently speaking has begun to feel a bit more effortless (in some ways, in general it is still a struggle) and I am enjoying my output a lot more. Still, output is comfortably the hardest thing about Japanese for me and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

I think it depends heavily on my mood and general physical and mental state. At the beginning of this log I was feeling pretty good and was well rested so everything felt pretty smooth and then a few weeks ago I hit a patch of bad sleep and generally was mentally busy and not looking after myself well enough physically so my comprehension really felt bad although objectively it probably wasn’t vastly different. Now I am in a pretty good patch good again and everything feels a lot more transparent and effortless. As for “the fog”, when I was reading that thread I was wondering if I am still in it. I think in some domains or with some writers I absolutely am in the fog still, kind of fighting to put ideas together, although normally not at the sentence level but rather the paragraph or article level. That is assuming I can use a dictionary as well. For more familiar material I don’t feel in the fog anymore; I definitely don’t have that visceral resistance to reading that I had as a beginner. That is not to say it is on the same level as English or anything, not at all. Normally the things that give me pause are questions of why the writer said something one way and not another. For good quality writing I will often realise I am reading something technically good, with creative phrasing etc, but if you asked me to explain why it is good or why the writer chose that phrasing I would probably be stuck. My sense of the language still feels weak in that regard. I am very aware though that that is an advanced issue and will take thousands and thousands of hours of input to begin to iron out.

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):

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
#58

62/100 days

  • 500 kanji production cards (487/500)
  • N2 vocab deck (724/1659)
  • [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 (7/15)
  • Maintain my mined vocab deck

Life, Immersion, etc

Hello - long time no update. I got into two bad habits here I think. Firstly, I felt things were too boring to update most days. Secondly, in my downtime I have been playing Ghost of Tsushima instead of posting an update here…

As I have been slacking a tiny bit I would like to try and focus on this little project and post daily for the remaining days. I have some days where I am completely busy with social plans and I am sure life will throw up a few unexpected obstacles but for the most part there should be no reason why I can’t get a bit more serious for the remaining time. Anyway, as it has been a short while I thought I’d post a varied mega-update with some reviews, random thoughts on language learning, and perhaps a little bit of grammar chat (although I may run out of steam before that).

First, what have I been doing? I have been a bit lax on the SRS front, coming way under my 30 minute target on a couple of days where I was busy, but mostly just plodding forward. You can see my progress there from the checklist at the top. I need to crack on a bit with the DOJG but the kanji and vocab should be no sweat. I’ve been reading a little bit, enough to keep up with the book clubs and finish a couple of shorter novels, but most of my input has been youtube and then just chatting at work. I also have had some social bits and pieces in Japanese, the highlight of which was a BBQ with colleagues at which I chatted with a Japanese 3 year old for a bit. I like babies and small children in general but besides them being cute it was fascinating to see their level of language knowledge and their ability to mimic a few English words that their parents asked me to teach them.

I want to tidily finish up the goals for this challenge before the deadline so will be pushing to read more and drop my listening until I hit my targets. I believe the way the timing works out I should finish this challenge then have a week or so before the N2 and will try my best to just read every free second I have during that week as I am led to believe having a strong reading ability can essentially carry you through the JLPT.

Okay, let’s do some reviews. All contain something that could be considered a spoiler by someone so peruse at your own peril. I would say there are no spoilers or only light spoilers though.

哀しい予感 review

This is the second book I have read by the celebrated Yoshimoto Banana. The first I read was Kitchen. Kitchen was perhaps the third or fourth or fifth book I read in Japanese and although the vocabulary and grammar was probably around the right level and the length was forgivingly short I found myself finding the whole thing a bit murky and difficult. It was like looking at a painting through a translucent pane of glass. I could make out the large figures and broad strokes but had no clue about the finer details or technique. I was acutely aware of this fact and when I ended up finding such a well respected book to me quite average I of course assumed it was down to my inability to fully grasp what was meant to be good about it. Honestly, I found 哀しい予感 much the same. It is very straightforward with little specialist language, if any at all, and Yoshimoto prefers sparse and clear sentences to overly verbose stream of consciousness style writing. Despite this I felt like I never found my footing. This could be because 哀しい予感 is so-called literary fiction, meaning there are no tried and true genre cliches for me to cling to to make sense of what is happening, but I get on well enough with Murakami and my recent reading of 今村夏子’s むらさきのスカートの女 didn’t pose a large challenge either. Of course, there are plenty of writers who probably are just writing in a way I am not yet familiar enough with and I would guess that is what is happening in. What is surprising for me is that other learners claim Kitchen is an easy read. I suppose insofar as the dictionary doesn’t have to be reached for quite so often this is true but from the perspective of really appreciating the story and the writing I find it hard to believe. Anyway, for the moment I can say that Yoshimoto Banana is not my favourite writer but I will have another crack at her work when I feel I am ready.

世界から猫が消えたなら review

Somehow longer than it needs to be and still underdeveloped. Having said that, the writing is nice and simple and clips along at a good pace and one or two sections did cause me to pause and to consider some more existential questions although only ever in a very obvious and trite and superficial way. Felt like a story that just enumerated undeniable truisms but truisms are truisms for a reason so no harm in taking some time to think about them. The relationships with the cats were something that didn’t have as much impact for me as I think the author wanted them to have as although I like cats I don’t have the strong personal affinity for them that some people appear to.

Overall I would recommend this book to learners as I can’t see someone hating it even if they don’t love it. But equally I can also imagine some people really loving it. The Japanese is very approachable as well.

Moving onto random language learning related thoughts I’ve had recently.

Something I’ve noticed lately is that I will assume that I should understand 100% of something when having a conversation. I am not sure why or when I started having that attitude though as obviously it is not like I once understood 100% of Japanese and am trying to recover some lost ability. But that’s exactly how I behave sometimes. If I had to guess why it would be because I am more focused on communicating and less focused on the Japanese itself these days. Meaning normally I am not hung up on not understanding Japanese but just hung up on not understanding, full stop.

Lately I have been privy to more and more conversations where I am included in the in-group. A non-controversial example would be multiple conversations I have had where people are discussing other foreigners’ Japanese ability (or inability), unrelated to me.

Something that has been on my mind is that sometimes conversation has felt harder than normal with people are frequently talk with. At first I was a bit dejected and couldn’t work out why it was happening but I think, at least in part, the reason is because I have gotten better at speaking recently and people are willing to bring up harder topics or use harder words. I probably also am more comfortable bringing up harder topics myself now even if I know my vocabulary is too weak to get too far into the weeds with it.

An interesting topic I have been thinking about recently is the idea of educational satiation. In short, we tend to have some point where we are satisfied with the amount we have learnt about something and then feel no need to pursue it much further. For most people with most topics this satiation point comes pretty quickly and even for educated people there is normally a relatively early point where people stop trying to learn (around the level of a undergraduate degree). I wonder how this concept applies to language learning and how the barrier to entry for Japanese changes thing. For example, we can perhaps assume most hobbiest language learners would their satiation point at around B2 level. However for Japanese the amount of effort required to hit that point (for English native speakers) is pretty massive, probably thousands of hours. So you end up in an interesting position where people will never hit that satiation point and maintain a kind of hunger for the language despite the fact that their goal is realistically just an intermediate level of ablility. Of course lots of people probably hit that satiation point way before that but I do wonder about the difficulty of hitting that satation point versus the strength of the hunger.

Okay, I am going to stop here today as I have things I want to get on with but hopefully this mega update made up for my lack of posts recently. I do intend to get stuck into this a bit more although I think I need to just post even if I am busy and have nothing interesting to say.

Anyway, 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):

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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#59

I dunno about anyone else, but this thread is reminding me just how quickly 100 days can pass by! :flushed:

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#60

Mini-update:

Had a good day at work and did lots of chatting and listening, including a speech competition. I also read a bunch of news articles for something work related. I then wasted away a few hours replying to messages and stuff once I got home so am yet to do any focused book reading and I’d like to spend an hour or so on that now. I wanna post an update daily, as mentioned in the previous post, but don’t want to have to stop reading later to do it so today this is all there will be!

It’s scaring me a little bit myself. It’s becoming a useful exercise is appreciating my daily life a bit more though, precisely because of how fast time flies by.

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#61

Mini-update:

Busy day today with some volunteering thing earlier today and now I’m off out to see a friend so although I’m getting a lot of natural input today I’m not getting closer on the reading! Tomorrow is totally free so other than doing some chores I should be all good to hunker down and read.

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