How long did it take to to get to the point that you could read a novel in a day? I read はたらく魔王さま a while back and it took me months to read at the rate of about 30 mins per day. Although, reading a book in a day is not something I’ve done in English either, it would be a good goal to have for Japanese.
4 Likes
7/100 days
175/1000 kanji
SRS
- 25 new kanji, 35ish reviews
- 150ish vocab reviews
- Bunpro N3 Lesson 7
Immersion, Thoughts, Life
Did about 30-40 minutes of listening (youtube and a podcast). Read about 30k characters of 変な家. Read about 50 pages of よつば for the beginner book club.
I should finish 変な家 tomorrow and then I will perhaps start on another book on my list of easier reads I prepped for this challenge or I will get a head start on the book club books. 5 pages a day (x2) isn’t a masssive amount but I can easily see myself getting distracted for a week by something else and having to play catchup. I’ve never read any scifi or spacey things in Japanese before so I am expecting the first 20% or so of Star Wars to be a little slow for me on the vocab side of things (I am hoping all the droids and blasters and whatevers are just katakana-ised but I suspect they aren’t, not that it’s a big deal but still).
This weekend I have a couple of different social plans and I like to warmup a bit before seeing (Japanese) friends by doing an hour or two of listening and I can also feel myself wanting a couple of listening heavy days after all the reading this week, so we’ll see what happens.
In other news, my gym membership started today so I popped by after work to see what’s what. It’s been a couple of years since I have lifted, probably, and it has been maybe 7 years since I was lifting seriously so I am trying to be very careful not to hurt myself by jumping straight back into things. I want to build up to a 4-6 day programme (not sure exactly yet as it depends how time-poor I feel once work ramps up again) but am probably just gonna ease in by doing a very low intensity PPL 3 day split and sitting on the stationary bike listening to a podcast or music for half an hour or so. Sorry for the gym chat for those who aren’t into it but I reckon picking working out back up as a hobby may have some influence on my Japanese as well so it’s worth mentioning.
Thanks for reading.
In terms of years/months it has been over two years since I started learning and I have been in Japan for about a 18 months. I have studied at least semi-seriously almost that entire time (like an hour a day is probably my minimum) but sometimes I was doing a lot less and sometimes I was doing a lot more. In terms of hours or characters read I am afraid I don’t like tracking that much so can’t tell you much. I have read millions of characters though and have read for hundreds of hours (which is vague, I know).
At this point, I quite strongly believe in a compounding effect when reading though. So an hour a day isn’t worth double 30 minutes a day but probably like 2.1x as much and 3 hours a day isn’t 6x but more like 10x. It took me ages to build tolerance though and what I used to do a lot was do literally like 5-10 minutes of reading and then 10-20 minutes of listening or something else and then rinse and repeat. When I was N4ish I would also sometimes pause on every subtitle of a show (Terrace House) and basically read it instead of watch it.
As mentioned in a comment above I also like reading in English. Being highly literate is very important to me personally so I have relatively high motivation to read “real” books. I do know many of the more otaku inclined people online swear by VNs so if you aren’t as allergic to anime girls as I am (please don’t @ me) then you may find something like that useful as a stepping stone. I think just being obsessive about it and knowing that it is gonna take thousands of hours and hundreds of books to get good puts it into perspective.
I realise the answer you may want to hear though is that I had a turning point around my 5th-8th book (can’t remember exactly what I have read or what order) which was Norwegian Wood (ノルウェーの森). I had read maybe one or two of Murakami’s novels in Japanese before Norwegian Wood which must have helped and Norwegian Wood is also like half a million characters or more on its own so by the end I would have been pretty used to the writing style. But basically it was the first book where I properly felt like I understood everything that happened and basically every single sentence made sense even if it took some thought and googling (I was obviously leaning heavily on yomichan when reading though). After that I realised like “oh if I keep going I can learn to enjoy this…I can actually learn to read Japanese properly” and since then although some books are very hard (人間失格 was pretty punishing for me and I am gonna need to re-read it) and some just kind of suck and are boring (I think I DNF’d 君の膵臓を食べたい at about 80% in even) I know that if I keep going I can get something really valuable out of it. The good moments more than make up for all the shit I had to do to get here (and am still doing to get where I want to go).
(Also, sidenote, but I started out as a listening focused learner and although my listening is worse than my reading now I actually still want to focus more on my listening in the medium term.)
Currently reading:
- 変な家, 49727/62734
- 海辺のカフカ（下）, 51935/222476 (was at around 25k at the start of this challenge, I think(?))
- (Bunpro Book Club, Intermediate) スーパーカブ, 0/109076
- (Bunpro Book Club, Advanced) スター・ウォーズ４, 0/169574
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
6 Likes
Thanks so much for the detailed breakdown. Based on your response, it’s apparent I’m just not reading enough. I struggled through that first light novel, but I know that it can only get better from here. Lately I’ve been caught in a loop of flashcards with Bunpro, Anki, and Wanikani. While I don’t want to pump the breaks on those anytime soon, it’s apparent I need to read more. I would love to eventually read through a Murakami book as well. That seems like a benchmark for a lot of learners.
May try a visual novel as well. 私、二次元嫁にアレルギーじゃなく、貧弱だ。
4 Likes
8/100 days
200/1000 kanji
SRS/Study
- 25 new kanji, 35ish reviews
- 149 vocab reviews
- Bunpro N3 Lesson 8
Immersion, Thoughts, Life
It’s lunchtime now and I probably won’t update again this evening. Finished 変な家, started 禎子の千羽鶴 but had to stop reading as even just the start almost made me cry and I am reading in snatches at work and don’t really want to be crying at my desk. If you have been to the Peace Museum in Hiroshima then you may already know the story of Sadako. I will expand on it when I finish and review the book.
変な家 started fine but kinda wasn’t great in the end. Most the book is dialogue so pretty easy to read although some sections were harder than others.
Currently reading:
- 禎子の千羽鶴, 1552/49591
- 海辺のカフカ（下）, 51935/222476 (was at around 25k at the start of this challenge, I think(?))
- (Bunpro Book Club, Intermediate) スーパーカブ, 0/109076
- (Bunpro Book Club, Advanced) スター・ウォーズ４, 0/169574
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
8 Likes
NOTE: I will be moving to a roughly weekly update schedule (could be more frequent, could be less frequent) as I don’t really enjoy daily tracking of my progress. I am finding having some public accountability helpful but nitty-gritty tracking is not for me. If something quite interesting occurs to me then I may post about it outside of specific progress updates - perhaps book reviews or interesting videos or things like that. Basically, if there is no daily progress post then that doesn’t mean I am doing nothing! I’ll still do specific progress report posts but just less often.
10 Likes
No worries!
I bet having to write something every day is not only tedious, but also time consuming. That time could be better spent studying or doing something else anyway. Keep up the hard work!
6 Likes
Thats a great idea. Just try to remember why you started this and keep the study consistency!
4 Likes
I’m busier this week with work but don’t worry I’m still plugging away during my free time!
6 Likes
16/100 days(?)
320/1000 kanji
SRS/Study
Since last update:
- Bunpro N3 Lessons 9+10, N2 Lessons 1+2+3
- 175ish new vocab, a bunch of reviews
- 120 new kanji, a bunch of reviews
Immersion, Thoughts, Life
This entry will be a bit scattered.
Life: For those reading who haven’t lived in Japan you may not know but the beginning of April is a pretty busy time in Japanese workplaces as it is the beginning of the financial year and old people leave whilst new people arrive. It is also the beginning of the school year here and since I work in a school that means lots of meetings and class prep. Although I am an ALT (a position famous for its lack of actual work) I have always insisted on attending every relevant meeting since I started this job. I also have a non-English class which I run (it is a research class) and belong to a kind of study support department as well. My two main classes are also totally run by me and I don’t use any textbooks and instead design my own curriculum. If I am not working then as much as possible I will try and study. Basically I have been busy this week. Next week classes start so I will be busier still probably. Later this month I am also doing a guest lecture on British culture for a local charity so I have spent a couple of evenings this week preparing for that.
Despite all this busyness I actually think doing daily updates probably works better for this little 100 project as I started to lose track of what I was doing or had done pretty quickly after I stopped updating daily. So from now on I will try and update daily or at least every other day. I don’t think it suits my personality longterm but for the sake of staying focused on this project it seems to work better than leaving this kind of larger gap. It’s my first time really doing this kind of thing so I don’t really know what works for me so excuse my going back and forth. Weirdly it is probably quicker to do daily updates and braindumps than more considered weekly posts.
Reading: You can see from my tracked books below that I started the furigana version of the “Bookworm” series. It is not really my thing but it is the right level for this little project and it is fairly simple to pick up and put down which was perfect for me this week. You can also see I read maybe another 30k of Kafka on the Shore and did a little bit of the book club reading plus a tiny but of the Sadako book. Because my reading sessions have been more like 20 minutes here and there this week I haven’t been able to get into one thing and focus hence the quite wide spread. I also read Yotsuba. I don’t think I am gonna track manga in my currently reading/completed list as I don’t read much and for me it is more about the art than the language.
Listening: Most of my immersion this week has been listening as it tends to be less intensive for me and it is a bit easier to turn my brain off whilst watching youtube than when reading. Due to meetings I have probably been “listening” for about 2 hours a day at work besides my actual study time. Recently things at work have been getting easier to understand but there are still plenty of times when announcements or topics in meetings that kind of go over my head a bit. Like I know what they’re talking about but it is easy to miss the details.
Speaking: Also, I have someone new sitting next to me at work and we have been chatting for maybe an hour or so each day. The guy who used to sit there was a nice buy but a bit taciturn so we didn’t speak to each other much beyond basic courtesies. The new woman is the 書道 (calligraphy) teacher and we’ve been chatting a lot about kanji - pretty useful desk buddy to have honestly. I will probably also sit in on one of her classes once lessons begin. I did a bit of 書道 in the past but I am at the level of a 4 year old still so I’m looking forward to learning a bit more. There’s another new person in my department as well and she is always striking up conversation. It may sound silly but I have never liked talking (in Japanese) too much at work as it just feels worse to make stupid mistakes and sound like a monkey at your workplace than with friends or in a bar or something. One thing I am trying to work on this year is speaking more at work and trying to accept the fact that I can, to some degree, speak Japanese. I am constantly telling people I meet I don’t speak Japanese since when I moved here that was true but slowly it is becoming un-true and it is hard to know where that line is. I almost said it to my new desk buddy the first day we met because she was asking if I can read hiragana (lol) and I was about to say something like “Actually I find reading to be the easiest thing about Japanese - I can read a bit but I can’t speak at all” but we’d been having a conversation for about half an hour at that point so it would have been ridiculous. I think the issue is that my standards are high so even if I can have a long conversation about daily topics without any gigantic issues there are still so many things I don’t know how to say properly or I have to avoid specialist topics or I make a silly little grammar error or I become aware how poor my pronunciation is (To beginners reading this: Pronunciation is much much harder than you have been led to believe. It’s an “easy to learn, hard to master” kind of thing. My hot take for the day is that pronunciation is harder than kanji.).
Review of Oppenheimer
Unrelated to Japanese language learning but I saw Oppenheimer in the cinema last weekend. The reason I mention it is because it was originally not released here and was subject of some online controversy due to the subject of the film and also the fact that some people found the Barbie-heimer meme marketing thing to be offensive. I watched the film with a Japanese friend and we discussed it afterwards. Safe to say it really was at the limit of my conversational ability but it was pretty interesting to hear her opinion. From my side, I thought the film was excellent and clearly has an anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons perspective. Due to the film being mostly from the perspective of Oppenheimer himself (and partly from the perspective of Lewis Strauss) naturally the narrative focused mostly on things besides Hiroshima/Nagasaki. I won’t say more for fear of “spoilers” but basically the focus is elsewhere, on areas that make sense for the characters and also for Nolan/a Western audience. The film goes on for perhaps another hour after the dropping of the bombs. My friend who I saw it with found the message of the film to be far more ambiguous than I did. I have since spoken to other Japanese friends who saw it and they also found it more ambiguous than I did, interestingly. The film itself is excellent and everyone I know here who has seen it says it is excellent but I can also understand why some people may not want to go out of their way to see it. I have brought up the Ghibli film “The Wind Rises” as a comparison when speaking to Japanese friends. Anyway, I will leave my thoughts there as I don’t really want to get too much deeper into it and derail this post further. But overall good movie, 9/10.
Mini-forecast: I will be pretty busy so I am expecting my reading numbers to drop further but I am looking forward to my new classes and I see no reason why I shouldn’t be able to get some good listening in and keep ploughing through the kanji and grammar. In May there is Golden Week and a test week so I am roughly planning to get a lot of reading in then, depending on my mood.
Thanks for reading! (Also please excuse the typos in this one - I haven’t proofread it and don’t intend to!)
Currently reading:
- 禎子の千羽鶴, 13,334/49,591
- 本好きの下剋上（TOジュニア文庫), 27,986/99,257
- 海辺のカフカ（下）, 88,880/222,476 (was at around 25k at the start of this challenge, I think(?))
- (Bunpro Book Club, Intermediate) スーパーカブ, 5880/109,076
- (Bunpro Book Club, Advanced) スター・ウォーズ４, 11,807/169,574
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
7 Likes
17/100 days
Mini update only:
Cleared all anki reviews and did about an hour of listening. For future reference, I consider this to be my bare minimum although sometimes I don’t hit even that. Did no new kanji or words, revised no grammar, did no reading.
Slept really badly last night and have been busy all day with work and then after work I had to do some prep and then a meeting for the volunteering thing I’m doing. It’s 21:00ish now so I could feasibly get some reading in but I’m knackered so I’m probably gonna stick on some listening and white noise it before falling asleep. The rest of the week will be busy but hopefully less busy than today.
6 Likes
19/100 days
Mini update again: Totally forgot yesterday but did my minimum again so just cleared my anki reviews and did about an hour of listening. Today I’ve clawed back some time although ended up talking to my mum for a lot of that time as she is visiting me in Japan later this year and she is a bit nervous about certain aspects since she knows basically nothing about Japan.
Today, cleared my reviews, did about an hour of listening, read a tiny bit (maybe 5k characters), gonna have a bath now and try read some more but may fall asleep. This month is looking to be busy but hopefully I can steady the tiller this weekend although already I’ve got a few different social invitations so we’ll see…
7 Likes
20/100
Mini-again: Managed to go through a Bunpro lesson today and add 10 new kanji as well as clear my reviews and then about an hour of listening and a tiny bit of reading, maybe 5k characters again. Getting slowly less hectic. Pondering whether to turn down an invitation to go drinking tomorrow night as I know it will wipe out my productivity on Saturday. Also have an invite to a sports circle event on Saturday evening. I’ll decide tomorrow which I want to attend (could be both, could be neither) or perhaps I’ll make some dinner plans or something with a different friend. I’m feeling a bit knackered and want time to rest and get some good reading in but also I’d like to see my friends… If this weekend were actually 4 days long it’d be ideal. I’m definitely getting into the Japanese rhythm of life as despite the 年度 having just begun I am already counting down the days to Golden Week lol
Quick edit: Actually I also read the news online at work for maybe about an hour total which I completely forgot about. Not gonna track character counts for news or anything but thought I should mention it.
4 Likes
Gonna shoot for 50-60k characters of reading today after my friend said he was gonna aim for 50k a day this Saturday and Sunday. Had a slightly lazy morning doing some light housework and somehow it is already almost 11:00 so we’ll see what happens as the morning is normally more productive for me. Anyway, pre-emptively posting for the sake of accountability.
Update: Read about 25k but decided to go to badminton/volleyball in the end after all so that’ll be that for today. Tomorrow is clear so hopefully I will actually hit 50k then!
4 Likes
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):
- 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
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):
- また、同じ夢を見ていた, 2/10
- コンビニ人間, 5/10
- かがみの孤城, 3/10
- キッチン, 5/10
- 人間失格, 8/10
- ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石, 3/10
- ノルウェイの森 (1), 7/10
- ノルウェイの森 (2), 7/10
- 薬屋のひとりごと 1, 4/10
- 容疑者Xの献身, 6/10
- 星の子, 5/10
- 西の魔女が死んだ, 5/10
- そして、バトンは渡された, 4/10
- 国境の南、太陽の西, 5/10
- 海辺のカフカ〈上〉, 6/10(?)
7 Likes
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
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):
- 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
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):
- また、同じ夢を見ていた, 2/10
- コンビニ人間, 5/10
- かがみの孤城, 3/10
- キッチン, 5/10
- 人間失格, 8/10
- ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石, 3/10
- ノルウェイの森 (1) , 7/10
- ノルウェイの森 (2), 7/10
- 薬屋のひとりごと 1, 4/10
- 容疑者Xの献身 , 6/10
- 星の子, 5/10
- 西の魔女が死んだ, 5/10
- そして、バトンは渡された, 4/10
- 国境の南、太陽の西, 5/10
- 海辺のカフカ〈上〉, 6/10(?)
4 Likes
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):
- 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
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):
- また、同じ夢を見ていた, 2/10
- コンビニ人間, 5/10
- かがみの孤城, 3/10
- キッチン, 5/10
- 人間失格, 8/10
- ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石, 3/10
- ノルウェイの森 (1) , 7/10
- ノルウェイの森 (2), 7/10
- 薬屋のひとりごと 1, 4/10
- 容疑者Xの献身 , 6/10
- 星の子, 5/10
- 西の魔女が死んだ, 5/10
- そして、バトンは渡された, 4/10
- 国境の南、太陽の西, 5/10
- 海辺のカフカ〈上〉, 6/10(?)
6 Likes
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):
- 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
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):
- また、同じ夢を見ていた, 2/10
- コンビニ人間, 5/10
- かがみの孤城, 3/10
- キッチン, 5/10
- 人間失格, 8/10
- ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石, 3/10
- ノルウェイの森 (1) , 7/10
- ノルウェイの森 (2), 7/10
- 薬屋のひとりごと 1, 4/10
- 容疑者Xの献身 , 6/10
- 星の子, 5/10
- 西の魔女が死んだ, 5/10
- そして、バトンは渡された, 4/10
- 国境の南、太陽の西, 5/10
- 海辺のカフカ〈上〉, 6/10(?)
6 Likes
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
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):
- また、同じ夢を見ていた, 2/10
- コンビニ人間, 5/10
- かがみの孤城, 3/10
- キッチン, 5/10
- 人間失格, 8/10
- ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石, 3/10
- ノルウェイの森 (1) , 7/10
- ノルウェイの森 (2), 7/10
- 薬屋のひとりごと 1, 4/10
- 容疑者Xの献身 , 6/10
- 星の子, 5/10
- 西の魔女が死んだ, 5/10
- そして、バトンは渡された, 4/10
- 国境の南、太陽の西, 5/10
- 海辺のカフカ〈上〉, 6/10(?)
6 Likes