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):
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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; character count to be updated 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 character count to be updated 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)
Lifetime completed (possibly incomplete list due to bad memory, in no particular order, excludes stalled and DNF’d books which are easily over 10 in number, excludes manga/articles/anything else):
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また、同じ夢を見ていた , 2/10
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コンビニ人間, 5/10
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かがみの孤城, 3/10
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キッチン , 5/10
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人間失格, 8/10
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ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石, 3/10
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ノルウェイの森 (1) , 7/10
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ノルウェイの森 (2), 7/10
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薬屋のひとりごと 1, 4/10
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容疑者Xの献身 , 6/10
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星の子, 5/10
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西の魔女が死んだ, 5/10
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そして、バトンは渡された, 4/10
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国境の南、太陽の西, 5/10
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海辺のカフカ〈上〉, 6/10(?)
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