[DAY 51] 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):

5 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