I did my reviews and did some more new lessons and, oh what is this?
Next step is working through Shin Kanzen Master N2 文法 as well as watching the 日本語の森 series to work on the differences . I’ll also reset the grammar points gradually as the new sentences get added.
Hopefully this is a good enough head start before the exam in July. I will not have a repeat of last year’s N3…I will be prepared this time! Haha.
Good morning!
However, I added 10 more lessons to WK, but not going to add lessons on BP.
) Luckily, renshuu had conjugations lessons so I’ll head up there and study it more.Today, I was reminded just how confusing 二重敬語 is. 
Well… I became sick in the middle of the night Monday to Tuesday. So… I did do Bunpro reviews to not lose my streak, but it wasn’t until I felt better today that I also tackled reviews on WK, and obviously no new lessons on either site and won’t happen later this evening either. Hopefully tomorrow I can get back to routine.
Funny, I had a big work task Sun-Mon that was why I didn’t have time for lessons properly and Tues-Wed was supposed to be me getting back to them, instead I was sick. 
Good morning. Done WK and BP.
Back on the horse today.
Reviews at WK and BunPro. 15 new lessons on WK, vocab from level 7 still, also turned off reorder script because of @Jul3. Still a lot of lvl 7 vocab before I get to level 8 stuff but then I did also notice that some of the kanji felt a bit squishy in my memory since it has taken a bit to get to the lvl 7 vocab (finish level 6 vocab and being sick).
3 BunPro lessons: が, から, and N + てもいい. The last one I can’t quite figure it out, maybe it was just the translation syntax BP chose, but while I found verb[て]もいい very understandable. I felt like I couldn’t figure out from seeing the N + てもいい in action. Aka I tried to translate the example sentences as I went (I’ve turned off English so I have to click to show it) and I felt like I couldn’t figure out the proper translation for any. And with that I don’t mean word for word, but that I felt like I couldn’t even figure out what the general translation would be. So I don’t get what it is doing, it feels super different from verb[て]もいい, but I have a feeling I’m just not getting it, and the reading didn’t have anything to help me.
Also, now level 14 here, and I got the 9000 XP badge yesterday.
Glad you’re better and back at it!
As for me, BP was uneventful… still haven’t added my remaining N5 lessons…
WK I added all the Level 10 kanji that were unlocked to me, and suffering through my normal round of failure with them… I’m not really sure my strategy is good at all… let’s hope they stick by the weekend…
Done WK and BP.
Good Morning!
Did my BP reviews. Pretty easy when they’ve been <25 for the whole week. Still haven’t taken WK off of Vacation Mode. But I have been doing vocab reviews with FloFlo and Torii.
Cracked open 完全マスターN2文法. Had the same sinking feeling as when I first started Tobira. “Oh god, this is intimidating.” But just like Tobira, once I figured out how I was going to structure my notes and actually got into it, it wasn’t so bad! It just takes a little longer since all the explanations are in Japanese.
Finished the first section on all the ways to say “When…” or “Immediately after…”
際
に際して・にあたって
～たとたん（に）
～（か）と思うと・（か）と思ったら
～か～ないかのうちに
Of course I’ve previously studied all these on BP. But I didn’t know the nuances between them. Took the short tests at the end and did very well!
My plan is to try do a section a day/4-5 sections a week. So I should get through this book in about 2-3 months, hopefully.
Manage to get back into things fully yesterday.
BP and WK reviews. Started with 15 WK lessons but added 4 later, so I could finish off level 7 vocab by doing 20 and 15 lessons the next two days (meaning today and tomorrow unless something changes). Three BP lessons: あの, V + に行く, and じゃない. None of them were confusing, thankfully. Also, I knew ano since before.
Instead of getting back to KW… I tried a couple of sites for practicing vocabulary, Kitsun and iKnow to be more exact. I’m not sure I fully like either. Maybe I’m just spoiled but I’d like a more polished experience and/or at least some help figuring out how to actually use the website (this is aimed at iKnow since Kitsun is still in beta and therefore literally wouldn’t have the polished experienced yet).
I started this because I finally learned what the Japanese language school I will start in April uses as a textbook. One too focused on classroom use for me to study ahead, but apparently the first book seems to teach N5 and half of N4. So I thought I should round out my knowledge with more of that.
How about customer service? @seanblue said this. I still prefer Anki instead of Kitsun, I tried iKnow and fell in love but no, first things first, though in reality I can only use my energy up to zeroing WK & BP only everday. I think nothing beats (literally use Japanese every day) hand writing & reading practice when we’re WK + BP lifetimers. Just my personal opinion though. 
I mean, by saying first things first above is, I have all three A Dictionary of [ . . . ] Japanese Grammar books and soon this too and also writing book practice, but some days when all I could do just stared at them before I slept. They are so intimidating much more than bloated hundreds of WK reviews, if I don’t touch them. 
I saw that from @seanblue and that absolutely sucks. I’m not sure iKnow is for me, neither Kitsun. Perhaps Anki, although I guess I might have to figure out how to add those input fields to it. -.-’
However, you might be right that I’ll gain more from reading and writing practice (as well as speaking practice) instead of another SRS trying to beat new words into me. (With out the mnemonics it feels like being hit in the head trying to make it stick, which would mean I’d need to make up my own, but I’d rather learn the kanji at WK first, and then I could make up my own mnemonic if needed for non-WK vocab.)
Actually, that might be the right way to go. Not as easy to just sit back and let the program do the work for me, but it will work very needed muscles.
Also, I’m planning to get the grammar dictionaries when I get to Japan, as well as a couple of other books. They are so much cheaper to get there (especially compared to here). Also I hope that maybe there is a hardback or a bigger version of the dictionary than the one I looked at in a local shop. The one I looked I would have to hold open all the time, and I’d rather have one I can put down open on a table.
You probably also want to get these books for reading in Japan. Yeah, because I heard they’re cheaper there. I know them from two Tofugu articles.
They seem pretty cool, but also a bit redundant? Like the amount of example sentences is great, and mnemonics in volume II (wasn’t clear if they are in volume I too) for new vocabulary might be great. But otherwise it seems there wouldn’t be a lot of new stuff? Like new vocab and more sentences, but otherwise I should have a lot of it from WK. Or did I miss something?
My plan currently was to get the grammar dictionaries, some cheap graded readers at BOOKOFF, and a book on onomatopoeia. And eventually some other books just for reading (manga, light novels, etc.).
Good morning everyone.
I’m afraid graded readers will be too easy for you but you surely can try. It’s just my personal opinion. I’ve never tried graded readers nor 2 volumes of books that were reviewed by Kristen here, but I had read LOTS of people talking moaning about graded readers too easy on WK forum. That’s why I also recommend people to read these 2 books instead of graded readers. I want to get them as well but not from Amazon America, or even from Amazon Japan but with the sellers who are from Europe or America, because I usually got books from Amazon Japan much more quickly than Amazon America, maybe because it’s near.
Idk what you’re talking about redundant here, but I think WK needs better context sentences (I know they’re working on it), and these books are the answer, I believe. fyi starting from level 21, we only got 1 context sentence instead of 3 for level 1 to 20, not to mention, we usually can’t read the last/or one of those 3 sentences because it uses kanji/vocab we haven’t learned. Especially since you’ll be in Japan, I think you’d absorb them pretty quickly because miaou you’d see Japanese language every day.
Oh yeah, same, I want to grab onomatope (I forgot who recommended this book on WK forum) and manga too, but not in short term, maybe around June or the end of 2019, because miaow 
お金がないからNHK Easy読む。
Edit: I just want to share this, when I googled Kristen’s article again, what I found was this. Crabigators-sama recommended the book that’s on the way. So happy. I bought this grammar book before I read this. Recommended by some people on WK forum, well, and also, because I got the complete series anyway.
Have you tried Memrise? It’s has their own made courses as well as a bunch of user-created ones. I used that to do the equivalent of iKnow’s Core 2k.
I use Torii now though, it takes iKnow’s vocab and rearranges it into JLPT levels so I can study N2 vocab.
FloFlo is another good one whenever you want to start reading books! The selection is pretty limited though.
Did my BP reviews. Still haven’t taken WK off vacation mode :x. I have a 3-day weekend so maybe I’ll get around to it…
Finished 2課 for 完全マスターN2文法 and watched the equivalent 日本語の森 videos. Reviewed the differences between:
～最中だ
～うちに
～ばかりだ・～一方だ
～（よ）うとしている
～つつある
～つつ
Took the section quiz and scored 100%! : )
Interesting, because I’ve seen a lot of people recommend graded readers on WK, and not seen even one post about them being too easy. I guess it depends when in the flow you do them. Since I’ve currently read 0 sections of sentences hanging together (say several pages of manga or a couple of paragraphs of text), I feel like graded readers can be a good place to start for me. Graded readers also makes it easy to find material at my grammar skill level and hopefully with few enough new words that I won’t be overwhelmed with a lot of vocab.
Why I think the books are redundant for me: I don’t need more example sentences, I need more text hanging together so I can start reading actual Japanese where context is a thing. Japanese is so dependent on context to actually understand it that I feel like reading sentences in isolation don’t have much function beyond when you first learn a kanji or word and even then only in the beginning. I don’t want to stick with learning material longer than I have to. I know from learning English that my skill ballooned when I could start consuming normal media, but to consume normal media I need to be practiced in that skill, and example sentences doesn’t do that for me. Instead with graded readers (and manga) I can start reading actual text hanging together with context that also use similar words.
Perhaps I’ll feel different when I get to level 20+ and there is only one sentence at WK. But then I currently can only read one sentence, and sometimes only if I’m lucky. I mostly look at the English translations of the sentence to get a sense for how the word is used, and I guess I will miss that.
Currently however, I basically feel, if I had to buy those books for the Japanese school I’ll be going to. I’d totally use them and probably find them useful (and also would use them for school so…). But since I won’t, I’d rather buy really cheap books at Bookoff so I can practice reading more normal Japanese.
The multimedia exercise book is interesting though and I’ve added it as a maybe buy. It basically depends on if I think I’ll have time to use it when I need it in my study journey.
For onomatopoeia, I was planing to get Jazz Up your Japanese with Onomatopoeia that Tofugu recommended (they had a couple of different recommendations, and I decided on this one). Do you have a review of onomatope? There was no look inside on Amazon so I don’t know what that one is like and whether I might want to get that one instead.
@lopicake I tried Memrise before, but not really their vocabulary courses, but the beginner Japanese ones. I found the interface all right. I’ve heard a lot about poor quality though from user-created courses so I didn’t try them. Any chance you have a link to the one you used (since I assumed you still think it was good)?
What is Torii?
