2024 or 2025? Bit confused here haha
In regards to listening, have you tried the Japanese version of Audible? It’s like a Spotify for audiobooks, very different from the subscription model in the West.
I am trying to do immersion with it by running it as often as possible via my mp3 player. I don’t understand too much because of my low level of proficiency but for you, it might be more interesting than some podcast (I find those boring myself)
in October 2024, I hope I will be able to start the master‘s degree of Japan studies. 
Then, I would study one semester abroad in Japan in October 2025
Oh yes, I was thinking for a while now to subscribe to audiobook.jp (not Audible, though, maybe I need to compare these two)! I will definitiv try if it works out for me because I would LOVE to losten to audiobooks
Ahh I see.
Have not tried audiobook.jp yet. I wonder if they have any exclusive audiobooks?
What do you mean with “very different from the subsription model in the west.” 
? Maybe I misunderstood but aren’t both audiobook and audible subsription based?
Audible
Audiobook
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Yes, it’s a subscription but you can listen to pretty much any book for free and as many books as you want. Meanwhile, the version here in the West gives you one point per month that you can spend on a book and any additional book costs 10€
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Ohh now I get it. I thought that would be the case for western subscriptions as well. Thanks for explaining 
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as far as I know, audiobook has exclusive titles as well and focuses on japanese publications. But as I have neither tried one of both, I can‘t say for sure. I also read that audiobook uses mp3 for downloading their content, which might be a plus and I think that a subscription is not necessarily needed
Today, I returned home and reviewed my grammar points (I switched to vacation mode for the past two days because I REALLY had no time whatsoever 
) and also reviewed my kanji anki deck. I am still very tired, so that’s it for today. I will get back properly tomorrow as soon as I catched up on some sleep. 
To be honest, I was extremely tired yesterday when I wrote my small update. I would like to talk about my business trip real short: I was able to meet some japanese business partners from the company I am working for and during our dinner, I had the opportunity to chat with them for about 2 hours. It was a very nice experience, although I was very afraid that my manner of talking was really rude, because in the situation, I wasn’t properly able to use 敬語. I hope they still had a nice evening and I was very happy to have the opportunity to talk in japanese since a very long time.
Some of you might remember that I booked a session with a japanese teacher in italki and it’s going to be this weekend. I am also looking forward to this!
Since I spend the last days on my business trip, I am able to take today and tomorrow off from work and I am already using my time for my studies. I really wanted to get back to it as soon as possible 
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Today, I haven’t practiced any reading or listening, because I feel very unwell today, but I managed to do the following:
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Review 107 kanji flashcards and practice my kanji reading and writing skills. Also learnt some new vocabulary. My writing practice probably took me 2 hours or so.
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Reviewed my daily grammar points on Bunpro. I‘m still repeating the N3 grammar points that I feel I need to refresh. According to my schedule , I should be able to continue with the N2 grammar by the middle of the coming week.
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I bought the digital version of 君の名は for the intermediate book club starting on August 12.
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I checked out Audible.jp and am thinking about buying the audiobook of 君の名は as well. I wonder if it would be fun to listen to the passages after reading them.
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Today, I spend my day in bed because I was still feeling sick. 
But besides sleeping quite a lot, I did the following today:
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Reviewed 93 anki kanji cards and write them. I also learnt some new vocabulary and dug into the kanji that I didn’t recognize easily (or at all). Spent about 2,5 hours.
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Reviewed my Bunpro grammar and learnt 3 new grammar points
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Read 死神の精度 page 1- 25. I just wasn’t in the mood for ライオンのおやつ and procrastinated a bit. I have about 30 pages left, and I recently read about 30 pages of it in one sitting when I was in a flow, so it should be manageable. I just didn’t want to read something that makes me sad, today.
No listening comprehension today, either. I feel a bit bad about it… need to get back into listening tomorrow.
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Today, I finished reading ライオンのおやつ! 
So, yesterday I read about 40 pages in one sitting and had roughly 10 pages left. But it was already very late and I was extremely tired, so I postponed finishing the book for today.
As I wrote before, the story revolves around a young woman in her early 30s who was diagnosed with cancer and spends her remaining time in a hospice (ライオンの家). As expected, there were hard times when I had to cry, but there were also very light moments in the story, too. I really liked the combination of both worlds and ultimately thought that this is how life goes, right? Up and down. The book made me think about what’s important in life and how I want to spend it, but not in a depressing, too philosophical way. Despite its topic, it’s a story which embraces life. It’s neither tacky nor prosaic. I have the feeling that the book is not very wildly known, but I would recommend it!
I also did my grammar and kanji reviews for today. My writing practice looks usually like this:
By the way, I also had my trial lesson with Akane-sensei on italki today! It was so fun to chat with her, but I felt like a toddler fighting for their very first words, again I am going to book more lessons with her, in order to practice my output. I cannot neglect in any longer 
Also, I picked up contact with a rather new friend from Japan. It’s a male, not really within my age range, he‘s about 10 years younger than me, but very reflected and intelligent. We got in contact a while ago (2 months or so) by chance. But at some point, I thought that I don’t want to be a creepy 32 year old woman chatting to a young man in his early 20s. Even though he seemed to enjoy chatting with me (in Japanese only). Anyway, I did enjoy talking to him, too, and was able to practice so much. We don’t talk about language learning or Japanese, but a lot about politics or societal questions. I usually don’t have the chance to talk about these topics in Japanese, so I was glad to grab this opportunity and talk to him. I hope I‘m not a creepy lady. I‘d rather like to see myself as a nice お姉さん instead. Therefore, I decided it’s okay if I want to continue talking to him.
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Today, I read the first half of the first section for the intermediate book club (君の名は).
I plan to do the following while reading the assigned sections per week:
- I am going to research every minute detail I don’t understand. I will research absolutely every word, kanji or grammar point I don’t understand. At the end of all 16 (?) weeks, I want to understand 100% of the book. At least theoretically.
- Since the weekly amount seems relatively reasonable, I want to create my own anki deck for the vocabularies.
Actually, I had ChatGPT analyze my reading and without looking anything up, it seems that I understand roughly 70% of the text. I was able to understand the remaining 30% from context, so it does seem like a manageable text for my current ability.
I also started my 30 day trial 聴き放題 on audible.jp and just listened to the beginning of 君の名は, corresponding to the text I read today. Oh I LOVE it. This will hopefully help me to keep up with my listening practice. 
In contrast to 君の名は I just bought 変な家, which I will be reading for fun alongside the book club assignment. With 変な家, I plan to practice reading fast and getting into the flow, just like I recently did with ライオンのおやつ. I plan to look up as little as possible.
I know I said in my initial post that I plan to read 死神の精度 afterwards, but after reading the sample of 変な家 I was just so intrigued… and also, audible has the audiobook-version as well!
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Besides doing my daily kanji, vocabulary and grammar review (I finished the N3 recap today!), I also did the following today:
- Read the latter half of this week’s section for the intermediate book club.
- Repeatedly listened to the audiobook of said section (still amazed by this additional dimension it brings to my reading and listening practice)
- watched two episodes of Urasawa Naoki‘s 漫勉. What a soothing series that is!
- started reading 変な家. Actually, I just started and reached page 15. I will definitely continue reading after I wrote my post, because I am totally into it! The thrilling 違和感 I felt right from the beginning is actually a little fun. I‘m interested to see in what direction the story goes.
If someone reading this read the book, too, please share with me your thoughts!
From tomorrow on, I will be able to continue with the N2 grammar points, I‘m looking forward to it!
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I did the bare minimum of grammar and kanji review today (I will probably feel the effect tomorrow when I have slightly more to review than usual ) but I read up until page 104 of 変な家! With my kindle (app) setting, this equals to 41% of the whole book.
The great thing is, that I genuinely had the feeling as if I’m reading the story, rather than translating it in my head and try to understand what’s being written. I am actually really pleased with myself today 
And I had genuine fun while reading. I think I will listen to the audiobook once I’m finished and then I want to watch the movie, too. But first things first.
What I enjoyed was also that I encountered grammar points that I once had trouble wrapping my head around, but during my reading, I understood it subconsciously. I also encountered a new word that I just encountered in 君の名は, too! That was a nice feeling
I was wondering why I can read 変な家 so easily, and I think one aspect is that I like mystery stories a lot and often watch 名探偵コナン in japanese while I’m doing something else, and I recently read a mystery manga called medium. So I guess I’m also relatively familiar with certain words and expressions that often come up in mystery stories.
I already read 十角館の殺人 from the same mangaka (in German, though). If there’s someone reading this who likes mystery as well, I’d like to recommend these, especially because they’re both rather short series.
Back to literature: I noticed, in comparison to 君の名は that 変な家 uses way less onomatopoeia and adverbs. I’m quite bad at understanding both, and I already noticed when I was reading 秒速5センチメートル that Shinkai Makoto really loves his adverbs.
As for listening, I watched 3 hours worth of 漫勉, so I’ll count this for today.
It was already, yesterday, but I also listened to the audiobook of 変な家 up until the point I had read yesterday. Unfortunately, the audiobook doesn’t give me the same eery feeling like the book, but I’m looking forward to listen to it entirely once I’m finished reading, nevertheless.
By the way, I meant to show you guys since a while now, but this is the reason the japanese-japanese translations in my kindle app sometimes bother me:
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Prior familiarity helps a lot and genre fiction is generally predictable so it does make it easier to follow things. By the way, the first half or so of 変な家 is also basically all dialogue which tends to be easier to read (the lack of adverbs and onomatopoeia that you note is also due to this as there is simply less description on dialogue). At some point the narrative device switches and it becomes a little harder - still very readable though. I’m interested to see how you find it in the end!
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you are totally right! Also, there are many pictograms of the layout of the house in between the pages. I will tell you my impression as I progress 
Recently, there have been more cases when I was talking, that the japanese words came to my mind first and I couldn’t think of the English or even German counterpart. I have been waiting for this moment!
Although I know there will come down phases when I question why I’m even doing this and why I want to let myself suffer so much. but I found that these critical phases, when one is frustrated and doesn’t seem to get anything right, are the times when the brain learns. Not only with language learning, but other things, too. So… I keep on digging my way through it 🫠
oh, but about the onomatopoeia and adverbs, I still think Shinkai uses them excessively in comparison to other authors I have read so far. I didn’t run an analysis, though, just my impression. And I always wonder: should I actively learn them or catch the feeling they evoke as I go?
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Your books are exactly like mine! I really love Kani in Context and the grammar dictionaries. Once I get past N3, I’ll have to take a look at some of the books you mentioned. I love mysteries and if it’s translated into German even better! I need to practice my German as well
I hope your masters goes smoothly! I’m still conflicted on what to get mine in if I want to persue it. Best of luck to you
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Dear all, in case you’ve missed me: I am still alive! I am just in the midst of moving and have NO time whatsoever 🥲 I’m currently on vacation mode and cannot do my reviews. I’m squeezing in a bit of time to let you know that I’m still alive, at least I hope it’s going to calm down during the course of the next week. I think that next week Sunday should be fine, eventually. However, I do have two announcements:
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I finished 変な家! I’m going to let you know about my impressions as soon as I’m able to catch my breath.
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I got accepted for the master’s degree!!
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that’s so great to hear! I’m still on the lookout for some really in-depth kanji dictionaries including non 常用漢字 (preferably japanese-japanese). So if someone has a recommendation, please let me know
Good luck for your German studies! I heard it’s quite difficult to learn
Regarding the masters, I thought about it for so long and switched between “I’m going to do it!” and “No way I’m doing this to myself again!” back and forth. Eventually, i just had to make a decision. Best of luck for you as well!
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