A Super Long Update Post! 

Iâve taken about a week off of pretty much all Japanese study. Of course I still use Japanese here and there in my daily life living in Japan with coworkers or at the shops, but in terms of active studying, nothing! I donât think this is necessarily a bad thing; this is probably the longest break Iâve taken in years aha. But I do feel the urge to push myself to get back into doing at least something daily or else the act of [not studying] will become its own solidified habit. The âgoodâ part about having studied multiple languages at high school only to have forgotten ALL that I learned is that I did learn an important lesson:
It doesnât matter how long you have studied a language, if you stop using it, you will forget it.
obviously Iâm sure this doesnât apply to everyone but it sure as heck applies to me! And Iâm aware that if youâve studied something for a long time it might be easier to get back into than the first time around however, I still think the general message stands.
So, I would hate for Japanese to become yet another language I spent years on only to eventually remember nothing of it. So far in my language learning journey, Japanese has felt distinct given itâs my first self-taught and self-motivated language which I studied outside of school. So Iâm hoping to keep it that way, and not let it join the other languages in my èšèªå¢å Ž lol.
Lots of my fav study logs on here posted a 2023 review a while back and I never did, so in a similar vein I think itâd be good to reflect on the study phases Iâve gone through the last year to think about what worked well and what didnât.
- - - my study routines over the last year - - -
reading phase
This time last year (May â23), I joined my first book club å°ããªæ£®ã®çŒã¡ãã and started reading 倩åœå€§éå¢. I also binged Cure Dolly grammar videos. And I was intermittently writing my Japanese diary (which I began in February). Around this time I was also using Anki and wanikani. In June, I was mostly using Bunpro, but didnât study much. Then through July-Aug, I started reading Akira in Japanese. These were intensive reading sessions where I looked up every word I didnât know and physically rewrote every line of text in a notebook. I really enjoyed my Akira set-up!
writing phase
Then in September, I began the Quartet 1 study group, (watched Tokini Andyâs supplementary grammar videos), and was doing the monthly writing tasks. This is also when I wrote my first comic in Japanese and I would go on to make 4 comics. I continued reading and writing out Akira. In November, I started reading V for Vendetta in Japanese, but that didnât go very far.
heavy output phase
After taking a break during my travels in December, I came back to Japan in January â24 and really committed to my Japanese diary. I pretty much did it every day for a loooooong time. I also did daily wanikani pretty consistently for a while. The biggest change tho was taking up weekly Japanese conversation practice with my friend. This was probably the most active speaking practice I had ever done while studying Japanese. So with daily writing output and weekly speaking output, it felt good. Then, I stopped doing wanikani and began that 75 hard challenge (trying to practice reading-writing-speaking-listening every day), but that only lasted around 25 days.
- - - the situation now - - -
And now here we are. I have wanikani in vacation mode with around 750 reviews waiting for me and Iâve been on this level for 91 days. I donât necessarily feel inclined to return to wanikani reviews as of yet. My work life is a lot busier than it used to be so I donât have down time during work which is mainly when I used to do reviews so itâs a bit harder. But I probably should return to it because Iâve noticed myself mixing up kanji and forgetting readings. I think Iâll do that in a week or two once I feel settled back into a daily routine.
When I travelled last week, although technically I was meeting my 75 hard goals and doing all 4 skills daily, I was only doing the bare minimum. Truthfully, I felt like a cop out.
Having reflected on the last year, I think the phases I most felt like I was actively engaged in my Japanese study were 1) when I was intensively reading Akira (July-Oct â23) and 2) when I was writing my Japanese diary daily, doing wanikani, and meeting my friend weekly to practice speaking (Jan-March â24). Given the increased workload at work, I need to build a study routine which is sustainable to achieve in non-working hours.
Reading through my study log, I also found a gem of a comment from @Pitapi who (after I posted sometime last year about feeling disconnected to Japanese study) said:
All of these suggestions are so so good, but the last one is especially cool. Namely, itâs important to ask yourself:
what made you love learning Japanese? And why did you want to learn Japanese in the first place?
And ultimately for me, it was always because I wanted to be able to read Japanese manga after having written on it during my thesis. I think in the past and now, I have felt disheartened about my poor skills in speaking and listening. Also, since Iâm leaving Japan really soon in a few months, thereâs this anxiety that ânow is the best opportunity to practice speaking/listening with native speakers so donât miss this moment!!â. So I push myself to do things like the 75 hard challenge where I have to practice those skills. And while they are really important, frankly I didnât learn Japanese so I could speak it. And maybe returning to intensive reading as a focus, returning to something that was at the heart of my original motivation for learning the language, will help reignite my passion for it.
I think itâs crucial while Iâm about to enter this new phase of living OUTSIDE of Japan that my motivation for learning Japanese is at an all time high, in order to sustain my studies during the transition. Not to mention, this autumn, Iâm also probably going to start learning Russian (again hehe) due to moving in with my Russian partner. So, in anticipation of taking on another target language, itâs imperative that I feel secure with my study habits in Japanese so it doesnât fall to the wayside.
- - - going forward! - - -
ãšã«ãããthat was a very long post but it felt necessary to air out my thoughts after a week away and after about a month of feeling like a cop out aha. In conclusion, going forward, I think Iâm going to:
- return to posting a daily diary entry in Japanese here on my study log
- take up weekly conversation practice with my friend again
- and start intensively reading and writing out Akira again
I loved being part of the Quartet 1 study group, but Iâm sad to say I donât think I could honestly/realistically say I could commit 100% to the Quartet 2 study group right now. So Iâm thinking Iâll just follow along with the new grammar points each month, watch the Tokini Andy videos since I find him a great tutor, and cheer other people on from the backseat because I am so proud of all the members who are keeping at it and I want to see how they do 
These are the main focuses! Iâm actually at work today (on a Saturday) but I have no classes to teach so I have free time (hence this mega post haha). So I think Iâm going to spend today doing bunpro reviews to get back into the swing of things just because it will give me exposure to lots of example sentences. I have 147 reviews so letâs see how I get on! Thanks to anyone who read all of this: I really truly appreciate this online community so much and I donât think I would have continued Japanese for as long as I have without it 
And with that, here is Saturday 05/11âs diary. Iâll post the diaries like this today and tomorrow and then next week Iâll begin (another lol) new formatting system for the blog I think <3 :
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Saturday 05/12
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