How fun!!! yes, post your adventure updates 
and it will be great to see how your renshuu experiment turns out! Let me know if eventually that’s something I can link in the home post for future adventurers 
If it makes you feel better, it gets MUCH easier after the intro, and imo way easier than Frieren, so you got this
except this part 
mostly just behind
lots of things keeping me too busy so reading had fallen way behind since july
renshuu dot org is a free japanese learning platform, yes FREE
there is a very active discord group with weekly activities, etc…
they have a paid version pro (it’s about 100 bucks when it’s on sale for lifetime)
but basically you can use the existing tools or build your own
one of the things I’ve wanted to do but never taken the time to work on is build out a community list
I am a lifetime pro user and I do find the sentence practice quite helpful.
For my own reading I use kitsun (as well as my wk migration)
could use Anki it’s ok - just h8 it (boring)
Thus what I wanted to do with any book, was to build out a vocab list and then add custom sentences for that vocab and for a book - can just use the sentences from that book!
Thus manual process. The first few pages really did take a long time and felt like I was putting the whole tome into the thing. But in any case right now I have added 113 vocab words coupled with 60 sentences. Some of the sentence features require a paid membership so not sure how much of that part can be used for free, but they are there.
I’m not building out the whole book, just bits of it as I go along. As it’s a manual process will take some time. Cannot promise it all gets built out - if i get bored, tired or just don’t have time to get through it. Or this experiment fails but anyone can check it out they want. There are still couple of possible bugs to still get sorted as well (found a couple and renshuu already killed them - they are currently in the process of upgrading the reading buddy tool).
In any case, ideally I’d like to use this for various books I read that aren’t book club books. Being a free resource with study schedules has some other benefits beyond a spreadsheet. Beats exporting and then importing into kitsun or another program.
Like I said renshuu is actually free. Seriously don’t have to spend any money. If I knew when I started I’d never had spent any money on WK.
To find the vocab and sentence lists on renshuu: (very much work in progress - only up to scene 4):
which will take you to
the search feature is a bit wonky and admittedly haven’t figured it all out but if you search by shuly or a partial title the list will NOT come up.
But if you browse all they are sorted alpha with the japanese starting after the roman alphabet (scroll way down) or you can search by the book title which is probably the easiest
from either of those you can build out study schedules
an example of the sentences entered
the sentence reviews think anyone can do but some features like the jlpt entry style requires payment
in any case work in progress and certainly won’t be the complete book or anything
find a vocab word I want to add, adding it through reading buddy to the vocab list, then adding a custom sentence and parse and bind to the dictionary and add to the sentence community list.
doesn’t take long per item but it does add up.
this is still just a test for now, but feel free to check it out. if you create the study schedule the added terms and sentences should (i think) automatically add to the schedule.
a view of the vocab list (the first sentence in that list is the one from book-but probably not visible as they are technically individual private entries - so you have to add the sentence study I think):
in any case - if you notice there are already a lot of prebuilt sentences in renshuu as well
one nice thing is that you can mark stuff as known and don’t have to learn it, can also learn stuff in any order you want. Not forced into any wk style must do this first silliness. Can customize the SRS spacing as well. Also once you build out a study schedule, so say this list only has the vocab i want to learn, you can search their dictionary and with a couple of clicks add your own vocab to an existing study schedule. Realize the interface can be painful and sometimes it is, but once you figure out it very much worth it - and it’s a free resource
who knows when or if I’ll finish but you can at least check it out in the meantime.
(oh yeah the translations of the sentences are by me myself and I with some help from deepL - tried to go with as close a translation to keep the individual words/terms while keeping the sentences as natural w/o screwing up the order of the terms too much - certainly not perfect but should be good enough for learning)
learned more about 蝙蝠 than I ever wanted to know
happy joy !!
have made it to the next decision point Stage B complete
89 sentences and 159 vocab words added so far
trying to decide which wants to kill you more
the Amazon Rainforest or all of the critters in Australia
You’re at stage B, nice, prepare for adventure, heheh, but don’t get too comfy 
wow, that is commitment! I would be hard pressed to say I’ve mined that many words total (outside of Satori where it is trivial)!
Your renshuu project looks really neat, one of these weekends I’ll get on there and check it out, I haven’t explored renshuu.
It’s not that different from what I do when doing detailed reading. It’s just some extra steps.
I signed up for it years ago but never really used it until I was looking for some other general study options. Been using it regularly for a while now. I really liked how the sentence reviews are done. Sort of an all encompassing review, rather than a stand alone vocab term or grammar point. Also learning something in context tends to just stick better for me. Instead of, there was a kanji look alike what was it again, oh the sentence was related to such and such it was this one… probably doesn’t make any sense but it’s how my crazy head works.
What I have generally done with the vocab is either add it to my kitsun lists as I read OR populate google vocab sheets. If it’s something I really want to create a learning path for, I can use the vocab sheet and import the whole thing to kitsun or add individual terms. But all in all it’s sort of a mish mash. Sometimes it’s been what page or where was this in the book again…kind of annoying.
This method is pretty nice and will leave behind an easy way for anyone else to pickup the same materials and study however they want.
Recommend checking out renshuu, it’s a pretty powerful tool even if the interface isn’t always the most intuitive. It’s a free resource more powerful than anki and you can study all of the kanji, vocab, grammar for Japanese. If you do need help the discord server or email works out plenty fast.
I’m interested 
welcome, how fun! If you want to join the next adventure, set this thread to watching to get notified when we start polling for start dates, or put yourself on the interested list here and I’ll be sure to tag you when we get that far!
Or you can read at your own pace on a previous adventure like @shuly
Thank youuuu looking forward to adventuring 
Just wondering if anyone knows, do you have to pay customs on delivery with CDJapan or can you prepay? (I have no physical money on me 
)
hmmm, I haven’t used CD Japan, and it might depend on your country, but if no one here responds, maybe ask in the BBC or IBC clubs as someone there might know!
I used CDJapan to order the first book and all the payments were prepaid!
Stage C complete
all of you 
friendshaped!!! 
ジャガーは仲間になりたい (笑)
Up to
197 vocab
108 sentences so far
Will start Stage D next reading session
what, are you saying you didn’t wet yourself at that scene?
I clearly should go to sleep cuz I’m pondering something stupid and stuck but the heck with it posting a stupid question cuz I’m tired - sure I’ll feel really lame tomorrow
竹の節に溜まった水を探すな。。。
vs
木の根っこに水が溜まっていないか探すなら。。。
this negative いないか for some reason isn’t making any sense.
the bamboo sentence seems fine to me
If you want to search for water that has accumulated in bamboo joints…
but this other sentence is throwing me (being the same verb)
It’s slightly different enough and im so exhausted that can’t seem to figure out how it’s not negative here
if I ditch the end…
木の根っこに水が溜まっていないか
木の根っこに水 in the tree roots
but then the verb form is negative?
Is there not water collected in the tree roots?
Im sure it’s simple but im so tired and the object in the bamboo is the water
but here 探す is getting the direct object (the water)
vs in the tree roots there is no を marker,
instead it looks like a question
に is still marking the location to search
maybe how about this, could the sentence be written
木の根っこに溜まっていないか水が探すなら
木の根っこに溜まった水が探すなら
what is the いないか doing here >> think that’s maybe the question
and comparing vs the rewritten tree root - get an を vs が
竹の節に溜まった水を探す
木の根っこに溜まった水が探す
even 川を探す has the を particle
sure some of it is all the hiragana vs kanji but 90% is because I should have gone to sleep an hour ago
sure these are stupid questions and will be obvious in the light of day but for now gone in enough circles overthinking this to death
My rambling along with Shuly’s ponderings
But the か seems to come in as a “whether or not” meaning
So then maybe the negative form is like asking people questions like “why didn’t we go to the movies?” → 映画館に行きませんか?
So then
Feels like:
(Tree rootsっこ in) (whether or not water is collected/accumulated) (if we search)
??? Does this help at all?
That’s a good explanation. That is also how I read those things, kind of like these negative English musings: “couldn’t it be?” or “isn’t it just possible that?”
PS @shuly there are no stupid questions! It pains my heart to see that 
We’re all learning together and sometimes the brain mushes when the brain mushes 
あきらめたらそこで、しあいしゅうりょうですよ! (an epic line from Slam Dunk: it’s only game over if you give up = just keep going!!) I memorised that early on and it accompanies me through many brain mush moments!
I believe “whether or not” is more of a か ~ か construction like かどうか, but I agree that this is a tricky sentence with the negative. I guess I’d translate it like “If you want to check that there’s not water in the tree roots…”
Pondered all this last night. But what bugs me is why this choice would be written with a negative invitation kind of statement and the other 2 are not? The lack of the direct object particle is what sticks out as odd.
I’ll look at it again today and give it some more thought but feels like I’m missing some nuance (and that’s what’s annoying me). Or could be parsing the sentence wrong with the hiragana somehow.
Especially frustrating when extremely sleepy 
Really should go to bed when I’m that tired and stop reading and I know this but I’m stubborn.
Probably just author’s discretion, to phrase the two similar choices differently so it doesn’t feel repetitive.
It’s an embedded question with か、which turns the whole clause into a noun. From Kanshudo: “When か is added to a plain form clause, the clause can be used as if it were a noun, and ‘embedded’ in a larger sentence as an indirect question.”
I see embedded questions a lot in Japanese, it’s not something we do so much in English. Usually it’s something like:
どこにいるかわからない
[ どこにいるか ] + [ わからない ]
Where is it? + I don’t know.
becomes
I don’t know where it is.
[ 木の根っこに水が溜まっていないか ] + [ 探すなら ]
Is there not water collected in the tree roots? + To search
becomes
To search for if there’s not water collected in the tree roots.
It sounds awkward when you try and make a complete English sentence but ‘is there not water collected in the tree roots?’ sounds fine by itself.
Here’s another example of a transitive verb, 調べる in the second example, not taking を in an embedded question sentence.
I’m ok with the grammar but then why use the same verb w/o the を particle
If you choose to search (in bamboo)
If you choose to search (for a river)
If you choose to search isn’t there water ??
something about the nuance - still feels weird about it to me
To flip it around
why not do the same thing with the bamboo sentence
“is there not water collected in the bamboo”
see what I mean about why it bugs me … ?
there’s a nuance somehow
Honestly, there’s a point at which I can’t say why the author chose a specific phrasing without asking them. My best guess is that the phrasing was simply chosen to differentiate the two options, so they don’t feel repetitive when you read them one after the other.
I can’t say what the specific nuance of the phrasing is either, that would probably be a question for a tutor or hinative or something like that, unless anyone else in the thread has an idea.
