in germany, public transit is the first one to go striking, but it’s pretty delayed most of the time regardless and people know they have to work around it
plus, because of the work at works council and politics, ive conditioned myself to process information about strike as “WHY WONT THE FREAKING EMPLOYER JUST GIVE THE EMPLOYEES WHAT THEY WANT, OR COVER FOR THE SHIFTS THAT PEOPLE ARE ENTITLED TO BE ABLE TO GET THE TIME OFF”, so i cant get myself to be angry at strikes anymore, im angry at the companies instead xddd
how do french people react to the strikes going down in their country?
it wasn’t a very productive day in terms of japanese, and after the warning i’ve left after yesterday, i’m kind of glad i didn’t push myself much today? i feel a bit more rested up right now, but i still listened to a lot of video essays in english today and didn’t really focus japanese all that much
that being said, its still pretty crazy for me to say that “reading a level 32 manga (with mokuro) is not pushing myself”, it just felt like i clicked on a few words, i looked like and then the session ended xddd
also, as seen with this photo, i did configure the full yomitan and the full mokuro web reader on the mobile edge on the tablet, and it is a bit flickery and uneven, but the dictionaries i have are unmatched in this experience ^^
Also, finished Kona on Satori Reader and started reading 変わらないもの, a new story on the platform:
this time, i really wanted to focus on the story and narrow down individual words, and since YUYU wrote this, it felt like more organic than the other Satori Reader stories, for which I’m pretty grateful C:
My subscription for Satori Reader runs out tomorrow, but I still haven’t cancelled it and I wonder if I should go an extra month, because I still haven’t found any other source of stories, but to be perfectly transparent, I’m not getting much out of Satori Reader because I struggle to concentrate on their content and I’m out within seconds of every chapter played, so I have one more day to decide what to do with Satori Reader for the future
German
I did get my results for the B1 exam I absolutely yolo’d and did not study for!
at the same time: better than expected, and wait, what’s this SCHRIFTLICHER AUSDRUCK score??? xddd
that was the section I mentioned I had the most fun with and freestyled a long letter with a lot of expressions I felt like inserting for some reason, but it came with the lowest score, and now I’m disappointed because I’m 100% aware that if I were to keep it short and concise, I’d get a better score at it, but COME ON xdddd
this is a bit of an issue with open-ended questions at the exams, that you feel this strong temptation not to just answer a question, but answer the question in a personally rewarding way, and then you get penalized for it, so i’m sorry, i’m not the best rule-follower, i brought this on myself xddd
i’ll pick up the certificate in a few days ^^
also,
i was thinking about this in the context of German language, and today I got a really interesting, great listening material for that!
My German currently is at the point where I understood every sentence in the video and almost every single word without lookup, but still it did feel like I was putting in a bit more effort than in English and my brain was like “NYEH”, so thinking that I’d prefer to consume content in English regardless definitely is a mental block more than a skill block and I don’t know how to approach this, if anyone has any hints, let me know
Life
<insert the cat picture from above>
I got myself some new shoes, because I absolutely murdered the previous ones that I got after the US trip in May xddd
Those shoes come with a really cool thing though… THEY DO NOT HAVE SHOELACES
I LOVE NOT HAVING TO TIE SHOELACES xddd
It’s nice to finally find things that promote the city for a change, this is the Rotes Rathaus (also seen in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe!) and a bear showing the design of the building it’s positioned in ^^
My bike’s back wheel geometry is really leaning towards to the side where every rotation is causing extra friction with a frame, so my bike won’t make it long from now, sadly…
yay level up - you proceed to the next stage congrats!
I’m so sorry but that’s wildly different than my experience and I’m pretty sure you would have aced mine. I did it with my local council, although the certificate says telc and I thought it was a standard B1 test, but it seems it was way simplified compared to yours. I just checked it says Zertifikat Deuschtest für Zuwanderer:
Hören/Lesen: B1 45 Punkte
Schreiben: B1 20 Punkte
Sprechen: B1 100 Punkte
Gesamtergebnis: B1
It doesn’t actually say what the max points are . I mean, the max they will let you have is B1 and I think I remember she told me she gave me full points, but I find it funny it doesn’t actually say what the max is.
Either that was a cheat code test version … or things got updated - that may have been pre-pandemic
Hint: keep going
sorry, but I think it’s true. Your German is great, just keep at it.
I bet you went through this in English and just forgot. I feel like it’s pretty normal to have a period where even though you are basically fluent, it just takes more concentration to operate in that language. And it depends on domains? I wasn’t so aware of passing through the stages myself, but I watched my SO go through it with English - first it was when could he finish his workday and not be exhausted due to the language, then when could he go through an evening with friends (lots of people talking at once), getting through films, and his endboss was comedians. At each stage he reached a fatigue stage nope-out or eyes glazing over, and over time that just happened later and later. With work and friends he didn’t have a choice… and with comedy he really wanted it (because he thinks they are funnier than Germans lol) so I guess my advice would be do social things in German where you have to speak in German, and find that thing that’s literally only in German and keep at it.
OMG, I love this comment so much… I’m linking it over on my log…
So far, I’ve only ever been stuck in the “physical exhaustion from attempting to comprehend” stage with all of my foreign languages. Although Japanese is finally leveling up to experiencing less exhaustion. Yay!
So far so good, just wish I didn’t have to restart the German/Japanese interest machine from scratch every day, I constantly miss my ideas of what I’d like to do in terms of Japanese in a day because the “mannn im not feeling like it todayyyy” is just taking too much mental energy xdd
i haven’t even properly studied for N2 at all because i’m just never feeling like it and it’s easier to negotiate with myself to put on Metroid Prime 4 in Japanese rather than do a cram on Bunpro or something
I’ll go a bit faster because it’s really late already ^^
I tried two games in Japanese today, and neither of those two comes with Japanese voice acting, which on one hand makes things easier to understand, as you know what happens from the English voice acting regardless, on the other, the voice acting kind of underpins the Japanese study while playing the games ^^
I don’t really have much time to play right now, I’m glad I was able to at least start them, but I’d like to eventually try and finish both, especially if they could be in Japanese and I could test my reading skills ^^
tl;dr for both though, kanbuns, kanbuns and katakana everywhere ^^
I don’t read fast enough and the font used for kanjis trips me over in Metroid Prime 4, but I didn’t go significantly slower playing in Japanese, which is just a testament to how good the game is built around environmental storytelling and guiding people through visual cues ^^
As for manga, I went to eat breakfast out today and the restaurant owner was curious about how does Mokuro work, why was I reading in Japanese, and I also told him about Düsseldorf and JLPT, so it’s been twice this week that I picked up attention in the public for reading manga in public spaces, it feels pretty nice ^^ xddd
Anyway, 伽藍の姫: it’s a little more shouneny-action than I would’ve liked, but the illustrations are absolutely beautiful, I enjoyed reading it!
神に誓って偽りです: cozy crime, maybe I should just call out cozy crime as one of my favorite genres because it’s got the vibe of Ace Attorney and it was just fun to read it, even though I found myself struggling without Mokuro a bit more than I expected I would at the vocab ^^
Life
Spotify Wrapped! Now you’ll hear how basic I am xddd
I kinda have a feeling in this regard I might be the opposite of Mitrac, I only listen to mainstream and don’t breach out to the more indie, more hard-to-find ones xddd
Also, Discord Checkpoint as well??? My favorite emoji is for some reason? xddd
finally arrived and I’m having friends at my place help me assemble it together, as an excuse to just meet up and celebrate St. Nicholas Day one day in advance xddd
And I went the Thalia Manga store in Alexanderplatz and they had some really nice releases! Now that I’m reading a ton of manga, I’m also becoming influenced by the covers and I want to read more
Especially the “Yamada & Kase-san”, “Clan” and “she is beautiful” got my interest, and here’s a special rerelease of Nana (in English!) that contains multiple volumes in the same release, pretty sick!
Congratulations on your B1 exam! Get that passport!
As for the N2, in my experience reading speed is REALLY important so all that book reading you have been doing is actually fantastic test prep. The only studying I did between failing and passing the N3 was reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
I feel the same but I literally just tie my shoes once and slip them on for the rest of entirety or until they get too loose (with the exception of my hiking boots that is)
I meant to write this reply yesterday, but didn’t manage to finish it due to work, so I apologize for that
Herzlichen Glückwunsch
It’s interesting to see the notes for a spontaneous test
It’s really sad to see that they didn’t appreciate the creativity you brought to the written part and I don’t want the thought that you’re not able to express yourself in that language to enter your mind at all, because it’s not true. I think this just goes to show that the current exam system isn’t a perfect system, because you’re required to answer in a certain way and not use your mind at all, which is the opposite of what it should be. It should give you confidence in your ability to use your knowledge of the language and bend it in your own ways to express yourself, but for a person who needs to correct who knows how many exam papers (and probably doesn’t enjoy that at all), it’s way easier to have a script to stick to and that’s it. You’re an amazing person with great language skills
Also, another way to think of this is a similar way to when you go to a doctor and they draw blood for some tests and then they give you the results. They treat those results as absolute results and as if they were holified per se, which is not quite right, because these results express the values for one point in time and isn’t quite representative for other points of time so to speak. There are many factors which could influence the results and they just don’t care. This is a problem in many systems and no one usually care enough to fix it
I think mitrac provided great advice. I don’t think I have a good advice, but maybe a certain advice:
Our brain doesn’t like having to concentrate on many things and doesn’t like doing the hard work or choose the long way per se, when it has the power to choose. It just likes doing things with as little effort as possible and always choosing the easy way, because maybe it likes being “resource efficient” and having only one thing in mind brings more joy than having to think about different things at the same time. The other thing is that the brain usually opt into a language it likes /it’s quite familiar with than a language it’s not quite yet comfortable with, since it doesn’t have to use much effort to decipher the language (hence going back to the point of choosing the easy way / resource management). Emotions tied to the language also play a role in that. For example, if you feel like you don’t like German and you’re forced to learn due to whatever circumstances present at the time, then it doesn’t matter how much time you spend on it, because your mind will always resist, because it’s not enjoying the process. On the other hand, if you like Japanese and enjoy listening to it, then your mind will in turn enjoy it too and try to put as many resources as needed, due to the fact that it’s something you enjoy and not feel forced to do it (I’m pretty sure that the mechanism itself is tied up with Dopamine, but I don’t remember the nuances). So, here comes the generic advice (don’t do this at home to your kids): your mind is behaving like a child, so you have to treat it like a child, by tricking it into believing that you like the language, so that it stops resisting every time you try. But how do you do that?
(A small disclaimer: whenever it comes to try to do some rewiring with dopamine, you need to be careful, so that you don’t help making dopamine-connections that aren’t in your favor. Hence, be wise, try to figure things out with time and ease into it)
There are different ways depending on your preferences (the best way might be to mix and match and see what works for you ):
You can try adding a reward system, in which if you commit to listen to something in German and finish it, you can then listen to something in Japanese (or any language that you would enjoy) as a reward and in such, tricking your mind into doing the hard work, because there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. You can start with small videos and make your way into longer ones, once you feel comfortable enough. The thing you need to be careful about is that you’re building a new connection for your dopamine and with time, your mind will only do that if it’ll get a reward at the end. Not getting a reward isn’t gonna be enjoyable. Hence, easing your way into it and achieving your goal without having your mind get hooked on a certain reward will be ideal.
Another way is to ease your way into it by consuming content you like (similar to what you did with Japanese) with which you can trick your mind into giving up “the default choice to resist”, since it’s something you enjoy. Ideally, it would be a show you really enjoy and you’ve already watched before. This would help your mind ease into comprehension of the hearing language, because it’s already familiar with this media and it’ll just start connecting the dots.
Another way is to try and listen to a new material (you’re unfamiliar with), by easing yourself into it over time. You can start by passively listening to it and at some point you can start the active part of listening. An example of which is this channel or the DW short news. Both of them would serve this purpose without exhausting you or having your mind start resisting, since you’re delivering this passively or in bite sizes.
There are different ways to go through this and the best way would the one you’d come up with after some experimentation. The only thing I wouldn’t recommend doing at the beginning is to overwhelm yourself with the various German dialects, because your mind wouldn’t like this at all. Start small and build on it
I apologize for the long reply and I hope this helps in some way
I think it’s trying to tell you something… Don’t chase time, it’s TV time!! and bird in the hand because why not, that’s also how I always end my sentences bird in the hand
I REALLY WISH i had those shoes, the last shoes i got were like runningish-shoes and the shoelaces would just come undone all by themselves within like half an hour, and people would let me know that my shoelaces are untied and i give them a thousand yard stare like “I KNOW” and then proceed not to action my shoelaces anyhow xdd
I think this is one part, but another is also that the longer a letter is, and the more casual it gets, the bigger chance of making a mistake there is and of introducing a word in a context where it doesn’t belong, and it’s possible I’ve done a few of those mistakes, but also this is my personality type, es tut mir leid
I know that struggle really well and I keep encouraging myself thinking that the perfect dopamine connections exist somewhere as I keep falling for the same traps over and over again xddd
I think this one has lead to the most success from my side so far, the other ones I’ve also tried, but consuming something I’m familiar with does decrease the difficulty significantly and makes me more excited about the content I’m consuming, but also gives me a mini-existential crisis of “do i only understand stuff because i understood it in english and not japanese?” ^^
I think it was a really thoughtful response and I appreciated it, thanks! It does help like a journaling mirror, because I already do some of those things, and the goal is to, confronted with the reality of different studying methods, try to aggregate what works and what doesn’t ^^
Reward system probably doesn’t because as you cAN SEE BY THE STUDY LOG, i have sources of immense joy in my life every day, multiple times every day, so there are hundreds of carrots dangling already xdddd
this is so profound, i’m jumping off because it’s the TV time now, bird in the hand
aaand i’m stuck in a perpetual loop of reading 薬屋のひとりごと-likes xddd
Today’s manga was really weird because it just felt so much like The Apothecary Diaries that there were moments when I was going like “wait a minute, that borders on the range of copyright infringement” xddd
It did take it in a bit of a different angle though, but my biggest highlight of attempting to read this manga was that there were multiple kanji in it that were simply not in JPDBv2, and on my tablet I didn’t have the KANJIDIC installed, so you try to highlight a character and… nothing comes up, you’d think that Yomitan is broken if not for the fact that if you highlight the kanji below, it works immediately xdd
I think the genre of Chinese inner palace mangas is really entertaining to try to decipher, but I’m far from being able to read them easily, though I do admit that this one did feel like some words did carry over from the other mangas, like 後宮, 宮女, 皇帝陛下, and so on ^^
I do admit that reading those sometimes does make me feel like I’m actually reading Chinese xddd
But yeah, 55 minutes to get through the first volume, pretty exhausting and deflated me from reading today xddd
And as for Slam Dunk, gave myself little time to read today, but SLAM DUNK FRIDAYS, so I at least wanted to start it
I wonder if I’ll decide to read on a train to Düsseldorf tomorrow!
I know the Saturday/Sunday update can be a bit spotty for people, so for the ones that are taking JLPT exams this Sunday, GOOD LUCK EVERYONE and let’s slay and destroy this exam
LIfe
So on a topic of BAAAANGIN breakfasts today, I had friends come over today to help me assemble an Ikea Billy, and one friend, the DJ one from my birthday, got excited about the state of my kitchen and wanted to make an Egg Benedict in it! I was helping at the beginning, but she did use to work in gastronomy and after a while, she realized I was holding her down, so I was asked to leave the kitchen and wait until the magic would be done, here’s the benedict then! C:
We (she?) made two versions, a vegetarian one for our vegetarian friends and a meat one, I do admit the vegetarian one looked a bit better, but the bacon came nicely together ^^
It was supposed to be a mini Christmas meeting, but because Egg Benedicts took ALMOST THREE HOURS to prepare and consume, we didn’t get around to decorating the christmas tree, sadly ^^
We did get around to assembling Ikea Billies though, two proper bookshelves plus two extensions EACH, both bookshelves are like 3 meters tall and it’ll take me a bit to properly fill it with books, but we’re gonna be trying C:
Then I went to Pausify’s Silent Book Club again and read my manga on Mokuro, met a Russian person in there who was into linguistics as well and we were throwing English words at one another we never heard actually spoken in person, so that was fun too C:
And, at the Hbf, saw that DB printed those little stories that you can read as you wait for your train, I’m reporting that the 30 minute story did not take 30 minutes to read, it’s almost like a German version of an Aozora Calendar xddd
Either way, the bouldering friend is inviting me to a Christmas Market tomorrow and then I’m taking a train to Düsseldorf to meet up with another friend, and then it’s JLPT there, so see you tomorrow!
Double knot them! Triple knot them! Tie the shoes, then tie the loops together into a knot. This is how you keep hiking boots on and how I get my shoes to stay tied for months. You can also just buy shoe laces at a store so you can have soft rainbow shoelaces that don’t come untied.
I do not feel ready for JLPT at all. No matter what the score comes tomorrow, I’ll have a regret that I have not done enough prep for it, but looking back at the year, the amount of places I visited, the amount of friends I’ve made, the amount of manga I’ve read, the amount of book clubs i’ve participated in, scripts I’ve written, the amount of posts I’ve produced… maybe this is the best timeline?
I didn’t skip a single day of study in the last 368 days, first with WaniKani, Bunpro and Duolingo, then WaniKani, Bunpro and Satori Reader, and then WaniKani, Bunpro, Satori Reader and manga, so hey ^^
I most likely will not attempt any JLPT in the middle of the next year, maybe in the winter, but for now, it’s weird to even think I’m writing something tomorrow, but alas. We did it? Maybe? ^^
夢の端々 was a bit of a downer when I was reading it, it’s definitely on the side of doomed yuri and you read this and you disengage because there is almost no point in time where the manga is happy, even in the scene of people making love to one another, this is the saddest love-making scene I’ve read in a while xdd
Probably not my manga for now ^^
FATE/STAY NIGHT THOUGH.
I’ve promised myself I’d read something with voice acting before JLPT and then I conveniently forgot about it… until today ^^
Previously, when I was reading the first part of the prologue (two days ago), I was feeling like I needed to sleep on some story developments for them to make sense, but the other chapters of the prologue in my hUMBLE OPINION are PEAK FICTION and I really enjoyed reading through Rin’s misfortunes ^^
I said I’m only interested in the prologue for Fate/Stay Night, because Emiya’s guts are getting to me, and so I did: 57062 characters, 670 pages according to the website ^^
If you translate it to regular novel terms, it feels something like 180 pages of a novel?
I timed myself on part 3 of the prologue, and I came at 23132 characters over 2 hours and 3 minutes, so if you want to calculate the mitrac-minute on this one, this might be the best data xddd
I probably spent something like 6 hours reading this prologue considering I read much slower in part 1, and something like 3 hours today, so, hey, that was fun C:
that ”もの" came to my head as a grammar before even reading the false furigana on this one ^^
Also, me, thinking I’d never use the 茨 kanji from WaniKani in my life, also me:
Ahhhh, so happy to have been able to finish it before JLPT! C:
Life
St. Nicholas day! As promised, started off with a Christmas market today, and would you look at that, they had Labubus with Fullmetal Alchemist on this one! C:
Aaaaand a Christmas taiyaki to seal the day! I didn’t even notice that they had a Christmas Taiyaki, so I made an order, paid for it, and then asked for the order to be cancelled to get a Christmas fishy instead xdd
I managed to only play Stardew valley instead of study today
But I’m not stressed out
So I should be able to be rested
But it’s supposed to start snowing soon and not end until around 9am…
The test doesn’t start until 12:30 … so hopefully that snow with interfere too much
xddd
and then the session ended xddd
congrats!
. I mean, the max they will let you have is B1 and I think I remember she told me she gave me full points, but I find it funny it doesn’t actually say what the max is.
that may have been pre-pandemic
(with the exception of my hiking boots that is)
to aid you on the path you’re taking 
.