ChristopherFritz's Study Log

If you end up using it for serious note taking I’ll be interested to hear about any problems you run into.

This week, I started taking notes on the Gulliver e-reader while reading through 結婚しても恋してる (with the absolute beginner book club). Here are the obstacles that stood in the way:

  1. The Gulliver ships without support for the Google Play store. Or, rather, it originally supported it, but then Google made some changes, and now a (firmware?) update is needed to use the Google Play store. This required plugging the e-reader into my desktop computer and placing the update file in a specific location, then unplugging the e-reader and following a series of steps to install the update. This also wiped out all my setting and files, but I actually did this the first day I had the e-reader, so I didn’t lose anything. The e-reader’s web site had all the information I needed.

  2. Even after that update, I still cannot access the Google Play store. Since I’ve only been using free software, I’ve downloaded APK’s and installed them manually.

  3. The Kobo reader I use (since I buy e-books via Kobo) doesn’t support noting manga pages. This means I need to take a screenshot, then write notes on the screenshot. This actually isn’t so bad, because all my noted pages are in one place.

  4. While other e-readers by Onyx (the company that makes the Gulliver) expose the screenshot functionality to a physical button, the Gulliver does not. I found a free screenshot program (Screenshot Easy), then downloaded the APK to install on the device. This app is nice because I can have a tiny camera icon overlay on the screen, tap on it to take a screenshot, then it gives the option to open the screenshot (allowing me to get right to taking notes).

  5. I can’t find any functionality to share files (common Android feature). I run the KDE Plasma desktop on my computer, so I have a program called “KDE Connect” installed there and I installed it on the Gulliver. This allows the two to communicate over wifi, and I can use that to easily transfer files from the e-reader to my desktop computer.

So far, my note-taking has been limited to writing on screenshots. I haven’t tried using the built-in note-taking functionality, as that would create a disconnect between my note and what I’m writing the note in reference to.

Here’s an example where I’ve noted on an image:

Some words I didn’t know and I marked them for looking up. I could easy switch between apps, going from Kobo to Takoboto to look a word up, but since I’m behind on my book clubs this week, I focused on pushing forward with reading, and looking up later.

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Latest reading status:

Reading

  • I read 「よつばと!」 volume 5 when I’ve finished my book club reading for the week, and have more than five minutes of reading time on the bus. I typically start my book club reading for the week with 「よつばと!」 volume 10 Monday afternoon and finish up Tuesday morning on my bus commutes.

  • I’m a bit on hiatus with 「キラキラ100%」. The story is fine, but haven’t had time for it. Although I do plan to finish it, I currently am not planning to continue on to volume 2, due to the amount of other things I am reading and want to read.

  • I’ve added 「 一週間フレンズ。」 from the Beginner Book Club. This title I planned to give more attention to understanding every bit, but knowing the story from having watched the anime (English subtitled) and read this volume in English previously, I find that hinders the effort. Sometimes I’ll read something I don’t fully understand the grammar behind, but I’ll think I do because I know what’s being said from previous English exposure to the scene. I’ve decided I’m fine reading through it like this.

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  • I’m just reading a tiny bit of 「俺物語!!」 here and there. My focus is reading the series in English, so there’s no big push to finish volume 2 in Japanese.

  • I’ll read a little bit of 「怪盗セイント・テール」 when I finish my iKnow and WaniKani reviews on the bus and have under five minutes left for reading time.

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  • I’ve added 「結婚しても恋してる」 from the Absolute Beginner Book Club. I’m enjoying the light material and easy pace of this entry for the ABBC.

  • The newcomer to “reading” is 「ブレス オブ ファイア 竜の戦士」. But wait, isn’t that a Super Famicom game? Yup. All ひらがな dialogue is a lot easier than I expected, even if there are still plenty of words I don’t know. I do wonder if I would have benefited from taking a copy of the game’s script (if I can find one) and extracting the top x most used words, filtering out those I know from WaniKani and iKnow, and doing flash cards on those before I started playing. Well, too late for that! Since this is the first RPG I owned (on SNES) and I’ve played through it numerous times (in English), I know enough that I can pick out the words I know and fill in the rest with context and English-version memory. I’ll look up words I don’t know if they come up a lot.

Upcoming

Considering

  • I’ve added 「GALS!」. It was free for a preview period, and it looked readable for me. I saw the anime on DVD with English subtitles about a decade ago, and then bought and read through the manga in English. I’ve been watching for the English manga to get a digital release so I can read through it again. Looks like I may be going at it in Japanese instead. Although these book covers on my bookshelf screenshot are mostly sorted alphabetically, I pushed 「GALS!」 to the first slot to show it’s my highest consideration.

Completed

  • I finally finished volume 1 of that 「ポケットモンスター」 manga. I did not care for it one bit at all, and am glad to be done with it. I wasn’t opposed to dropping it midway, but wanted to at least give it a chance. (Not to be confused with 「ポケットモンスタースペシャル」, which was released in America as “Pokémon Adventures”, and I plan to continue to read in English.)

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Some time ago, I read through Aria/Aqua in English only to have the series be dropped by the publisher (which is extra sad as this was the second publisher to give the series a chance in the US). I bought the series in Japanese, and followed through it by reading along with the anime, but my vocabulary and grammar were far too insufficient to really get anything out of the experience (Japanese-wise).

Fast-forward to 2019, and I wish I were reading along with the book club, but alas my paperback comics are currently in storage (probably until sometime in 2020), and Aria still has no digital release. (Edit: I notice Rakuten has an option to request a digital release for physical-only manga. If Aria suddenly gets a digital release, it’s thanks to me for requesting it :wink: )

Because clearly I’m not reading nearly enough series (I’ve barely even touched anything English-translated in forever!), I decided to check out あまんちゅ!(にせアリア). (No, that’s not actual furigana.) It’s another manga by the same author, and is available digital. And, no sci-fi atmosphere for me to skip over stumble through.

Two chapters in, and it’s too soon for me to tell what the manga is actually about. It’s not for lack of understanding on my part (I’ve mostly followed everything); there just isn’t much at all going on! It seems the main characters ひかりさん(あかりじゃない) and ひどりさん(あいかじゃない) are both into diving as a hobby, which seems like it may be the basis for the manga to revolve around.

The low amount of dialogue made the first two chapters really easy to read through. Anyone who’s read Aqua/Aria will recognize the use of narration panels, and (what feels like massive overuse here) gag faces for characters.

Sample Page (featuring アリアじゃない)

Reading chapters three and maybe four should keep me busy until the weekend when the ABBC and BBC each level up to their next week of reading material.

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I’ve been using the Flaming Durtles Android app to do offline WaniKani reviews on my bus commutes. Aside from this reducing the amount I do at home (bad, because I know I’ll just catch up on the bus), it’s been a great asset, and one I plan to keep using.

When I first saw there was an Anki mode, I tried it, didn’t like it (for my own personal use), and switched back to “input answer”. But I’d like to try something faster for use on the bus (or else all my manga reading time goes to iKnow and WaniKani). So this morning I tried out the Anki mode again, and here’s my experience with it:

Cons:

  • In WaniKani, I don’t pay attention to whether I’m being asked for meaning or reading. I find out when I go to enter one, and my meaning comes out in hiragana or my reading doesn’t, then I switch over to the other. With Anki mode, if I think of the meaning when it’s asking for reading (or the other way around), I end up seeing the answer I didn’t try to recall yet.

    • To combat this, I’ve set lessons to show meaning and reading back-to-back, and I think of both meaning and reading at the same time at the first card. This does have what feels like cons, but I don’t know if they are:

      • I get less mental exercise versus when I have to think of meaning and reading separately, at two different times.

      • If I get a card wrong, I’m immediately given the same card again. This doesn’t give me time to drop the card out of mind and then have to recall it again later.

  • I have trouble with じゅ vs じゅう, and I don’t properly think of it being one or the other before revealing the answer.

Pros:

  • I’m exposed to see all meanings. If a kanji or vocabulary has multiple similar but slightly different meanings, and I always use only one when inputting the answer, I’ll not be familiar with the others. This gives me a chance to see them and have them in mind as similar or alternate meanings.

  • When keying in a meaning, sometimes I put in a wrong answer, but it gets picked up as right. This can contribute to me learning the wrong form of a verb (such as “separate” vs “separately”). This isn’t a problem on the web site where it tells me if my answer is a little off, but I wasn’t getting that in the app possibly due to my settings. With Anki mode, since I see the answers, I can tell if I thought of a wrong variation of the word.

I’ll try using Anki mode a bit more and see if I want to stick with it, or if it feels like actually inputting the words is beneficial (even if it means dealing the slowdown of entering typos that I need to fix before submitting an answer).

I will say, getting a bunch of burns in a row while in Anki mode (I was going from card to card pretty quickly) felt really nice.

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Anki Mode and Manga Reading

Since switching to Anki mode in the Flaming Durtles app, I’ve been able to get reviews done a lot faster, which has allowed me to make a lot of progress in reading 「怪盗セイント・テール」 volume 5, to the tune of about 100 pages in four days. Because this is a series I know very well, I’ve been able to overlook most words I don’t know, look up anything I feel I should know, and keep going forward without feeling I’m missing anything.

Video Game Reading

I’ve paused playing 「ブレス オブ ファイア」 since 「ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島」 (Link’s Awakening) came out. I’ve been playing that in Japanese, and feel I’m doing well. (On the Japanese, not the gameplay. Why, oh why, did I chose hard mode? About 50 deaths already.) I’ve played the original version of the game enough that I can sometimes better understand the Japanese by recalling that part of the game from a play-through of the original.

WaniKani Review Session

I think I had my worst review session ever, getting 37%. But it was only about 10 reviews, and mostly all new material. Some people might get down from a percent like that, but not me when I have support from people like マリン from 夢をみる島.

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Wait, what was that, マリン?

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…right.

The other 70-something reviews I did today went much better than this mini-session.

WaniKani Leveling Goal

Although I’m looking forward to reading 「ふらいんぐうぃっち」 in the Beginner Book Club soon (I bought the series on DVD a while back, but haven’t gotten to watching it yet!), I also wanted to see what kind of prep I might like to do for the club’s following read, 「霧のむこうのふしぎな町」, which will be my first Japanese-language “book” book I read all the way through.

Reading starts December 14th. Once I reach the start of level 16, I’ll know (or at least have been introduced) to 90% of the total (not unique) kanji used in the book. This means my goal is to reach level 16 by mid-December.

I think I’ve read one week per level is about the fastest one can hope to achieve, but I have room to complete a level every three weeks and still reach level 16 in time. Considering my level-up average is 3.8 weeks per level, I think I can manage a tiny increase to the pace.

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…but maybe I’ll look into the self study script for leech-studying. Just in case.

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Since I finished level 10, I’ve managed a 19 or 20 day level by doing 11 items per day.

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I am using the WK Lesson Filtre, which lets me do 11 items in one batch (it overrides the WK batch limit of 10) and it lets me do (my preference of) 3 radicals &/or kanji and 8 vocab items each time (except for the couple of days when I have run out of kanji just before levelling up). I find it a more consistant workload than whole lessons of nothing but kanji.

I’ve been really bad at getting new lessons in. Since I’m now using the Anki mode on the Android app for faster reviews, I need to use some of that freed up commute time to get new lessons in each day (although I don’t think I can filter lessons in the app). Or else in the morning do lessons first thing on the computer with filtering to ensure I’m getting a good mix of radicals/kanji and vocabulary in each day. But for now, it’s all vocabulary lessons until I reach level 13. I did 40 this evening, which I otherwise wouldn’t have without my new goal!

I think one of my main issues is I don’t do vocabulary lessons as soon and as many as I should, and that hurts my reading retention for kanji, which holds me back. Hopefully in the next few months, I’ll create lesson habits that will push me acquire kanji and vocabulary at a faster rate than my current trajectory has been.

Day-later edit:

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Is that review count really right? With Anki mode speeding things up, it’s amazing how fast I can review, and I feel I’m not any worse off for not taking the time to enter in my responses (and constantly have to fix typos). But it also helps that I have a bunch of new vocabulary that I either already knew or can remember easily.

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(Have I been really unobservant until now, or is the hat new?)

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Halloween Month = Halloween Hat

I just wish I saved more avatar screenshots before Nintendo shut down their Mii app.

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Goal Adjustment

I made a mistake on my goal of kanji to learn before reading 「霧のむこうのふしぎな町」. I need to reach level 17, not 16, by mid-December to recognize 90% of the overall kanji used in the book. So, what does this mean for my pace?

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Again!? You see the way Ethel’s shoulders jump? You see how Lucy’s eyes go wide? Yeah, that’s me right now!

Vacation

In order to ensure I hit my goal of reaching level 16 17 by mid-December, here are my plans for this upcoming week:

  • Camp out in the middle of nowhere. (3 days)
  • Play video games with nephews. (3 days)

This…may be more difficult than I originally anticipated. (Impromptu out-of-town trip to visit family incoming.)

Thankfully I’ll have the Flaming Durtles app for offline reviews while camping.

I’ll probably do the entirely of my ABBC and BBC reading on the 10-hour bus trip back home at the end of the week. And I don’t even have to worry about accidentally reading ahead, because by then we’ll be at the start of the next week’s reading.

WaniKani Schedule

As for my WaniKani goal to be able to recognize 90% of the total kanji in 「霧のむこうのふしぎな町」 before we starting reading it in the BBC, my level schedule is:

Level Begin Complete
Level 13 10/02/19 10/20/19
Level 14 10/21/19 11/08/19
Level 15 11/09/19 11/27/19
Level 16 11/28/19 12/16/19

My required pace of 24 days per level has dropped to 18 days per level! This new schedule extends past the reading start date of December 14th, but by then I should have completed all Level 16 lessons.

I’m prioritizing lessons by radicals and then kanji, but I’m not slacking on vocabulary lessons anymore. I’m aiming to keep my apprentice around 100 (hopefully by completing lessons, and not by failing reviews!) The count of new radical introduced per level has dropped, but the kanji are getting to be complex enough that I’m actually reading and using the mnemonic stories (which I normally don’t do).

We’ll see how it goes. Worst-case scenario, I can’t keep up with this schedule, and I slow down to what works for me. I don’t meet my goal, but that just means I’ll know maybe 86% or 87% of the book’s overall kanji, rather than 90%. That’s not a big deal. What’s important is that I maintain a pace that is conducive to learning the material.

Book-Reading Prep

Looking at the level 13 kanji in 「霧のむこうのふしぎな町」 (19 unique kanji comprising 114 of the book’s total kanji count), I recognize the 11 I’ve encountered lessons for. I look forward to learning vocabulary for these well in advance of reading the book.

Although one should study on a schedule, not on motivation, having a little motivation on top of a set schedule certainly doesn’t hurt any. For extra motivation, I’m looking at the count of unique kanji from the book that I’ll encounter per level, and the total usage of those kanji in the book:

Level Individual Total
Level 13 19 114
Level 14 12 30
Level 15 15 101
Level 16 16 92

Although only 19 of the 37 kanji in level 13 are used in the book, I know that once I finish the level, I’ll be able to read 114 of the overall kanji in the book. (Unintended side-effect: Level 14 may feel a little demotivating compared to levels 13, 15, and 16.)

Okay, no new reviews for an hour and a half, and I don’t have to head to the bus station for at least 10 more hours. Guess it’s time to start packing for this trip!

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Enjoy the holiday! Camping and video games! Sounds great! :smiley::+1:

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WaniKani Progress

I’ll hit level 14 this week, a few days ahead of schedule. Considering I was on vacation last week, I’m hopeful to do even better (faster) on the next level. (Disclaimer: Do not level up at a pace faster than your learning can keep up with.)

I’ve also kept up on my lessons, with it currently sitting at 0. I have 32 vocabulary lessons still waiting to be unlocked, thanks to 12 kanji not due to guru until later this week.

Reading Progress

Does buying a digital copy of the English book “Who Censored Roger Rabbit” and reading through it over the span of a week count as reading progress?

We’re at the end of the current ABBC and BBC manga, which I’m wrapping up reading. I just need to check anything I marked to look up and look them up.

I didn’t put nearly as much effort into 一週間フレンズ as I’d originally planned, but that’s probably because I’ve previously seen the anime with English subtitles, and I’ve previously read the first volume in English, so I had “I know what’s happening” to fall on. This isn’t a bad thing (it’s one of my listed methods for reading manga), but it doesn’t doesn’t help my grammar knowledge grow.

That issue won’t exist with ふらいんぐうぃっち. I haven’t watched the anime, although I did buy it on DVD a couple of years ago. (I…have a backlog.) I haven’t read the manga in English, either, although I download the preview, then delete it after half a year of not reading it. (I…have a lot of English manga I’m reading.)

Granted, it was the same situation for me with 結婚しても恋してる (no English version experience), but that series involves a lot of disjointed one to two page stories. I expect hope chapter-long stories (as ふらいんぐうぃっち is) to be a little more favorable to me looking more deeply at the grammar involved.

Flash Card Musings

When I had read volume one of ごちうさ way back in 2018, I made 2,477 flashcards. This included all first appearances of words, including each conjugation used. I did maybe three or four revisions along the way until I came up with something I was comfortable with.

From that experience, and from increased reading in general, I’ve found the following:

I found sentences are not as necessary as I had originally thought.

Using sentences from the reading material sounds good on paper, but in reality it often results in short, out-of-context sentences.

I also discovered sentences can become a crutch, in which you only know a word because you recognize the rest of the sentence and have memorized the word used in that sentence. (Read: Don’t recognize it in any other sentence.)

Using WaniKani, especially in Anki mode (via the Flaming Durtles Android app) has shown me that sentences are less necessary that I used to think. I’ve also come to realize that I usually don’t even bother reading the sentences in iKnow.

I now routinely encounter the same vocabulary across different decks. For example, 多い appears on page 57 in ごちうさ volume 1, so it appears in my ごちうさ deck (although I don’t review that anymore). It’s also in level 5 of WaniKani. It’s also in the first 100 words in iKnow’s Core decks.

I don’t expect any kind of connection between different services, but if I’m reading multiple books and am using decks based on those books that are part of a single flash card system, there needs to be a way to connect cards for the same vocabulary. They should share review progress, and either should come up at random when it comes time to review the word (unless I’m reviewing a specific deck). I don’t know how doable this is in Anki, and I don’t know if Kitsun has anything like it. I think Floflo may do this (sharing the same card across all books that include that word).

Vocabulary words with multiple definitions I feel should include only the one meaning used in the sentence in the material. This requires extremely time-consuming manual curating of decks. (This is a strength of the community-based service Kitsun.) But that also means progress for the same word across different decks cannot be shared.

I could go back to building decks in Anki, and find a way to reuse the same card across multiple decks. I think this would come in the form of creating one monolithic deck, and then tagging all the words that appear in a story as a way to group them per story.

I could build custom decks in iKnow, using iKnow’s Core series (for shared progress), but their custom deck builder is cumbersome.

I’ve toyed with Kitsun, but I don’t care for how any of the default deck styles look. I tried to make my own layout, but only succeeded in wasting time proving I cannot do any better. More importantly, I don’t know if the site has a concept of shared progress for the same word across multiple decks.

I looked into Floflo, but the tool for importing known words for Anki fails for me. (I had made and tried importing a list of the iKnow Core 2000 words, as I know most of those.) Otherwise, it could be nice to use to tailor my reading toward books based I can read comfortably (grammar willing) while still learning some new vocabulary.

Of course, anything without an offline Android app is a no-go for me. (I begrudgingly used WaniKani on my desktop computer before the third-party Flaming Durtles app was released.)

The easy option is, of course, to be lazy and not create flash cards.

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This is what I do! But interesting to read your musings.

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Wanikani Progress

As I work my way through level 14, I find half of the vocabulary I’m learning means “feeling”, and the other half means “personality”, and the final half all mean “complete”. I may just reach level 15 in a few days, but I know I’ll be struggling with the level 14 vocabulary, and I still have 34 lessons pending. (Not doing them yet, since I’m sitting at 101 Apprentice.)

My revised level schedule now allows for 19 days per level, an increase of one whole extra day allowed per level! (Take that, chocolate factory lady!)

Level Begin Complete
Level 14 10/17/19 11/05/19
Level 15 11/06/19 11/25/19
Level 16 11/26/19 12/15/19

Depending on when I hit level 15, I may order my lessons for focus on vocabulary a bit. (At the very latest, I’ll do that once I hit level 17, at which point my level speed will slow back down a bit.)

Reading Progress

I made it through 「にゃんにゃん探偵団」 in about a week. I did have to look up a bunch of words, and skimming through last year’s book club thread helped out from time to time. Looks like I’ll be joining in on the 「にゃんにゃん探偵団おひるね」 book club a bit sooner than I originally anticipated.

I’ve finished up volume 1’s of 「結婚しても恋してる」 and 「一週間フレンズ。」 with the book clubs, and am finding 「ふらいんぐうぃっち」 a (so far) fairly easy read with the Beginner Book Club.

Looking at my WaniKani Reading Clubs Timeline, it looks like 「ふらいんぐうぃっち」 and 「にゃんにゃん探偵団おひるね」 are now my only active club reads. I may be getting back to reading 「よつばと!」 volume 5, or the next volume of 「怪盗セイント・テール」. (Or will I finally get back to 「キラキラ100%」?) There’s also volume 2 of 「あまんちゅ!」. (By the end of volume 1, I am undecided yet if the series will interest me.)

I added 「ハナヤマタ」 on my “considering” list, but having just finished watching the anime, I’m still in the “honeymoon period”. Since it lacks furigana, I may wait a couple of years, or I may forget the anime enough to drop this off my consideration list later.

Part of me wants to get the Japanese release of “Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town” remake for the Switch (after finishing “Breath of Fire” and “Link’s Awakening” in Japanese). But I’m really not feeling the art style for characters, or the upgrades to their appearances. Adding that I’ve always liked 2D sprites over 3D, I’m…undecided.

Grammar Progress(?)

I haven’t learned much anything new in quite a while, but I’ve gotten better are recognizing some things, and am getting good at re-learning things I already knew and forgot.

I would like to get back to reading something where I analyze and scrutinize every little bit of grammar sometime.

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Checklists

I find I consistently get more done when I have a checklist, and I consistently get less done when I do not. It’s not a matter of motivation. It’s purely laziness. I should probably make daily checklists, rather than just the rare weekend one I make in the 「勉強しましょう ~ let’s learn together!」 thread. Perhaps make weekly checklists there that cover seven-day ranges rather than Friday through Sunday?

Grammar Progress

One thing I’m trying to do is get through one Cure Dolly video every day. (Starting yesterday.) Today I listened/subtitle-read through the Cure Dolly video on “passive” verbs, and it completely changed how I view れる/られる. I’m never calling them “passive” verbs again. From now on, I’ll refer to them as “receptive” verbs. I feel like all existing Japanese-learning material should have their whole section on “passive verbs” thrown out, and rewritten from scratch. The idea of taking a Japanese grammar concept, and trying to shoehorn it into a similar-sounding-but-actually-quite-different English grammar concept only confuses things.

I feel like every time I get a quarter of the way into a Cure Dolly video, I want to rant about published English-language resources for learning Japanese grammar. But that’s a good thing, because I’m throwing out the English grammar-based way of looking at Japanese grammar, and learning the Japanese grammar-based way of looking at Japanese grammar.

Wanikani Progress

Nearly five days after reaching level 16, I’ve almost Guru’d all radicals, and haven’t touched a single kanji lesson. I still have some level 15 vocabulary lessons pending that I’ll get to as my Apprentice count dips below 100 from time to time. I just wish Apprentice wouldn’t drop 20 points in a day. That’s quite a bit of new vocabulary lessons (for me) to take on in a day, and it adds to my daily reviews for a while!

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Since I’m ahead of my short-term level up schedule, I don’t mind taking a bit more time. It’s how levels 17 and beyond will be as well. Here’s how my schedule looks for reaching level 17:

Level Begin Complete
Level 16 11/05/19 12/15/19

I don’t want to rest on my laurels, but I think I have some time before I start those kanji lessons. (Why do I feel like a fast rabbit who’s taking a nap while a slow turtle trots by?)

My daily reviews are averaging around 150 lately, but it’s slowly creeping higher and higher. I’ve been ignoring doing leech reviews, and that’s showing as well. (Maybe if I stuck leech reviews onto my to-do list?)

Reading Progress

My occasionally-updated bookshelf screenshot up in post two now shows my progress in books I’m reading. I partly just wanted to play with HTML and CSS to make the images visually show my progress, but mostly wanted a clear representation of how far I am in everything I’m reading.

「ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島」: No progress here. I’m lazy, so I haven’t gotten to swapping out the “Mario Maker 2” game card currently in the Nintendo Switch.

「怪盗セイント・テール」: Reached the end of the story! There are two unrelated one-off stories from the author to finish off this volume, then the short volume 7 covers additional stories with the main characters of the series. I’m using the power of checklists to get through the first one-off story this weekend.

「俺物語!!」: I feel like I should be just about at the end of volume 2, but I’m barely halfway! I think I’m making slow progress mostly because it’s only a couple of years at best since I read the volume in English.

「キラキラ100%」: I hadn’t touched this one in a long time, even though I’m more than halfway through. Thanks to the power of checklists, I’ve started it back up again.

「ご注文うさぎですか?」: The start of volume 2 was a slow struggle earlier this year, and I dropped reading it for a while. I picked it back up again recently, and I’ve been making a good pace of it. Some chapters I remember from watching the anime back in 2017, which really helped considering there’s no furigana to help me out with the kanji. But I can definitely see progress. My kanji analysis of the first volume showed that by the end of WaniKani level 15, I should recognize 45% of the unique kanji and nearly 73% of the total kanji. Volume 2 should be similar, but I feel like I haven’t yet learned even half of the total kanji I’m seeing.

「ブレス オブ ファイア 竜の戦士」: The nice thing about this being a SNES game is it’s a digital download, so I don’t have to swap game cards to play it. But being an RPG, I have long stretches where the only reading is the same battle text over and over again. And then I reach a town, and it’s slog because I just have to talk to everyone. This might not be so bad, except: 1) I have text speed set to slow, and 2) a lot of villagers repeat the same dialogue as other villagers in the same town.

「ふらいんぐうぃっち」 and 「にゃんにゃん探偵団おひるね」: I’m keeping pace with the books clubs, although I haven’t been commenting too much lately.

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Checklists

I’ve finally found a use for my final reserved post: a weekly checklist.

I like to say I’m lazy, but the truth is I’m lazy to start doing. I can spend 15 minutes avoiding starting to watch a 10-minute Cure Dolly video, but once I’ve watched it, I’m ready to watch another. I can spend a month avoiding reading the next chapter in a manga, only to read three chapters once I’ve started.

A checklist helps out with two things:

  1. When I’m doing nothing, I can just pick something from the list and start doing it.
  2. Checking off items gamifies the experience. There’s this desire to complete and check off everything.

Study Progress

I’d been having trouble in my WaniKani reviews with a lot of similar-meaning vocabulary, so I’ve been on level 16 for 18 days. No issues there, except that I’ll end up on level 17 this upcoming week and I still have 76 81 lessons pending! I let my apprentice get too low (it’s sitting at 73), so I need to get back to doing daily vocabulary lessons.

Reading Progress

I’m a tiny bit ahead on one book club, and just barely kept caught up on another. That evens out, right?

My progress on reading is:

  • Saint Tail volume 6 (83%). Just need to start that last one-off story. Since it’s not related to Saint Tail, there’s no incentive for me to read it.
  • Link’s Awakening (80%; estimate). On hiatus because Pokémon.
  • Flying Witch volume 1 (69%). Was almost late on getting last week’s reading done, so I’ll be sure to read it early in the week this time.
  • My Love Story!! volume 2 (68%). Having read it in English and planning to continue the series in English, it feels like work to have to continue this in Japanese. Yet, each time I start reading it, it’s actually nice to read through and compare my understading with the official English translation. I do want to get this finished up.
  • Breath of Fire (66%, estimate). On hiatus because Pokémon.
  • Kirakira 100% volume 1 (66%). I still don’t feel compelled to read more, although I like the basic concept to the story. I expect there to be a specific turning point in the characters’ relationships that may make it more interesting for me, but I don’t know if that’ll happen by the end of volume 1. I do want to get this finished up, as it’s been on my “currently reading” list for a long time now.
  • Yotsuba&! volume 6 (58%). This one may or may not go on hiatus because the book club for it’s starting back up again. I do plan to read the next chapter on Thanksgiving, though.
  • Is the order a rabbit? volume 2 (55%). This is still my “I have three minutes left on my bus commute; what should I do to fill it?” item.
  • Kitty Detectives book 2 (44%). I read this while out of town last weekend and accidentally read two weeks worth. (Probably should have spent half that time on Flying Witch.)
  • Pokémon Sword (9%, estimated). Gotta stop playing in English long enough to play in Japanese.
  • Yotsuba&! volume 11 (0%). The book club lives!
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I love the “review, learn, consume” breakdown of your checklist! :heart_eyes:

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I responded in the 2020 goals thread with some goals mostly based on what I’ve accomplished in 2019. With a little more attention given, here are my filled out goals which I expect to occasionally write about my my progress of in this thread.

Move

It’s not a Japanese-related goal (just moving up the street), but it will likely impact my progress when I move sometime in first quarter 2019. I expect to miss reading deadlines, and to do minimal vocabulary reviews, some days during during the move.

But there is a relation to Japanese here. Finally, all my stuff in storage will be returning home. I’ll have my Aqua and Aria manga back, and the rest of my ごちうさ Nendoroids in hand again!

Reading Goals

1. Read 30 manga volumes. I expect these to include:

  • 怪盗セイント・テール: Final volume!
  • よつばと!: Not counting what I’m in the middle of, I have five volumes left to complete the series.
  • 三ツ星カラーズ: Perhaps one per season to keep from reading them too quickly? Hopefully a new volume will come out around October!
  • アクア/アリア: Hopefully I remember how to handle a physical manga. Thankfully it’s not an omnibus.
  • ふらいんぐうぃっち: Volume two was a freebie, after all. I like the series so far, so volume two will decide if I keep reading.
  • 美少女戦士セーラームーン: It’s time! Maybe I’ll start with Sailor V, which I failed at in the first few pages ever so long ago. Or Sailor Moon and Sailor V concurrently? I’d like to read at least six volumes in the year.
  • GALS!: In consideration, depending on how other reading is going. I anticipate this series may be a little dialogue heavy for me.

I should be able to get in at least 23 volumes out of these.

In preparation for this, I need to finish up the non-WK book club manga I’m reading (three volumes, not counting よつばと! and ごちうさ).

2. Read four children’s detective picture stories. Not very ambitious, but my focus is on manga. Considerations are:

  • わんわん探偵団: Three-book series which may be picked up by the にゃんにゃん book club.
  • ミルキー杉山のあなたも名探偵: Much older 13-book series from the same author.

If these have three cases to a book, I can read one case per month and hit the four-book goal.

3. Read a Studio Ghibli シネマコミック (cinemanga). I read through となりのトトロ in 2019. For 2020, I’m undecided between (in order of consideration):

  • 魔女の宅急便 (Kiki’s Delivery Service)
  • 耳をすませば (Whisper of the Heart)
  • 天空の城ラピュタ (Castle in the Sky)

Whereas a typical manga volume may be around 150 to 200 pages, the cinemanga for 「となりのトトロ」 is 416 (not counting the opening/ending theme song portions). However, a lot of pages were still-images of a scene with no dialogue, so it probably has a similar amount of dialogue as a single manga volume. Reading still takes extra time due to appreciating the artwork, however.

Looking at my potential reading schedule (23 volumes, four children’s books, one cinemanga), I wonder how I ever managed as many manga as I did in the 3/4 of 2019 that I’ve done manga reading! I guess I cheated a bit with “Saint Tail” because I’m so familiar with the story already, and to a lesser extent the easier “Yotsuba&!”.

(Schedule not final. Considering にゃんにゃん book two spills over into 2020, as well as the BBC book, I may need to adjust my book reading. I expect to be adjusting it throughout 2020 as well, based on my reading speed and progress.)

(First edit will be to push Aqua/Aria over. I won’t have them out of storage for at least a few months!)

Vocabulary Goals

Create a custom deck in iKnow where I add at least one Core vocabulary work I encounter in reading each day.

This will require I get my backlog of reviews down to zero. がんばれ〜

Grammar Goals

Identify at least one grammar point I’m certain I don’t know (or don’t know well) in what I’m reading, and thoroughly read up on it.

WaniKani Goals

Reach level 40. Hopefully this is setting the bar low, but going up another 23 levels in the same time I did 15 sounds like a lot to me. I know I slacked off on lessons and didn’t get serious about taking on more lessons for much of the first half of 2019.

Speaking Goals

I have no reason to learn to speak Japanese, but I wonder if shadowing will help my listening speed and comprehension speed any. I’ve been planning to shadow 「となりのトトロ」 in 2020 (but not right away). Since I know this movie very well, and have seen it probably 30 to 40 times (although most of that in English), it should be a good source to try with.

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