I want to look ahead a little.
So, leaving off the one enormous series I chose to skip, after tomorrow Iāll have exhausted everything not labelled āharderā on Satori Reader. Oku Nikkou was a bit of a pain for the first few episodes (loads of unfamiliar words about onsens and weather, heh), but it pretty quickly became very manageable. There are unfamiliar words for sure (I think thatāll be the caveat forever), but aside from the occasional grammar curveball they tuck in thatās just a new pattern, itās getting pretty simple to sit back and read. Feeling fantastic about that. Once I do some of their top level content, Iām going to need an exit strategy.
Can never be sure what Iāll be ready for, but I think my hope is to take that time to tackle my first visual novel with a texthooker, and see if thatās tolerable at all. Iām thinking something by Key ā I have both Little Busters and Clannad on hand. I poked around in Clannad sometime, probably a month or more ago, and found that every non-dialog sentence was dense with like 4 unknown words using totally unfamiliar kanji, and it was too much to piece all of that together for my working memory. Iām hopeful that Iāve patched up more holes with my Wanikani progress, and that Iāll have continued to do so by the time I start. Iām currently on level 20, and Iāve heard 30 thrown around as a very rough estimate of a time people feel a little more comfortable with the kanji they know when tackling this sort of non-furigana thing. I think Iāll wrap up Satori Reader before that level, but thatās only a guess and Iāve spent every day trying to push myself through difficult stuff, so Iām hopeful. Iāve enjoyed visual novels for a long time, so thatāll be a major step whenever I can make it work.
On the manga front, I finished the 2 volumes I had of Neko Ramen. The challenge in all the slangy speech and constantly unfamiliar words kind of snuck up on me there; it felt like it was written straightforwardly until it eventually occurred to me that just about every page was a small challenge; the simplicity of Yotsuba yelling a couple words at a time isnāt here, haha. But I made it through, and if nothing else sticks with me, I now know that āććā can become āć¤ććā after names ending in ć¤. Iā¦ had to ask about that on these forums because the cat almost never uses such honorics and the guyās name being ć¦ć¤ sort of threw me off that it was even a name. Really one of those āugh Japanese whyā moments when I have to go ask people online for help reading, and it turns out what I couldnāt read was just "ććā.
Now Iām starting on ć¢ćŖćć©ć¤ć / Blue Spring Ride! I just peeked at the first few pages to see what I was in for, and it seems like text is pretty simple and sparse, so far. Might be a nice little restful read compared to everything else. Wouldnāt mind getting through the 3 volumes I have quickly.
Oh, and listening! Once I got fairly well able to tell what Teppei was saying in Nihongo Con Teppei, I switched to his podcast with Noriko. Seems a bit harder, but Iāve been listening long enough that Iām getting better and better at at least following the gist of what theyāre saying, too. Looking back at Nihongo no Mori (especially after going through the Wanikani level with all the part of speech words) itās much simpler to understand and better take in the full message, now that Iām not struggling as hard to decipher the words. I donāt know if I want to spend much time on such grammar study right now, but I was happy to look back because it showed some very noticeable listening progressā¦ which I need, because people like Teppei fool me into feeling like I know this language, and when I listen to real natural Japanese, Iām back to struggling to catch a word here and there. Itās to be expected.
Really appreciate you all who check in; I hope youāre hanging in there, too.