There is unfortunately one more pandemic related update
So, about those boosters… yeah, fiancée and I are still not really feeling quite normal. Seems like people who had/have long covid, while they sometimes see improvement from vaccines (and I did see the last of it go away a while after my last shot so it’s hard to say if it did or didn’t ultimately help), it’s also not too uncommon to have a sort of resurgence with shots. It’s less bad than before, thankfully, and it hasn’t impeded me TOO much because it comes and goes through the hours of the day, just like it did back then… but sometimes I just have feel malaise for some hours, every day I feel like I have a fever for part of it, I’m working on building back endurance to do normal things like stand for a while, etc. No fun! Today has been kind of worse and I’ve wasted a lot of hours not doing much, which is frustrating.
That said, when I can manage, on I go. I’ve finally finished the second case in Ace Attorney! From this game alone I believe I’ve mined over 300 words already (doing a few too many per day in my voraciousness, to be honest). I haven’t had many roadblocks learning this way, and it’s been the best of my Japanese learning yet. I love seeing how Redd White, who in the localization was made to use words like “Splendiferous” and “Giantesque,” in the original, he just peppered basic English words throughout his speech (written phonetically in katakana and not always used well), and would not shut up about how he spent time America. It’s a totally different character trait, in one sense.
I also came across this absolute nightmare of onomatopoeia, haha. I think it’s actually helping me remember those words.
On the other fronts? Well, Wanikani is still happening. Nothing too exciting to say there. I’m still excited to learn more kanji but the more my reading comfort creeps upwards, the more I feel the pull to get to doing that, which is great honestly. WK kanji stick with me well, so thus far I think I’ll stick it out all the way to 60, but who knows what the future holds.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but I also picked up Paper Mario! There are some bits I have to give up on, but I’m treating it as a nice extensive reading break, where I just do my best to understand and then move on, no dictionaries. And I understand quite a bit overall, but at the same time, there is clearly so much a child is expected to know that I’m nowhere near still, heh.
…like spoken Japanese! Here and there I’m watching Midnight Diner and K-On to practice my listening, but listening hasn’t become easy enough to not get a little disheartening and frustrating, so I do it in small bits compared to reading. I know listening is its own skill that has to be practiced, in order to even properly hear the words I do “know,” but at the same time, since reading will both teach me new words easier and get the words I know more deeply ingrained and natural through repetition, part of me wonders if the key to better listening is just to keep my head in the books for a little longer before gradually shifting more attention to that skill specifically. Hard to say.
Lastly, since we were both not feeling super well, my fiancée and I exchanged a single early Christmas gift, and she was very nice to get me Azumanga Daioh, since I loved Yotsubato so much! It turns out that has no furigana, which is inconvenient since it’s physical as well, but I dragged myself through a chapter looking up kanji by radicals because I REALLY want to read it. Luckily the actual writing has been basic and easy so far; the unfamiliar kanji are all that cause me issues.
That’s all I’ve got I think! Hoping I find a little more energy to read tonight, cause today has been the least I’ve done in a while. I want to, just not quite mentally there. These days happen and we get through them <3.
