@VikingSchism@anon99047008 – Thanks for the input, both of you! I didn’t explicitly mention it, but I do use subtitles a fair bit. The decision comes down more to if the thing I’m trying to watch has them available at the time or not; when it does, I usually use them. I’m not good enough to be intentionally weaning off. They certainly help, but it’s been hard for me to track real progress on this front outside of growing through the learning podcasts. Feels like I’m still banging on the initial wall, only making tiny, almost imperceivable cracks. So it’s good to hear some voices echoing that you’ve found them useful. Thus far I’ve mostly just let things run and done my best to catch what I can as it’s going, so that’s probably not the most useful, but since I have an absolute addiction to looking up every little unknown snippet I come across in reading (which I’m slowly breaking right now with Paper Mario), listening itself has been my break to try to figure out the language while not doing that, heh. Might be time to look for a more helpful studying balance, though.
I’m not too picky on contents, luckily. I’d say I’m not super excited about slice of life anime so I move through it a little slowly, but I have a fine time while watching. What’s really calling out to me are films; I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned loving those here before. Can’t wait for the days I just can pick up something by Yasujiro Ozu, or Gakuryū Ishii, or Nagisa Oshima, and just watch it. Have actually been thinking of trying an Ozu movie soon since they have a lot of relaxed, small talk type conversations, but then my subtitle problem loops all the way around to “Criterion hardsubs every non-English film with English” so I have to use a program just to block the English, heh…
Merry Christmas! Happy holidays! Enjoy whatever holiday you want to celebrate, if any!
Well I said I wanted to chat a bit about Ace Attorney, so I’m back quickly with one more little update. Overall, it’s going great. I’m 42 hours into a game that’s supposed to take like 20 (on the final stretch of case 3, with 5 total), but that’s gonna be how this goes for a long time, heh. With fairly short sentences, it’s easy in an an hour or an hour and a half to mine plenty of words every day. The case structure is also quite helpful because within one case you get great repetition. Victim died at a film studio? 撮影所 is now the word you are most comfortable with in the entire Japanese language. But then a few hours later, it’s on to a new set of keywords. It’s nice for how broadly comical the characters are written to be too – everyone has their own little quirks to recognize, which strikes me as good practice just identifying types of 役割語 (role language) and the like. A few little observations I particularly enjoyed:
This character constantly gets kind of embarrassed and repeats 恐縮 (きょうしゅく), to my understanding a sort of “sorry to bother you” for use whether you are actually sorry, or grateful they are going to some effort for you, or etc. I don’t believe there was a single word solution quite like this in English?
This guy is the absolute worst. I had forgotten just how leering and creepy he gets. That said! In Japanese he seems less obnoxious to me because of just how far the English translation went. It’s neat how they have the little kanji in parenthesis to match online chat stuff, like (笑). To convey that in English… well, his first line is “WTF? Who are j00 d00dz!? LMAO!” The less said about this man, the better.
I just want to say, I’m pretty sure what’s going on here is monkey apocalypse, a combination of さる and ハルマゲドン . Feels great, however simple, to be catching some Japanese wordplay. In the English they just mostly abandoned this joke and say “Mr. Monkey.”
Anyway, I’m at a point where it’s hard to feel progress (I guess that’s always!) but I’m playing a fun game so I can’t complain much. Definitely recommend it for studying purposes if you have any interest (and there’s that Steam sale right now). I just need someone to smack me when I keep making Anki cards well past what’s reasonable, heh. Debating if I want to play the next game/the whole trilogy now… on one hand, I’m having a good time, and they’re very well suited for picking up new words at my level. On the other, I’m excited to play a visual novel that’s totally new to me, and voice acting in the game would be a big plus. Hmm…
Ok, let’s cram in one more pre-2022 update, because I have a particular piece of news I’m excited to share.
The usual things are rolling on as always, but for Christmas, I was given a Kindle Paperwhite! After a decent chunk of fighting with Amazon to get it to properly allow me to use the Japanese store, and loading up some dictionaries, I grabbed a few relatively easier Japanese books and sampled a few. The one I settled on, after a quick look through, was Zoo, by Otsuichi. And although my reading speed is quite slow, and I’m rereading a lot of sentences to reach comprehension… turns out I can read a real native book with the help of a dictionary! It’s not without grammar I don’t understand, but I’d say I almost always can comprehend the meaning (I mean I think, I’m always open to the possibility that I don’t know what I don’t know), even if I’ve had to give up on a few details here and there. It’s mentally taxing enough that I’m noticeably failing to bring to mind readings that I can handle in a vacuum, but that’s fine. These are much longer form sentences at times than Ace Attorney uses. I’m a decent chunk into chapter 2, which is page 18 and 8% of the book, apparently. As long as the writing style doesn’t switch up too heavily between stories or something, I’m confident I can make it now, no matter how long it takes.
Also, this story is extremely dark! It’s been interesting but this is definitely full of potentially upsetting, triggering material. Figured I should at least mention that.
So… that’s one goal for “next year” with some great progress already, haha.
Seems like I’m hitting a lot of words on Wanikani recently that I already knew prior to really “knowing” any Japanese, which has been really amusing to me.
Want to never forget 金属 again? All you have to do is hear this song Kinzoku Bat - YouTube
金属金属金属bat
And for anyone who plays Yakuza, Kiwami means EXTREME
I’m over here amusing myself in the dumbest ways mid-review. At least learning that kanji was totally free.
That’s it. That’s how Japanese studying is going. I mean, I’m still reading stuff, and it’s going as fine as last time I talked about it. I’m 17% (33 pages) into Zoo 1 by Otsuichi, and on the second day of case 4 on Ace Attorney. The latter has 60 hours logged now. I’m looking forward to getting faster with reading, just because I want to read more things. I’m trusting the process though – I remember when trying to decipher a chapter of When Will Ayumu Make His Move took like an hour, and last night I read both chapters for the week in something like 15 minutes. I think after every month or so I can look back and see tangible, large progress. It’s a great feeling.
Haha, oh yeah, Yakuza 5 goes so hard on that word. Just spell out your themes, verbally, as hard as possible. I love that goofy game; even though some are more polished in the series, I think it’s my favorite.
I’ve been typing things that I’m up to daily in the current “read every day challenge” thread and when I finish things in the “extensive listening challenge” threads so I’ve had less need of this topic, but I want to post a quick summary of progress:
I’m in the early parts of case 5 of Ace Attorney, the final case. Things have been pretty good up to this point, but I feel as though this case uses substantially tougher language, with a lot of obscure references. We’ll see how well I can manage. Looking forward to finishing my first full Japanese game! I’m also at 36%, page 69 of Zoo 1. This I read on the side here and there so it’s hard to glean too much from looking at progress, because I don’t track time, but that’s… ok for being 18 days since I was at 8%. As book number one, the most important thing is that I’m actually reading it, heh.
I’ve watched a season of からかい上手の高木さん, with subtitles, and this show is definitely the most comprehensible thing I’ve found for listening. So much so that I’d perhaps say it’s the first experience I’ve had watching anything in pure Japanese where I’m not catching out bits that I know but actually understanding the majority to a satisfying degree. Feels like what I miss is small and incidental. So that’s nice.
Just today, on a whim to shake things up I reenabled the Japanese dictionaries I have on Yomichan. A lot of the definitions were too much work, but some were helpful. In fact, one on this very day helped me understand a word where the Jisho definition didn’t really work for the context I found it in… so I made a monolingual Anki card. Then I made a few more. Most I made today still have English translations, but when I see low-hanging fruit Japanese definitions, I’m very slowly adding them to see how that goes.
I also just passed 2000 sentences mined in Anki, and I’m super close to the halfway point on WK (should be level 29 tomorrow)!
I know I said I wasn’t going to make goals before, but from the goal thread for 2022, I got it in my head (and posted there too) to try for one thing: Lost Judgment. As games go, this is NOT going to be an easy one, and I know it’s super far from where I am. But just consider it my overambitious target – if I can play and understand it by the end of 2022, I’ll be very happy and have made phenomenal progress. If not, that’s fine, I’m making an effort to not attach too much importance to it. But I’d sure like to get to the level of playing it (to reasonable comprehension) in Japanese. We’ll see
I just finished AA case 5, in English, today. Let me know if you can figure out the kanji on that one guy’s sleeve. I got the second one, but never got a clear view of the first.
I think it was the best case in the game, and by far the longest and most difficult.
Totally, I love this case. Definitely a noticeable jump up in difficulty too. Not sure if you’re aware, but the game was originally released on the GBA with only cases 1-4, and case 5 was added in the first DS remake. So it was made after they had a lot more experience.
I’ve been finding the bento delivery lady excessively difficult to read – she speaks in very poetic comparisons so far and has been making a ton of references to stuff like specific methods of cutting vegetables, which mean next to nothing to me.
Anyway, if this was your first AA, you’re in for a treat if you continue! I really like where they took the series for 2 and 3 especially.
While I put off starting my Anki reviews for a moment, today I hit level 30, which is close enough to roughly halfway (and the Wanikani email claims it’s half) so I figure that warrants a check in! Looking at everything I’ve done, I’m actually a bit stunned at how much I’ve managed to accomplish. In a few days, I’ll have been doing this for 8 months. And currently, while nowhere near fluent, I’d consider myself… functional enough that I can mostly just have fun with it, besides the flash card grind. Case 5 was giving me too much trouble on Ace Attorney so I swapped to Summer Pockets, and couldn’t be happier I did! This is a small veering away from the plans I was talking about to read Clannad/Little Busters or something, but there are 100s of things I want to read so it depends on my whim at the exact time.
Remember that first post, when I said Summer Pockets was kind of a longer term goal? Yeah. The whole reason I was planning to pick something else is that it was one of the last straws that pushed me over the edge to doing this, and I didn’t want to drag through it if I felt like I’d miss too much or not enjoy it enough. So, having chosen it means only can I read it, but I thought I could read it well enough to make it worth doing now. And I think I agree with that assessment while doing it! Looking up a word every two lines with a texthooker is no one’s idea of fluency, sure, yet it’s not overly demanding. I can handle most of what it throws at me, so far. And that’s really exciting! I don’t mind this process that much, so while I have a very long way to go, in one sense, I’ve made it? Should just snowball from here, even if it takes a while.
Let’s look at those new year goals/focuses now, too.
Well, I guess you know how visual novel reading is going. As I’ve mentioned I started reading Otsuichi’s Zoo 1 as well, and as of basically 1 month after starting that, I’m 50% into my first ever real Japanese book. Success!
I want to say I’ve seen small improvements recently, or at the least, I’m making a good effort to devote time to watch at least one episode of something per day. Going out and finding easier anime with subtitles (just finished からかい上手の高木さん) has given me more material that’s comprehensible enough to be overall relatively satisfying. Long way to go to be able to understand what I want, so this one will need more checking back, but I’m trying.
This is another thing I’ve mentioned in the read every day thread, but I re-enabled a couple of those on a whim recently! Much more often than not, they’re too much of a pain with unfamiliar words so I just skip them so I don’t detract from reading my VN itself by making chains of lookups in lookups, but when I see a relatively short, easy definition, I go for it. I’ve even put some of those on Anki cards, if I’m confident in the definition. I’d say at the moment I do that for about 1 out of every 5? It certainly varies, but the number I can read well will only go up over time! So I’m happy with at least taking a first, tentative stab at this.
It’s been a while! I’m still diligently posting in the read every day thread, as I make progress through Summer Pockets and see my reading speed increase. Pretty happy on that front. I even finished a book a little while back! Zoo 1 by Otsuichi is down. I’m halfway through Zoo 2, but things have gotten more stressful and difficult with my health recently (already went into all that elsewhere on the forums) so I’ve pulled back a bit on that.
That said, I’m mostly posting here again to muse out loud on something I have on my mind. That thing is, well, Wanikani. Today I reached level 34, but I feel like I’m actually starting to hit that point where I wonder if finishing is right for me. Perhaps it’s that I’m more comfortable in reading in general, or just needed more practice with mining, but after saying before that I saw no difference for words learned in context… oh boy, do I now. I’m hitting that point where you get aggravated at learning words from a list, feeling like all of them are just vaguely linked to an English equivalent but no real understanding of proper use, or a contextual memory to make them mean anything to you.
I’m really starting to think it’s possible I’d be best served just continuing my reviews for a while to burn some things, but putting new lessons on hold, potentially forever. At the same time, it’s a big step, and I’m hesitant about my ability to totally learn new kanji on my own. Don’t want to sabotage myself. Up to this point I’ve had ok results I guess, with kanji in the wild. Really what it comes down to for learning kanji outside WK is that I’m still figuring out how to best cement ones I have to force (that come up less frequently), but I’ve definitely been able to remember sufficiently recurring ones, often without even trying that hard. Like, every new WK level seems to have 5 or so kanji now that I just immediately go “yep, I already know that one.”
It’s not an easy choice. I’ll be thinking about it…
@WeebPotato Oh yeah, I think I recall you not too long ago talking about breaking from Wanikani to go learn on your own? In the end I’m sure these decisions are fairly personal and either way can work as long as you stick with it, but I’m curious how it’s been going for you, if you don’t mind me asking? Very close to tentatively taking the plunge myself, would be nice to redirect the entirety of my WK time to more reading and listening, with just a bit of a heavier anki load on the side.
You know it’s funny you say that because I’ve been in a similar place lately! It feels really weird to seriously think about it since for me at least, WaniKani’s been (if a bumpy road) something constant as long as I’ve been studying Japanese with the thought like - yes, I will definitely finish this one day.
But with the reading challenge, as I imagine you might be feeling, it feels like time I’m taking away from reading and learning words I’m actually encountering, you know? And that’s a sentiment I’ve seen plenty of other people have here and been like “wow can’t imagine feeling that way” but here we are So yeah you’re not alone!
I think you have a good idea for testing it out, just seeing how things go without taking on new things for a while - it’ll be there if you change your mind! I think exposure does a lot though, even with learning new kanji; like you said, there are tons of kanji you’ve learned from reading without WK having much to do with it, but I think it’s just harder to conceptualize for yourself how much you’re actually learning that way, so it’s easy to underestimate. No WK levels in the real world
Whatever you end up doing, best of luck! May you continue to crush it in the reading challenge
Congrats!! That’s such a huge thing, I’m so happy for you!
About this, I will say I’m actually noticing more kanji and vocab from the late 30s/early 40s out “in the wild” than I really had at any previous levels. It definitely helps me to learn them mechanically first, and then that meaning is further cemented by encountering them elsewhere, rather than the other way around; my brain just doesn’t like to process things I haven’t yet “learned” in a structured way. YMMV, of course, especially since you clearly consume far more media than I do, but I just thought I’d throw that out there if it’s of any meaning to you.
My personal philosophy is always just, “I’ve already come this far, may as well just finish it.” I don’t really see it doing any harm or facilitating any “overlearning.” Maybe you’ll get bored, but again, what’s the harm?
Of course, that’s not me trying to sway you any which way!! Just my two cents, and I absolutely think you’re golden for trying things out and seeing what works best for you in the long run. I hope you’re able to come to a decision that’s right for you, and wish you best health-wise and with everything else. Best wishes!
Oh yeah totally same feelings. I loosely learned hiragana one day, katakana the next day, then by day 3 I was starting Wanikani. It’s the longest constant for me, predating Anki, and I never thought I’d really mind going through it. Nice to hear from someone else having similar feelings.
Totally appreciate it! I know what you mean, and there are pros and cons. I will say I definitely at least with enough exposure can do it the other way around comfortably. I look at the level I just reached and I already know:
丼 as どん for beef bowl and the like
吐 as は for throw up and the related meanings
奴 is やつ
豆 as まめ, beans
刻 as the こく for じこく, time
Clearly there’s still a lot this level could teach me, but I was able to look at those isolated kanji and already think I definitely know a word with them, both what it means and how it’s read. A few others I have a sort of shaky recognition of.
Yeah I know what you mean. I think for me it’s that I’m doing a lot more Anki alongside Wanikani than anyone should than others do, and while I’ve had the patience for it, I hit a lot of reviews every morning. Perhaps it’s less the time sink aspect of WK even than just the subjective annoyances that come from some words I get wrong. Like, there are so many somewhat similar words taught together inevitably because of how the system works, but without context, I feel like I don’t have a real concrete thing to tie them to to really know the meaning. And that I like how when picking things on my own I can spread the synonyms out and not get them all mixed together in my head. When I get the meaning wrong enough that I think it’s truly wrong (I’m a bit liberal with doublecheck on things that are typos or a little off the chosen gloss tbh), I just don’t feel like I have a real understanding to tie it to, so it’s too abstract. With my Anki words I at least have the sentence it was used in to show one natural context, and trigger my memories, and I think that makes a huge difference.
At 34 I don’t think I’m quite far enough to think I might as well finish it, personally. But I dunno! Because I do really love the kanji teaching method and think it has helped me substantially. I don’t want to learn kanji totally out of context, so the words are needed… but at the same time, it feels like time spent only fake learning words, now that I can learn them for real.
I lean most towards dropping here when I turn my thinking around the other way – level 60 is not the end, and it can’t be. There are many more kanji we have to know. So one way or another, we have to take the methods for learning that we’ve picked up and apply them ourselves one day. In that light, I’m hastening reaching that point, but it is still a point everyone faces even if they go to 60, you know?
Totally appreciate the thoughts, either way. And I don’t really mean for this to criticize WK’s methods – I think how it’s set up, outside of more minor detailed quibbles, is great, and I wouldn’t be at the point where I could consider doing this on my own at all without WK having implicitly taught me how to learn this stuff. At this point I’m experimenting with at least a few days off from lessons and cranking up Anki a little more, but I’m not totally confident how it’ll go.
Also I hope things are going well for you too! It’s great to hear from you again @Naytrib
Some people might disagree with me here but I feel like if you are thinking this then it’s probably worth trying branching out (maybe going down to just reviews for now as you said, or straight to vacation mode), and then if you find that kanji is becoming an obstacle for you then there’s nothing stopping you from going back to it!
I stopped using wanikani to learn kanji maybe six months ago now and this might change in the future but just now I really don’t miss or feel the need for it. I really value wanikani for getting me to the point where kanji aren’t a scary thing, but after having the experience of learning vocab through context I enjoy, and also using Japanese definitions which I find way more helpful for my understanding than trying to map it to an English word…certainly just now I would not want to go back to learning vocab out of context J-E.
Also, I feel like learning kanji the other way around (just though coming across it in enough words) and naturally getting a sense of what it means is really cool!
But also, it’s totally a personal decision, and either way is totally valid! But just sharing an experience of stopping mid way through WK and not (yet!) regretting it!
One thing you could try is slowing down substantially with WK, but still continuing. Doing fewer lessons a day would be far less of a strain and give you more time/energy for Anki and reading, and you’d still get the benefit of WK’s structure for helping you learn some kanji. I guess for me at least, every word or kanji I’ve learned outside of WK has taken me a little more effort to learn because I have to do more of the work myself, like preparing flash cards and coming up with mnemonics for the readings, etc. (I don’t always use WK’s provided ones, but many of them work fine for me). Plus with kanji, you miss out on the keisei script trying to learn on your own, and I do miss having that.
I guess I feel that there is value for learning a bunch of kanji alongside each other, but there are of course trade-offs, too. The other big one for me is that WK teaches me that I am confusing kanji that I didn’t realize I was confusing, haha, since there are so many kanji mixed together here. That’s part of why I’m forcing myself to learn to write any new kanji I’m learning outside of this system, because that forces me to truly learn to distinguish it from others with similar radicals. Otherwise, it’s easy to think that I know something in the isolated environment of seeing it on a flashcard, but then have it turn out that I remember the specific circumstances of adding the flashcard (“oh, this kanji must be 鮫 and not 較 because it’s an Anki card and not on WK”) rather than truly memorizing the kanji.
In any case, good luck figuring out a path forward!
Yeah, thanks a lot for the idea. It is definitely another good thing to consider. I’m totally still thinking on all of this, but knee jerk reaction at least is that if I truly don’t really need Wanikani anymore, the idea of consolidating into fewer resources and learning the words I choose as I need them is, of course, pretty appealing. There are absolutely risks that I’m undervaluing what it’s still doing for me, but if I stop using it and I was right that that doesn’t negatively impact me, that seems like the optimal outcome.
So I think, the way I’m leaning, is continuing for a little while to do reviews so as to not disturb anything in SRS, but cut out the lessons and allow myself to add more cards to anki with unfamiliar kanji (which I already have some experience with when I come across kanji not on WK). I’ll try to be attentive to how this seems to be going, and I definitely have your suggestion that I could potentially use as a way to reintroduce WK if I want to not take it at this speed then.
I’ve found that it’s a mixed bag – some kanji I try to learn on my own are stubborn, but then there are some that through exposure I’ve learned so effortlessly I didn’t even try. Like the 5 I listed above… I think I put effort into 奴 (やつ) because it’s common and an easy word to map on, but otherwise they came without me even thinking about them much, just looking them up until I stopped doing that.
There is also, for mnemonics and the like, always the option of me still looking up any kanji that exists on Wanikani within the system if I want a suggestion, without using their specific SRS.
If any of this sounds like I’m being argumentative it’s not meant to! I’m laying out my thoughts in response partly because talking to you (all) has helped me to further work through my current position on this. And if I find I’m not satisfied, your ideas probably will really come in handy.
I think I’m in a bit of a similar boat. On one hand I think most of the content WK has to offer is “useful” and the way it’s prepared with self-reinforcing material is incredibly easy to follow. On the other hand, there’s enough friction on the platform and disappointments in the content that I find myself often very annoyed at WK despite learning new concepts here fairly efficiently.
Like, even if the content here is useful overall and mostly “common words” the reality is that the things I learn here never really tie into what I’m actively doing off the platform. I’m not into Law and Order, so seeing fifty variations of some kind of police department is not helpful nor is the terminology for judgement and lawsuit. They’ll be super useful when I start Ace Attorney tomorrow™ instead of fifteen levels ago and haunting me as leeches that can’t be hibernated. I know I could open a newspaper and see most of those words on any given day, but that doesn’t really make learning out of context words with mediocre at best definitions feel good.
And that mediocre at best part really sums up my experience. Like 80% of the things feel “good enough”, but it’s just not satisfying to me anymore. I constantly find myself looking to external sources for better context or more elaborate definitions. The presentation of data here kind of sucks and is heavily compensated for by scripts that could break at any time. I frequently compare a lot of functionality here to Anki, Kitsun, and Bunrpro, which blow WK out of the water despite one being a bit of a dinosaur and the others being fly by the seat of their pants operations.
I think I’m going to stick it out here in full force just to rip off the bandaid (and out of ironic laziness), but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to just export the kanji lesson data into Kitsun and focus on my mining instead.
I think some of the worst ones are the ones that have really long and specific meanings that I can never get straight in my head because I inevitably reduce one of the words in it into a simpler synonym or something and then get annoyed when I get it wrong despite the meaning not changing
Also when I reach a word I’ve already had kicking about my Anki deck for a while and the meaning is marginally different from what I’ve learnt it as (or I’d learnt the word with a Japanese definition)
So yeah you’re not alone!
