Haven’t been feeling the urge to update too often simple because studying has been a little… monotonous? Maybe I mean that half negatively half neutral, ehh. It’s routine. Big breakthroughs are hard to come across so it’s basically just a rotation of whatever I’m reading right now. Except even the rotation is slow because I’m in the midst of a couple of the longest visual novels, a medium already known for being longwinded. Let’s take stock again:
Hundred Line (VN/game) - I’ve gotten 2 endings of 100 with 80 hours logged. Definitely not actively reading every minute of that, but, 
Umineko (VN) - Early chapter 2 (of 8) with my club
Fata Morgana (VN) - Semi-early in chapter 3 of 8 with my club (though they trend longer over time)
推し、燃ゆ (Novel) - Probably finishing today
Lunar 1 (videogame) - I dunno, 1/3? Halfway?
Trails in the Sky FC - Finished with the club this week! Not starting part 2 for a couple months it seems.
I already had too much going on, but picked up the Lunar remasters on a whim because I was going to be away from home for a few days and wanted it as a chill thing to do on the Steam Deck. Very cozy game, easy to read.
On on hand I mostly don’t have trouble reading average stuff anymore, and my definition of “average” is far from the extreme end, but also people kinda give me the impression it’s above where the average learner’s average might be. I started noticing that sentence was a mess and leaned into it, sorry. The only thing making me fight for comprehension ever is the novel. It’s not even that hard in its language, like word choice, but the book is pretty stream of consciousness and that ends up meaning you have to be very confidently getting the meaning from each word. Might totally miss what exactly is being said if you misinterpret a word or two because there isn’t always nicer surrounding context given, and mid paragraph she might start talking about doing a whole different thing in a different place. So it’s kind of like reading rambling out of context sentences sometimes. I enjoy it but it’s not easy.
It has annoyed me a little how slowly I read things though, the enormous added time compared to if I was doing it in English – that’s inevitable, but I don’t feel like my reading speed has improved much in quite a while and I hope to see it do that again. I’m probably doing this to myself by taking on too much, but there’s SO much I want to experience in Japanese, and the speed issue is a direct limit on me there.
In better news, I think my listening keeps getting better despite practice there being somewhat sparse. Reading really does just make everything clearer. I finally had the experience earlier with what I would have previously considered a trickier podcast (さくら通信) where I pretty much just understood close to 100% of what I listened to. My struggles at this point being really rough ways people can talk on movies and the like probably does bring that to being largely a need to practice listening to that kind of thing more, sometime.
But I also want to make time again to practice output. Maybe I’ll get started on that soon. Would like to voice chat with my friend but it was just always too difficult to get damn near anything out, and while I did shadowing and writing for a short time, they were aggravating compared to being able to spend more time on reading… because you know, my reading speed is slow so I need to dedicate more time to it. It’s going fine but everything competing for my time is a pain, heh.
While typing all this, I realized it’s nearly June, and I started learning on June 1st I’m pretty sure, so I’m a couple days away from the 4 year mark! So this is a celebratory post now too!
And in non-Japanese news, I mentioned working on losing weight in my last post – that’s progressing well! The lowest I’ve weighed in so far is 217, which if I take my high before starting this is already 11 pounds lower. Bit exaggerated by comparing lowest to highest, but the change is real. I’ve gotten more used to how I’m eating now and the hunger isn’t bothering me as much, so I’m working on adding a little more exercise (at least, as much as I can tolerate, cause doing a lot tends to make me feel bad and drained for a long time after in a way it doesn’t most other people). But I’m feeling like I’m making good progress health-wise too for sure.