Daisoujou's Study Log - Out putting out output

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
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Hehe, thanks for the encouragement! I think I might, but I’m unsure of what category I want to place it in. I feel like Japanese Language is probably where it should go, but I’d like to allow myself the freedom to post about anything I want so maybe the Campfire is a more fitting one for me. The Campfire is also the only category that is unreadable without an account as far as I know and feels more private to me which I prefer, but I also know some users mute it and won’t be able to know of it existence. Not that I would expect many people to read it to be completely honest :sweat_smile: , but at the same time I’d like for those who would to be able to if they want to. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter much because I’m a random username (that will change at some point, wanted for a while) posting about Japanese and whatnot in a random internet forum, but I’ll admit that still giving the entirety of the internet access to what I write (in a journalish, personal way?) is something that makes my socially anxious brain a bit uncomfortable.

Also yeah I agree, of all the ones I’ve lurked in the past (which aren’t many I admit) this is the only one I’ve wanted to actively participate in so far. The rest I’ve tried seemed either worthless or gave me different degrees of hostile vibes. The Japanese learning community is still somewhat… enthusiastic everywhere, but WK seems friendly and positive enough to make this a place I feel comfortable in for the most part and allows me to develop this niche interest with like-minded people. I’m super grateful to the read / listen challenge threads and the VN club for acting as the foundation for the daily Japanese structure I have nowadays, and to the people who participate in them.

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Even if someone have a category muted, they can track and watch specific threads. In fact you can mute a whole category but then unmute specific sub-categories. It is quite flexible. So it would only be a matter of them finding your study log the first time. So basically it is just about making people aware of it when you first post it. :slight_smile: Then on your profile you can add it as the featured topic and therefore anyone who clicks on your profile pic will see it.

I’ll sometimes get new readers of my log (seen by getting likes from usernames/pfp I don’t recognize) and I think it is due to the link on my profile. You can also add yourself to a list of study logs that exists too.

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Oh man, this reminds me of the time I joined a Japanese learning discord and one of the first things I saw was incredibly blatant racism and transphobia - and even if I could have looked past that (which I absolutely could not, I would not want to stay somewhere where that sort of thing gets overlooked) there was also a very off-putting air of elitism. Like “if you’re not studying every waking hour of the day you’re not serious about Japanese and will never get there” sort of thing. So I left that place very quickly lol

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The first thing you mention is an automatic blacklist in my book, but addressing the second, I also can’t stand it much and definitely have seen it around in the Japanese learning community for sure. The one-upmanship, gatekeeping and overall bitter atmosphere. Of course there are better communities and it’s not always like that, there’s plenty of awesome people around too, but you have communities that overlook that more than others and in the end every place has their own group culture.

As you mention I’ve seen it a lot from people who devote a lot of time against people who don’t or can’t, but I’ve also seen a similar shade of toxicity sometimes coming from those who don’t against those who study several hours every day. Both cases make me roll my eyes. I sort of wish people in general stopped projecting their own conceptions and goals onto others, the constant need for validation attacking others in the process is very off-putting. The schedule of someone who wants to achieve high competence in two years is going to look much different from someone who wants to achieve it in ten, and both are perfectly fine IMO, most of us are learning for fun and interest. What I see usually gets overlooked is that time used for something is time you’re not using for another thing, and people who use a lot of time for Japanese in this case won’t have that time for other projects; same for people who use little time for Japanese, they’re going to have much more time for other things they want to do or learn or whatever. It’s a trade-off you’re simply either willing to make or not, a matter of adapting the goals you have to how much time realistically it would take to achieve them. For some people it will be worth it, and for some it won’t.

I have other projects I want to start like programming, art, or resume music at some point, but right now I’m happy about advancing my Japanese and putting lots of hours into it. When that stops being the case then whatever, I’ll use that time for the other projects instead, but expecting that others should give Japanese the same level of attention I give it makes no sense. My personal goals only make sense in the context of my life, and other people will give different value to different things.

I like WK because while I’ve definitely seen this here too occasionally, it seems much more watered down in comparison to other places I’ve lurked, so it’s chill. Drama is also pretty rare, but then again I mostly move between very specific threads.

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Yeah, for sure. I think Japanese is just such a hard thing to do with the failure rate crazy high that you get people obsessing over it and then becoming really judgmental about anyone who doesn’t, or on the flipside you have a lot of people moving slower who might be frustrated about their progress or feel like they’re getting judged (sometimes because the former group really is judging them!) and it’s bad on both sides. If anything WK community slips here and there into the side of judging people for “speedrunning,” but most of the people who are being elitist about learning think Wanikani is a waste so it kinda self selects for one side.

I agree a lot with everything you said – I’ve expressed annoyance here and there in the past about people who get a little judgmental about “rushing” as somehow a bad thing, though when expressed reasonably I definitely understand the impulse to make sure people won’t burn themselves out. I’m honestly pretty far on the opposite end of the spectrum though, like I’ve said before, I would only worry about myself stopping if I wasn’t seeing enough progress. I dunno, I see people ask what the hurry is and it’s like… personally, I’m mortal and have a finite time to make use of what I’m learning. For a task that is definitely measured by years even for the people devoting crazy amounts of time to it, that actually feels pretty relevant haha. And recently I feel a little more mortal than most sometimes :skull:.

But I don’t think everyone else needs to (or even will realistically have the time to) go at the kind of pace I’ve been trying, as long as they have a realistic enough picture of what the results might look like to make that decision. I’d be more vocally against the AJATT elitism too if it was something I actually encountered much here.

Fundamentally, anyway, who cares? I mean if people want help/advice to learn better I like to try to give it, but at its core it’s a question of how someone else chooses to spend their time. Whatever.

Hopefully goes without saying but since it was mentioned, as a side note, racism/transphobia/etc is reason to pretty much instantly cut people off for me. There’s no other redeeming quality that’s gonna make up for that and I like to hope that social consequences can at least make people less bold about it if nothing else.

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language learning rambling

I think a lot of this kind of stems from how the public online Japanese learning community has developed as its own bubble. For most people in the world the language is pretty niche and a lot of the study materials/methods were painfully underdeveloped for a long time. People getting into the language were probably either some kind of hobby enthusiast or someone with a special connection to Japan (relatives, work, etc.) In a situation like that the language learning process ends up kind of stagnant, either stuck with traditionalist programs like what you would find in formal education or what a tiny internet community claims is best. It really doesn’t surprise me that the latter group, whose members probably only see learning Japanese as a means to an end, prioritize methods that are fast, efficient, and immersive.

As for the failure rate… I think Japanese is not really all that bad. I’m in the US where a lot of students end up taking language classes to satisfy arbitrary requirements in highschool and/or university and most of them never touch those languages again. I would definitely consider that a failure and a complete waste of resources. Seeing that kind of failure on a site like this is pretty normal, but I think society does a lot to cover up those failures normally. It makes specific languages seem harder than they really are when language learning as a whole is a difficult process.

I saw you post about ghost trick in the other thread, but is it the kind of game with actual substance behind it? I always assumed it was one of those games whose puzzles were going to be the oddly specific and borderline nonsensical kind like you’d see in old point-and-click adventures. I just glanced at a trailer which definitely isn’t helping. Did marketing do this dirty? Like I wouldn’t even have expected a noteworthy story from what I’ve seen so far.

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I dunno, I took Spanish in high school then didn’t touch the language again for years, and only recently got back into learning it, and I was more or less able to get back everything I’d learned through Duolingo without too much effort. I went from there to reading books in Spanish and watching/listening to Spanish media, and after a couple years of semi-regular practice, I’m able to read pretty easily and can listen to podcasts and watch some native media with decent comprehension.

Sure, my high school Spanish classes probably could’ve been done more efficiently and with better teaching (maybe if they had been, I wouldn’t have quit practicing), but I wouldn’t call them a complete waste of resources/time. I’ve benefited a lot from having that base of knowledge, no matter how deeply it was buried in my brain. I think language learning is a lot less of an all-or-nothing kind of thing than people think it is, which is honestly probably part of the reason for the dropout rate.

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Agreed, and for what I’ve felt so far I’d even say that’s the default for language learning as a whole. Honestly, I think a big part of the reason it’s like that is because the language learning community in particular has been sold snake oil over so many years, the marketing has been relentless instilling conceptions like “Learn a language with only 10 minutes a day! [insert app that will hardly teach you two words a day]”, or “Learn a language fully in 30 days!”. I think people in general underestimate how massive of an undertaking learning a language can be depending on the level of competence you want to achieve, especially for a language like Japanese coming from native languages that are extremely different linguistically and culturally. There is absolutely nothing wrong with studying 10 minutes a day and no need to be judgemental at all against someone who does, maybe that’s all they want and it works for their goals. But I think it’s also important to be realistic and honest, as you say, about the progress that you can expect over time with different levels of commitment. For someone just starting out that has a goal of reading novels unaided in two years, then no, 10 minutes a day is absolutely not going to be enough, and it’s better IMO that ideas like “10 minutes a day is enough, don’t rush” aren’t perpetuated because it’s a straight lie. I think the better approach is giving realistic and honest advice adapted to the goals of the person asking to prevent wishful thinking. Now, starting with 10 minutes a day to gain consistency and progressively increasing it until you’re where you want to be? Absolutely. It’s also okay to not have the time or the mental energy for more temporarily, that’s just life and another aspect we have to accept with full honesty.

It’s also interesting, for what I’ve seen so far the language learning community loves getting very meta, talking lots and lots about the thing instead of actually doing the thing. I guess talking about doing the thing gives the impression that you’re actually doing the thing. Looking for the ultimate resource, the ultimate schedule, the ultimate plan. I was a victim of this mindset for a long time too. If most people who post about language online would actually study as much as they theorise about the language they would have a very high level by now. If anything, I’ll give it to “Japanese speedrunners” for being realistic about what it takes to push the language to a high level in what many people would regard as a reasonable time span (aka a few years); I just don’t relate nor agree with the subsequent ego measuring contest that some create in the process…

I studied music for many years in the past, and while the music world definitely has its share of very hard elitists, I think when it comes to music or art in general people are very aware that they are (also) massive undertakings that require thousands and thousands of hours over the years to achieve a very high level, if that’s what people wish. I get the impression that in general there was very little wishful thinking. Of course if what you want to play is some cords and sing along then sure that’s going to take very little time, but if you have very high ambitions like composing orchestra music or interpreting very taxing works, then no, again, 10 minutes a day is not going to cut it if you don’t want to take 80 years. As you put it, time is finite, and I think it’s fair to assume that many people would want to enjoy the fruits of their labour sooner rather than later, if given the chance. When I was in the conservatory many looked up to the ones who studied a lot and progressed really quick, and it still took them so many years of hard work; professional classical music is a very long career. If anything, isn’t it good that others have access to the experiences and knowledge of the more hardcore crowd? I think it opens up another whole point of view and what to expect if you follow their steps, and that’s very valuable and benefits everyone IMO. It’s weird to me that the hardcore Japanese learners are met with so much resentment or jealousy, when their experience should be very valuable to the rest as another informed point of view. Then again, I suppose it’s also fair, when many hardcore Japanese learners have been so weird about their achievements that it taints the whole thing.

But yeah, learning about the language learning world online has been an interesting experience all along I admit haha, but that’s been part of the fun. Online discussion boards can be great but also often such a waste of time though, when it comes to learning something, it’s insane.

So in essence, this sums it up pretty nicely :joy: .

I’m of the mentality that everyone’s experiences are valuable and we can all learn and benefit from everyone, both beginners and veterans. I don’t think someone ever stops learning one way or another. I like to see it as a compendium of knowledge that everyone helps to build over time. If someone is judgemental and holds many prejudices then I suppose it will not only hinder their potential in terms of learning, but in life as a whole.

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Not too much I feel the need to add on language learning, but as for Ghost Trick…

I’ll have to get back to you with an updated opinion because I only pushed a little beyond what felt like the tutorial, but so far, I like the puzzles. They are definitely pretty specific… you move your little ghost soul between items to inhabit and some of them allow you to perform an action while in them. Like, making a bike roll back and forth, turning on a fan, etc. What surprised me so far is that I didn’t know you have very short range to move between objects, so while you do these things to cause interactions between objects, often the goal is getting some close enough for you to make the jump somewhere else. The way the first area has you get the string from a flag within a blender (without a blade) to twist and pull on it does maybe give me those point and click vibes, but semi within reason thus far. I’ve always heard the story is actually extremely good but it throws you in not knowing much so I can’t say anything other than a few characters were amusing, just yet.

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Actually I do want to add – you’re probably right and language learning is just hard across the board for sure, and I think the stuff you mention factors in. I think I just mention Japanese being hard and the potential for failure in creating the kinds of communities it has because I feel like there are pretty sizeable movements of people instilling fear in new Japanese learners. You have to learn pitch accent or you’ll be unintelligible, the textbooks are going to teach you wrong Japanese, if you use a system like Wanikani instead of just reading and listening from day 1 you’re going to waste all your time, etc. It’s kinda stressful sifting through all that when you’re new, or at least it was for me, and I at least get the impression there’s a pretty big overlap in the kinds of people who bought into making language learning out to be a lot scarier than it needs to be turning around and feeling superior to people who “aren’t doing it right.”

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Bit of a life update, but I’ll tuck in some Japanese talk while I’m here – just got back from the hematologist and all of the tests they ran for predispositions to clotting and the like were clear. Their guess is that it’s a physical impingment given my longstanding arm problems, which was already what I was thinking and wanting to steer them towards, so that’s nice. In about a month I’ll have an MRI which is probably long overdue and we’ll see from there. Here’s hoping I can eventually settle the arm issue for good.

Reading is going well, got a healthy mix with Ghost Trick being almost automatic relaxed reading, VNs falling in the middle but giving me tons of text to practice with, and some old Soseki stuff to strain myself looking up every other archaic word. I don’t talk about listening as much but I’m doing it too and it very much depends on the material but I certainly consider it something I can actually do now, though reading will always be my stronger point. Usually finding the space for at least a couple hours of Japanese per day, but probably closer to 4 on most good days.

I’m honestly enjoying my return to Anki so far. It’s kinda fun lol. Just needed the break I think, and I feel like a restart from the thousands of cards that I had gotten hazy on was a good thing. Honestly I very quickly decided I want to push myself harder and I’m mining close to 40 cards most days. If I didn’t have a couple years of experience with Japanese learning and some results I don’t think I would even tell you all because I’d be bracing myself to hear that that’s a bad idea, haha. But I feel very in touch right now with what I can handle and the ways I want to push myself to pick up the pace. We’ll see how it goes when the intervals get longer and things start coming back, but I’ve even been pretty rough on myself with mining a ton of brand new kanji and generally tricky stuff and so far it’s going fantastic. Feels as though all of the practice up to this point has helped me get better at the act of remembering words – more framework to build on, better understanding of what works and doesn’t for me to make something stick, etc. Even if I start slipping in accuracy, after all the time spent doing WK full speed plus anki, it’s never going to be near the time burden it used to be, and for me widely cramming in words has always been my preference.

When it comes to “Daisoujou does amounts of language grinding that others balk at,” we are so back :sunglasses:. See you all in that post N1 zone :crossed_fingers:

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Things are still going! I’m approaching the end of 999, still debating if I want to follow a potential spinoff club into the next game. I kind of want to do it, but also want to clear more time for new things… will have to decide when the time comes. 9-Nine- is nearly done with its 3rd entry (of 4) so the home stretch is starting to be visible there too. Just a couple stories left in 10 Nights of Dreams, could finish Ghost Trick in a few days – it’s about time for a lot of what I’m doing to shift again! Great to have a growing list of things I’ve successfully read in Japanese. Well, a hypothetical one. I keep remembering I should record all this to look back on then I never do it :sweat_smile:

Anki is good still, hitting ~100 reviews per day and it’s still very quick. Don’t think I’ll mind as it continues to grow. So far my accuracy is great, maybe I miss 5 or so a day, but we’ll see how hard I’m punished for my hubris when I actually have matures cause it’s still early. I wish I wasn’t feeling the need to mine so many words I either had trouble with in anki in the past or repped in WK then got to and went “what in the world is this?” but that’s life with SRS, eh? Not everything is gonna lock in tightly. Just makes me want to do even more practice reading… but that’s gonna be a function of slowly ramping up my speed when I can, not spending even more time on it.

Presumably people have seen, but I made that film club! Super excited to see what gets picked and get that underway, and I’m glad the reception has been pretty good. I hope I can hang in there for picks without JP subs; listening is still sketchy. Just have to keep telling myself that’s what this is for, but my tolerance for missing stuff in movies has been so much lower up to this point.

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I’m nearly finished with Ghost Trick (start of chapter 18, the finale), and this post is really just to follow up with @ccookf on it – yeah, the game is really good. Despite the impression you’d get from the sort of silly object manipulation the puzzles are built out of, I’d say the majority were pretty reasonable, with a fair bit of clever moments. Only a couple points have felt sort of aggravating or unintuitive. They’re very much a rigid sort of puzzle about inputting the one correct sequence of actions, but I like them all the same. They get great mileage out of the limited gameplay concepts.

The characters are quite charming, have these funny super expressive animations, and it all sprawls out into a big web of a story with more people and places involved than I really expected it to have. I dunno if you have any familiarity with the Ace Attorney series (same director and writer), but it’s had the same feeling as the really strong endgame cases in those games. Lots of serious character moments blended into the light goofy tone and a bunch of plot threads weaving together satisfyingly. I mean, assuming the impending end doesn’t drop the ball, but everyone seems to love this game and I’ve heard nothing negative about how it ends.

Makes for great Japanese reading – I’ll probably try to talk about that a little in the read every day thread tomorrow or something, but there’s quite a lot of dialog, and the necessary lookups have been kept to a minimum for me at this level now. Very pleasant.

It also has what may be the best videogame dog.

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:books::books: Read every day challenge - Summer 2023 :sunglasses::sunny:
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Well here I am. Being bothered by health problems that suggest a different chronic condition potentially again. Lmao. We’ll see I guess. Found a doctor who might not be terrible though they will only really see me on a short term basis. At least they’re getting me in super fast in a couple days.

Reading is reading and it’s impossible to perceive any improvement in the short term I think, but I’m enjoying it. Listening though, I recently feel like I’ve noticed I’m a lot better! Can still be destroyed by a lot of things where people speak in difficult unclear ways or the words used aren’t ones I easily know. I’ll always be a bit more reliant on kanji to jog my memory for some things. But I’ve been posting in the listening thread about how much progress I’m seeing in listening to some pretty fast stuff and following along well enough. Helps that I’ve stuck with Splatoon related stuff for a long time, heh. Will recognize 塗り, 潜伏, 対面, 立ち回り, and other terms used related to game mechanics and movement for the rest of my life haha.

I’m also just very excited about this Anki pace. The proper matures won’t be back for a month or so and some of them are gonna be way too hard then I’m sure, because I’ve been harsh on myself with tons of new kanji and difficult irregular readings and whatnot. But in such a short time, the numbers!

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And in the early stages anyway, I do well at remembering them; today’s accuracy was pretty representative:

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Even if a sizeable chunk of the matures are too hard, like I expect they may be, I don’t think I’ll get too caught up in that. If I didn’t mine them my accuracy at remembering them would be 0. The reviews are not at all a bad time burden and I don’t mind doing them, so I’m going to just dump a whole bunch in and hope a useable portion sticks. That approach to Japanese as a whole has gotten me this far anyway, haha.

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Double update kinda, but another significant thing occurred to me – recently when someone needs help with precise meanings of words on this site, or I’m maybe dissatisfied with what Jisho is giving me, it seems like on average reading Japanese dictionaries doesn’t really strain me too much. I seem to know the words in the definitions more often now (though I do use dictionaries that were recommended for starting out, having easier definitions). In the past I’ve disliked the monolingual idea because with limited reading stamina, I didn’t want to spend a bunch of it fighting through those definitions and probably defining words in definitions. So this is some evidence that I’m making more reading progress than I can feel. Will I commit to using those all the time? Ehh, I dunno right now, that’s a pretty large disruptive change, especially when I’ve just begun using Anki again and it’d change how those cards work. But it’s a cool thing to notice.

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I’ve started noticing this recently, too! Especially when translating stuff or trying to explain like a wrestling term to someone else, I’ve found myself reaching for monolingual dictionaries more and more (or often in my case googling slang that isn’t in any dictionary and reading blog posts explaining how it’s used, haha. Lately I found myself learning a term that originated in Japanese tiktok memes…).

I’m definitely still not ready to make the full switch, though, because that would be a lot more work to add to the process of doing Anki reviews, and I’m of the opinion that SRS should be as painless as possible. But for times where the meaning of a sentence hinges on one or two specific words, I’ve reached the point where English glosses are insufficient, and it’s not too much trouble to read a monolingual dictionary for clarification.

So I guess maybe I’m alright using monolingual dictionaries for lookups (as long as they’re fairly occasional, haha, like in pro wrestling for me), but I’m not comfortable enough to use solely monolingual definitions on my flash cards.

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I’m doing really well, picking up my pace in reading the novel 硝子の塔の殺人 (regular updates on that kinda thing in the read every day thread) and enjoying it a lot. I’m also playing Pikmin 4 on the side! There’s a lot to read but nothing’s very demanding, and it’s a lovely little game so far. Also the next VN pick starts up soon, and the film club has started! I’ll be watching the first movie soon. I actually only really post this to muse on a one thought –

I think it’s common for people to have a hard time actually doing something in Japanese. You know, it’s mental effort, getting started can be hard, etc. I have the opposite problem haha. Splatoon is kind of an exception where I play it just about daily, but there are a lot of things I’d like to check out that I have a hard time doing because they’re in English. I guess that’s a good problem to have and this sort of neurosis gets you far in learning :wink: . I don’t wanna overstate it like it’s causing me distress or I’m gonna burn myself out or something, it’s just like, I can kinda do all my hobbies in a way that incorporates Japanese. Hard to play some videogame when I could make another choice and be still playing a videogame but also learning together with it. I fit in so much time for my learning that I’d be fine either way, but given the choice, I consistently go for what’s going to squeeze in that little extra. And it’s very nice, but maybe at some point, I’m going to have to break from it a little bit for cool things that aren’t Japanese, heh.

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Haha I feel the same way. Completely disregarded any media that wasn’t in Japanese for the last year. Started to pick it slowly back up, I guess 10 min a day is doable… Though a bit heart breaking to spend 10 minutes less on Japanese than I could have :cry:

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I have my money on this being the DJT?

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Honestly I don’t remember but that’s ringing a bell

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