Now that I’m knowing more and more similar words and grammarpoints I’m thinking about writing notes in a physical Notebook (on paper, not the other Word for Laptop).
My questions are
I like to write Japanese overall (physically). I do it not often enough if I’m honest.
Furthermore, I think it was proven that writing something even if you don’t look at it again helps overall retention. At the moment, I’m focusing more on input still, trying to read as much as my time permits.
That being said, I NEVER look back at my written notes. The simple exercise of writing something is enough for me. I’m horrible at reading back my written notes/exercises. Therefore, I can’t give any tips on the 2nd and 4th points.
I write on different things. Sometimes I write one or two words on my whiteboard, sometimes I scribble randomly in my college block A4. Since I only throw them out later/erase them again, the medium doesn’t matter much to me.
I do it more for words/sentences and probably never for grammar points.
I want to use the Notebook only for Things that I actually struggle with. Not for normal writing exercises. And it has to be as comfortably to use as possible. I know myself. If I end Up not liking the Notebook I would soon quit again. But I think that it would be really helpful for me right now.
I have always used physical notebooks for language learning and it does help a lot. To answer your questions:
Yes, I have physical notebooks, but I am not always very consistent (something that I’m trying to change). I have one for purely kanji practice (I use this one), one for grammar and general remarks, and one for vocab.
It depends, but usually yes. If you make it as concise and straightforward as possible, it is not bothersome to read it again. But as @downtimes said , simply the act of writing it down helps. One good friend of mine (he passed N2 and also learning Chinese) always carries a small notebook with him, in which he writes down all the kanjis and vocab that he doesn’t know. He then uses his notebook whenever he can, while taking the transport or when he needs to kill some time.
Yes, it does help. In my experience writing down a word or kanji multiple times help you a lot with not only memorizing the kanji, but making sure that your hand remembers how to write it down. It happened to me before that I didn’t remember a kanji visually, but when I started to write it down, it came back naturally. As for grammar, the point for me is not repeat what was written down in a comprehensive grammar book, but rather writing down my own interpretation and remarks of a particular grammar point.
To make sure that I am not confused, I write down the kanji’s specific reading above or after the kanji itself (if this was the question).
Both A4 and A5 (although I slightly prefer A5 because it is more compact). I also carry a small A6 notebook with me.
I’ve ordered two Notebooks. A4 & A5, dotted, Spiral Binding. They also have 4 lined Pages for content. A4 is for Grammar and A5 for vocabulary.
I added my comments/opinions:
yes, i love writing on paper. i should do it more and more often 
being persnickety about stationery is one of life’s joys.
my favorite things currently are the Leuchtturm Drehgriffel pens, the Hobonichi Techo (and the 3-color pen that comes with it if you order online), and Mnemosyne + Leuchtturm notebooks
Thank you all for writing your experiences and Tips.
I have some earasable gel pens in different colours that I will use for my notes.
And this is the Notebook I ordered.
https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/B0F294VSJ2?ref=ppx_pt2_mob_b_prod_image
I absolutely do have a notebook. For lots of reasons. Some of those reasons are because I enjoy writing, I have too many notebooks and need to use them, and because it helps me sit still and focis/remember. Most often I never go back to it once I’ve written it down; but I will eventually create art over the top.
I use them once or twice a week. I do it for my writing practice, to strengthen my memory. After I wrote them, I did not really use them or re-read them.
When I first tried learning Japanese, 40 odd years ago, of course I wrote word lists down in notebooks. Back then, there was no other way. When I had an idea that “I’ve encountered a word for that…” I’d have to flip though pages and pages of vocabulary to find the bugger I half remembered… These days, I find that Anki with its search function much more convenient. And any kind of SRS “on paper” is quite impractical.
Where I did use physical notebooks throughout my career, was for taking notes during meetings (and lectures back in my student days). I found it easier to take notes by hand, rather than typing while trying to to listen. Toward the end of my working life, I used bound A5 notebooks: A5 because they were easier to carry around and could be used in cramped conditions and bound because I wouldn’t “lose” (=stupidly tear out) pages. Writing things down tends to crystallise the concepts, topics or decisions in my mind. I mostly didn’t refer to the notes later, unless I had to make meeting minutes or wanted to look up what had happened a couple months ago.
(Back when I worked in a lab, of course I had a lab notebook, where I documented my experiments in proper detail. A4 format was better for that purpose and a bound notebook was actually a (legal) requirement.)
These days, on my second attempt at Japanese (after retirement), I’m using Anki as my “notebook” for vocabulary and grammar points, because of the SRS functions and because Anki is even more portable than an A5 notebook. Also, I like that it’s so easy to update my Anki cards, as I struggle a lot with Japanese synonyms.
But, I’m also writing by hand too. In fact, I’m currently taking a Japanese handwriting course, getting daily corrections by my teacher, on sentences that exercise recently learned grammar points.
I doubt I’ll keep all this stuff I’ve been writing, it’s just practice.
Interestingly, all this handwriting in Japanese has reactivated and improved my penmanship in English and German too.
I also did This when I learned english in school, but I don’t intend to use my Notebook for a random vocabulary lists This time.
One Notebook will be for Grammarpoints
The other will be for words that I always confuse with each other
Yes. Bound Notebooks are so much better for Meetings and lab. I liked to use A4 for Meetings and A6 for quick notes in the lab. Die Reinschrift der Laborexperimente während meiner Ausbildung war dann wieder in A4.
化学者もですか。
For some of your planned notebook uses, I’ve been using Anki because of the ability to update without messy scribbles when you learn or realise something new.
For grammar, I have cards with the key point and example sentences, both in casual and polite versions.
For confusing words:
In struggling with all these words and considering their meanings, I’ve begun to notice how many English and German words actually also have numerous, completely unrelated meanings.
I don’t understand This yet.
I will never ever again use Anki.
I thought a bit more about what I want to write in my Notebook.
Grammar Notebook
Vocab Notebook
Edit: I googled the Translation. Not quiet. Staatlich geprüfte Chemietechnikerin. Same Niveau as Bachelor.
Probably you’d fit into 化学者 just fine, as most 化学者 are bachelor level and a lot of German “training specialties” like Chemietechniker don’t have any equivalent in Japan. The Japanese chemical education system also has far less hierarchy than Germany. (I worked for a large Japanese chemical company and only met a handful of Japanese chemists with anything more than a bachelor’s degree. Being a woman is no longer a roadblock either: Japan has changed a lot since the 1990s in that respect.)
Writing by hand gets things into my head quicker than typing too, but even so, I’ll stay with something “electronic” thanks to editability and portability. And after struggling and struggling on my own to get the verb forms into my head, I downloaded a shared Anki deck with audio, which helped a lot.
2 ideas for your vocab notebook:
Another thing I do is note pitch pattern for vocab.
Thank you for your ideas for my Notebooks. I will include them. If I’m lucky I can already get them from the Packstation.
I decided to do a physical Notebook instead of a digital one, because the digital Notebook would easily disappear. I mean “aus den Augen, aus dem Sinn.”
I think in order to say “are you also a chemist?” you need to bring in a pronoun, like あなたも化学者ですか. I mostly am operating by feel here, but I think the idea is that because the particle も is operating to replace は, the place where you’d use は can’t be omitted.
like, without the “also”
（あなたは）化学者ですか。
so in order to put the も in:
あなたも化学者ですか。
Thanks. But that raises the scary question about あなた, i.e. when it is appropriate and when not.
Wouldn’t “CherryAppleも化学者はですか” be better?
i think either is probably fine. in the context of a larger conversation, one use of あなた motivated by grammatical necessity probably won’t register as rude.
(btw, the は in 化学者はですか is always incorrect: in “CherryAppleも化学者はですか”, both も and は are trying to mark the “topic” of the sentence, meaning there’s no “comment” left to say about it!)