Durteloni’s Study Log

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
41

Week 37.

  • Genki online: completed lesson 7 workbook questions and listening comprehension exercises after reading grammar notes. Grammar is finally sinking in.
  • KD anki deck: average stability has jumped to 3 months as my reviews have now covered about 40% of the deck. Recall has stayed around 85%. My reading practice is screaming to me that I should really study compound words :face_with_peeking_eye: Well, I guess we have a ready plan for next year!
  • Reading: completed Sōseki sections 7 and 8. Finally encountered 絹, one of my favourite leeches :grin: The last paragraph of section 8 was a breeze compared to the rest.
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42

Week 38.

  • Genki online: workbook questions and listening comprehension from lesson 8. Ouch, not as easy as I thought!
  • KD anki deck: something got bungled, stats are back to the old numbers, average stability is barely above a month and median difficulty is over 95%… because I keep pressing ‘good’ instead of ‘easy’ for easy kanjis :melting_face: I hadn’t realised that Anki’s difficulty rating decreases only if the ‘easy’ button is pressed. I wonder if that behaviour can be tweaked ?!
  • Reading: completed Sōseki section 9, random news articles on Todaii and @trunklayer ‘s manga vignettes. Used @simias ‘s KanKan tool to look up unfamiliar kanjis, worked great :smiling_face:
  • Listening: Learn Japanese with anime, Kiki’s delivery service, and a couple of episodes from the Nihongo con Teppei podcast. Those are very basic, yet I have to give it my full attention to understand more than a couple of words here and there :sweat_smile:
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43

Week 39.

  • Genki online: grammar points lesson 9. Will I now finally stop confusing まだ and また ?! Should be simple enough in context… assuming I get the context :sweat_smile:
  • KD anki deck: after almost 2 weeks of pure reviews, new cards have started to appear again. Had a bad session yesterday where I failed a third of the ‘young’ cards (guru and below? ) :grimacing: yet still got 5 new cards today. This FSRS algorithm is a bit of a mystery to me. I’ve been using the kakimashou dictionary every day for the past month or so and really enjoy going through the material for kanji that I struggle to recall ( quite a few :rofl: )
  • Reading: completed Sōseki section 10, and a couple of news articles and manga vignettes. The price of rice seems to be a recurrent theme this year in Japan.
  • Japanese culture: finished Kyota Ko’s Folktales of Japan. His commentary after each tale is conversational and reads like a blog entry, fascinating and relaxing to read. At the opposite end I started Lafcadio Hearn’s Glimpse of unfamiliar Japan. It took me a few pages to get past the archaic language and obsolete cultural norms, but soon I was transported in late 18th century Japan. His description of Enoshima makes me want to go there at once, yet I wonder what the island looks like today?
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44

Week 40.

  • Grammar: none this week.
  • KD anki deck: nice mnemonic for 酷 , short and sweet. Evocative long stories are supposed to work best…. but I can’t remember them :upside_down_face:
  • Reading: Sōseki sections 11 and 12. Whoever decided what to do with the author’s earthly remains obviously failed to read the end of section 11 :grimacing:
  • Listening: Learn Japanese with anime, first episode of Your Name. Completely missed that movie when it came out. Story seems geared towards teenagers, still I’m curious to watch the whole movie later, and hope I can follow some of the original audio.
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45

At that point then you have to start making mnemonics for your mnemonics and then it’s turtles all the way down. I find longer stories get to bee too much as well. :slight_smile:

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46

:turtle: :turtle: :turtle: :rofl:

first time I hear this expression for “infinite regress”, had to look it up. Love it, thanks!

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47

Week 41.

  • Genki online: workbook questions and listening comprehension from lesson 9. Went better than expected, onwards to lesson 10 :blush:
  • KD anki deck. Discovered that I’m supposed to optimize the FSRS regularly by clicking a button in the deck-specific study options. Ok….Median “card stability” dropped from over a month to 23 days, maybe driven by the increasing number of new cards :thinking: . Recall still averages around 85%, almost all fails are due to my inability to remember the ON. Plus ça change… :sweat_smile:
  • Reading: Sōseki section 13. Kakimashou flags an alarming number of kanjis as Kentei level 1. The whole piece is way above my reading ability, yet I’m finally seeing kanjis that I hadn’t encountered in any other reading material that I’ve sampled so far. Went back to tadoku and picked a random book from level 5. Err… need to work on grammar!
  • Listening comprehension: final 2 episodes of ‘Your Name’ from Learn Japanese with anime and a couple of episodes from the Nihongo con Teppei podcast… something about his kids going camping ?!
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48

Week 42.

  • Genki online: workbook questions and listening comprehension lesson 10. Aced the former, failed the latter miserably :expressionless_face:. Same as back in early January. Undeterred, I jumped into a
  • Listening comprehension session: picked a random full episode of 90s Moomin anime and hit ‘play”… I have to put subtitles less than 5 mn in, as I understand nothing besides ‘この本は、面白いですか’ :grimacing:. OK, time to try something new! Japanese course based on Tae Kim’s grammar guide & anime I believe was recommended by @simias on this forum. I love it that anki let’s me skip cards, so I can concentrate on the ones that look most helpful to me :blush: . This deck is fun, it plays original audio excerpts from the original sources. I’m starting at a leisurely pace of no more than 5 new cards and at most 50 reviews per day, though I think I will suspend cards as soon as I reach instant recall. My aim is not to memorize every sentence in the deck, but to train my ear. I also listen to every card that I skip for more exposure. Curious to hear how that strategy pans out :thinking:
  • KD anki deck: I started marking the cards where I fail to recall the ON as ‘hard’ instead of ‘again’. No point beating up a dead horse. I’m hoping to improve my retention of kanji meaning by reading through Yves Maniette’s “Les kanjis dans la tête”, heavily inspired by Heisig but not a direct translation. Most stories are engaging, some are quite clever, and what a relief to read material in my mother tongue :relieved_face:
  • Reading: Sōseki sections 14 and 15. Overall comprehension went pretty well until I hit this sentence that starts with a barrage of Kentei lvl 1 kanjis: 蹂み躙られたる薔薇の蕊より… :upside_down_face:
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49

Week 43.

  • Genki online: workbook questions lesson 11 went fine, the load seemed much lighter than the previous lesson, which had double the number of grammar points. Listening comprehension was mediocre, I have to listen at least three times before I can answer the questions.
  • Anki decks
    * KD: finally discovered how to create a custom study deck to go over my leeches :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
    * Maniettes: the iOS anki app isn’t great for browsing, it won’t let me browse from where I left off, I have to start browsing from the top of the list each time. When I skip a card that I already know during reviews, it does not automatically add a new item, so I end up with very few cards. Seems odd!?
    * Jlab: again browsing isn’t working, it’s showing the back instead of the front of the cards. Wasted a few hours trying to fix it and gave up. I can see how Anki can become a time sink. Sticking to reviews and hoping for the best. The notes are linked to Tae Kim’s grammar book; got sidetracked reading all about the subtleties of the の particle… Can’t recall much but it was interesting.
  • Reading: Sōseki section 16 looked daunting but turned out to be easier than expected, with mostly familiar kanji and the same gruesome content as the previous sections. Looking for a cheerful story when I’m done with this one :sweat_smile:
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50

Week 44.

  • Genki online was taken down :cry: . Picking up “Japanese the manga way” again.
  • Anki decks : I’m through 800 kanjis on the KD deck and still the stats say that Median difficulty= 95%. Apparently optimising my FSRS has landed me in “difficulty hell” :face_with_spiral_eyes: . Unfortunately the interface in the snapshot looks different than mine… I clicked on “Help me decide” and ran a simulation. Made no sense to me. Read posts on FSRS and can’t say I understood much besides that the “hard” button should not be used for fail. I used it as “took me a while to recall” and later on also included, “can recall meaning but not the ON”. Apparently “hard” should not be used, full stop, but there is no way to hide or disable it in the iOS app :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
  • Watched a couple of episodes from the Speak Japanese naturally playlist. Even if I get lost occasionally, I enjoy listening to her voice, very relaxing :blush:
  • Reading: Sōseki section 17 was tough. Read a few NHK easy news for relief, and tested Shinobi. Wish I had discovered this when I had started to read!
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51

Week 45. What a week. Started as a complete sh*tshow at work and ended in a fabulous weekend. Life is full of surprises like that. Barely squeezed in daily Japanese studies.

  • Anki decks. Found another mnemonic gem on KD that finally lets me remember the kanji 義. I know, it says the top radical is 羊 :ewe: rather than WK’s king with horns… yet Kakimashou also calls it ‘sheep variant’. Meanwhile, Wiktionary is adamant that “The component 羊 here signifies “good; beautiful; auspicious” and not “sheep” :person_shrugging:
  • Reading: happily following in @trunklayer ’s footsteps with shinobi. The beginner content is too easy, but relaxing for a change :laughing: For more challenging material, the app lets me access intermediate level News stories: click on the book icon and filter by level.
  • Sōseki section 18 has no audio. That paragraph breaks off from the story, and is all about the author explaining how he got his facts from various sources. I was feeling guilty as I thought ‘what a crashing bore’, when I stumbled upon 沙翁. Never in a million years could I have guessed the meaning behind those 2 characters: Shakespeare . Made my day.
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52

Week 46.

  • Anki decks on autopilot, some days acing it, and some others failing badly. Anime snippets whizz past, leaving me far behind :snail:
  • Reading: shinobi stories are still too easy, but the AI voice is ok and I need the listening practice!
  • Finished Sōseki earlier in the week. The novella ends on a commentary by the author about his writing, with a suitable sprinkling of self flagellation. I was just happy to meet some of my leeches, including the second kanji of 遊覧, which I always want to pronounce かん :melting_face:
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53

Week 47.

  • Anki decks… and my tablet autocompletes to ‘on autopilot’. Fair enough :sweat_smile: This week’s recall on the KD kanji deck wasn’t bad at about 88% on average. I’m now at mid-point where reviews cover half the KD deck. Not sure what to make of the stats: 564 cards are classified as ‘mature’, i.e. recalled after at least 21 days, but my median stability is 27 days and 465 cards are classified as ‘100% difficulty’. Am I learning anything :thinking: ? My top leeches have now gone through over 60 reviews: 識, 惑, 叱, 審 and 係 . Can’t see any theme or pattern here, but maybe there’s one??
  • Reading on Shinobi: just about managed 2 stories per day. A couple of stories felt way harder than the rest and I nearly flunked the test after those! I wish the app would display test scores next to completed stories, so I could go back to the tricky ones.
  • Read a couple of NHK easy news, looks like that’s where Shinobi is getting their news articles from. How long until somebody at NHK notices? NHK copyright lawyers seem to be cracking down lately: pictures have disappeared from NHK articles on Todaii.
  • Listened to the episode on Speak Japanese Naturally about Matsuyama castle, complete with gorgeous views and a visit to an orange juice tasting bar :face_savoring_food:
3 Likes
54

Week 48.

  • Anki decks: Jlab’s course based on Tae Kim’s grammar book and anime is starting to pay off. Despite only adding 5 cards a day, and suspending cards after a few reviews, it seems like my ears are getting better at listening to spoken Japanese and parsing sentences. Compared to the anime snippets, Nihongo con Teppei sounds almost slow :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

  • Reading: reached story 46 on shinobi. Grammar is still basic, but every so often I stumble on a string of new words, or kanjis that my brain decided to erase from memory, like 種 . Dang counters :sweat_smile: . Encouraged by my improvement with listening comprehension , I decided to test my reading abilities by going back to a level 5 book on Tadoku, 美知子みちこの星空 … finally I could actually read whole pages without having to check a dictionary. I checked another Sōseki short story about the life of a cat and was surprised at how much I could understand. That felt good.

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55

Week 49.

  • Grammar: started Tobira exercises , reading comprehension went fine, but could only remember the pronunciation of 2/3 of the words. Good practice.
  • Anki decks: squashed a couple of leeches on the KD deck :innocent: I seem to be getting new cards only every other day, so progress is slow, but steady. I’m pondering whether to drop the Manette deck as my recall there has sunk to 75%, compared to 88% with KD. Manette uses stories, which I thought I would recall because they are in French. I was wrong: long stories don’t help me remember the kanji, even in my native language!
  • Listening: Jlab anki deck, latest episode on Speak Japanese Naturally and a couple of nihongo con teppei.
  • Reading: reached story 57. Some wacky Alice in Wonderland stuff, still fairly easy. Read a couple of NHK easy news, Japan seems to have a bear problem?! Tried standard article on Todaii: oh boy, I have a looong way to go :sweat_smile: Enjoyed the Frieren excerpts posted by @trunklayer
4 Likes
56

Week 50.

  • Grammar: Tobira workbook stumped me with the bajillion usages of できる :melting_face: The notes explain one particular usage but the exercises test other meanings. I feel I should know those, but I don’t :sweat_smile: Read the example sentences on Jisho, yikes, the overloading is impressive. Picked up my hard copy of Japanese Grammar the Manga Way, completed lesson 15.
  • Anki decks: dropped the Manette deck as retention failed to improve. KD deck moving along, had a few bad days on recent cards, but my accuracy on mature cards averaged 92% this week. I must be learning something :grin: .
  • Listening: managed daily listening practice with the jlab deck and on the Speak Japanese Naturally yt channel. I’m now pausing the video to read the Japanese surtitles: they sometimes cover the whole image, but I find them extremely useful, especially to follow the dialogues.
  • Reading: completed 69 short stories on Shinobi and a couple of NHK easy news articles.
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57

Week 51.

  • Grammar: none.

  • KD Anki deck: after struggling last week to learn some of the kanji, failed repeatedly over 含 and 念, I got stuck with only reviews for 5 days. New kanji finally started to trickle in a few days ago. Looks like FSRS decided my brain couldn’t take any more new material?!

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  • Listening: re-watched Ponyo and this time I could understand some of the Japanese, hurray! This is one of the Miyazaki movies with relatively sparse dialogue and simple vocabulary. Thoroughly enjoyed it :blush:

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58

Yeah, those two used to give me a lot of trouble as well :sweat_smile:

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59

Thanks for sharing, I feel less lonely! :sweat_smile:

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60

Week 52.

  • Grammar: read a couple of Tae Kim articles linked from the Jlab anki deck during reviews. Japanese Grammar the Manga Way, completed lesson 16.
  • KD anki deck: had a few bad days where accuracy plunged :face_with_peeking_eye: Still averaged 83% overall this week, could be worse?!
  • Listening: 5 episodes of Moomin Jap version and the last 2 Speak Naturally episodes. Spending more time on listening comprehension seems to have improved my reading ability, even though there’s been little overlap between the vocabulary in my reading and listening material. How could this be? A random YT video on language acquisition (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=illApgaLgGA) and a few related articles seem to indicate that grammar and reading are best tackled after one has acquired basic listening and speaking skills :face_with_monocle: Not sure about the speaking part, but I’ve started shadowing the Speak Naturally episodes as an experiment.
  • Reading: reached story 91 on Shinobi. Struggled through the フリエレン manga excerpts posted by our favourite cat :grin: Can’t wait for the day where I no longer need to type whole sentences in DeepL..! Sōseki Ten Nights of Dream: finished the first 3 sections, i.e. first night story. Even though I sometimes check almost every word, it’s starting to feel less disruptive, somehow I managed to glue the pieces together more easily. It helps that Sōseki uses a lot of repetition and that the voice recording on story 1 is superb :blush:
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