Durteloni’s Study Log

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
61

Week 53.

  • Grammar: Tae Kim and bunpro lookups during reading and jlab reviews. Not sure how much grammar I’m acquiring this way, at least it helps me understand whatever material I’m reading :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
  • KD anki deck: 88% accuracy this week, inching closer to my FSRS desired retention of 90%. A couple of old leeches reappeared, and others got finally squashed. My Mother of all fails: 惑 (76 reviews :melting_face: )
  • Reading: reached story 103 on Shinobi and dream 4 of Sōseki’s Ten Nights of Dreams. Rather bleak stuff, unless I’m falling to grasp the subtlety of the author’s wit?!
  • Listening: started watching フリーレン Beyond Journey’s End, episodes 1-4, still with English subtitles. Got a bit confused with the odd choice of common German words for characher names and places, but the story is engaging and I’m having a blast listening to the original dialogue. Watched the last episode of Speak Japanese Naturally; her voice is so soothing to my ears, I have to practice active shadowing to keep awake :sweat_smile: It paid off though: the video contains stunning views of Mt Fuji from a nearby lake.
4 Likes
62

Week 54. Took a day off from Japanese studies yesterday due to travelling.

  • Grammar and KD anki deck: continued as before. Mature cards now number over 700 :partying_face: , yet median difficulty sits stubbornly at 97%. Am I retaining much?!

  • Listening comprehension: reached episode 7 of the フリーレン anime and shadowed through the episode of Speak Japanese Naturally about communal cats (yes, it’s a thing!). That went by quickly, no time to fall asleep :grin: The bear alerts broadcasted on public speakers sounded spooky… maybe enough to shoo away the bears?!

  • Reading: reached story 113 on shinobi, the grammar is getting harder for me. There’re some weird translations that make me wonder how reliable are the Japanese sentences :face_with_monocle: Decided to binge read one evening half a dozen stories on Todaii, which are taken directly from news articles. Bears are a problem this year in Japan. Reached dream 6 of Sōseki’s Ten nights of dreams. Rather bleak. He must have been fun at parties :grimacing:
3 Likes
63

Week 55.

  • Grammar and anki KD deck: had a couple of lousy evening reviews. My recall seems to tank past 8pm. Spent an hour reviewing leeches before manually trimming the list of leeches down to a manageable 8. Why does anki never remove the leech tags after successful reviews :face_with_raised_eyebrow: ?
  • Listening comprehension: reached episode 12 of フリーレン. It gets a tad nasty, but there’s comic relief to balance the gory bits :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: . The Speak Japanese Naturally episode took us on a drive around a touristy area. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most terms related to using a car were in English; good katakana practice :sweat_smile:. Road signs looked utterly baffling.
  • Reading: reached story 123 on shinobi. Episodes are now getting longer, I couldn’t do more than a couple a day. The material is a bit buggy, but I like the way it builds up vocabulary, especially kana-only terms, and grammatical constructions. Read dream 6 of Sōseki’s Ten nights of Dream. This was a weird one, but definitely more upbeat than the rest so far. I encountered kanji that just entered my review pile, which is always a thrill: 掘 as in 掘り出す (ほりだす) - to carve out
4 Likes
64

Week 56. Very busy week, still managed daily Japanese studies.

  • Grammar and anki decks: briefly checked a couple of tofugu articles but otherwise just got on with the reviews. With my choice of settings, total daily review time is under half an hour. Very glad I’m doing both Kanji vocabulary and listening comprehension deck. They reinforce each other nicely.
  • Listening comprehension: 2 more episodes of フリーレン, our subscription ends this week though, so probably won’t get to the series’ end. Oh well, happy to switch to something else with perhaps more standard Japanese than anime speak?
  • Reading: reached story 136 on Shinobi. The difficulty grading is a bit weird and some content reads like TV ads from the 50s, but overall it seems to have improved my reading and listening skills through gradual introduction of new grammar constructs and constant repetition. In hindsight, I started on Satori Reader too early to truly retain anything from their extensive grammar notes.
  • Manga: bought the old ドラゴンボール booklets 3 and 4, to read over the holidays :grin: