KanjiOzeki's eternal source of motivation [yet another study log]

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
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Hi There! It’s me, KanjiOzeki. Welcome to my study log.
I’ll be talking mostly to myself here in the hopes that this log will help to keep my motivation high, but you are certainly welcome to read along!

Where to start? I kinda started my Japanese journey on a whim, and very recently. But unlike other projects that come and go, I kinda want to stick with this for a while. I’m currently enjoying the learning journey and would like to end up able to have some basic reading comprehension. Bonus if it includes enough to have some basic Japanese conversations for a holiday trip to Japan (next year? :crossed_fingers:)

As you might guess from my username I like to watch Sumo wrestling. I got into watching Sumo since NHK started putting their videos on Youtube in 2024. For those of you who don’t watch Sumo wrestling: Ozeki is the 2nd highest ‘champion’ rank, just below the great champions or Yokozuna.
The broadcasts are in English, but there’s a lot of jargon with the kimarite (winning tactic), ranks, etc. and I couldn’t help but want to learn more about it.
Japan has a fascinating culture. Definitely a mixed bag of good and bad, but either way distinct from the general western culture I grew up in.

So, I started with Wanikani March 26th just to check out some Kanji, and it got me hooked. The gamified SRS system works really well for me. It became immediately apparent that it would be hard to progress without learning Hiragana and Katakana. So I picked that up pretty quickly thanks to the Tofugo site. I rarely have issues with hiragana now, 3 weeks later. Katakana there’s still some characters I get confused about sometimes, but it’s mostly fine. I have a little kana cheat sheet for when I need it.

After level 1 I started looking for more resources to round out the WK experience. Mostly grammar, but also some conversation exercises.
I settled on:

  • MaruMori: mostly for the gamified grammar stuff, but also added vocabulary.
  • Genki: grammar
  • Irodori: mostly conversational Japanese, but it’s free!
  • NHK Easy Conversation lessons
    Of these I’ll mainly be focussing on WaniKani + MaruMori to ‘spearhead’ my learning and then go through Genki + Irodori a bit later to consolidate my knowledge. My first impression is that Genki is a good method, but MaruMori works better to pick up the concepts for now. Genki seems to assume you live in Japan as a foreign exchange student and are familiar with the student / class lingo.

I also found a bunch of reading material. There really is no shortage of this, only thing I might add to it on the short term are graded readers if I feel I lack material.

  • Tadoku.org has some really basic japanese picture books
  • NHK web easy
  • Various manga I bought (mostly to motivate me because I look forward to be able to read them. I realise most will remain far above my skill level for a while.)
  • Yotsuba
  • Polar bear cafe
  • Dragonball
  • Death Note
  • One Piece
  • Naruto
  • One Punch-Man
  • Neon Evangelion

Other than that I turned on Japanese subtitles on Netflix where possible. It’s kinda fun to see more and more recognizable in the subtitles. (for now mostly the katakana and the odd Kanji-based word)

Long term goal:

  • Wanikani level 30
  • MaruMori N3 complete
  • Be able to (mostly) read the manga I bought. Dragonball, One Piece etc.

Short(er) term goals:

  • WaniKani level 8 to get the full N5 Kanji coverage.
  • MaruMori N5 complete and decent grasp of the N5 grammar points.
  • 1000 words
  • Maybe start on some basic manga, or graded readers. Maybe Yotsuba will be doable?
  • No firm goals on Genki, Irodori etc. I’ll work on them if I feel like it, but I don’t want to overload myself.

Current status (23 days in):

  • Wanikani level 4 just started
  • MaruMori 40/138 in Fledgling Forest (N5) and 16/40 grammar points ‘guru’ status
  • Irodori: Halfway through lesson 2
  • Genki: chapter 1 started
  • NHK Easy Conversation lessons: lesson 1 finished.

So yeah, loads more to do. But I feel like I’m on the right path to eventual progress.

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Welcome to WaniKani and this community! catwave
We have a very nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaice commeownity and I really hope you’d like it here! love2

Coincidentally, I’m currently reading this free manga which you might find interesting:

Might be a bit too advanced for your current level, but who knows…

You might also find this thread interesting:

In any case, best of luck with your studies! wricat

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A sumo manga. That’s cool. I’ll put it on the list of stuff to check out once I get the first 1000 basic words and see how far I get then :slight_smile:

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Check in ~2 weeks after my opening post:

Current status (35 days in):
:smiley: overall feeling

:smiley: Wanikani level 5 first half almost all in apprentice 4 waiting for the second half to unlock.
:slightly_smiling_face: MaruMori 48/138 in Fledgling Forest (N5) and 43/60 grammar points ‘guru’ status
:slightly_smiling_face: Tadoku Graded readers: 1/18 level S books finished.
:neutral_face: Irodori: Halfway through lesson 2
:face_exhaling: Genki: chapter 1 started
:sleeping_face: NHK Easy Conversation lessons: lesson 1 finished.

Vocabulary
Really happy with my WaniKani progress. Currently spending about 10-11 days on a level. I’m really happy if I can keep it under 2 weeks. Since level 4 the WK pace has definitely picked up and feels like I’m learning new words at a good pace.

I started looking at all the MaruMori stud lists as well and added a few hundred words. Mostly easy katakana words and ‘very common’ hiragana words. Probably up to ~300-400 extra words that don’t overlap with WK. Not the most useful to learn all those katakana words since almost all are basically the (butchered) English word. Then again, I now am a lot more confident on reading katakana. I can now mostly understand when it’s h/f or r/l and only rarely confuse レ/フ or ソ/ン/シ/ツ.

Grammar
I’ve (mostly) been slacking on MaruMori, Genki etc.
I do need to start using the WK ‘holding pattern’ times when you are waiting for new stuff to unlock to work on MM grammar, get some Tadoku reading in etc.
MM felt really tough with a lot of new concepts combined with new words. I’m starting to catch up with the MM vocabulary. Now that I’m getting caught up I really want to push to get at least to lesson 57/138. I think it’s not a super bad thing to take a little more time on the grammar and do it at a time when I can focus mostly on the grammar. That said, I do want to hold myself accountable to keep making progress.

I don’t mind too much putting irodori & Genki on a bit of a pause for right now and come back to it a bit later to ‘solidify’ the grammar I learnt primarily through MaruMori.
NHK Easy Conversation was a little ‘extra’ I tried. I might come back to it when I feel like it, but I won’t make it a goal.

Reading
The main new thing is starting with the graded readers. I like it and it wasn’t too bad at all.
Tadoku recommends that you don’t use a dictionary and just skip over stuff. I might give that a try as a first pass. But I definitely plan to keep looking up all words I don’t know so I can learn them! I can see the sense in the advice for actual stories, articles etc. But the only point to reading these (very easy) graded readers is acquiring the basic vocabulary & grammar!

Question: What’s your approach to Graded Readers? Skip over stuff, or dictionary?

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For me, the problem with the “learn all the things while I read!” approach was that it wasn’t reading anymore. It was… learning all the things. And it made reading a real dragging crawl of an affair.

I found more benefit from the tadoku approach, but not so strict that I’d look up nothing. If the topic is [bla], and I have no idea what that is, I’ll keep reading a bit to see if I can work it out from context before looking it up.

Especially in the beginning, I had my dedicated grammar studies, and I had my dedicated vocab studies. It turned out best for me to let reading be reading, without also being those two other things. Spotting the words I was learning. Getting used to sentence structure. Absorbing grammar by looking up the most frequently recurring things.

Everyone learns differently, of course, but that worked most sustainably for me.

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Hello and welcome! I started the day after you and am doing… not quite as well as you but I’m enjoying the journey. :slight_smile:

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Thank you! And for what it’s worth: To me it sounds like you are doing very well!

Comparing pace is unavoidable, but I think not very helpful in the end. Everyone has their own personal journey. The two things I want to focus on above all are keep making progress and have fun with it. There are a lot of factors which make comparisons invalid. I can’t help but look at people who ‘speedrun’ WK, but they could have advantages like: infinite time, actually living in Japan, it could be a reset from a higher level, maybe they had already studied Japanese in school, or already know Chinese characters. It’s also very possible that they just have a better memory, scheduling and motivation than I for learning this.

In the end I can only set my own goals and see how I do.
I think the one thing that gives me a big boost at the moment is that I’ve felt that I’m no longer making progress in my job. I’ve been looking for something where I can feel like I’m learning and for whatever reason I latched onto learning Japanese to fill that need. I’m also lucky in the sense that I don’t have many obligations and can spend a few hours per day on it.

For me to stick with a project long-time is rare though. I’ve often started things fast and then quit only for other people who are making steady progress to overtake me. I would like to become a bit more like that latter type of person. Sticking with this daily for over 30 days is a big deal for me.

I really want to give myself every opportunity to stick with this long enough to be able to read some basic manga. That’s why I try to set up as much ‘help’ for myself while motivation is still high. I may sound like I have it all figured out, but underneath I’m worried for the inevitable motivation drop. I don’t mind a slowdown, but I really hope I can at least keep doing a couple reviews daily when that happens so I can get back in it later and not have yet another abandoned project.

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Could quote the whole thing because they are wise words indeed, but to keep it short (for once)… agree totally! I think the comparison was more an appreciation of your progress so far. :slight_smile:

That’s one of the things I love about this community is the reinforcement of motivation that comes from the open sharing of study logs and progress, and just how wonderful the people here have been so far. I have similar problems where if I’ve got something long-term that I want to do but am not really driven to do, if I have a day or two where it breaks I can totally stop. I like these study logs as a way to self-police. :slight_smile:

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Another 2 weeks have passed. Time for another check-in!

Current status (49 days in):
:smiley: overall feeling

:star_struck: Wanikani level 7, about one third in (started all the lvl 6 vocab and first half kanji. Didn’t do all the available level 7 vocab yet.)
:grimacing: MaruMori 57/138 in Fledgling Forest (N5) and 40/60 grammar points ‘guru’ status
:sleeping_face: Tadoku Graded readers: 1/18 level S books finished.
:sleeping_face: Irodori: Halfway through lesson 2
:sleeping_face: Genki: chapter 1 started
:sleeping_face: NHK Easy Conversation lessons: lesson 1 finished.

Vocabulary
Still really happy with my WaniKani progress. It actually sped up to an average of just under 8 days for levels 5 and 6. I’m learning new kanji and vocab at a breakneck pace, but it does come at the cost of everything else. I just don’t have the mental capacity to also do the grammar etc. with 150+ reviews a day and a bunch of lessons on top.
I didn’t really plan for this to happen. I wanted to take 10-14 days per WK level. I think it’s fine for as long as I’m still highly motivated to do so and still find it fun.

Grammar
I did do a few lessons on MaruMori, but not nearly as many as I planned.
I also have definitely been slacking with the Grammar SRS, focussing on the easier vocab SRS :face_with_peeking_eye:. I even managed to make negative progress on the guru+ SRS status on the grammar side. I think the main reason I’ve been avoiding it has been that I find it rather challenging (apart from less time due to the WK SRS load).
I think this is ‘OK’ for at most a few more WK levels. It’s not bad to get to a 1000 words on WK first I think, but I don’t want to unbalance my Japanese learning too much. Hopefully my appetite for grammar will come back naturally. :pleading_face:

Reading
Did next to nothing in this category. There’s a few reading exercises on MaruMori I guess, but even those I felt I didn’t do too well. (~80% missing vocab, ~20% misinterpreting grammar).

Short Term Goals

  • WaniKani: lvl 8
  • MaruMori: get back on the grammar SRS train and get to lesson 65 minimum (72 ideally)
  • Tadoku: get back on the Tadoku lvl S books!!! Last one I read was 22 april :face_with_crossed_out_eyes: And I don’t know why, because that one was kinda fun to read.
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